Film Camera

So, first things first, let's answer the questions.  I can't look at the questions while I'm writing this because of the unique way blogger is designed. So...

Musical Interlude...

Anonymous asks - 'is it just me or do you not get the contrast with film?'

Ok by no means am I an expert, but I feel like the mess of post-production tools available to most people nowadays essentially means that contrast is taken to extremes.  Basically, people find the contrast slider and before they do anything else, they push that to the maximum setting.  The result is that every single black and white image now has an incredible contrast, basically ranging from the whitest a screen can display through to the deepest blacks.  We've been spoiled by the incredible ability to create drama in an image that didn't originally have any.

Having said that, the images that came out most contrasty with the film camera were the ones that were perfectly exposed, so I think there is a lot of light metering and/or good guesswork involved to ensuring the best images.

You absolutely can get extremely rich, extremely contrasty images with film, but you can't move a slider to make it happen so I think it's a lot rarer and based more upon the circumstances and photographer.

It's worth pointing out that I got them on the PC by using a 600dpi scanner attached to an all in one home office solution - as such, these scans are what can only be described as garbage.  The only one that comes close to representing the images I hold in my hand, is the woman standing behind the robo-parrot.  Even that one is roughly a nautical mile away from showing the clarity of the actual image.  The scanner shows up imaginary scratches and blots that aren't present in the actual images; more frustratingly it made some of the images sepia!  What in the what?

Anyway, onto the last question:  The colour one is actually a picture I took in Japan to show that George Lucas sold out thirty years ago, and continues to sell out now.  Yoda selling curry!  Ol' George has made me use two exclamation marks in two paragraphs, but I feel it quite necessary.  Yoda selling curry!

Ok so mum lent me her film camera (Ricoh Sr-10?  It's a Ricoh something) while I was in England, and I started off with some colour film that grandad had storing in the fridge.  Considering the film was a decade old, the pictures that came out were pretty darned good (quality, if not content wise).  This got me wondering about shooting using black and white film, so I ordered 5 rolls off tinternet.

3 weeks (3 weeks, what the hell.  No wonder this crap went out of fashion) later it arrived and I started yomping around with my film and digital SLR's in tow.

I immediately binned the first roll of film because I'm a complete moron - that left me with four rolls.  I took the first around the geek convention with me, and a couple around the RSPB show along with Fowlmere.  This one is from the show, and just nudges past my quality control limits in the sharpness department.  I was clearly focussing on some distant unseeable gnat in the next county, but having a narrow aperture meant it came out kind of okay.

This one is from Fowlmere and I was interested to see if standard landscape photography is viable with black and white.  You see cityscapes depicted in black and white all the time (the lack of colour gives the image, for lack of a better word, 'gritty,' realism) but rarely natural landscapes (past the advent of colour, anyway).  If you look really carefully at the picture, there are a number of interesting lines moving from the left towards the middle - regarding the question about contrast I think this would have looked better were that central flowing line more pronounced.

That brighter line in the middle is actually a break in the clouds.  As an image it's entirely unexceptional, but it really makes you think about how light will be represented with black and white because the result was entirely unexpected (for me).

At the geek convention there was a hall of steampunk, and this converted radio thing was one of the items for sale.  It turns out that polished brass comes out rather nicely in black and white as the reflections work really well.  I love the detail of the lightning power conductor/battery thing.  The whole point of these things seems to be pointless excess, I'm pretty sure only two of those switches work, one to turn it (whatever it actually is) on, and one to change a parameter (maybe volume, maybe station, maybe something else?).

This is one of the pictures that I really like.  The scan makes it looks like I dragged this negative through a thorn bush, had it X-rayed (which it was) and then cleaned the kitchen with it, but when you see the image in person it's actually very clean.  There's way less hipstermatic noise and very little in the way of scratching.  The only real blemish is on the neck, where those white blotches are apparent.  I have no idea why the scanner picks all this nonsense up, but it did.

This is a copy of the digital one I took from before.  I wanted to compare the digital to the analog.  This picture is far less sharp and the ISO 400 film I used shows some grain (in the physical copy it's noticeable, if barely, in the digital image it looks like it was printed using a 4 foot brush and operated by a toddler).  It's interesting that I like both images, but the subtle differences in sharpness and contrast really give a different 'feel,' (technical term) to the image.  One is more inviting, whereas the other tends to be more matter-of-fact.

Yeah I don't really know what that means either, but it made sense in my head before I typed it out.

It made this picture sepia for some reason.  Yeah I don't know why.

Argh I got too close!  I swore to myself I wouldn't do it again.  I was trying to get the back half in focus but instead managed to get only the salmon sashimi.  Damnit.  This was the sushi restaurant in London.  The best Salmon sushi I've tasted to date, but also the worst tuna.  You win some, you lose some.

This is probably my favourite picture.  The woman in the background absolutely makes it.

It made this one sepia too.  I had to shoot this one with a really slow shutter speed so it's not particularly sharp, but I like the effect even down to the hint of business you can see through the back window.

This was actually taken in the sushi restaurant.  This scan is utter dogpants, but the physical image is really nice.  The image is extremely simple and, wait for it, the contrast between the light top right quarter and the rest of the image along with the shape of the circular thingy, really make the image stand out.

I really like this one.

This is another one I particularly enjoy.  It was an experiment to see whether you can successfully get entirely black and entirely white in one image with film.  The answer is probably, but it turns out that having a light area entirely engulfed in dark areas makes for some quite interesting pictures.

This one is all about shapes.  I just plopped mums camera on the floor, pointed it upwards and took a picture.  That's also how I got the pictures of the mushrooms from before.  Focus is absolutely critical with this one, because if the shapes aren't apparent, if they aren't crisp, the picture fails.

This is also one I really like just because this is a small park area for kids to play in.  They always look melancholic at 1AM, which is a good time to go out and take pictures.  Just keep an eye out for drug addicts.

These are onions.  Just lots and lots of onions.  If I were to shoot it again I'd turn them ninety degrees so that the onion bodies were the foreground, and that heap of stems/stalks would subsequently be in the background.  I think it'd balance the image a bit better.

I absolutely love rain, but it's damned difficult to take a picture of.  This was an experiment to see what raindrops look like in b/w.  It turns out they show up really nicely on dark leaves, so the only question left is - how can I exploit that in another image?

It's a crying shame that this one didn't come out.  What's happened is that I've under or over exposed this picture dramatically, meaning the people at the shop have had to either push it or pull it to make the image.  In essence, I messed up and they tried to fix it, causing all the grain to stand out massively.  It looks worse in this scan, but it is really bad in person too.

This is another one of my favourites because it came out so contrasty.  I like how the lizard is blending in with the shadow, because that's what lizards do.  The grain in the wood is also exceptionally fine, showing that the quality of the materials at my disposal was top-notch.

This is the ropes course in black and white.  The sky is rather featureless, but the trees in the background at a bit of interest outside the obvious.

The climbing wall.  This came out a bit dull in the scan, but there is more detail in the original.  Apparently 600dpi isn't enough.

This was Jackies first car apparently.  We came across it in a garden centre, so I took the rather typical shot of it looking along the length from the rear tail light.

This is a view from the farm, looking down towards one of the big lakes.  It's all rather wonky and when I look at the level of the horizon it makes me feel a bit seasick.

This is one of those classic nothing shots.  The flowers are kind of nice, but fully 2/3 of the frame is an indistinguishable mass of leaves that have no definite shape.  I'm convinced there's a picture in there somewhere, I just haven't found it yet.

This is another one of that car (I forget what kind it is, a ford cortina something or other).  Originally I tried to hint at the fact it was being restored, with the covering rags only being glimpsed at - but now I think the opposite tack would have made the pictures more interesting.  By tucking it away and only showing a glimpse of the care, it might have been a more interesting shot.  Then again the owner might have been pissed off if he'd have walked into the greenhouse and I was messing around with his car.

This enormous dragonfly was hovering around patrolling his territory.  It's a shame you can barely see a blip in the picture, let alone detect the shape of a dragonfly.  What I like about this picture is the background however, as it's a really nice fallen leag pattern.  The leaves are under water, so they sit rather lightly on each other to give a depth you don't see when they're sitting on the ground.  I've tried taking pictures of lots of small leaves layered on top of the each other, but it looks incredibly flat.  Doing the same through water gives an interesting effect, I think.

This is another sepia one for no apparent reason.  Apparently Jackie is quite hard to take pcitures of without her pulling a face, but here she is.

This one is all about reflections.  Again, I really like the shapes but I do wonder if this picture, in colour, would stand out more.

This is really annoying because I hate dogs, and this dog is pretty stupid as they go.  But the picture came out well, and as begrudging as I am, it can't be helped.

Stupid dog.

This one reminded me of those school pictures you get where one eye is half open and the other is half closed, with a sticker on it saying 'quality control.'  Those pictures look awful, but this one still look like grandad is laughing.

You never see wildlife in black and white.  Wildlife is all about colours and spectacle, but what happens when the wildlife you're observing is dull, like this particular bird.  The only colour it sported was brown, and dull was the byword during its evolution.  So why not black and white?

This is another quality control one.  I only included it because of the face Ray is pulling.  D'awww, cheeky chappy.

Grace flexing her biceps, looking stern.

Simon, probably looking at the stupid dog.  Wilcoxes tend to take decent pictures.  Good job guys!

Another sepia one.  I honestly have no idea why.

It's not a duck.  But in profile, it's pretty hard for me to guess what kind of bird it is.  It probably flies.

There was obviously a tense conversation happening when I took these, as everyone (even Grace) had serious face syndrome.

Except mum.

And finally the last one!  Wow.

I shot three rolls of film because I binned one before I started, then the camera packed up before I could use the last roll.  In all, that was 108 pictures, of which you just looked at around 30.  Of those 30 I would say around 20 are worthwhile.

Just under a 20% success rate!  Not bad for a first foray into black and white, and a second into film.

A Typhoon Update

So I moved house yesterday, during a small typhoon. I say small - it was big somewhere but we just caught the edge so there wasn't really much to write home about except a bit of wind. The moving people turned up in a small lorry, and much like a parade of clowns, they jumped out of every opening. There were six people in total, meaning the room was cleared in twenty minutes leaving epic amounts of dust everywhere. Seriously, there was ridiculous amounts of dust. By the end there were piles, feet deep. You didn't so much leave footprints as impressions.

Sherlock Holmes would have been able to deduce your birthdate from it; such was the amount. After moving into the new place, the city was privy to a fantastic sunset. That often happens after a typhoon, all the cloud cover for miles around is sucked into the storm, leaving perfectly clear skies. Today has been the same - there isn't a cloud to be seen, nor had their been all day. I stole this image from a friend on facebook. The colours aren't very intense, but you get the general idea.

The Flight

Never fly Sri Lanka airways/airlines.  They are godawful.  They are just the worst airline.  Jesus, they really are awful.

I can't be doing with specifics due to the doctor specified pressure limit of 1000 PSI, which my brain might exceed should I recall the specifics too vividly.  Needless to say there were obnoxious children, delays, awful food, really horrible children, screaming, unbelievably loud babies, mis-sold meal tickets, interminable infants, broken TV's and horrendous spawn.

God, they are bad.  Their planes are from the late 60's, held together with mostly hope and a dash of tape.

Their staff are bad, every single time they walked down the aisle they would bang into me.  Then they would bang my shoulders with the trolleys.  Then they would shove their wobbly back fat in my face whenever they tried to get anything out of the lockers.  On that note, someone needs to redesign their uniform - it's entirely unflattering to mere mortals.

On another side note, Sri Lankan kids are the worst.  Of course it's the parents fault for letting them run around screaming at each other for ten hours, but still.

Anyway, multiply that hate by 60 hours (30 there, 30 back) and you'll begin to appreciate the suffering.

And I paid for it.

I hate the whole world for being so stupid as to allow this behaviour to continue, and I hate myself for having funded it further.

Never fly Sri Lankan airlines, never go to Sri Lanka.


On a more positive note, the flight from England to Sri Lanka was tempered by the presence of a wonderful lady with whom I shared an hours conversation, ranging from the awful food to silly memories of a common thread.  I can't for the life of me remember the exact topics, (the few inches Sri Lankan afford the kneecaps directly affect human brain function) but it was fun and interesting.  One of those silly little life affirming things that happen every now and again.  We didn't even find out each others names, so I finally met someone who didn't immediately sign me up to facebook.  Not that I'm one to talk, I have about a million facebook 'friends,' about three of whom are actually friends.

The Return

We start this special 'returning home,' edition of the blog with my grandparents 60th wedding anniversary.  Needless to say it's a pretty impressive number, and having everyone down at dads site (http://www.topevents.gb.com) to try out the events.  This is an extremely long blog, so let's move on.

This is one of my friends from from uni, with whom I ventured into a geek festival.  It was pretty good fun, and there may well be a couple of pictures from the very same convention.  Things like steampunk fashion shows, red dwarf appreciation, board and card games - a real smörgåsbord.  Nineworlds, in case you are interested.

This is a cousin.  We ate at great expense in a garden, nothing but cakes and family.  It was interesting to see what everyone is up to nowadays, what with the years difference since last we met.  Some are headed to Dubai, some to other parts of England.  One to Japan.

I couldn't help including these two gems.  They're funny because they are, the combination of lettuce and confusion (or is it annoyance?) coupled with the following memory of brussel sprouts (I can only assume that is the cause of the following expression).

To be fair, no one likes brussel sprouts.

I managed to head out to a couple of RSPB places with grandad.  One a reserve (who has two thumbs and saw a pair of kingfishers (#)), the other an exhibition.  I have mixed feelings about this picture, the combination of Grace smiling and grandad not is pretty jarring.

After the rain fell in Simons garden, these little flowers were covered in raindrops.  Unfortunately I forgot that water is rather difficult to photograph on account of it being see-through; and therefore taking the colour of whatever is behind it.  As such, you can't really see the water droplets.  Take my word on the beauty of the droplets.

This is a hideously tacky coffee shaped plant pot mum bought.  It really is that colour.  Actually, if you modify your monitor so that it only shows red, and make that red the reddest red that can red a red, you'll approximate the actual colour.

This is the outdoor clock.  As with the above image, I set the camera on a tripod, set it for 30 seconds on a relatively low ISO with a small aperture (about f8 I think) and shone a light on the parts I wanted to show up in the picture.  As you can see, the brick on the right hand side is also lit up because the torch beam wasn't very focussed.  If I were to do it again, I'd project the clock further from the wall, have a more focussed beam coming from the torch, and use a more sturdy tripod.  With the weight of the camera and the very slight vibrations coming through from walking around, it's ended up being rather blurred.  Either that or the focussing was pants (it's quite difficult to get the focussing right when you can't see anything).  Another must would be a large floodlight for the very reason of initial focussing.

Using the same technique as above, I lit this lantern with the plants in the background.  By their very nature, flowers tend to move around and as such, they were never really crisp.  It's interesting because on the back of the camera this picture looked absolutely amazing.  It left a bit to be desired when blown up to full, however.

I personally prefer the darker shot as above, but some people find this kind of lighter image more interesting.  One thing I do like about this picture is the plant life on the right, just fractionally appearing in the shot before entirely disappearing.  It hints at a block of light creating the scene, rather than the small torch that was actually used.

This is one of my favourite species of photogrpahy.  Sitting a camera on a tripod and leaving it open while fast moving, lit objects fly past.  In this case it was a car.  The colour image is nice, but the vignetting coupled with the noise, give this black and white image a special interest in my eyes.  Even without the red lines inherent in nighttime car photography, I feel this image works quite well.  The contrast between the road and its dimples really strike me as appealing, what could be a dull surface (especially in black and white) has a texture that can be felt just by looking at it.  The lines are well framed, drawing the eye all over the picture.  That's probably what I love about black and white - a full quarter of the picture is absolute black, but that creates interest.  Whereas a colour picture might contrast bright shades with the shadow, this uses shapes.  An altogether separate phenomenon, and the reason (I think) why black and white survives despite the shinier, newer technology (unlike betamax).

This image is extremely rough.  There is a photograph to be had somewhere, I just couldn't figure out quite where it lay.  I didn't want to keep relying on black and white, so I ventured into colour while trying to emulate the interest some of the others piqued.  The road still has that amazing texture, but nothing else really works.  Honestly, I thought the hanging trees would frame the shot better than they did.  Then again, nothing is in focus which detracts as well.

This is from the nineworlds convention, showcasing the bizarre world of steampunk.  Their whole outlook is one of frivolity and rube-goldberg outlandishness.

This is one of exactly two photographs I am willing to share; the others are rather bland, out of focus or just plain boring.  It's a shame because the event was anything but.  I did learn a fair amount about simple aspects of photography - setting up the camera properly always helps for example.

This is another one of my mate.  I can't remember what he was talking about, but it looks fairly serious.  I think this picture could actually use a little more contrast.  It's interesting because the current (common) train (wreck) of thought is that more contrast is absolutely the goal with all b/w photography.  It basically results in every single picture looking like a charicature, or like the stereotypical 80 year old 50 a day smoking Puerto Rican.  If you don't know what I mean, google that last sentence - I'm sure something will come up.

What does this cloud look like to you?  I thought it looked like a plain old boring bird, but I recently spoke to someone who thought it looked like a much more romantic phoenix.

The fool from university again.  Not all pictures have to be serious - I'm certainly not.  It beats the typical snaps where people are giving the duck face.  Again, google it.

This is the bird watching grandad.  I thought I was fairly observant, having taken something of my dads ability to observe around an area, without ever actually looking.  For example when driving, he notices everything but the road he's driving on.  I'm sure it's dangerous, but he's never crashed with me in the car.

This formation flew overhead when we were talking to a lovely lady about all sorts of things.  It was difficult to tell whether she was extremely friendly or on behaviour altering medication, but either way it was pleasant.

I messed this picture up.  Only half of grandma is present.  I was focussing too heavily on the cutting, which is the most interesting part of the picture (it's where grandma and grandad merge, so the eye tends to be drawn to the knife) but it looks kind of strange when your eye goes back up to the downturned faces.  I don't mind they're looking away from the camera, but some people do find that off-putting.

This is one of my absolute favourite pictures from the trip.  It would be absolutely perfect if the glasses were taken off, and once again, maybe a fraction more contrast.  I might take it back to the editing suite and play around with it some more.  That's THE great thing abotu digital as far as I'm concerned - not that you can take shots ad infinitum, but that you can edit ad nauseum.  Cor, fake latin.

A cousin bouncing around, doing a passable impression of Cleese or Dr. House before he was House.  I forget his name.

The problem I am having at the moment is that the kinds of photography I want to indulge in, require rather specialist lenses.  I'd love to do street photography.  People strongly recommend smaller Leicas and assorted rangefindery, but I don't have a spare 10 grand.  With what I've done so far, a really fast 50mm (like the 1.2 50mm canon make) would seem to be perfect, even with a big body.  That's still a grand.  At least it's not ten.

The other stuff, like macro, I'm not particularly fussed about.  The other end of the extreme, the ultra telephoto (400mm plus) is absolutely appealing to me.  I adore the wildlife shots you can get with these lenses.  I don't like the 5k pricetag much though.

The reason I bring this up at this point, is that the hoverfly is ridiculously small in this picture.  Even with a simple 200mm lens, it would be appreciable.

This is a picture I was playing around with in photoshop.  I spent five minutes mocking this up, not paying much attention to edges, with the intention of seeing whether the shot worked.  I'm still not sold because I find myself being something more of a purist than I'd imagined.  I'm not opposed to digitising and digital workflows, but I do find myself disliking the garishness of what flows out of the internet.  This picture borders on the obscene for that reason.  If I end up flip-flopping, I'll spend a while fixing the edges and making it presentable.  I mean, I don't hate the picture...

If I cropped the blue out of this one I think it would work well.  Maybe straighten the edges a bit.  I really like the digitally altered contrast employed here (having just slagged off the high contrast kids of today).  I quite enjoy the disproportionate use of pink too.

This one is exactly the opposite.  This is washed out and dry feel of all the colours somehow suits the minute insect as it bumbles around. 

I've always like the shots where someone is looking back at the camera while obviously walking forwards.  It's compelling because you assume a connection with the person in the picture, a dialogue.  It helps if there's a beauty in shot.  Imagine just about any romance you've ever seen in a film where there is a dream sequence - the leading lady will always do this on screen.  That kind of shot is always on the face, to give a romantic, close feeling to the sequence.  This one is more of a jolly stroll through the woods.

There was an old burnt stump in the woods.  Black and white lets the contrast do the talking, showing the texture quite successfully.  I love the detail shown here.

The bark on this tree was also quite interesting, but keeping the colour means it's more difficult to emphasise the texture over the colour.  The narrow focus helps keep the eyes on the bark, and as such, on the texture.

It turns out that my aunt is wearing camoflauge gear when converted to black and white.  This is one of the many 'nearly,' shots I take, where everything seems to line up nicely, but one distraction makes the photo much less appealing.  In this case, the lack of distinction between her shirt and the bush on the right.  Annoying.  I might take it back into colour and see how it looks.

I had someone holding my hand while I leaned over to take this picture.  Butterflies never seem to rest, so to find one warming up in the sun, or chilling out in the shade is quite rare.  As such, I put the lens into macro and leaned in over a ditch of nettles.  I wasn't keen to go for a dip, so I had someone hold my hand while I leaned over the stingers.  It's not exactly the most stable way to take a picture, so I took a few to make sure the odds of at least one being acceptable were improved.

A bit further along was this, a common butterfly around England, but one I don't know the name of.  Again, if I had a full-time macro lens I might have filled a larger portion of the frame. 

I quite like the frog peeking out from behind the leaves.  The colours were surprisingly drab considering the green camo they sport.  It doesn't really work for a number of reasons, chief among which is fully half of the picture is obscured by a bloody great big plant.  Whoops.

This is an equivalent picture to the b/w one above.  The goggles are extremely annoying, which is another positive when shooting black and white, because if a highlight is blown it usually adds to the contrast with another aspect of the picture.  With colour photography, it just looks bad.

 

(#) with that joke, you have to imagine me standing there pointing my thumbs towards my chest, as if to say me, along with the...  it's funnier in person.