Your Cameras

matters bc it pisses off dayo iirc
we should post some of our best bad photos!, i am gonna think, i really have quite a library.

yeah there's something very appealing about 'straight' photography - I think it requires a lot of confidence! I like this one:

http://i.imgur.com/iIqAZ.png

the flatness of which reminds me of

http://i.imgur.com/jyfcB.jpg

lol I am going through her flickr now and I don't see anything that's explicitly about blown highlights?

these are the kinds of blown highlights that piss me off:

http://i.imgur.com/3QxKg.jpg

the upper left part

or something like this: http://www.dcresource.com/reviews/canon/powershot_sd850-review/IMG_0017.JPG

ILP man shakes fist at cloud

lol. there's def a difference between blown highlights and blown highlights used aesthetically. like this pic from that photographer def works

http://www.flickr.com/photos/elena_vidor/5101410623/in/photostream

I don't begrudge high-keyed photos as a matter of principle - but I think when a photographer is aiming for an otherwise quotidian scene like a forest or a hallway like above and lets the highlights get blown it's very distracting. I guess maybe the Q is, are there other parts of the photograph that can distract the gaze.

like the abrupt transition from dark branches to white sky is bad, it's not so bad here and there's plenty else to look at and it's even part of the image itself, the transition from midtones to highlights as the gaze moves upwards

http://www.flickr.com/photos/elena_vidor/6467002099/in/photostream

I almost posted that one earlier as an example of a picture that I love. I had a hard time at first determining if the very bright values were technically blown or not, but whatever else I think it's a beautiful image.

got distracted by making & consuming oatmeal in the meantime

yeah there's a difference between an image being high-keyed and the highlights being blown. robert adams is an example of a photographer (who shoots in B&W no less) who prints to emphasize the bright values. shooting into the sun is probably going to result in blown highlights no matter what. but the effect is certainly striking! here's another from her stream

http://www.flickr.com/photos/elena_vidor/3998105339/in/photostream

Yeah that one's great.
I could have sworn I had become accustomed to seeing a number of pictures on that stream that had clipped highlights but I'll have to go back and look again.

actually I think a lot of them do, just in ways that don't really jump out per se

http://www.flickr.com/photos/elena_vidor/5404290027/in/photostream

http://www.flickr.com/photos/elena_vidor/5735950919/in/photostream

ah yes, and the green to white transition on the trashcan is definitely a digital 'thing' that you probably either love or hate. I kind of love it just since it's so brazen and casual.

random q: any of u dudes use a soft release on yr leicas?

nope. kinda wondering about their magic effect.

I've used a couple on various cameras, I didn't see a big difference. I did like it on my Canonet that has a heavy release, though.

I've read that Sherry Krauter (Leica repair expert) sees more damaged shutter assemblies from using SoftReleases than any other reason.

but it's just like a lil screw dealie

thinking is that if you drop/bang your leica, the softrelease will damage the shutter since it's screwed in?

I used to use one - led to more blank frames than anything else since it would go off in my bag

o I c

eh ok forget the magic effect then, I'm doing fine

personally I think yr photos could be softer, china, yr aggro tude towards shutters in general really comes across, every traffic cone I see conjures visions of a man jamming the button down just ~angrily~

:(

I kid

me too!

so after dicking around with this thing for the better part of the afternoon (including the application of some black electrical tape for ~stealth~) i think i have a much better handle on uh handling

also read about the finer points of how an m6 meters and lo the scales were lifted from my eyes. i didn't realize that a single up-down push would keep the meter on for 9s or whatever---i thought i had to keep it depressed the whole time. AND that (at least if mine is any indication) if there isn't enough light, the meter won't do anything

so w/r/t handling (and i don't know how nerdy you guys get about this) it seems like, for me, who likes things particular, some sorta baseline setting would be a good idea. get into the habit of resetting the camera to say f2.8 (as fast my lens gets) and the shutter spd to the flash speed (1/50) since there's a lil hiccup in the action of the dial that lets you know you're there without looking

and apparently its not that hard to just remember what you're supposed to do with the focus ring when the ghosted rf image is one side of the 'real' or the other

who knew

haha I've never managed to remember the righty-lefty RF focusing thing

some people claim that they can achieve really fast focus by always keeping the lens focus all the way at macro or all the way at infinity and then to just swing the focus until it lines up and stops

I get around all this by being continually in ~zone focus~

I feel like the best accessory I've bought is the upstrap

http://www.upstrap-pro.com/

never falls off my shoulder unless I kneel to tie my shoes

oh that looks nice

I've got a Artisan & Artist silk strap that I like. Way too short to use as a neck strap, but perfect for wrapping around my wrist a couple of times. Stupid expensive normally, though, for a strap. You could do pretty much the same thing with paracord but I haven't seen anyone do a good paracord camera strap yet.

my boutique strap days are behind me I think. Had a Gordy's camera strap for awhile (one of these) but never ended up liking it. I wear the camera around my neck now. I'm increasingly convinced that if I don't I will certainly drop it.
I mostly either guess/zone focus or set to hyperfocal (out at least out to some set distance, like 20 meters or something). Only use the rangefinder occasionally.

with guess focussing, btw, for me it's much less about quickly seeing something, quickly guessing how far it is, and then adjusting the lens than it is about setting the lens ahead of anything else (to maybe 6ft, 8ft, 10ft, etc.) and then waiting until things are in that range. so if I'm walking I'm mostly seeing what things are falling within the prefocussed range I've set. I think it's not a bad way to work, since you've already thought about how close you'd like to be to a subject and have some idea of how much of the frame you'd like to fill. then you can do the quick little run when something is just out of range before snapping.

I did the prefocusing thing for candids in Uganda, only blew it on a few pics (DOF was way too narrow)

yeah I'm usually using a 35mm at f5.6-f11, only occasionally f4, so that provides some leeway.

http://i937.photobucket.com/albums/ad215/jiaoqu/vivitaruws.jpg

Confirmed my spot for a Fuji XPro-1 and 35/1.4 lens. Looking forward to being able to go longer and wider than 35mm.

nice, dylannn!

keep your fingers far away from the lens!

dope, I would like to pick up a vivitar ultra slim for $10 like gr80

I get around all this by being continually in ~zone focus~

dayo playing the zone. It's true, man-to-man focus takes more precision. But it can also be more effective. It's a matter of taste, almost.

I got a Contax ST because I've never really had a manual-focus SLR. It's awesome. Big, bright viewfinder, A+ ergonomics.

On the train home the other day, there was a guy with a camera phone taped to one end of a 5 or 6' long 1x3 board. He would stand between the train cars, hit the button to record video, and then hold the camera over the top of the train as it zipped along. I gave him my card and told him to write me with the link if he got any good video and put it online. I just thought it was such a cool bored-college-student-type-activity.

good idea bad idea: ~carefully~ using sugru to affix a lil nubbin to the shutter release as a poor man's soft release

the danger is it might get stick in the screw-in hole I would guess?

yeah that's my concern.

well the threads at least

http://www.rapidwinder.com/

might be worth it to buy one just to scratch the itch - about $22 after shipping iirc

I'm impatient.

also you guys talking about the screwy bit possibly causing damage made leery

ABORT