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Photo of the Week #5


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Andrew asked me to start his thread this week. He has decided to get in a little fishing and hopefully will bring back at least a picture of the big one before it gets away.

 

So...post up a shot you took this week, last week, or last year. He is pretty flexible on this. I think he wants you to at least be the person who took the photo...and even that may be negotiable.

 

In other words, have some fun...

Edited by Claudio Branch
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Very nice images gents! In keeping with the emerging dramatic skies theme here's one I took this week of an Oncology Research Centre in Glasgow. I was out taking some site photos for a photomontage of the site next door for a competition entry we're working on but managed to snag a few personal shots while I was there. ;)

 

Just my usual wee Fuji camera with polarising filter.

 

P.S. Incidentally Neil, what's the reflective surface at the bottom of the picture?

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P.S. Incidentally Neil, what's the reflective surface at the bottom of the picture?

 

 

 

I am looking out of my loft Velux, and sat my camera on the velux glass for stability but managed to get this reflective surface for the foreground.

 

Also this shot has no post work, just the original raw file.

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P.S. Incidentally Neil, what's the reflective surface at the bottom of the picture?

 

 

 

I am looking out of my loft Velux, and sat my camera on the velux glass for stability but managed to get this reflective surface for the foreground.

 

Also this shot has no post work, just the original raw file.

 

I thought it was your infinity pool Neil...

 

Here's a snap from this morning, on the way back from scouting a location. Downtown Chicago at 5am. Didnt even think about the shot, just snapped, but I like it.

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Here's my photo for last week. It's an end of a foot bridge over Laurel Hill Creek in or near (I'm not making this up) Lower Turkeyfoot, PA. Yes, I drove through Upper Turkeyfoot to get there. It was a beautiful afternoon, so the fish were taking time off and some of us decided to take a photo break.

 

I used a Minolta SRT-200 that I recently restored, with a 50mm/1.7MD lens. The film was Arista Premium 100 (rebranded Kodak Plus-X) developed in Rodinal at 1:25/70F/6 minutes and scanned with a Minolta Dual III.

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I also shoot digital but I just think film is a lot of fun, especially developing it myself, and films like Plus-X and Ektar are just amazing. It's also what I learned on. I'd probably do enlarger prints too if I had a darkroom. When I want fast results, instant verification, high resolution, I go to digital, but shooting film is a slower, sort of meditative process - composing, manually focusing and not seeing the result until I get the film processed. (But with print film's exposure latitude the results are pretty reliable.) In comparison, digital feels more like photography with ADD. Instant feedback means feeling like I need to see and use the feedback instantly which distracts my eye from the finder and the subject.

 

The other thing about film is the equipment is cheap. Really cheap. I'm sticking with manual focus Minolta because it's obsolete - the parts don't work on any DSLRs without adapters, so it's cheaper than Nikon or Pentax. I got one pro zoom (Vivitar S1 28-90/2.8 macro, the best Vivitar lens) for about $25 and another (Vivitar S1 70-210/3.5 macro, the third best Vivitar lens, the second best being a tele prime I can't find) for $0.99, an XD11 (which is one of the Minolta/Leica collaborations and it shows) with a 50/1.4 for $40 and I wanted a 58/1.4, and found one for $20 - with a fully working SRT-200 thrown in for free.

 

Comparing the ergonomics and shooting experience with my XD11 to my D90, it seems that in may ways we've taken steps back. The XD11 is smaller and lighter with much simpler controls, very simple to use and change auto exposure modes, a much better viewfinder and a metal body. An all-around amazing design, almost perfect in every detail, like the shutter speed dial that can be operated with a thumb without looking away from the finder, the flip-up eyepiece blinder, the quiet shutter, it's a Leica with a Minolta label.

 

A Minolta Dual III is a film/slide scanner that's good, autofocuses and does 2820 PPI - 10MP scans - but is old and pretty slow. If you shop around you can find things like that pretty cheap. I got mine by posting on Craigslist ("Want to buy: Film Scanner"). With the old models the software usually doesn't run on new OSes but Vuescan usually does a better job than the original software. The current film scanners are the Nikon 5000 and 9000, and they're excellent but expensive.

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BTW here's a shot on Ektar 100 (processed and scanned by CVS) from a few weeks back, I think I used a Minolta with a 50/1.4 Rokkor lens. See how nothing's blown out? The shadows have detail but so do the whites and the sky is blue. The D90 has almost, but not quite, caught up to that.

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I use to shoot film a looooooooooooong time ago.

I had a slide scanner that fit into a 5.25" drive bay on my (very) old computer.

You should be able to get one fairly cheaply and if you scan a negative, just invert everything in PS.

 

Film can capture stuff that only film can do. Digital is good, but it's digital. Film, being analog, can capture warm colours so much better (in my opinion).

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Claudio - if you miss it, get a film camera and shoot :) Like I said, they're cheap enough now. You'd be amazed when you try doing something like taking a portrait with a 50/1.4 or tele prime lens in 35mm format, you can get the bokeh to do things a DX camera and kit lens just can't do. Much as I love the 18-55DX.

 

Joel - you got that right, I think. Unfortunately it's getting hard to get a "real" print done - most stores are converting to machines that scan, color correct and print instead of the old minilabs that had an automated enlarger in them, so a lot of the time your colors come out digital anyway.

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