LARGE Format....... ARRRRHARRRAHAHAHAHARR

Well having dealt with MF for i while i decided to go the full Hog and go to Large Format....well actually just big medium format. So did i spend Thousands of Brasillian Zemolions getting out fitted with a Linhof, or Schneider field Camera , i hear you ask
Well, No!
i have spend around $20.00 and picked an AGFA Clack. built ithe mid 1950's in Munich.
Actually for what they are i think a lot of people turn theis nose up at them probably because they are so simple. The various agfa models came 4x4, 6x6 and 6x9 and this is just from some superficial research that i have done. Well the camera that i have aquired is a 6x9, fised shutter speed and 2 F stop settings. Thats it. the only thing more basic would be a pinhole camera. And you would be shooting film at around iso 50 or 100.
But it's a dirt cheap way to explore the possibilities of what one can do. you would really have to work for your photo in terms of forethought. Execution is rather simple.
I guess it's the Zen approach to capturing images........OhmmmmmCLACK.......OhmmmmmCLACK

FIlter Theory

So....what FIlters do i Really need? It's a question i have been pondering for some time. WHile there is a plethora of filters out there which ones are the most practical and usefull? COnsidering the variety of Film Stock that i have(B&W, Tungsten,Daylight,Slide) and the different situations that i' using them in, Ihave come up with a list tha will suit me. This of course is a fluid and Dynamic list as each Photografer has his or her own opinion and rightly so, however i think i'm pretty close to the mark i feel in what is overal most usefull. There are a lot of 'Trick' or novelty filters out there and they have their applications and whith all the filters that i have collected over the Years i find that the trick type filter need a certain degree of planning ie you'll be going out deliberatly to use a particular filter to achieve a particular effect. Whereas other Filter are just commom tools of the trade. I also find that i don't mind usin filters larger than the lens i'm using in part to avoid vignetting, in part as it's personal preference and in part that's what i was able to get me hands on at that time. So here 'tis a list of must have's
UV or UV Haze
Polarizer (i did read a C-PL can be used on every Camera, an L-PL only for Manual Focus type. I carry both types as i have both camera types, but if C-pl can used instead of L-PL's than thats a couple of FIlters less i'm carrying)
80A
85B
NDx2,x4,x8
Fl-D
Fl-W
Center Filter (heliopan x2 type) - haven't got one yet but i'm working on it
And now for the should/could have
A set of colour FIlters(R,O,G,Y,B)
Soft DIffuser
I also use a Set of Varicolours (R,B,Y,G)
and a set of Graduated Colours(R,B,G,Y,O,Pink,Tobacco,Gray/.2 ND)
There are a few others but i won't list them as they fall into the Trick category IMHO.
There more the may need to be included, there may be some that i don't really need in that list. it's not set in concrete but they come in handy with the wide variety of lighting conditions that one is face with.
Thing to keep in in Mind is As Many as is is practical, but but as few as possible.
And when you are on a shoot, i you haven't got with you, there 's no sense pining for it(Lief Ericksenn)

The Best Laid Plans...

Something that I'm coming to discover, is that to consistently get good photos you need to plan ahead. Sure, if you keep a camera on you at all times, if you do see something worthwhile, you can get a photo, often quite a good one. But your chances of success are going to be so much better if you do your research, and, as per one of my earlier posts, you're in the right place at the right time.

How much planning do you need to do? Well, that depends... Often, just knowing where the sun will be at a particular time will be enough (there's no point trying to get a photo of the sun setting over a nice stretch of water if the sun sets in the opposite direction), but it's possible to go into a lot more detail if you want.

As an example, I've just started planning a bushwalk I want to do in a couple of months. I've got some ideas of what I want to photograph, in particular I want photos from a particular lake around sunset and sunrise. So, in order to get those photos, I'm going to need to camp fairly close by, to save getting lost in the dark, seeing as there's no tracks in this particular area. Knowing that I want to get photos with the surrounding mountains bathed in light will determine which sides of this particular lake will offer me the best vantage points.

All of this thinking has been done with the aid of a map, and a basic knowledge of where the sun will be rising/setting. Of course, the chances are that my preconceived notions aren't going to be spot on, but the theory is that with the majority of the thinking already done, I'll be better prepared to change my plans according to the conditions when I'm taking photos. We'll see in a couple of months whether or not I'm right, I guess...

Mamiya C22 - Amazing Piece of Camera Engineering

I guesswith Cameras the KISS Principle also holds true. Take the Mamiya C Series TLR Cameras. Relatively Speaking it's a SImple Camera. The only Real complex Thing would be the Shutter Mechanism. Now I have had a few roll through my 645 as well as my TLR and it astounds me that the TLR can out perform the 645 again and again. I guess it's what you get used to but while the TLR needs aset procedure to follow(no fancy interlocks to stop DOuble exposing etc etc, it has to date produced some of my favorite shots.
The Picture is of the Japanese Garden in Adelaide, bright Sunny Day, a few clouds in the sky. Again i forgot to take the setting down but it was shot with a UV & PL Filter in place, with a relatively small Aperture. sometimes you just nail it on the head.

What goes around, comes around

I was just reading Spud Gun's first post and it reminded me of how i got into Photografy nearly 30 years ago. Mum & Dad finally bought me a 35mm fixed Lense Compact Camera when i was about 9 or so Years old. For some reason which i don't quite understand to this day my mother insisted that I only shoot slides.(i still don't quite see the logic in her reasoning as she never offered an explanation as to why and any questions with 'why' in them were usually met with a slap around the head and a "i'm your parent, do not question me,because I know better!) But i digress....when i think back to those days I had no auto exposure, no light meter it was basically point and shoot. Come to think of it the film was a cassette type (35mm cassette). The shutter was fixed and you used a cube Flash (4 Flashes/cube).I then graduated to Mum's Spy Camera... well thats what it looked like only it was about 2.5x the size that James Bond Uses.The Whole Camera is about 13mm thick and again it used a Cassette Magazine. Why did they Buy one of thoses.. Hey, it was the Seventies and it was Cool to have one of those Kodak Cameras. I still have the camera here at home i just don't know Where. And then there was a variant that used a Disk with 12 Exposures (from memory) The Disk was a bit like the disks that you got with the 3D Magic viewers that where all the rage(anyone remember those?) Having said that with by todays Standard Basic Equipment you could and did produce some absolutely Stunning Photografs. Pop the cassette in, wind on, point , hold steady, shoot. And that was about it. You just had to take your chance whith the light. But it was an awfully big Adventure for a 9 year old, and a lot of fun, even when you made mistakes. The excitement was almost unbearable when you took your pictures in to get developed and you were waiting for slides/prints to be returned so you could see what you had achieved. That Magic has been lost to some extend with Digital, but as long as we have Medium format around i think one can recapture some of that Mystique.

Learning through making mistakes

I picked up the first film that I took with my new Mamiya M645 from being developed today, and I got quite a surprise. Out of the 15 photos that were on the roll, 4 or 5 were of quite a good standard. While that doesn't seem particularly successful, I'm happy with the results for a number of reasons.

To start with, I've never used a medium format camera before, and I've certainly never used a camera with a waist level finder. Add to that the fact that I've gone from having a camera with an exposure meter in the viewfinder, to having to use an old hand held light meter, and it's a surprise I got any successful images at all. One thing that has been brought home to me is that while the hand held meter is going to give me a start to my exposure, I'm going to have to compensate for things like uneven brightness, overly bright or dark scenes, and so on.

Out of all the photos I took, I was most surprised to see that the first photo I took with the camera came out very well. It's just a shame that the subsequent ones were not to the same standard! Even though the rest were not all as successful as the first, having kept notes on what my exposures were, and knowing that in all cases I was using an exposure suggested by the light meter, I'll be able to adjust in the future, and hopefully have a much better success rate.

6x6 mamiya tlr fantasy

Well... of all the cameras i have my mamiya C22 is probably the simplest, yet the most intriguing. I guess it is becouse of it's simplicity . the 6x6 Neg/slides are really something else when compared to 35mm. And the other thing is one has to be methodical beccause so easy to double expose. Focus,Wind,Cock,Shoot is the mantra. In any case it is a great camera to work with one gets into the habit of doing always the aforementioned steps. I got my first roll back a few days ago and although most of the pictures were testers of some sort this is probably the best of them. I took a series of Sunset Pictures and in an earlier post blog i posted one of the images but after having the images re scanned by a lab i thought i put this one up as well as it is a better quality image and deos the mamiya more justice.

What's the opposite of Inadvertent?

I'd like to muse for a moment, on the opposite of the inadvertent shot. This is the kind of shot where you walk around, look for interesting angles, maybe set up your tripod, look through the view finder, adjust as necessary, until you're finally happy with the composition... And it goes on, deciding on whether you need a small aperture for a large depth of field, or a large one to put the emphasis on the subject of the photo. Then you have to decide if you need a long shutter speed, to show motion, or a short one to freeze the motion... And then you decide if you can balance the depth of field for the length of exposure... And once you've done all of that, you finally take the photo.

For me, I get a lot of enjoyment from both types of shot, but in very different ways. I'm always thrilled when I see that a photo "works", even if I wasn't planning it to, and it was just an accident. But there's a different sense of enjoyment from a well planned photo, where you've taken to time to make sure everything is right, and you know (well, you hope you do) that you've got a good shot. I get a lovely feeling of satisfaction from such photos, especially if I've had to work hard to get them

This photo is a particular favourite of mine, for a number of reasons. For starters, it's not a shot any one could have got by parking their car, and snapping away. I had to work for it. The falls in question have had a massive log in the main fall for a number of years, and any photo from the track is going to be overwhelmed by the log. How do you get around that? Easy, you hop from rock to rock across the river...

Having done all that, all I needed to do was find a spot on the opposite bank where I could set up my tripod, hopefully keep my feet dry, frame the shot without the log if possible, or if not, frame it so that the log doesn't dominate the shot anymore. If you're lucky, that'll be on a nice patch of firm, level ground, but in reallity, it's more likely to be on a wet, slippery rock.

Having framed the shot nicely, all I needed to do was decide on the exposure. It's at this point I'm forced to digress, and ponder the tendency for photographers to _always_ use a long shutter speed when photographing moving water. Sure, it looks nice, but so do the million other photos with similar exposures. In this case, I decided to hold back a bit, and limited myself to 1/2 a second, which allowed some blur, but not an excessive amount. Of course, this is all personal preference, and other people may feel differently.

Getting back on track, once all of that is decided, it's time to actually take the photo, a process which is infinitesimally tiny, compared to all that has gone before it. Hopefully all the planning which has gone into the shot will have paid off, and you end up with a great shot. If course, life being what it is, this doesn't always happen, and you bump the tripod just as you take the shot, and it ends up a blurry mess... As they say, "Shit happens"... There's always next time...

Inadvertend Shooting.....

Isn't it funny how often the shots that you don't plan or the times you accidentally push the shutter become somewhat remarkable. I guess in Zen Terms one is freed from the constraints of the concious and all preconceived Ideas and convention is gone. For that moment the camera is free and captures a moment in Time and Space that is unique to itself and has not been pidgeon holed by the Photografer.
I was testing the Zoom/Macro Function on a Lens i had acquired and as i was Zooming( i cannot remember which way) i hit the shutter . The attached Image is unedited save for some mild sharpening. Other than that it's as i shot it. (Pentax ist D, 200mm Zoom Lens, Camera all Auto Settings....)

Sunsets are soooo romantic......Hrumpf!

Well Spud Gun.. Talk about being in the right Place at the Right Time... actuall i was waiting for the above shot i had been itching to try some graduated filters , and this axample uses Grad Blue and Red. It's the first time i have used filters like this and in combination. The Image really was a tester but it worked somehow and showed me the potenttial filters have (image shot with a pentax ist D, 80mm Aspherical Lense, all settings automatic)

The Right Time and The Right Place

I've come to the conclusion that a large part of photography comes down to luck. This was driven home to me tonight as I was walking to my car after work. The weather wasn't brilliant, it had just finished raining, and as I crossed a road, I turned to look for cars, and saw the most stunning sight. The sunset was brilliant, the sun had just sunk below the horizon, and the last of the light was painting the clouds in brilliant shades of pink and orange.

As luck would have it, I was able to get a great view further along the road, and I had my camera with me, so I snapped off a couple of shots. By the time I'd walked the last 20 metres to my car, the light show had faded. I was truly lucky to be in a position to take those couple of photos while the light was at its best.

Often, the difference between a good photo and a fantastic photo is down to being at the right place, at just the right time. It's certainly possible to plan photos, but you're still at the mercy of nature. Sometimes, despite all the planning in the world, the light just doesn't happen, and then when you least expect it, you're treated to an amazing display.

It's for that reason that I'm rarely without a camera of some sort these days, whether it's my MF or 35mm SLRs, or my little point and shoot digital (used to take the photo in this post). It's impossible to take a photo with the camera you don't have...