It’s all good

A cool post by Kirk Tuck at Visual Science Lab reminded me of  a discussion I had with a fellow photographer recently. As a quick post of my own I thought I would write about this little encounter.

This photographer made a point that he only shoots in manual mode. At worst, as he put it, he might occasionally use aperture mode. But apparently he would never, ever resort to auto mode. That, it would seem, was just for amateurs and phone shooters. As he was talking he was shooting. He was using live view and so I could see what he was doing. He was indeed shooting in manual mode and using two dials on the camera he was ‘manually’ setting the aperture and the shutter speed. The thing is he was changing the settings until the little arrow on the reading sat on zero. In other words he was letting the camera’s light metre determine the exposure. After watching him shoot a couple of shots it became apparent that he would first select an aperture and then match the appropriate shutter speed until the camera told him that he had the right exposure. I might be wrong on this but when I shoot in manual mode (and I rarely do these days as modern cameras are so good now) I do so because I know the light/subject combination will fool the metre. So if I am shooting a white wall in sun light I know I need to over-expose a little or the wall will come out grey.

To me, this particular photographer was shooting in auto but with a lot of unnecessary work. If he’s enjoying himself then good for him. After all, I was him once-upon-a-time. Now it just seems silly to me. Like I said, most of the time now I let the camera decide the exposure even if I decide the aperture or the shutter speed. More and more in fact, I just set the camera to auto-everything and all I do is press the shutter button. There doesn’t seem much point in doing anything else for the kind of photography I do. Which, by the way is the same kind of photography this particular guy was shooting.

Having said that I will add that I still get a kick in shooting a truly manual camera. I have had a few goes in the past year at shooting some old TLR cameras including a heavy and bulky Seagull camera. These cameras have no auto-focus, no auto-white balance, no auto-ISO, no auto-anything. And no light-metre either. The beauty of these cameras is that it slows everything down. The entire process of taking an image becomes a small labour of love, a fully immersive, creative experience. It’s as close as I get to feeling kind of arty.

As Kirk states in his post, you first need to select which film you will shoot, colour or black and white. Fuji, Kodak, Ilford? Portra, TMAX? Lots of choice. Then you need to pick the ISO. Once that film is in you can’t change those things until you finish the roll. Of course that roll of film isn’t just sitting on a shelf in the house. It’s at the local camera store so a trip to the store is in order. Then after buying the roll you have to load the film. For some reason I absolutely enjoy this moment. I place the film in the camera, feed the film onto the spindle carefully (I don’t want the film to misfeed and end up with an unexposed roll—I’m writing from experience here), I close the lid and slowly turn the handle to the first frame. Camera obscura. A darkened box with a lens, nothing more. No battery to load or charge. It’s ready to go… well kind of. Next I choose my subject. Again I need to do so with care. My skills are rusty and I cannot react as fast as I once did. I use the sunny f16 rule to determine the exposure but first I need to decide on the depth of field I wish to have. So I pick my aperture and now, using the sunny f16 rule I work out the shutter speed taking into account the ISO of the film. It’s lightly overcast and my subject is in the shadows while backlit at the same time. I go through the mental calculation and come up with an answer. Probably the wrong one. I set the shutter speed. Now the focus. My subject is about three and a half metres away, I look down through the large viewfinder. There is a little split screen to help me focus. there’s even a plastic magnifying piece I can flip up to help me get it just right. I manually turn the focusing knob near the lens until the image across the split screen lines up. Finally I am ready to press the shutter button. One last check of my composition and… oh but wait, the sun has just come out and my subject has moved out of the shadows. That’s ok, no big deal, more light means faster shutter speed. Quick re-calculation of the f16 rule and I’ve reset the shutter speed. Now I re-focus and this time I get the shot. Or did I? There is no LCD screen here. I will have to wait until I finish the entire roll of 12 and get the roll developed. It will be awhile so I get my notebook out (I could just use my smart-phone but that just seems wrong) and I write down the settings, you know, just in case I screwed up so that I can learn for next time.

Like I said, I get a kick out of doing this. I like the process, I like that it forces me to slow right down and think carefully about what I’m doing. I like that it makes me ponder the wonder of photography. And I like that I learnt photography using film. But now, for 99% of my photography, I’ll use my digital camera. I’ll revisit film whenever the opportunity arises but as much as I enjoy shooting manually, I’m also having fun shooting mindlessly. If you know what I mean.

Oh and that shot above, in case you weren’t sure, it’s digital. Cross-processed in Photoshop. And yes, I really had fun making that shot.

Photography… it’s all good.

Green or Greed

 

This post steers away from my usual postings but that’s probably a good thing.

I had a conversation with someone who argued that thanks to the digital age photography had become much “greener”, more environmentally friendly, thanks to the disappearance of film and the need for chemicals used in developing. I couldn’t agree or argue with his comment because I had not seen any figures to confirm or discredit his claim. I suspect he didn’t have any figures or data either but that’s fairly standard these days; just look at the way journalism is going.

I don’t know how dangerous those dark room chemicals are to the environment or in what quantities they were used in the past but I do find it amusing when such claims are made because it’s often been my impression that while many people like to wax lyrically about the environment few people seem to care enough to change their habits. Let’s face it consumerism seems to have no bounds.

One set of figures I did see some time back was the cost, to the environment, of packaging. I don’t remember the actual numbers but I do recall being amazed and I remember wondering why it was that the so-called greenies were not focusing their efforts to bringing this seemingly shameful situation to light. I’m guessing that suggesting people refrain from buying the latest gadget while their old one still works would be too much of a hard sell. And that’s unfortunate because if I remember rightly the environmental cost of packaging was far greater than all the fossil fuel burning combined.

But I don’t want to get into a socioeconomic debate about the environment and what we should and should not do and all that stuff. To be fair I don’t even know if what I read about packaging was true or some fabrication made up by some self-serving group (like brown-paper-bag manufacturers or whatever). And I don’t mean or want to get all sanctimonious about green issues; I live in the West (well technically I live in the East but you know what I mean) and am in no position to be hypocritical since I am more likely a part of the problem than the solution. Instead I want to ask questions which came to me while listening to my friend’s argument about saving the environment.

Once upon a time the bulk of photographic advancements were made in the areas of film and optics. Where film was concerned, the beauty for photographers was that you could easily partake in the new technological improvements without having to fork out large sums of money. You could buy a roll of the latest Kodak, Fuji, Agfa or Ilford film, try it out and if you liked it you went and bought some more.

Today, camera gimmicks aside, the bulk of the technological advancements tend to relate to the Charge-Coupled Devices (CCD) but unlike the old days it always involves buying a whole new camera in order to experience the new-found benefits. Seems so wasteful. So here are my questions: why can’t we have interchangeable CCD? Are there technical reasons preventing this? And if there are is anyone looking at solving the issues? The only thing I could find on the Internet was some reference back in 1999 of a Nikon camera (the D1) that was to have a rumoured interchangeable CCD. It never happened. So please excuse my ignorance on this but I would like to know what is stopping manufacturers from building such cameras. If you know, I would be most appreciative if you would tell me or point out some relevant site.

And for the record, I’d be perfectly happy if all the stuff I bought came in brown paper bags or plain cardboard boxes. Specially if that helped the long-term sustainability of forests like the one in the image above.

 

Let’s get technical… or not

This image which was made some time ago (ie years ago) in Warwick, Queensland, Australia with an old APS 24mm film camera which had a fixed lens, fixed focal length and a panorama setting that was nothing more than a mask over the exposure. Shots taken with this camera were of a similar quality to ones taken with today’s disposable cameras. It is technically of poor quality. The depth-of-field is wrong, the sharpness leaves a lot to be desired and the exposure… well it needed a bit of dodge and burn. And despite the flaws I like this image a lot.

I shoot for a number of reasons one of them being the sheer joy of it but none of them being for making a living. That’s a good thing. For me. I might be broke otherwise. Seriously though, technical perfection is hardly a prerequisite to good photography. It can be an aspect of it… or… not.

Is it there yet?

Do you wonder whether digital has surpassed film on quality yet? Watch this video and find out what they think on the Gadget Show.