Archive for the ‘Photography’ Category

Olympus E-P1 and my next computer.

Friday, June 19th, 2009

The Olympus E-P1 looks absolutely stunning. It’s highly likely that I’ll be buying one of those come September.

The E-P1 does away with the mirror box of D-SLRs, whilst retaining a large Micro Four Thirds sized sensor, which results in a camera which isn’t really an SLR, but produces high quality images akin to those typical of D-SLRs. It seems to be an ideal camera for street photography – the silver model isn’t overly obtrusive, and coupled with the 17mm lens and optical viewfinder (fitted onto the hot-shoe), makes for a compact camera capable of taking high-quality images whilst still being small enough to not be highly noticeable. It is quite expensive, at £749.99 for the kit including the 17mm lens and optical viewfinder, but I feel that it is well worth it, and there won’t be many (if any) running costs involved – no film to develop and scan. As well as this, Olympus will be producing an adaptor which will allow me to use my OM lenses from my OM-2n on the E-P1, which is a great benefit. I will be waiting until reviews are available on the camera before making a final decision, but I’m almost certain that it is the camera for me.

I have also been looking into the 13″ MacBook Pro, and believe that come September, I will have enough money to purchase a model. I’m willing to accept the lower resolution of the 13″ model due to the extra portability offered, especially as I am also planning to purchase the 24″ Apple Cinema Display to go with it, which runs at 1920×1200. An expensive investment, but well worth it I feel. The MacBook Pro comes with an SDHC card-reader, which will be extremely useful when coupled with the aforementioned Olympus E-P1, which also uses SDHC cards – that’s one less cable for me to worry about! It is highly likely that I will purchase Aperture with the MacBook, and use that for photo management. I’ve looked into Lightroom as well, but it seems from reviews that Aperture is more suited to my needs. Furthermore, Macs provide an ideal environment for doing development work in, especially as they are Unix-based, and thus have a half-decent shell available to users. I’ll most likely be using Eclipse for Java programming, and I’ll possibly be doing some Qt development on Macs as well, but we shall see.

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One camera, one year

Friday, June 12th, 2009

As I wrote in my last blog post, I’m currently looking into getting a film rangefinder such as the Bessa R3a. Obviously, such cameras don’t come cheap, and I’ve been looking into ways to make it worth my while (and money!). I uncovered (somehow, whilst browsing around) [this project].

Now, I know the article is rather explicit in saying that one should use a Leica, but I quite frankly don’t have the money to buy one, and believe that a camera such as the Bessa R3M (similar to the R3a, but with no auto-exposure) would be an ideal camera to complete the project with. As the writer quite rightly points out in his [next article], Leica cameras hold their value extremely well, and you could quite easily re-sell the camera for what a price very close to what you bought it for. As I mentioned earlier, there’s no way I’d be able to fork out for a £2500 camera unless I got like two full-time jobs or something silly along those lines, so I think a £300-400 Bessa will have to do.

It is advised in the original article that one should shoot as many rolls of film per week as possible. This is a pretty large expenditure, but I imagine that I would purchase a box of 10 rolls of whichever film I decide to use per month. This would probably amount to around £35 a month for the raw film, and approximately another £35 a month for processing costs. The article recommends getting 1-6 “work-prints” per film – I would not get prints of these photos, but instead upload them to Flickr, so I would effectively be uploading between 10 and 60 photos a month. Every month, I would pick out the two most interesting photos (as calculated by Flickr) from what I had uploaded that month, and get prints made of them.

The monthly cost would come to around £85 a month, with an initial outlay of around £800 for a camera and lens, and £200-250 for a film scanner.

(Oh, and in case you’re wondering, I would most likely get a 50mm lens. Or possibly a 40mm lens. Not 100% sure on that one.)

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Film vs. Digital

Thursday, June 4th, 2009

For my birthday, both my parents have agreed to contribute a sum of money towards a camera for me. At first, I had my heart set on a DSLR, but now I’m not so sure…

Let me explain. I’m as much of a computer geek as you can expect the average Comp Sci student to be, perhaps more so. I love my digital toys (or hate, depending on the situation). But for some (perhaps insane?) reason, I still prefer film to digital. My primary camera at the time of writing is an Olympus OM-2n, and it performs perfectly. Since starting out with the whole photography business, I’ve gained an interest in street photography. It’s great fun (although a teensy bit scary at times), and I love just randomly snapping pictures of interesting-looking people. I’ve been using my OM-2n primarily with the Zuiko 135mm f/3.5 lens I have for it, and I’ve generally been having great fun with it. However, I would much prefer to get closer to the subjects and get better shots that way, rather than shooting from a distance. For that method of photography, a rangefinder point and shoot camera is much more preferable and discreet compared to an SLR. Prime examples of rangefinder cameras that the average person may well know of include the Leica range of cameras.

Now, Leica cameras are a tad expensive (coming in at around.. £2,500 for the body only!), so I’ve been looking around at cheaper alternatives. The one which seems to most suit my needs is the Voitländer Bessa R3a. It’s a fraction of the price of the Leica (a “mere” £350), and seems to offer most of the capabilities of the Leica M7. It also uses the Leica M-mount for lenses, so if I ever did earn enough money to upgrade to a Leica (possibly a Leica M8 or M8.2 sometime in the distant future), any lenses I bought would for the Bessa R3a still work on the newer camera.

The Bessa R3a also has a 1:1 viewfinder, meaning that I’d be able to shoot with both eyes open (which would probably be kinda weird at first, but I’m sure I could get used to it). It uses aperture-priority for its “auto” mode, which is the same as my OM-2n. It has the ability to display two shutter speeds in the viewfinder: the shutter speed which you have selected as the user, and the shutter speed which the camera recommends. It produces outstanding results on film, with a resolution of 125lp/mm (line pair/mm). The only “downside” is that it cannot be used without batteries. I guess I can just make sure I keep spares with me at all times.

In my last blog post, I wrote about the advantages of getting film processed in bulk, buying film in bulk, and the use of film scanners to reduce the costs of photography. I believe that if I practice what I preach, I would be still be able to feed myself, whilst continuing to shoot film. (But only just…). Depending on what I decide I prefer to do in the long run, I would most likely invest in a double-digit or single-digit Canon DSLR or a Leica M8 of some sort. But this would all be in at least a couple of years, so I’m not going to think about that too much.

Now, this blog post may well be a tad pre-emptive: I’m not going to buy any new camera until I’m off my crutches. This will allow me to experiment much more thoroughly with street photography with my OM-2n and two legs. I’ll be able to get closer to my subjects, and keep moving whilst taking photos (which I cannot do at the moment). I want to be able to spend a good month or so shooting with my OM-2n on two legs before purchasing a new camera, so I’d be on the market around about late August or early September. We shall see what happens.

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Making photography more wallet-friendly

Friday, May 29th, 2009

I’ve recently been getting into photography, thanks to my girlfriend, Willow, and a couple of mutual friends of ours. At the moment, I’m shooting with a film camera, and as you can probably imagine, this isn’t the most cost-effective of approaches. As such, I’ve been looking into how to make it cheaper for me to enjoy this hobby (especially as I’m a student with limited funds).

Obviously, the cheapest option in the long-term would be to buy a DSLR (Digital SLR) camera, however, I want to carry on shooting with a film camera for the time being (although I do have plans to buy a DSLR towards the end of the summer). Due to this, I’ve been focusing on how to make it as cheap as possible to do film photography. I have been taking my film to Jessops to get them processed, printed, and scanned, but the quality of the scans were, at best, mediocre. Jessops also used cold developer when developing my roll of Ilford HP5, which resulted in unacceptably high levels of grain. They also scan colour images with a green/blue cast to them, which in some cases, can completely ruin a good photo. A friend on IRC has recommended (on numerous occasions) that I use Peak Imaging for photo processing, then to scan the photos myself at home. Peak Imaging offers a discount when many rolls of film are sent in to be developed at once. The main expenditure in this plan would be forking out for a film scanner: a decent model would set me back about £200-odd. But after so many rolls of film, it would start paying for itself: after doing the maths, it would take approximately 20 rolls of film until the scanner started paying for itself (assuming mid/high-resolution scans). In addition, having your own film scanner allows you to scan only particular frames from the negatives – or particular slides – and at higher resolutions.

So, although I do plan to get a DSLR, it seems to be well worth buying a flim scanner, especially as I plan to continue using film throughout my experiments with photography. The £200 expenditure quickly pays for itself, and allows me to worry much less about how much I’m spending whilst taking photos. I’ll also start buying film in bulk once I’ve identified my favourites, and store them in fridges so that they don’t go out of date so fast: every little helps…

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