Irish Streets

December 8, 2017November 24, 2018 CamerajunkyLeave a comment

I have been planning to write about my adventures in Dublin and Galway a long time ago. It was a short business trip in 2015 for only 2 weeks but I could fit in some time to explore and of course to take photographs. I wanted to write a bigger post initially because of the great experiences I had in Ireland. Since I have not managed to put my thoughts together in the last two years, I have decided to take a more simplistic approach and let the photos talk instead of me.

I have used my beloved Leica M2 with my Sonnar 50mm ZM lens loaded with Fuji Superia Xtra 400. All the film was developed and scanned by the excellent John Gunn Camera Shop.

Music on the streets of Dublin was everywhere. I was quite impressed by the diversity and the quality of the music I heard there. It is a vivid city with many faces and to me, street musicians are definitely contributing to the charm and charter of the place.

But things were about to change in regards to the regulation of street music. Don’t know what was exactly on a stake or what the result turned to be. But at the time I was visiting Dublin, large groups were coming together, playing music and peacefully protesting against the planned changes.

I have also taken a couple of candid shots. Partly because I am really bad at this type of photography yet I needed to experiment with it. After all, I was caring a camera which was built for the task.

At the end of the day, I have returned my method of asking people if I could photograph them. I am much more comfortable with this approach. At least I have fewer issues with framing and composition when I can use the viewfinder.

People were generally very friendly and talkative with me. I was very much surprised about the number of positive reactions of people I asked to take a portrait of them. In addition to that, I myself received a lot of attention. Random people started to talk to me about equally random things ranging from the weather to the funny aerobic class across the street while we were waiting for the green light at a zebra.

I was also trying to capture little details of everyday life like this little dog who might be waiting for his owner at the entrance of a pub in Galway. All in all, I really had a great time even if it was very limited. I had a lot of good experiences, met many lovely people and I have taken an unusually high amount of photos on this trip which is a statement of itself. Someday I will go back with my family for some more exploration with properly dedicated time.

Balcony door portraits

November 10, 2014November 18, 2018 Camerajunky3 Comments

Light quality is extremely important to a photographer, just like snow for an Inuit. We have countless names for the different types of light while any average people would only call them “strong” or “weak”. The amount of light we get is very easy to measure and describe. But the quality is a far more subtle, much harder to formalize concept and therefore much more interesting to me. Modern cameras can handle low light extremely well thus photography is now possible under such difficult circumstances no one could be foreseen just until a few years before. But high sensitivity sensors with great quantum efficiency and extremely sophisticated noise reduction processing cannot create great photographs just by extending the lower bound of minimum illumination necessary to capture an image. Although these new tools certainly aid the photographing process, the quality of light (among other factors) is and always will be key to a good image.

I am currently experimenting with mainly available light, trying to find situations which work for me so I can get the results I like in a somewhat predictable manner. One of my favorite spots lately is the door of our balcony. In my opinion, this location has nearly ideal light conditions for portraits during most of the day. The balcony is relatively deep, and only the front is open (sides are solid walls), then comes the big door followed by a deep room with white walls and furniture.

Eszti, Nikon F3, Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 AIS, Ilford HP5, Kodak D76, Canoscan 9900F

Gabi, Leica M2, Zeiss Sonnar 50mm f/1.5 ZM, Ilford FP4, Rodinal, Canoscan 9900F

Kálmán & Vince, Sony Nex 6, Sony 35mm f/18 OSS

This setup has a similar effect to a soft-box. Light comes through in a beautiful evenly distributed, soft way, which then decays rapidly as it penetrates into the room. A subject placed close to the door can be lit very well with a strongly directional but soft light while the background is lost in darkness.

I have taken several portraits at this place using different formats (APS-C, 35mm, 6x6cm), films and digital sensors, and a small, but representative selection can be seen in this post. I think it is interesting to see next to each other similar shoots using similar focal length but with vastly different capturing technology.

Brigi, Pentacon Six TL, Carl Zeiss Jena Biometar 120mm f/2.8, Fuji Acros 100 (expired), Rodinal, Canoscan 9900F Comment CAMERA 9900F View full size 1000×1000 Brigi

Eszti, Leica M2, Zeiss Sonnar 50mm f/1.5 ZM, Kodak Professional Elite Color 400, Canoscan 9900F

The conclusion is that, no matter what your medium is, good light (and composition) could always give respectable results but technology does not save the day if the light quality is poor for the subject. But it is again another subjective property, what is poor light for a photographer for a given purpose, could be magnificent for another. Nevertheless, I think it is crucial to study light as a photographer, amateurs and professionals alike.

Many thanks for the proofreading to Ramon.

Kiev 4 + Ilford HP5

November 20, 2013November 18, 2018 Camerajunky3 Comments

If you followed the Camerajunky Facebook page you may have already read about my planned reunion with my beloved Kiev 4 camera after a long period in which it was hidden in a box. I really felt that I needed to use it again, and my recent discovery about the beauty of Ilford HP5 film gave me the final push to do so.

I don’t know why, but from time to time, I feel serious urge to go back to the basics and pick up a fully mechanical camera such as the Kiev and leave the sophisticated OM4 on the shelf. In addition, I really do like the character of the little Jupiter 8 lens. Especially the quality of the background blur it produces is really appealing to me. I know that many find it not so pleasing, but hey great things are usually dividing after all. It is not the sharpest nor the fastest lens I have ever touched, but an unmistakable character for sure. I also learned that the grain structure and tonality of the Ilford HP5 ISO 400 film is also very unique and close to me, so I thought, I should combine the unique lens with the unique film.
I usually use lower sensitivity film so it could be that other medium speed films have similar characters as well. I guess I will need to try more. Until that, I leave you with some random but to me very catchy shots.

Eszti, (Gyöngyös, Hungary), Kiev 4, Jupiter 8, Ilford Hp5, Kodak D76, Canoscan 9900F

Trumpeter, (Graz, Austria 2013), Kiev 4, Jupiter 8, Ilford Hp5, Kodak D76, Canoscan 9900F

Bring your giant medium format camera to work

October 25, 2013November 18, 2018 Camerajunky8 Comments

A photographer is never really putting down his camera, no matter what crazy thing she or he is doing for a living or filling the days with. Since we are not living in an ideal world, most of us have to face the limitation of time and availability of light in our everyday life.

But limitations are not necessarily bad things! They teach us to utilize our possibilities more creatively by forcing us to see and think in ways we would normally not choose to. This, of course, influences our work as well as ourselves and vice-versa. Eventually this feedback loop can contribute our personal and photographic development similarly to the way the ever-changing environment influences life forms and pushing them towards evolution.

Currently, my job is to sit in an office and convince computers to obey to the needs of their human masters. Making their lives easier by sending them nice, well formed and most importantly correct invoices. As interesting as it sounds, but it is somewhat fulfilling to my geek side which likes to brain wrestler with abstract problems.

But it makes my photographer side starve because the current situation has a very little room for photography. Especially now when the winter is coming. Days are shorter and shorter, so more and more frequently I end up to spend most of the hours filled with natural light in between walls in my ~~natural~~ working environment.

To overcome this obvious contradiction, I decided to make occasionally a “bring your giant medium format camera to work day“. I started to bug my colleges and taking portraits of them during lunch brakes or when I need to wait for my computer to finish a long-lasting blocking task.

The point is, you don’t need to stop being a photographer, just because the conditions are not ideal for the kind of photography you are normally up to. Try to get out the most of the situation and who knows this might drive you to completely unforeseen paths and discoveries.

Jogi, Pentacon Six TL, Carl Zeiss Jena Biometar 80mm, Fuji Across 100, Kodak D76, Canoscan 9900F

Jogi is a musician besides being a software engineer and in my opinion, they are making pretty cool music. Their website http://www.theflamingdugongs.at/ is not complete yet, but worth to have a look at.

Barbara, Pentacon Six TL, Carl Zeiss Jena Biometar 80mm, Fuji Across 100, Kodak D76, Canoscan 9900F

Janez, Pentacon Six TL, Carl Zeiss Jena Biometar 120mm, Fuji Across 100, Kodak D76, Canoscan 9900F

Kyrylo, Pentacon Six TL, Carl Zeiss Jena Biometar 120mm, Fuji Across 100, Kodak D76, Canoscan 9900F

Kyrylo was so pleased with his portrait that he visited me at my desk (2 floors below his place) to shake my hands right after I sent it to him.

Hannes, Pentacon Six TL, Carl Zeiss Jena Biometar 80mm, Fuji Across 100, Kodak D76, Canoscan 9900F

Marco, Pentacon Six TL, Carl Zeiss Jena Biometar 80mm, Ilford HP5, Kodak D76, Canoscan 9900F

Naturally, it is not my top priority to photograph at work, and I always make sure that this does not have any effect on my everyday responsibilities. It took me quite a while (about 2 months) to get these images. Though they are not perfect, I enjoyed taking them they are part of my journey.

Österreichischer Skulpturenpark

July 14, 2013November 18, 2018 Camerajunky3 Comments

Sometimes the most amazing places are literally just a few steps from your backyard. Yet it is so easy to overlook or ignore them, just because you don’t expect anything extraordinary close to your regular living space. Or you miss to visit them because you think that since you live nearby, you could do it any time which moment never come.
In the end, I tend to know the interesting places around other cities better than my own. But I fight, so last weekend, we visited an amazing sculpture park right next to the place I work. I passed by almost every single workday since last September because my bus stop is about 20 meters from the entrance. Despite the free entrance, I have never managed to take a look, until now.
To make the occasion special, I brought my old trusted Pentacon Six Tl loaded with some expired Velvia and my wide angle 50mm Flektagon and the standard 80mm Biometar.
Apart from the last picture, all posted photos were taken with the Flektagon. I scanned the film with my CanoScan 9900F.

This piece of land-art (Die Erdkugel als Koffer) is one of our favorites because it integrates so well into its environment and due to the size of it, it is hard to figure out what it supposed to be. Once you get closer and maybe read the attached documentation which is, by the way, the part of the sculpture, you can have a nice AHA experience. It interprets the planet Earth as a suitcase and the statue is the handle.

I have never had any seriously overlapping frames issue with the P6, but this time. Hopefully, it only happened only because of my mistake during film loading.

My advice is to go out and explore your surroundings and don’t forget to take a camera with you.

If you were around Graz and had some spare time, this park is really worth to visit. Here are the layout and the list of all the sculptures.

Istanbul through Pentacon Six TL

August 23, 2012November 15, 2018 Camerajunky11 Comments

Sultan İkinci Beyazıd Veli Türbesi (Istanbul, Turkey) Pentacon Six TL, Carl Zeiss Jena Biometar 80mm f/2.8, Fujicolor Pro 160NC, Canoscan 9900F

Sultan İkinci Beyazıd Veli Türbesi (Istanbul, Turkey) Pentacon Six TL, Carl Zeiss Jena Flektogon 50mm f/4, Fujicolor Pro 160NC, Canoscan 9900F

Finally, I am back with a post again! It has been a long time I could write anything. The reason for this long break is that I have got married plus I have changed job and country to live. From September I will live in Austria and I hope I will find new impulses for my photography.

Anyway, thanks to my old mentor and friend PepLluis that we could visit a really extraordinary place (Istanbul) as our honeymoon. This post is a kind of diary about this trip taken by my beloved Pentacon Six TL camera. Although we have carried a digital camera as well the medium format is one of my weak points and so I decided to share these images over the digital.

Pentacon Six as a travel camera

Of course, a big question has immediately emerged when we hit the warm and crowded streets of Istanbul with a heavy duty medium format camera and with three lenses and a tripod in the backpack. As you would suggest this gear is anything but light, so the question is how good travel camera is the Pentacon Six TL especially nowadays when you can choose among many excellent lightweight digital system cameras.

This gear is indeed heavy and cumbersome to use. You need to measure light in advance, focus carefully (the depth of field is really shallow on greater apertures) and you must hold the camera very still when firing the shutter. These tasks can be difficult in the crowd you can experience in the touristic places of Istanbul during Ramadan. I definitely gained some muscles after this trip.

On the other hand, the experience of operating such a beast is really unique as well as the results you can get at home. Personally, I am really pleased with the images and it was a great fun to use the P6. But next time I will think my camera choice over before packing. Nevertheless, I am pretty sure that the Pentagon will come with me many more times. My Pentacon Six TL review can be seen here.

Approaching storm (Topkapi palace, Istanbul, Turkey) Pentacon Six TL, Carl Zeiss Jena Biometar 80mm f/2.8, Fujicolor Pro 160NC, Canoscan 9900F

Woman (Topkapi palace, Istanbul, Turkey) Pentacon Six TL, Carl Zeiss Jena Biometar 80mm f/2.8, Fujicolor Pro 160NC, Canoscan 9900F

Eszter (Topkapi palace, Istanbul, Turkey) Pentacon Six TL, Carl Zeiss Jena Biometar 80mm f/2.8, Fujicolor Pro 160NC, Canoscan 9900F

Eszter ( Büyük Selimiye Cami, Istanbul, Turkey) Pentacon Six TL, Carl Zeiss Jena Biometar 80mm f/2.8, Fujicolor Pro 160NC, Canoscan 9900F — Eszter (Büyük Selimiye Cami, Istanbul, Turkey) Pentacon Six TL, Carl Zeiss Jena Biometar 80mm f/2.8, Fujicolor Pro 160NC, Canoscan 9900F

Shooting with a Pentacon Six TL, Istanbul (Turkey)

Artist (Istanbul, Turkey) Pentacon Six TL, Carl Zeiss Jena Biometar 120mm f/2.8, Fujicolor Pro 160NS, Canoscan 9900F

Hagia Sophia (Istanbul, Turkey) Pentacon Six TL, Carl Zeiss Jena Biometar 80mm f/2.8, Fujicolor Pro 160NC, Canoscan 9900F

Collaborative street art

June 13, 2012November 15, 2018 CamerajunkyLeave a comment

Sometimes you can unexpectedly run into true pieces of artwork even on the most odd locations. So did we in Barcelona during one of our typical disoriented big-city exploratory walk. Eszter spot the scene which can be easily called as installation, but in the same time she urged me to hurry up so I had to take the shoots really quickly.

For me the interesting aspect of these images is the fact that the key components of the composition are probably done by separate individuals who did not know about each others actions.

Someone painted the depressed skeleton in the suit.
I guess the textual graffiti on the wall was made by someone else.
A 3rd person placed the mirror next to the wall, I think his motivation was simply to get rid of it.
Of course the house must have been braked down in order to expose the surface to paint, and in addition nature started to take back what was originally belonging to her.

Than I came and take a few shoots about this partially intended but mainly spontaneous temporal exhibition.

Each of the contributors had their own motivation and in some cases story to tell. Did the painters know about the future extensions? Does this evolution step altered their initial message if there were any. What will be the next step along the life of this composition? Can it be comprehended as art?

These are hard questions to answer especially the last one which is indeed a philosophical one. One thing is sure, these kind of spontaneous exhibitions can be found everywhere, it is up to us to notice them and freeze them via a photograph, because they will disappear eventually.

Barcelona, Olympus OM-4 Ti, Zuiko auto-s 50mm f/1.4, Kodak Porta 160 NC, Canoscan 9900F

Underpass music

April 13, 2012November 14, 2018 Camerajunky2 Comments

I admire very much photographers who are able to do street photography of any kind either shooting invisibly or by asking strangers for a photo. Although I love these kinds of photographs I did not dare to do anything like this, therefore. As you have probably noticed already I shoot my friends and relatives most of the times as the same persons appear many times on my blog. All in all, talking to and taking photos of strangers is somewhat natural for some but for most of us including myself it is a challenge.

This is fine actually, but I always try to do new things and find challenges in my photography and the temptation of getting wonderful shots on the street raised so high that eventually I asked someone for a photo and hopefully I will keep doing this practice.

It was easier than I thought, nothing bad had happened, he was very friendly and allowed me to take the shoots below. As you can see he is a musician playing guitar in many places like this underpass I used to walk through regularly.

I know this is not really a traditional street shoot but can be considered as a street portrait similar to those Ade used to shoot with his medium format Pentax and publish on STREET PORTRAITIST blog I really like.

The camera I used is the latest member of my collection an Olympus OM 4Ti with a stellar Zuiko 50mm f/1.4 lens. It was the very first roll of film I moved trough of this little thing and I am quite happy with the results.

Gábor (Szentendre, Hungary), Olympus OM 4Ti, Zuiko 50mm f/1.4, Kodak Gold 200, Canoscan 9900F

Light pollution

April 5, 2012November 14, 2018 CamerajunkyLeave a comment

After the rather technical post about the true beauty Exakta Varex II, I thought it is about time to come up with something easier to digest. I looked into my photo-stream on Flickr and found these shoots I took back in 2009. I had such a great fun by doing these I decided to share them again here.

I was in Girona (Spain) and I did many night shoots by the time so I waited for getting dark and I climbed up to a small hill nearby the town. I was pretty much amazed by the colors of the sky painted by the lights of the city. The sky must have been covered by clouds and most of the light was reflected back to earth. This combination resulted this deep orange glow which I liked so much and gave me the sensation of walking on another planet.

In the meantime there was a big celebration in the city because as it turned out the Football Club of Barcelona won an important match that night. Therefore at some point strange sounds, sirens of alarming cars, voices of yelling people and violent explosions of fireworks broke the inner peace of my faithful photographic ritual. I am not a huge football fun so I had no idea what was going on. I thought that these people must had gone crazy down there which increased of my strange experience a lot.

Next day I thought the whole story over and I realized that I was not a tiny bit less crazy than the football fanatics. I was out alone at night on an abandoned construction site relatively far from the city in a foreign country armed with a crap tripod and a compact camera. It sounds not so safe despite the fact that I was not really attractive and the place is generally very calm and peaceful. Well, who is crazy is always just the matter of the point of view, right?

Post apocalyptic atmosphere

March 26, 2012November 14, 2018 Camerajunky1 Comment

I am a huge fan of post-apocalyptic movies, games, and atmosphere overall. In fact, I really would like to participate or work on such a movie one day. Of course being a mortal I have very little chance to do it, but I had to realize that the receipt of post-apocalyptic scenery is actually very simple.

My main ingredients are some early morning mist, a high tech solar cell covered concrete building (very easy to find), an old Exakta loaded with Kodak Gold and 2 vintage glasses (Zeiss Jena Tessar 50mm f/2.8 and Meyer Optic Trioplan 100mm f/2.8).

For some reason, these shoots remind me of the movie Delicatessen which I can faithfully recommend to watch. OK, there aren’t any high tech in that movie, but the fog creates a similar sensation to me at the opening scenes.

This building, by the way, is a member of the Technological Park of the University in Girona in Spain and I am lucky enough to work in this strange complex. I took these photos a morning during my regular walk to work.

Interesting note that this building is named after Narcís Monturiol i Estarriol who invented the first fully functional submarine. Also interesting the fact that (as far as I know) the solar cells were actually never in use even though the construction has finished around 2009. I hope they will be operational one day. I guess there must be a bit expensive for decoration purposes only. I love the way they look like anyway.