Photographing The Golden Gate Bridge

This morning I headed up to San Francisco to take some photographs of the Golden Gate bridge. As you can see from these iPhone snapshots, I was using my Mamiya 645 1000s which I had loaded with Kodak Ektar 100.

The first place I visited was the Marin Headlands for the classic tourist shot with San Francisco in the background.

I then tried to head higher up into the Headlands but the road was closed for construction. I did take a few photos at the visitor center before heading back over the bridge to Fort Point.

If you have never been to Fort Point, it is highly recommended. It is great for taking the bridge from a viewpoint that’s a little different from most tourist shots.

The fort itself is also quite interesting inside with exhibitions on the history of the fort and life back when it was in use. And you can climb up to the roof where you can stand right under the bridge.

It will be a while before I get my Mamiya shots developed but when I do I will post some here (if they are any good)

Posted on August 14th, 2010 no comments

Photo Shoot Practice – Olympus 35 RC

Today I decided to take some shots of my Olympus 35 RC, a compact fixed lens rangefinder from the 1970s.

To take these shots, I was using a very basic “Strobist” set up with a Canon Speedlite 430 EX flash mounted on a stand firing through an umbrella camera left. I also used some white foam core on the right to reflect back some fill. The flash was fired remotely using an Elinchrom EL Skyport Universal radio trigger.

The camera I used was my trusty Canon 40D with a 24 to 70mm L f/2.8 lens. I metered using a Sekonic L-308s Flashmate meter.

I am still learning flash photography so came upon a few problems. One of those can be seen in this following shot.

Reflected in the lens is the clear outline of the umbrella. I would have preferred for this to not be so obvious. I tried playing with angles and also with the set up you see below but I wasn’t happy with the results. In this set up I am firing the flash through the diffuser part of a Photoflex multi-disk but the reflection was still too noticeable. Still a lot for me to learn for sure.

For all of the shots I set the camera on manual mode with the shutter speed set at 1/60. There was daylight coming in from an open door camera right and also through a window behind the subject so I wanted to use some of the ambient light.

Most of the shots were shot using an aperture of either f/8 or f/11 except the photograph above which was shot at f/5.6. I found with apertures less than that the depth of field wasn’t as pleasing to me. The flash was used in manual mode and the power was set from 1/2 to 1/8 depending on what aperture I was using or the distance of the flash from the subject.

The photograph above shows most of the gear I used today. At the top is an Interfit light stand and Wescott shoot through umbrella. On the next row is a Manfrotto 498RC2 ball head. Next to that is my Canon Speedlite 430 EX flash with a hot shoe to PC adapter connected to the Elinchrom El-Skyport receiver below. Next to the flash is the Canon 40D with the 24 to 70mm L f/2.8 lens and next to that is the flash meter, a Sekonic L-308s.

Below the 40D, is the matching Elinchom trasmitter and some no-name light stand adapter. At the bottom is a Manfrotto 190XPROB Pro Aluminum Tripod.

As I said I am still learning this type of photography so there is a long way to go before I will be truly happy with my images. But it is always a good idea to shoot as often as possible and learn from the experience each time.

Below are the rest of the “keepers” from today.

Posted on July 31st, 2010 1 comment

Olympus XA Review

One of my favorite 35mm cameras is my Olympus XA. Introduced in 1979, this camera is part of a series of cameras (along with the XA1, XA2, XA3 and XA4) but it is the only one of the series to use a rangefinder focus.

The Lens is a Zuiko 35mm f:2.8 lens and is completely covered by the clamshell when closed which makes this camera easy to slip into a pocket. Also, when the clamshell is closed, the camera is powered off which means the batteries last for a very long time.

With the clamshell open, you gain access to the focus lever which sits below the lens. Focusing is easy and fast since the lever has a very short throw and the rangefinder patch is still quite bright in my camera. Above the focus lever is the film speed setting with a range from 25ASA to 800ASA.

The camera uses aperture priority with the apertures being set by a lever beside the lens. Shutter speeds are rated from 1 second to 1/500 and the current shutter speed is shown using a needle that is visible in the viewfinder. (Note: I have seen other websites that quote 10 seconds as the max shutter speed but I have not tested this on my camera – the viewfinder scale only goes to 1 second).

The shutter is extremely sensitive requiring barely a touch to trigger. This means hand held slow shutter speeds are quite possible. Also, the shutter is practically silent lending itself well to being discrete in situations that warrant it.

These days you can pick up an XA for around $40 to $60 on eBay. If that is too expensive the zone focus XA2 is worth checking out. A lot of times the XA2 cameras go for less than $30.

To find out more about the XA and other cameras in the XA family, visit the best XA resource on the web, http://www.diaxa.com/

To see more of my XA shots, check out my Flickr stream with the tag Olympus XA.

Posted on July 27th, 2010 2 comments

New Lens Hood For the Voigtländer

Yesterday I got a new lens hood for my Voigtländer 35mm F/1.4 Nokton shown here on my Bessa R4A rangefinder. Hopefully this will reduce lens flare and increase contrast in the photographs.

Posted on July 21st, 2010 2 comments

Have You Entered Holgapalooza Yet?

Holgapolooza is an annual photo contest run by the folks from Light Leaks Magazine and Toycamera.com. Check out the rules and prizes at http://www.holgapalooza.com/

Posted on July 13th, 2010 no comments

Polaroid Automatic 230 Overview

Over the past few days I have been posting some Polaroid photos taken with a Polaroid Automatic 230 Land Camera. For those of you not familiar with older Polaroid cameras, I thought I’d explain exactly what this camera is.

The Polaroid Automatic 230 Land Camera is a folding pack camera in the “200 series” available from 1967 to 1969. It has a plastic body with a 114mm f/8.8 glass lens. The camera use 100 series peel apart pack film which is 3 1/4″ x 4 1/4″ in size. The actual image size is 2 7/8″ x 3 3/4″ centered on the frame.

The shutter is electronic with speeds from 10 seconds – 1/1200. There is a dial on the lens for exposure compensation of -1 stop to +2 stops.

Focusing is achieved by using a rangefinder that is separate from the viewfinder. The viewfinder assembly is on a hinge that allows for it to be folded down when storing the camera inside its case.

To focus, a lever attached to the bellows is moved left or right and there is a pictogram indicating which way to move for closer focus (a man) or infinity (a man standing in front of a mountain).

Film speed is chosen using a dial under the lens. The available speeds are 75, 150, 300 and 3000. So if a film such as 672 (ISO 400) is used, some exposure compensation is required. The yellow button under the lens assembly is the “scene selector” which adjusts the aperture.

Recommendations for which scene to use are listed on the top of the lens assembly for each of the film speeds and a yellow square shows the currently selected scene.

Numbered buttons indicate the sequence for taking a shot. Step 1 is focus and step 2 is press the shutter.

Step 3 is reset the shutter for the next shot. In reality, this is done before step 1 of course.

Finally step 4 is remove the film from the camera by pulling on the paper tab.

Examples Shots

Links
The Land List
Option8 Polaroid FAQ

Posted on March 22nd, 2010 8 comments

Toy Camera Book 2.0 Sneak Peak

Posted on March 12th, 2010 no comments

Polaroid Film

The Impossible Project are holding a press event in New York on March 22nd and hopefully they will announce some new integral film to feed our SX-70s.

Unfortunately, they won’t be releasing any pack film but I still have a small stash of various films left.

If you are viewing this in an email or RSS reader, please click though to see the gallery.

Posted on March 5th, 2010 no comments

Silver Efex Pro Film Types

I have been playing with Nik Software’s Silver Effects Pro plug in for Photoshop and Lightroom over the past few weeks. One of the features of the plug in is a “grain engine” which “accurately recreates your digital photographs to look like a traditional black and white image…mimicking the traditional silver halide process.”

This post is not a review of the grain engine. Also, I have not used all of these film emulsions so I cannot say if they are accurate or not but I wanted to show a few samples generated by the software.

Apart from the adding the grain, no other tweaking was done either in Lightroom or Silver Efex Pro.

The original photo was taken using Kodak Ektar 100 which is a pretty fine grain film. What follows is a “neutral” B&W conversion with no grain added and then five samples which mimic Kodak ISO 32 Panatomic-X, Agfa APX 100, Ilford FP4, Kodak Tri-X 400, Fuji Neopan 1600 and Kodak TMax 3200. (There are twelve other film types that I am not showing here).

Let me know what you think.