A Preston connection

It seems to me that camera manufacturers are using the retro look trick to lure people in to making new purchases. I've been amongst the older camera users hankering for a simple camera like we had in our youth. But having used my film camera since going digital I realise that the controls are much better on modern cameras. Sure it's nice to have actual buttons and dials to change the things you need to change often instead of fiddling about with menus, but in most cases cameras can be set up to do just that - often with the right hand and without taking your eye from the viewfinder.

So when pictures of the much trailed, and I mean much trailed, new Nikon full frame 'retro' DSLR appeared it seemed to me to be a curious mix of old and new. Worst of all it's lacking the one feature everyone really wants - the size of a film camera. Tomorrow all will be officially revealed.

Smallness is where mirrorless cameras score. It's why I keep getting tempted by them. I've been thinking that the Panasonic GX7 might be the Holy Grail. It has pretty much all the features I need. So that's what I've been trawling the net for info about recently. The files I've seen from it show it to be capable in low light which is a plus, and if the lens is up to it the detail it can resolve is great. There's one thing that puts me off. The pictures have that same look I get from the G2. That thing I still can't put a name to. The colours are sort of bright in a crayon colour way, yet dull and chalky at the same time. Unrefined. If I was only going to shoot black and white it would be fine though!

Still, I did find a promotional video for the camera. A book of Kertész photographs and Ian Berry's The English were my main inspirations when I discovered photography beyond the mainstream photographic magazines.  Leaving aside the fact it's an advert I enjoyed watching and listening to him in a 'reading between the lines' way. Listening to what he had to say about photography rather than the camera and watching how he moves when photographing. In the way the web works that video lead me to another.

There's no point having a camera that's great to use if you aren't happy with the 'film' it's loaded with. No point having a camera you want to like, and being less than happy with it. Which is still where I am with my little Fuji. I had it with me on a sunny morning in Preston (Berry's birthplace!) today. A day of bright winter sun and long shadows that made me want to take photographs. The problem was that I had no time to spare and had to snatch what I could while walking from the car to the art shop and back.

The camera did an okay job most of the time. That focus lag is a killer though. It's no wonder that the web is awash of shots like the one at the this post. Pictures of things that don't move. Luckily the people waiting to cross the road didn't do much moving. There were other frames, but this was the only one where people were shading their eyes. Which helps make the picture what it is.Which is something, but not all that much.

Why in black and white? The colours distracted from the visual point - the shadows - and confused the picture. It's an image that relies on its graphic qualities, so strip it back to the bare bones of tones.

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Playing chicken

Over the last couple of years I've driven past a poultry show just as everyone was leaving and wondered what it would be like to visit it with a camera. This year I was forewarned, and with the weather being lousy I stuck a a 'proper' camera and a spare lens in my bag and the X10 in a pocket and went for a look.

Being held in a big shed lit with fluorescent tubes but with some daylight (when the clouds parted) coming through small high windows the lighting was quite dull the colour temperatures mixed. It was doable without flash and most of the time ISOs weren't too bad. Not even for the X10.

Photographing chickens in small cages is a bugger for autofocus though! The best shots I got of the birds, almost without exception, have an eye visible between the bars and a catch-light on the eye - even if the eye was out of focus. I started out doing straightforward stuff. Catching a pose of unpredictable birds is hard enough, but trying to make sure essential bits aren't obscured by the bars at a critical moment makes life even harder. I like the symmetry and colours of this shot. Not to mention the pose of the bird.

As I went round the aisles I loosened up, forgetting many of the' rules' of composition, forcing odd compositions and not worrying at all about having everything level. Not even bothering to straighten things back home on the computer.

Limited depth of field became a feature of many shots, not purely for effect, but as much a result of the low light levels and a desire to keep the ISO down.

What soon became obvious is that the smaller sensor images just aren't as pleasingly smooth as those from the 'proper' camera. There's nothing 'wrong' with them as such, they just look kind of 'harsh' is the best way I can find to describe what bugs me about them. I'm thinking that my search for a small, discreet, camera is doomed to failure - at least at an affordable price.

There was a guy there with a chicken studio set up to take portrait photographs of the prize winners. Even without bars and with careful coaxing from their owners the chickens remained uncooperative subjects!

Despite the number of people milling about, doing interesting things, and mostly oblivious top the camera I still chickened out of taking as many candid shots as I would have liked to. Most of the ones I did grab were no more than snaps and mostly taken using the screen of X10 to frame them. Apart from one which I almost like quite a bit and which was the last in a series I shot using the viewfinder of the proper camera. I saw a situation that had potential and something took over. I jammed the camera to my eye and kept shooting until I got something. Maybe that's why I didin't take so many people pictures. I didn't see many situations developing?

Two good things did come out of this brief sortie. I loosened up my compositions, and I was looking for more complex people pictures rather than shots of 'interesting' individuals doing nothing much.

As ever there's a slideshow (which could be pared down further by weeding out some of the repetitive frames) to be found here.

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Looking back - the intended post

In a way I'm glad I held back on writing this as a post by Kirk Tuck resonates with some of what I have to say. And yes, I am in the greying over fifty bracket. Although I think I still see photographs as a twenty year old!

What rang a bell with me was the assertion that for most present day purposes (viewing on a screen) most cameras are more than adequate. This was brought home to me while sorting through my photographs from the tackle shop to put them on-line to show a friend. At one point I used Lightroom to create a slideshow (as per the previous experimental post). I did one version in high quality and ran through it on my PC. Given that I had used a range of cameras, with varying size sensors and quality of lens, it was all but impossible to tell which pictures had been made with what gear. The only real tell-tale sign being depth of field - although even that wasn't a sure thing.

The only technical limitation I noticed from any of the cameras was the G2's poor handling of contrast. Highlights being prone to over exposure. I'm guessing that's a failing of the older technology. A shame because the camera itself is well suited to using unobtrusively in close. Maybe more recent m4/3 sensors are improved in this area.

I also used another feature of Lightroom to see which focal lengths I had used most frequently. It was no surprise to find that the majority of shots were taken between 24mm and 35mm (or the equivalent on non-full frame cameras). The confined space probably accounted for that as much as anything. It did suggest that the 28mm might be all that's required though!

All in all looking back through three years or so of shots, although not a huge number in total, proved an interesting and valuable exercise. Not only did I pick up on these technical aspects, I made some discoveries about the aesthetics relating to pictures like this.

First of all I realised that it isn't always essential to keep things level, or to correct a tilt after the fact. Some shots work well enough when off kilter. I doubt I'd recommend having the horizon slant in a picture of the sun setting over the sea, but for documentary style pictures it isn't always worth fretting over.

Similarly I came across some shots which were clearly out of focus. The cardinal sin amongst photo-forum critics. At small sizes this flaw is less noticeable. Sometimes the picture has enough interest, either in the formal or the story telling sense, that a bit of blur doesn't detract at larger sizes.

Both these discoveries were quite revelatory for me. However, I don't pretend for one minute that there isn't merit in perfectly level, pin sharp, pictures. For a lot of photography that is demanded. But in stuff that is as much about capturing the feel of a place, mood or whatever a few technical slips are not the end of the world. In fact, they can add a touch of life to shots.

Another message driven home, one I have been aware of but drifting away from, was to keep the aspect ratios consistent. I had a mix of 3:2 and 4:3 shots to start with. Cropping them all to 3:2 made everything mesh much better.

Digital technology makes some processing decisions really easy to carry out. I had an urge to see what the set of pictures looked like in black and white. All it took was a few clicks and the slideshow was outputted in monochrome. The reversal was equally simple. I was surprised to see that I much preferred the colour version. Some individual shots worked in black and white, but for the most part colour helped the atmosphere.

There were more good things to come out of this picture review. The slideshow I put together was very much a 'rough cut', but it taught me a bit about sequencing pictures, which in turn suggested gaps and how they might be filled. I'll try to brave the wrath of the shopkeeper some more!

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An experiment

A test post to see if a video slideshow with some snaps from yesterday works on this blog...

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Not the intended post

I had something else in mind to write this long, dark evening, but I braved the elements down at the beach this afternoon. It was blowing a gale, almost literally, with dry sand stinging the skin and in danger of sandblasting a lens. The sun was out, however, between the fleeting clouds. Also out were the kiteboarding maniacs. Mind you it was that windy a fair few of them packed up early, it was that wild.

It hadn't been my intention to photograph the loonies so hadn't taken a long lens. The longest I had with me was a mere 85mm. At the expense of two wet feet I managed a couple of frame filling action shots. The rest were perfectly adequate for web (or phone) browsing when cropped. Which brings home the message that for the majority of uses photographs are put to  these days pretty much any old camera that can frame the shot is good enough these days. Something I'll return to when the post I was going to write today eventually appears.

85mm with no cropping!

There was another photographer shooting the action, rattling off frames at a rate of knots on their plastic bag sheathed camera. Something  I soon got bored of when I gave it a whirl. I put my wide angle zoom to use making the sort of pictures I prefer making. Pictures of people doing things in an environmental context. I shied off from taking my trusty 28 out as I thought I might end up at the beach and I don't have a filter for the lens. A good move as I had to clean salt spray off the wide angle's filter a couple of times!

Back-lighting can give great effects, but when the sun is in the shot it makes exposure tricky. One reason I like photographing in winter is that the sun is low in the sky almost all day - when it does shine. On the beach this can make for shadows which become a part of the composition by filling the negative space of the sand.

The blank canvas of helps make people and things clearer than they would be in a more cluttered place. What I try to get are people doing unconnected things over the picture plane to give a flow or rhythm to the image, rather than creating a composition in a more usual way with blocks of colour. It makes me think of some of Joan Miro's paintings - which I never really got in the past.  Timing can be everything. Not just to get them in the right places, but in positions which mean something. The frame below is getting there.

Ever since I started photographing the kiteboarders I've been trying to make pictures from low down of people behind the kites lying on the sand. Some have worked okay. Today I got one that I like for its near-symmetrical simplicity, and muted overall colours. The flash of red and the gesture of outstretched arms spreading the kite's cords are what 'makes' the image work better than of my previous attempts. Which just goes to show that it pays to carry on repeating shots over time - even when you think you've already got 'the one'.

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