by R.I. Pienaar | Jan 30, 2008 | Photography, Photography Equipment
I’ve a fairly short history with film, only started on it in September 2006 and it’s pretty much taken over for me from much of my digital camera work.
Since September 2006 I bought quite a few bits of film camera equipment, lenses aside this is what I have:
The most recent additions are the bottom two, they’re medium format cameras and something I’ve been intending to get into for a while. I bought the Seagull on eBay for cheap to see if I like the format and have some great results with it, especially considering it cost only GBP40.
So after loving the medium format as a medium I decided to get a proper medium format camera, I decided on a SLR rather than a TLR so got the Bronica SQA, it’s a square format medium format camera with interchangeable lenses, backs and finders. You can even buy Polaroid or digital backs for it to.
We took it out yesterday during lunch for a quick test and I love the shots we got, it’s lovely to use though it has no light meter so I use one of my hand held light meters, the shot below and ones it links too were all done with a 1 degree spot meter and metered using the Zone Systems.
I love working with the medium format negatives, they are roughtly 6 cm x 6cm each with big generous borders between negatives. This makes working with them so easy, easy to cut, easy to handle safely without touching the photos etc.
I found my developing results with them were much better than with 35mm, maybe I have just been more careful, will need to see when I do my next 35mm and compare.
Since using film my general photography has improved a lot, I now find that I am forced to spend a lot more time thinking about a shot, putting up tripod, metering it by hand, looking at every bit of detail of the photo to do the metering correctly etc, my % of shots taken to shots that I love is much higher than before and as a result even my digital photography has improved. I take fewer shots and get many more keepers. I think I’ll be doing film work till they stop making it.
by R.I. Pienaar | Sep 20, 2006 | Photography Equipment
I recently posted about my circa 1966 Kodak Retina Reflex IV camera, it came with a manual and as you can imagine these manuals are very rare. I took my scanner and scanned in the manual, the result is available on my Flickr Stream.
I’ve already come across one very happy Flickr user who had the camera and no manual, I hope more people get some use out of this.
by R.I. Pienaar | Sep 18, 2006 | Photography Equipment
I’ve often wondered about doing my own development of black and white film and full manual cameras but never succumbed to the temptation, till now.
This weekend I picked up a Kodak Retina Reflex IV camera, it’s in mint condition, original box and manual included. It’s missing a lens cap which might pose to be a big hassle as they don’t have what we now consider standard threads on its lens.
The camera is really amazingly built, the full mechanical operation is really impressive and while the ergonomics of using it is totally dismal compared to my Nikon SLR’s I think it’s quite manageable.
I bought it spur of the moment for GBP50 and just popped a color 35mm roll into it for some testing, the results aren’t bad at all:
So my intention with this is to go down the route of black and white film and do my own development, I probably won’t do printing since we have a really good negative scanner here and the printing equipment requires lots of space and a dark room and all that, things I don’t have.
More information about this range of cameras can be found on Wikipedia. The stall I got this one from had one of each of the 4 models made.
by R.I. Pienaar | Sep 15, 2006 | Photography, Photography Equipment
My trusty Nikon D70 has been in for repairs for the best part of a month now, it is suffering from the Blinking Green Light Of Death which is a pretty common bug in the first batches of D70.
It’s now around 2.5 years old which is pretty good going for me with a camera, yet Nikon is still fixing the problem under terms of the warrenty, the only problem is it’s taking some time.
So I picked up a Nikon D80 2 days ago, the body cost me 600 pounds including delivery and a 2 year warrenty, I also got a Nikkor 18-200 VR lens. I am especially excited about the lens as it was promised to be in the shops last November already but it never made it, I’ve been obsessivly looking for one but no suppliers have been able to get stock, 3 weeks ago I found one just sitting on a desk in a shop and immediately picked it up.
I am very impressed with both, the combination together is a really good combination and I do not regret the ยฃ1100 the set put me back for 1 second.
I’ve only taken a few shots with the D80, you can see them here.
by R.I. Pienaar | Jul 12, 2006 | Photography Equipment
I came across a article at Strobist detailing a very cheap light box setup and decided to build one.
It is basically a cardboard box, some tracing paper and a sheet of paper like you’d use to make a school poster on. I didn’t have anything, not even the tape to stick the bits together or something to cut with, I also had to buy 30 sheets of tracing paper since that was the smallest they sold and it all came to about 14 pounds. I had a box here from when I moved to the UK almost 5 years ago so figured its about time I do something with it.
It took about 10 minutes to slap everything together, Pixel found it all very amusing so all round a lot of fun.
Using it is a snap, I’ve not tried it using a desk lamp or something but really cannot imagine why it won’t work, with my SB-800 fully wireless remote flash I works a charm as you can see from the first shot above. The final results can be seen on flickr here with one of the shots below.
by R.I. Pienaar | Jul 28, 2005 | Photography Equipment
Someone asked me to take some portraits of them soon and I didn’t really have a lens that can do the kind of thing they’d want. A recent discussion over at Flickr suggested the Nikkor 50mm f/1.8D as a good lens to get, I picked one up from a store in town for GBP80 which was very very cheap.
I really love this lens, takes fantastic shots, not yet had a chance to take portraits but I love it for flowers as well. Some sample shots can be seen here.
