I have and always had a love-hate relationship with Velvia. It is a fantastic film stock for sure. When used for fitting subjects, it delivers results like no other film. It packs an extra punch in terms of color saturation, contrast, and resolution. My only problem is that I mostly shoot portraits and if anything this is not the best use for this film. Also, I am more careful with positive films as they need to be exposed very precisely, they cost more to buy and to get developed. That is why I kept a roll of Velvia 50 in my fridge for more than 10 years. I was waiting for the right moment to load it into a camera that moment has failed to come.
I think I became overly circumstantial with my precious film stash. So I decided to use up this roll of Velvia this summer. We have planned a holiday to visit friends next to Hamburg with plenty of opportunities to take pictures. I was especially excited about the seashore. In the end, we brought home many photos most of which were digital. Around the same time, we have got a nice telephoto zoom lens for our digital camera. We were eager to test the new lens and the little roll of Velvia got pushed back on the priority list once more.
Eventually, I have finished shooting this roll even though it has taken me months biting into the autumn. Despite the traditional wisdom, I have shot a lot of portraits on it besides the well-expected landscapes. I have used it for everything and I am glad I did. Most of the photos turned out just right. To be said, I had to dial back the reds in post-processing on all portraits. In this post, I would like to share some of these randomly captured moments. If you have any thoughts about them or about using Velvia, please leave me 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.
The second half of the Fuji Superia 400 in the Yashica had been shot during a wonderful family trip at the south of Austria. We have picked an easy trail close to Arnfels this time but one packed with nice scenery and experiences. We have passed by beautifully taken care of wine yards and a forest filled with life and with the colors of the autumn. We have picked some chestnuts, had a closer look of a variety of strange mushrooms and met with all sorts of wild and domestic animals including a little deer.
I was equipped with the Yashica TL Super with the Pancolar 80 attached to it plus I had my old Weimar Lux Cds light-meter with me. Eszter was shooting with her Nex 6, and of course we shared the duty of carrying the little one (who did not get lighter), but at least he could also run around a bit on his own due to the easy terrain.
The lights were initially quite harsh but inside the woods we were rewarded with some nice beams of light filtered through the branches of the trees. I find it very difficult to capture the delicate atmosphere created by such light conditions on any medium, but this small format film has done a decent job.
As we moved out from the forest, I started to look for details. This pole of an electronic fence seemed to be a good idea to take a picture of. Now, I find it quite boring unless I use it to evaluate the creamy background blur of the mighty Pancolar even slightly stopped down to around f/2.2. Notice the orange blob at the top left quarter of the frame. It is obviously my 2 years old running around.
Portraits of feeding animals are essential for any family photo book.
Not sure what happened with the top part of the cabbage photo. I think I must have overexposed so much that the film decided to make some color shift. In any case, I was indeed pushing the boundaries of the film because I tried to shoot as wide open as possible despite the abundance of light.
All in all it was a great trip with a handful of shoots we like both analog and digital. The Yashica served well once again, but I cannot deny that this camera especially with a bigger lens is not easy to carry all day. The weight can become a real problem if the camera is not the only extra weight one needs to take care of. Would I take it once again for a hike now that the much lighter Leica came back from service? I think will still take it occasionally, but more because of the lens not so much for the sake of camera.
What would a photographer do if he would suddenly need to carry an ever moving child on his back to every location he would take photos?
Photographer with extras, Sony nex 6, Sony 35mm f/1.8 OSS (taken by Eszter)
Of course he would use the new situation in order to justify a new purchase of a lens for the sake of portability to compensate the extra weight he now has to carry. This is how I ended up buying a Voigtlander Color-Skopar 35mm f/2.5 pancake II. It is tiny, extra light and being a wide lens, it is slightly less prone to the shaking introduced by the little one in the carrier. The price is not too steep neither for a native M mount lens plus I have found a quite handsome copy on a local trading site. It was literally no way out of this deal and so far I am very happy with my decision. Thanks to Ben (Flickr) for selling me the lens.
One of our first trips with the new gear lead us to the Grüner See. This is a temporary lake in the mountains which is filled by the water of melding snow every year for a short period of time. As the name suggests the lake has a beautiful green color even though the water is crystal clear. The bottom of a lake is essentially a meadow with grass and rocks and ordinary objects like a bench. The lake is surrounded with forest and mountains and it is truly spectacular. At the time of our (end of April) visit the level of the water has probably not yet reached the peak.
I have loaded a roll of slightly expired Fujicolor Pro 160NS from my stash, and even finished it on the very same day. Good weather, nice location, one of my favorite film stock and a new lens to test. I think it was a perfect start for the Voigtlander. I am actively fighting my G.A.S. (Gear Acquisition Syndrome), so I hope that I will value this lens on a long term. So far I am quite satisfied with the images I have got with it and honestly I think that there will always be place for a small good performing 35mm lens in my bag.
It is not easy to be a tourist. Visiting popular places has the obvious disadvantage that they are already photographed from every possible angle at every possible time of the year.
So what can a photographer do who is short on time and cannot afford the luxury of deeply explore his travel location? In other words should one leave the camera at home when going to a family afternoon visiting a hipped touristic site? Some would say yes. Just enjoy the time with the family and do not break the flow with those annoying stops to stare through the viewfinder. There is no way to take new, refreshing original photos anymore. There is even a camera called Camera Restricta which checks online how many publicly available photographs have been made on a certain GPS location.
Viewfinder Camera Restricta
If the count exceeds a limit, the camera denies taking any more pictures. While this camera offers a really extreme solution to the issue, it certainly raises the awareness that we should approach spectacles with care. After all, no one wants to create the 10 000th identical photos about that waterfall.
In my opinion, it is absolutely possible to take outstanding photos at locations which are considered completely exhausted as photographic resources. It is challenging indeed, but challenges are there to accept and conquer them.
My challenge
This is what I have tried to do lately. I was sent on a business trip to Dublin and of course, I tried to get the most out of it. Due to the packed by work nature of my travel, I had not much time for exploring, but I had a weekend and a few afternoons to work with. So I teamed up with my college and friend and picked some quite touristic places to visit. So we went to Glendalough, an extraordinary place with a beautiful mixture of nature and early medieval architecture. We had a great time and we were truly amazed by the wonders of this place, but as expected there is quite highly developed tourism involved here.
I was terrified when I realized that people were taking literally thousands of pictures just under that few hours we spent there.
But after the initial hesitation, I have started to shoot and tried to make up a set of rules I applied to make a difference.
Think with a head of a tourist
I tried to picture what is the easiest shoot one could get. This is what most people are up to. It is also a good idea to step back a little and watch what locations others choose. After I have mapped the patterns, I have picked a little bit different, harder to reach so to speak less trivial spot and angle. Many times just a few meters what you need for a significantly better shoot.
Use something special
According to a popular saying, your camera does not really matter. I agree on that a talented photographer can take stunning images with just about anything. On the other hand, a bad photograph is not any better just because it was taken with some exotic gear.
But the reality is not that all black and white. In the age of mass-produced digital cameras, smartphones and even smartphone cameras, a good old film camera can really shine out.
This is not the primary reason, why I shoot film, but it is great fun to see how much people are surprised because of the image quality and (I hope) cinematic look of my pictures.
Focus on the details
The world is full of neat little details. Many see only the big picture. Want to squeeze somehow the Eiffel Tower into the frame. But sometimes details are just more interesting. Better still often there is no indication whatsoever about their origin. Therefore it is always a good idea to have a camera in the bag no matter how touristy is the place to be visited. There is always the chance for a nice rusty road sign lurking at the next corner.
Galway
I have to admit that this photo with the fern was not taken at Glendalough but in Galway. However, this is my favorite detail photo from this roll.
People make things interesting
All humans are addicted to the look of other humans. Why not exploit this property of the mind and compose someone into the frame. It does not work at all times, but chances are that a handful of these photos will be the best ones. At least this is the case many times with me.
I am really bad at photographing people without their acknowledgment. I am not just bad at it, but also I prefer not to do it. That is why I asked these girls for this picture.
This is my quick guide for myself. I hope some of you will find it interesting. If you have something to add, or just like to comment, I would be happy to read your opinion.
Walls are usually not the most exciting subjects to photograph. To use medium format slide film to do that is even more strange and could be considered as some sort of crime by some. After all, we live in a time when both film and labs which are able to develop slides are more and more scare.
But what if you’ve found some really awesome walls filled with stunning graffiti masterpieces varying in size up to 30 meters (my approximation) and the whole place is a partly abandoned industrial complex.
Well, I couldn’t resist and loaded my Pentacon Six with a roll of expired (in 2004) Kodak Ektachrome 64 and headed to this place with my wife to take pictures of walls. In fact, she took way better photos than me, so maybe I will post those in the future as well.
I usually have no problems with expired film stocks, but this roll of Ektachrome gave me a very interesting result. When it came back from development it was possibly the flattest looking positive I have ever seen. I thought that I majorly overexposed all the frames equally. Surprisingly after scanning, I had to realize that almost no highlights were blown away and I could recover many details and color information during post-processing. I have the impression that the last 10 years after the end of the expiry date of the film was not spent in a refrigerator. I still have 4 rolls of the same batch of film, I need to think it over if I want to give them a second try.
The place we found hosted the Livin’ Streets 2014 festival for urban art, graffiti & street art between 07.06-18.07 2014. Their facebook page is here. Although we were too late to see the actual event, we could still meet with one of the artists who stayed to finish his work and also we could see all the paintings in the finished form. It was a great experience and we had a lot of fun, so yes it is totally fine to shoot some walls from time to time.
The photos were taken by my Pentacon Six Tl using a Carl Zeiss Jena Flektagon 50mm and in some cases a Biometar 80mm. The film was developed by a local shop and scanned by me with a CanoScan 9900F.
Airplane Parts & Hills by Nancy RubinsAirplane Parts & Hills by Nancy Rubins
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.
Sole d’acciaio by Ilija ŠoškićBetonboot by Michael Schuster
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.
Die Erdkugel als Koffer by Peter Weibel
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.
o.T by Bruno Gironcoli
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.
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.
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
Gábor (Szentendre, Hungary), Olympus OM 4Ti, Zuiko 50mm f/1.4, Kodak Gold 200, Canoscan 9900F
Gábor (Szentendre, Hungary), Olympus OM 4Ti, Zuiko 50mm f/1.4, Kodak Gold 200, Canoscan 9900F
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?
camerajunky 