ILPhoto Gallery (a thread to show off your pictures)

I mean I used to be as skeptical as the next guy, having used DSLRs &c before picking one up, but I really feel the leica has 'changed' the way I approach cameras & photography nowadays idk I think I drank too much kool-aid

well my FED should be something similar. will have it in a couple weeks?

but my praktica is my first camera and i feel totally affectionate and loving towards it

yah I'm not too familiar w/ the russian copies - plenty of people seem happy with em though assuming you get a good one, even if you dont get a good one there are people out there who know how to adjust it

nice winter light in chinavision's pic

anyway i bought 20rolls of 1600iso superia or something. its out of date but hopefully not lomo-blech tomfoolery level

Yeah so far I love the Leica. I have a FED 3 which I like a lot too though. I generally keep it around for B&W stuff because I have the Industrar 50mm collapsible lens which is uncoated and thus a bit diffuse looking, which means I use it to (try to) get that early diffuse Strand/Stieglietz/Steichen etc. kind of look, with marginal success. The downside with the FED is the small viewfinder and the knob advance (which yours might or might not have; they added a lever eventually). Otherwise it's a load of fun.
But I would be lying if I said that I'm not smitten with the Leica. Compared to my other (mostly compact) rangefinders, the viewfinder is large and luxurious, and is perfect for a 35mm lens. Something about it seems more conducive to just firing away rapidly too.
I also feel like a champ because I guessed the exposure for that shot. Too lazy to pull the meter out.

Also never really thought I'd be a Leica guy at this point in my life, but hey the price was right on eBay. It was actually not all *that* expensive to get a dinged up M2!

kindof want one of the selenium ones

btw that just skipped through my train of thought onto a tangent

the selenium no battery ones are nice but they are very old and many of them are not accurate at all anymore

for a small lightweight one the sekonic l-208 is pretty nice, does reflected metering pretty well (incident sucks tho)

you can also try to find an old luna sbc, they are big and heavy though but def look 'cool' in a retro-techno-fetishist way

after a while you can just 'guess' exposures with your head it gets pretty easy

yeah im starting to get there!

superia 1600 is a good fast film, you can also try 800 - just remember that you want to err on the side of overexposure

but its like somebody asked me to maybe do a wedding and i was like "?" also at work i showed the owner this photo i took of some cake

http://a3.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc6/181922_10150092299580829_530205828_6763210_948174_n.jpg

and was all "hey why dont you take our photos" but idk they might not even bother giving me money i can be such a pushover.

i mean ive been using boots film which is fine and cheap but this was £47 for 20 36exp rolls incl. delivery

Actually I used a selenium Gossen Pilot until I snapped the incident cover in cold weather. Now I use a Gossen Luna Pro (retrofitted for modern batteries) that I got on craigslist. The pilot was accurate, but as with all selenium meters it was useless in low light, when you'd probably need a meter most. Both were very cheap craigslist finds, by the way.

xposts, that is. Also I use sunny f/16 sometimes, but realized that it's been coming out a bit wrong lately because it's winter!

i basically never move the aperture out of 2.8

Terrified one of my friends will ask me to do wedding photog duties someday. Dodging it on the next one, as it would be difficult to act as officiant and photographer.

are they super easy to focus. i dont really understand rangefinders.

Classic rangefinder-style shooting is primarily done with 28, 35 and 50mm lenses in a reportage style, rather than close-up portraits or telephoto work - depth of field is greater, and absolute sharpness really isn't supreme. Most of the talk of the wonders of Leica glass is nonsense (to make it to print, there are too many steps along the way for that special 3D pop to justify a $6k lens) and the real magic of the system is how you can work with it, for the reasons folks have mentioned.

the other thing i wonder is does the fed have the leica weird sound or does it just sound like a normal camera. like to what extent are they ripping it off. its like i want to use this fed to understand man

It won't sound like a normal SLR, there's no mirror to move to make the ka-chunk sound. But it's not exactly like a Leica either - the Soviet RFs used metal shutters, IIRC, that make them a little louder than Leicas.

I think the FED sounds more like a slap, the Leica more like a click.

im so excited now!

All this talk made pull out the FED tonight btw.

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5093/5493562420_024d85329d_b.jpg
Alcatraz Wall by celluloidpropaganda, on Flickr

Downloaded the trial of Silver Efex Pro 2 plugin for Lightroom 3, trying to figure out how to work with it (in terms of when to sharpen, adjust curves, etc.. Also you have to export out of LR3 as a TIFF - I'm setting it at 360dpi when I do so, because that's the native resolution of Epson printers, or it can be downsampled to 300dpi for other printing options). This is Tri-X with the High Structure setting, selenium toned.

The 'filed negative carrier' border options are kind of cheesy, I'd never use them for a real print, but I feel like a thin black border of any kind really helps photos displayed online.

That's terrific. I'm pro black borders too. Just have to avoid putting them on photos of the kids we upload to Flickr (we later just transfer to Snapfish for prints).

I just developed a roll of colour film that I'd been taking pictures with for the last year.
I much prefer this one after I went into photoshop and fiddled with curves and made it black and white:

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5095/5493709283_051cf38883.jpg
Barriers To Progress by treefell, on Flickr

Just to prove I do black and white from time to time as well:

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5299/5500029984_e7b4207f41.jpg

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5293/5510704451_956c6fd0ca.jpg

Out and about in Soho with the Olympus OM20, Miranda 28mm lens and some late '90s Agfa Vista 200 film...

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5016/5533254182_c49f1d5c44.jpg

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5220/5532672357_2dd2e75743.jpg

beautiful colors! interesting bokeh

I'll add another from my most recent film roll.
This was taken during the Edinburgh Festival last year:

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5298/5494302006_490c721b6c.jpg
Waving From Telephone Boxes by treefell, on Flickr

Oh, for a super-zoom for the super-moon; the old manual-focus Hanimex 80-200mm (five quid from a guy in Lewisham a couple of years ago) had to do, leaving me with not very many pixels to play with.

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5060/5540694201_38af2b33a6.jpg

Had a go myself, would love a 500mm or more.
http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5051/5541106166_5a73a0054d.jpg
Super Moon by carljgodwin, on Flickr

Yeah, I was hankering after one of those catadioptric (mirror) 500mm+ lenses for a while, simply because they're compact, light and cheap. Seems like shooting the moon might be one of the few things you could use them for (fixed at f/8, dark viewfinder, very narrow FoV, donut-shaped bokeh, manual focus).

Think the shots I took the other night with the 135mm Zeiss were actually a bit sharper, but the lower magnification meant that I had even fewer pixels to play with and the blow-up was worse. Above photo is a 563x563 crop (0.3MP!). Certainly wouldn't print it. Maybe work as a badge?

I took a shot of the moon with one of my 300mm lenses last night. I was shooting in jpeg without realizing it so it's not as sharp as the RAW version would have been.
This is my favourite - a 680x680 crop (so it's fairly large):

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5020/5546609966_9f1f2f0cf3_o.jpg
perigee moon by treefell, on Flickr

Sky for a change.
http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5252/5550808006_b73e4fed5d.jpg
Untitled by carljgodwin, on Flickr

Really struggling for ideas at the moment and feel completely uninspired. Anyone else get this and if so, whet do you do about it.

kind of want to post pics to this thread but my tech stuff isn't at your levels. just building up.

not_goodwin, i liked your pics of the sky with all the jet traces. i remember that day in mcr.

not_goodwin, whenever I'm stuck for inspiration on anything I read poetry, but it has to be kickass poetry. A+ poetry totally gives you new eyes on the world. Can recommend the Bloodaxe anthologies Being Alive and Staying Alive.

Whatever, post away. are you on flickr?
Everybody's building up and learning here, I don't think anyone here would claim to have mastered the art of photography (yet).

Zora, thank you, I'll definitely check those out. I tend to look at other peoples photography/work for ideas, never thought about using written word as inspiration for visuals.

My sisters dog, who walk every
http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5096/5562369234_694ccb43ce.jpg now and then

..now and then.

omg it looks like (s)he's standing right on the edge of a cliff.

(s)he's? Can't you see his little willy?

ah I wasn't looking for (s)her cock

Not technically all that, but I've long wanted to capture one or both of the kids excitedly exploring Crystal Palace station... tiny kids, grand building...

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5176/5569057259_9f6c4eba9a.jpg

Arrgh! Ctrl-C before you Ctrl-V, yeah?

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5100/5569635890_6dd0c5bd1e.jpg

That one's great. The shadow on the stairs, the colours on the platform, the Ziggy Stardust brickwork, the green coat and the nervous descent... well done.

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5103/5570037693_e1477e15ac_b.jpg
DSC_2425.jpg by celluloidpropaganda, on Flickr

last in a series of my friend Craven making it rain poker chips on himself after he won our weekly game. I wish they were consistent enough to be turned into an animated gif
http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5104/5570626838_4e6d7ee2ba.jpg
IMG_0325.jpg by celluloidpropaganda, on Flickr

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5104/5570626838_4e6d7ee2ba_b.jpg
IMG_0325.jpg by celluloidpropaganda, on Flickr

Really struggling for ideas at the moment and feel completely uninspired. Anyone else get this and if so, whet do you do about it.