Scarborough snowfall 2

snowfall 2
Originally uploaded by ajh400

So winter 2010 continues it's chilling and unusual progress. It is rare to have snowfall settling in Scarborough, due to the salty sea air, even rarer for snow to fall and lay on the sands. But today it happened, and I got wrapped up warm and headed out the office to get photos for Saturday's paper. I got very cold and wet, yet also very warm and sweaty inside my coat, that odd and unpleasant combination that happens when you're walking briskly in winter. Shooting pics quickly became a bit of a struggle with snow on the lens, and condensation on the viewfinder, so I was almost shooting blind, and checking on the LCD(which itself had to be wiped clear of snow). Yearning for warm Spring sunshine now!

London in the rain

Long time no post, largely, no entirely due to work...

I'm in London (strictly speaking Surrey, a train ride away from the metropolis) visiting my Dad, and planning to go up to town to see some photo exhibitions. Today rain stopped play, as I'm not so keen on walking around London in the rain, which is plaguing summer, as usual.

But Saturday's forecast is dry at least, so I'm looking forward to the BPPA exhibition at the National Theatre, then a couple of shows at the National Portrait Gallery, then onto the new Photographers Gallery in Ramillies St, to see what it's like. And to see if it is still 'the' place for serious looking, studenty photographers...

A little bit of summer would be nice for the day.

Olympii

Olympii 1
Originally uploaded by ajh400

Some of my photographic golden oldies, I just think they look and work so nicely. I confess I am a camera geek. I seem to have collected more Olympus' than any other manufacturer and think their cameras and lenses are rather special. The Trips cost a tenner each, the 35RC was £25, and the Pen EE2 £15 I think. The newer cameras at the back were all bought new in their day, the AF-1Twin was about £75, as was the mju-1, and the XA-2 £99 I think.
Surely it can't be too difficult to make the Trip35 again, but digital? Please!

Focussing...I remember that!

About a year ago I took a notion to buy an Olympus OM camera, because it was an iconic 70's camera,  and the little Zuiko lenses were renown for their quality. Oh, and these cameras, and lenses, were going dead cheap on eBay, almost criminal I think, given the quality. 

One OM-2n became three, and half a dozen lenses, all for less than one new digital compact camera.  They are superb things, so small and neat, such an opposite to my regular D3, or even D200 and associated lenses. To think that pro' cameras used to be so small and light! What happened on the way Nikon and Canon?! Why can a modern pro dSLR be as neat as an OM?

 The big downside of shooting film is the cost of processing. This is just something photographers accepted back in the film only days, but now a 1Gb memory card can be bought for less than one roll of film alone. So the eBay OM's haven't seen a lot of film, being used like a weekend only classic car, and what film I have used has been from my bag of random old outdated films. If only I could use my OM Zuiko's on a digital camera...? 

  Well, I've recently been able to borrow an Olympus E-420 dslr, which with a cheap adaptor(another eBay find) means I can try using the old manual lenses for 'free',  digitally.

If the E-420 doesn't have the design chic of those old OM's, it certainly is tiny enough to match their handling. Unfortunately, the small size is achieved partly from the little sensor, only half the size of a 35mm frame so lens focal length is doubled, and the viewfinder is pretty wee, half sized.

Yet the whole point of buying the OM's, the Zuiko's and borrowing the 420 is the very act, the skill even, of manual focussing. The now nostalgic feel (in an autofocus age) of turning a smoothly damped focussing ring. The actual connection of myself with the very sharpness of the photo... from eye, to thought, to hand, to ...click! This is the way the greatest ever photos by the greatest photographers, have been taken. From Fox-Talbot, to Cartier-Bresson, Capa, McCullin, Bailey, you name them.. 

The latest autofocus is a technological marvel, especially with a Silentwave type lens, instant and  err, silent. But focussing is not now a physical thing as it once was, no more skill is needed (other than by thumb, to select a focus spot). Brilliant, yet thoughtless technology, easing our way to take a photo, that and auto-exposure.

So to use again a manual lens is like turning on the thought process, relearning the skill, and truly operating a camera. And I love it!

Of course, in using the E-420 I'm copping out a bit by using aperture priority autoexposure, but that's just a light reading thing. Focussing is the real deal. Using a fixed lens, not a zoom, concentrates the eye and exercises the feet! Put a Zuiko 28mm next to a Nikkor 12-24mm and it's so tiny it's like something the Nikkor might have coughed up!

So my new thing after being a photographer for 30 years,  is focussing, an almost forgotten skill yet the most basic skill a photographer should have.

With video becoming more commonplace in cameras,  vSLRs, so far all requiring manual focussing while filming, maybe the time has come for the comeback of all manual lenses.

Voigtlander make a few superb lenses, but all other manufacturers expect us to use the feeble, wibbly wobbly, lightweight excuses for a focus ring that are on their autofocus lenses.

Got used to autofocus? Go use a manual lens! If you're a proper photographer, you'll love it! 

Scarborough, May 2009, Olympus E-420 with 28mm f3.5mm Zuiko OM lens

Spring is here, but...

A splendid day for a walk along Scarborough's South Bay this afternoon. Refreshingly bracing, but not too cold, with a fantastic wild sea. Early Spring is one of my favourite times of the year.

So glad winter is now past!

Movies on dSLRs, the D90 vSLR is the future.

For many newspaper photographers these days, shooting video is an essential new skill/workload.

On one hand it's an interesting new way to tell the story, both from in presentation and in creative terms. I mostly enjoy filming, though having to shoot stills and video can be brain-frying, as you have to think of still shots, and moving images, with two very different cameras. And then there is the problem of having to carry two sets of kit - the Nikon and a bag of lenses, and the camcorder, maybe with mics, and a light, and always with a monopod at least. Where's health and safety saying "no, too heavy", when you really need it?! 

Help is at hand in the form of the new dSLRs which can also shoot video. I shall christen them vSLRs. I've never seen this term before so there, you read it here first.  vSLR-copyright me!

  I recently tested the Nikon D90, which is the simplest of the two vSLRs currently available(the Canon 5d Mk2 is the other, and offers a full frame sensor, 1080p movie shooting, and crucially, a mic input socket, very important for any filming of any seriousness). The D90 has an APS-C sensor, shoots 720i video, and only has a tiny, built-in mono mic. So it barely scrapes in as usable for video.
But after using it for just a few days, I realised for photographers like me who regularly have to shoot stills and video, the D90 was a revelation. No more two cameras, no more camcorder lens angle constrictions, no more 'video this but forgot to photograph that'(or vice versa). Just one camera(err, vSLR!) and a couple of button pushes to swap from video to stills, with excellent image quality for stills, and more than adequate video quality for online web use. The barely adequate sound recording is a major downside, but one has to work around this, and/or put up.

In a couple of years, every dSLR will be a vSLR. After all why not? It's easy to build in, and if a buyer doesn't want to use it, then they don't have to press the video button. For news pros, it'll be a major plus, and I'm sure some pro film-makers will also start to exploit the functionality.

I liked using the D90 so much, I bought it.

Snake Davis A

Snake Davis A
Originally uploaded by ajh400

An example of a photo that couldn't be shot on film. I used a D3 set to 2500iso, the lighting was very low. Film pushed to this iso would be horribly grainy. Digital now beats film.