Category: Photography

Finding Nature in Singapore with a Pentax Espio 120SW Point-and-Shoot

Posted on Posted in black and white, Film Photography, Photography, Photography Review, Street Photography, Travel, UncategorizedTagged , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Welcome to he Pentax 120SW – a tiny do-everything-for-you point-and-shoot from right at the time where everyone started buying digital cameras. To test this camera out, I decided to explore the Gardens by the Bay area of Singapore to see if I could experience the wonder of nature.

The Wonder of Nature

I think you can probably guess that the byline of the above video is somewhat sarcastic. Gardens by the Bay is as natural as a terra-formed Mars colony, with microclimate pods nestled among metal trees, all in the shadow of Marina Bay Sands hotel.

Most of the nature exploration involved photographing the topography and the tourists that milled around the area – wildlife of sorts, I suppose, just not the normal fodder for a David Attenborough documentary.

Using a mix of Ilford HP5 and Kodak Colorplus 200, I nevertheless put on my virtual pith helmet, strapped on my scythe and cut a swathe through the metal and concrete forests of Gardens by the Bay.

About the Pentax Espio 120SW

Well what’s to say? It’s a point and shoot.

It has a 28-120mm F5.6-12.8 lens, 6 elements in 5 groups, autofocus with focus lock, and with a minimum focus of 0.5m. It’s shutter speeds are from 2-1/360s and it has a bulb mode that’s 1/2s-1min though if it came with a remote shutter, I don’t have one so I’m not sure how useful bulb really is.

Like many point-and-shoots, this one is small and it’s light. It weighs 190 gr. without battery.

Pentax Espio 120SW

That, and it’s sweet sexy looks ,are probably it’s main attractions. Apparently, other than the film door it has an aluminium body. I don’t know though. It tastes like plastic to me. I don’t know how much this cost either but it was definitely positioned at the ‘luxury’ end of Pentax’s plastic point and shoot lineup.

in 2001 it won the Technical Image Press Association’s compact camera of the year award. But given those times, it’s probably like winning ‘Best new DSLR’ in 2023 when the whole world has gone mirrorless. You do get a really pretty orange backlight on the LCD though.

One of the problems is that it’s a Pentax. This was a company that churned out compact camera models like barbecue sausages and it’s not like there was ever much cachet in owning one. I have several Pentax point-and-shoots in my cupboard. I also have a few broken ones now hidden in draws that I might sell on ebay some time labelled ‘top mint’ but with ‘please read’ asterisked and in small print.

The fact is that there were so many camera versions, some good, some bad. How do you know if you’ve got a decent one?

Well you may have already made up your mind on this one but I think to make an accurate judgement, it’s only fair that I use some of that money I’ve been saving up for my kids education and blow it on a roll of colour film. Seriously, the things I do for science. And nature … obviously. Now this was Kodak Ultramax. Still a fast film at ISO400 but still a challenge for such a small aperture zoom on a cloudy day. BUT if Livingstone could conquer Everest with nothing but a woolly bobble hat and a block of Kendal mint cake then I could take on the challenge of Marina Bay with my trusty Pentax. Actually I might have got some of that detail wrong but that’s what happens when you trust Chat GPT to write your reviews for you.

A Slow-Lensed Camera

The Pentax Espio 120SW is perhaps not the best camera out there in terms of specifications and it doesn’t have a full array of modes and features. There’s no portrait, sport mode or dedicated macro facility here. You really have very little control.

You do get 25-3200 ISO, automatic DX coding, self-timer, automatic film advance, infinity and spot AF modes.

And for what it is, it’s capable of producing great results. It can meet the resolution of film and my favourite photos show that this has a lens that can be both sharp and contrasty. I didn’t really see much flare either thanks to it’s ‘super multi coating’.

If you use it properly it delivers good results. Unfortunately I bet back in the day there are a lot of people who have used this camera and wondered why the images came out blurry. That probably comes down to the lens. It has a maximum aperture of f/5.6 at 28mm down to f/12.8 at 120mm. That makes it tighter than the proverbial cat’s anus, though I haven’t actually done that test myself and I don’t know any proverbial feline proctologists.

You only get a focus confirmation or a warning light to tell you to use flash in the viewfinder and that’s not much feedback. It’s definitely capable at 120mm as shown here but where my shots failed it was usually because I was being overly optimistic of my ability to hand hold. Even with 400ISO, a dull day in Singapore meant that telephoto and slow shutter speeds conspired to give  me soft results. Don’t bother putting 100 speed film in this unless you’re prepared to shoot with the flash turned on.

But it’s Sharp

On a sunny day like we have here in Australia I still managed to get great results. Finishing the colour roll, I was able to get really vivid photos like this.

Admittedly, I might have underdeveloped a bit, which often gives colours, contrast and grain a bit of a boost but if you look here, you can see that it produces pleasing images.

As with any example of this kind of camera, though, you have to accept a certain randomness in the results it produces. There was no way I could tell the camera where to focus in this photo and while having the ability to at least spot focus fix on infinity focus is nice, the end results can be a bit unpredictable depending on the film or quality of light. I wasn’t really able to get it to produce any bokeh but that’s hardly surprising. I could get some subject separation if I shot close up and what I did see in the out of focus areas wasn’t ugly. It just wasn’t particularly distinctive.

So what’s your experience with cameras like this? Have you owned this particular model and what do you think of it? Some point and shoots can be ridiculously overpriced these days. I’m looking at you Olympus Mju II.

If you’re prepared to slum it at the ugly end of the Pentax range, though, you might find a bargain. There are definitely hidden gems out there if you are prepared to be patient.

But let me know your thoughts. From my perspective, if not the best tool for the job, this camera isn’t the worst. And like your phone it’ll give you a photographic experience that you can put in your pocket; just with this one, it’s actual film.

My advice, though, use a FAST film so you can make the most of the sharpness of the lens stopped down and give you a bit ore leeway with hand holding. Or use flash, which on these things is… ‘a look’ and who knows? Maybe one I’ll experiment with a bit more on a future review.

1950s Voiglander Perkeo 1 meets 21st Century Singapore

Posted on Posted in black and white, Film Photography, Medium Format, Photography, Photography Review, Street Photography, TravelTagged , , , , , , , Leave a comment

What is the Perkeo?

The word perkeo means pygmy and while probably neither of these terms are very politically correct, those were different times and I don’t think the pygmy hippopotamus is going to sue my YouTUBE channel for being sizist.

Still, it’s small, it’s cute, it unfolds and in that sense it’s a delight. This particular camera had been gathering dust for a while before being gifted to me by someone who’d been following my photography. I’ve had this for around six years now and I have used it well.

Most recently I found myself in Singapore for work and I had the option of either settling into another round of tiger beer with colleagues or taking the Perkeo with me for a brief walk from Bugis to Little India. I had two rolls of Ilford HP5 pushed to ISO 1600 and a fierce determination to find interesting subjects and pockets of light to illuminate them.

One of the cool things about Singapore is the different styles and cultures you can find in such a small area. It was just a short train ride from Promenade to Bugis Junction, where the stark modernity of Marina Bay gave way to a much more human and slightly chaotic street culture.

About the Camera

So what about the Voigtlander Perkeo 1? As the name suggests, this was the first version of the camera – it was superseded by the  Perkeo 2 and the Perkeo E. There were over 100,000 copies of the Perkeo 1 made and there were a few iterations. This particular version came with some tweaks to the original, such as the ability to close off the red frame advance window and a clever automatic locking mechanism to prevent double exposure.

So far that’s two rounds to Voigtlander against my human error but unfortunately it’s not a foolproof camera. It’s fiddly. Firstly, this is manual medium format camera. No surprises there. It dates back to the early 1950s when 120 film was the dominant format. So, larger roll film that can be a bit annoying to load in and out but you do end up with those gorgeous 6×6 square medium format negatives.

Capturing images on that film, though, can be a bit challenging. Most of the cool stuff sits on the lens. That’s because it has a leaf shutter built into it rather than a cloth or metal mechanism at the focal plane. The good side of that is that you have everything available right there and the flash can synchronise at every shutter speed. The bad side is that you find yourself having to make micro-adjustments with your fingernails for the shutter speed and aperture.

The shutter speed ranges from 1/250th to 1/25th of a second, or not very fast to not very slow, though it does have a bulb mode that you can use if you want to put it on a tripod. The aperture range goes from a not too small f/16 to a not very wide f/4.5.

I wouldn’t worry about the lack of wide aperture. One of the quirks of medium format is that because of the physical image size, for a given focal length you end up a with a commensurately narrower depth of field. That’s not just true of film. The sensor of your full-frame 35mm camera allows you to obtain that creamy bokeh in ways that your iPhone just can’t because of the miniscule chip inside it. Trust me, it’s all about physics. That or  phases of the moon working on the tides, which in turn are making a butterfly in China flap its wings.

In any case, f/1.8 would be impractical here. If it opened up wider than around f/3.5 then the focal plane would be perilously thin. And that’s made worse because you have no focusing aids in the camera. You have to rely on your ability to judge distance … in feet since this is basically a relic of the imperial system.

For a camera like this, f/4.5 is probably about as wide as you can go while still being able to make sure your point of focus will be sharp. So don’t worry about the lack of wide aperture.

And I do say that but of course I was shooting at night. And I soon found out that the further away from Bugis I got, the deader and darker the streets became. Fortunately I’m a brave boy and armed with another roll of Ilford HP5, I tried to squeeze a final few frames before heading home.

What about the Results?

As you can probably guess from those photos,  while I made my way to the Little India MRT, the opportunities thinned out just as the people did.

Overall I didn’t come away with lots of portfolio shots. I think the better shots were the ones that had people in them. I did hang around a couple of locations for people to walk by and in some cases, that took a long time.

And I’m not very patient. So apologies that instead of a fascinating street character, you end up with some random dude carrying a plastic shopping bag. Though I did find the poses of the people inside the building intriguing, if a little baffling.

But none of these photos are going to get me into Magnum. It was possibly a combination of the weeknight evening and my desperation to cram some creativity into a busy work schedule that’s to blame. And while shooting film at night with a nearly 70 year old camera was always going to be a challenge, I can’t really blame the technology.

Why I love the Voigtlander Perkeo.

In decent light, the Perkeo didn’t let me down at all. It’s sharp where it needs to be but still gives a nice characterful low contrast look that mitigates some of the issues of shooting ISO 1600. The fact that it’s medium format means the grain isn’t so noticeable and of course you do get that 3d pop when you shoot something fairly close wide open.

It has travelled the world with me, from Vancouver to Dubai, Estonia to Hangzhou. In fact I dropped it on the ground in Amsterdam once, leaving lovely big dent in the lens cover. Seriously, I don’t deserve good things.

It’s small but substantial, weighing in at 525g and if you’re patient enough to use an external meter and are comfortable with the square format, it takes some great shots. Even if you’re like me and too lazy to use a tripod or meter for exposure you can get good pictures from it – you just have to accept that not every photo is going to be a keeper.

So have you used one of these? If not, then it’s definitely worth seeking one out. I have a couple of other folding cameras – an Agfa Isolette and an even older Voigtlander Bessa that produces amazing 6×9 negatives, but this is probably the sweet spot in terms of size, quality and yes, even ease of use.

Perhaps not the greatest low light camera in the world but a gem nonetheless.

Testing the Nikon Ai Zoom Nikkor 35-200mm f/3.5-4.5S on the Streets of Tokyo

Posted on Posted in Film Photography, Media, Photography, Photography Review, Street Photography, TravelTagged , , , , , , Leave a comment

It was late February (not the 30th) and I was in Tokyo and wanted to go out and take some street photos on film. The classic choice of lens for this kind of photography would be something small and moderately wide. Maybe jump on the Diane Ar Bus with a 35mm or the get my Cartier Bress on with a slightly narrower 50mm.

But I didn’t do that. Instead I picked a monstrous old manual metal and glass 35-200mm zoom lens. Today we’re going to explore why.

A Marvelous Lens…

Was it the logical choice for the street? Probably not. But why do I find myself using this more than just about any other manual focus lens I own? It’s an optical marvel.

Before you spit vehemently on the floor at the description of a manual superzoom lens as a marvel, you have to cast your mind back to those bleak days of the early 80s when the optical imaging world was disrupted by the introduction of zoom lenses. It was a tumultuous time for lens manufacturing. Autofocus was starting to get its clumsy foot in the door and zooms were becoming more commonplace. After all, who doesn’t want a lens that gives you great versatility and ease of use?

In 1982 the longest zoom that Nikon could offer was a 50-135mm f/3.5. In the subsequent years, this range extended to 35-105 and 35-135mm. So you could see how they were incrementally improving things over time.

This particular  lens was released in 1985 after what was by all accounts a long and tortuous process to design and refine it to achieve its 5.7x zoom range. That was the same year that Nikon released its first retail autofocus SLR the Nikon F-501. While the Nikon L35AF in 1983 had shown the potential of autofocus in compact cameras, it wasn’t  mainstream at that point and the 501 was released at the same time as the manual focus F-301 which was probably more popular.

No autofocus but a very large zoom range. And In that context, when this lens was released, it was probably already a little out of date, while still being overly ambitious at the same time.

… But a Compromise

The result is a compromise but isn’t everything in life a compromise? You’re always going to struggle fitting your baby bassinet in your Bugatti Veron and if you’ve ever actually owned a pocketknife you’ll understand the limits of your corkscrew and scissors. Of course, that tool for getting the stones out of horse’s hooves is 100% fit for purpose even if that’s a purpose you’ll never need.

While the zoom range is great, it doesn’t go wider than 35mm.

The maximum aperture is 3.5 at the wide end and it’s variable to 4.5 at the long end. So not the worst but it’s not very fast.

It CAN focus as close as 0.27m or 0.86ft, giving a decent if not quite macro 1:4 life size reproduction. Annoyingly, that’s only at the 35mm end, accessible by a ring that increases the distance from the focal plane. Effectively a built in extension tube. It would be nice to have had it at the longer end to give you more working distance.

It does have amazing build quality. Really amazing. You could bludgeon your baby with it and given you might need to, to actually squeeze him into your Bugatti, that’s a selling point in itself. In any case, if you dropped it on your toes you’d be much more worried about your toes than the lens.

It weighs 740g or 1.63lbs for you imperials and that’s heavy but it is surprisingly compact. It has a 62mm filter thread which is actually quite small and probably smaller than most modern superzooms.

Compare it to Nikon’s modern 24-200mm Z lens and it still holds its own when you think that it’s nearly 40 years later. Well ok, it might teeter a bit.

While it is reasonably balances on my Nikon FE it’s not exactly discreet. The push-pull zoom itself is a compromise. I do have a couple of these style lenses and once you’ve had practice, it’s actually possible to zoom and focus in one action but this lens is bigger and much stiffer and more clumsy.

But it is what it is and I guess that’s going to be the theme of this review. But if it is what it is, then what is it? With all these compromises, is it good enough? To find out, I took the camera on a walk from Harajuku to Shibuya on a cold February day in Tokyo

From Harajuku…

It Is What It Is

Is this the swiss army knife of lenses or am I expecting too much? You can’t open a bottle of wine with it OR get the stones out of horses’ hooves. But can you take good pictures?

Earlier, I called this an optical marvel. There is a lot of lens crammed in here. Realistically, the marvel is that they managed to create it and it not be totally horrible. With 17 elements in 13 groups all working together to minimise aberration and field curvature at the various zoom lengths, it should have the light transmission qualities of a lump of coal.

But somehow light manages to reach the film plane and while this isn’t a 50mm f/1.2 Z lens, that lens can’t shoot 35 mm or 85mm or 135mm or 200mm. You get the idea.

It does distort but that’s very fixable and I have and no problems bending those lines back to right angles in post. F/3.5 is slow but you could see, on a winter’s day, it was still quite usable with 200 ISO Kodak Colorplus. The corners are soft wide open and diffraction creeps in by f/11 but at it’s rare that I’m going to want to shoot f/22 anyway.

I call it a Marvel and if there’s a downside to that, using it is the creative equivalent of watching a Marvel movie. You get a bit of comedy, romance, fantasy and action, and that’s even before I’ve taken the photo, just with trying to compose, zoom and focus with it is a drama. It’s not a shoot from the hip Arthouse experience though you could probably push a roll of HP5 in there if you want that black and white Zac Snyder aesthetic.

Perhaps my biggest complaint is that it is a bit like Captain Marvel. Overpowered but leaden and dull as a result, and I guess it ends up being a bit unsatisfying because it never quite lives up to its own ambition.

… to Shibuya

You can see that the best photos are the ones where I’ve had time to think through a composition to take in a street scene, capture close-up detail, or narrow the frame to point out details or find angles in the architecture. The strength of this lens is it’s versatility not it’s sharpness.

Great for the Price

In doing some research on this lens from people who actually know what they’re talking about, I found Nikon’s own review in which the words ‘relatively’ and ‘satisfactory’ both appear 6 times. That probably tells you something; and that’s coming from Nikon’s own PR machine.

It was never Nikon’s most successful lens but that might be because this hefty lens came with a hefty price-tag. As of 1996 this was still selling for US$1,290 and while it’s long discontinued now, that’s a testament to the engineering that went into it and the fact that there weren’t any great alternatives. As early as 1983 Tamron did have a 35-210mm lens available but from everything I’ve read, if that one’s a Marvel, it’s much more Carol Danvers than Nick Fury. For 15% of the original asking price you can now pick up an excellent quality copy and leave it on your camera. So why even bother to slum it in the 3rd party ghetto.

Ultimately, I’ve never heard anyone complain about the image quality. People don’t look at my photos and say, ‘oh, did you use a Nikon AI Zoom Nikkor 35-200mm f/3.5-4.5S’. They might say, ‘did you really take a photo of that.’ But that one’s on me, not the lens.

To me it’s sharp enough and when I look through my Lightroom catalogue it’s probably my most used lens. The reason for that may well be because I lack any sense of aesthetic intent as a photographer. I’m not getting up before sunrise to capture that perfect 20mm landscape, or using it exclusively for shallow depth of field portraits or sports photography.

This is the lens that I put on when I’m indecisive or feeling lazy. It’s a great travel lens and it’s also the one that I’ll stick on my camera when I’m just out walking the dog or don’t have any sense of what photographic opportunities might be out there. For me, that’s most of the time.

But let me know your thoughts. What’s your most versatile lens? Would you use a bloated beast like this or do you prefer to just take a wide prime locked to f/8 and zone focusing to capture the decisive moment?

Three Rolls of Film with the Fuji GA645Zi in Tokyo Japan

Posted on Posted in Film Photography, Photography, Photography Review, Street Photography, TravelTagged , , , , , , Leave a comment

The Fuji GA645Zi is my favourite and least liked camera. I call him Harvey after Harvey Weinstein. Big, ugly and powerful, promising you the world but more likely to leave you traumatised with your creative ambitions in tatters. This article will explain why.

You have to hand it to Fujifilm for bucking trends. Throughout the last decades of the film era, while Canon and Nikon were squeezing the last juice out of the 35mm SLR industry, companies like Fuji and Mamiya knew that the value of film lay in the quality and dynamic range of the medium and continued to innovate with larger format offerings that gave great quality while minimising the size. These days everyone lusts after the Mamiya 7 series of medium format rangefinders and this little device is a little neglected but in the 90s Fujifilm had a complete range of medium format cameras.

It’s 90s pedigree is unmistakable. Think boy bands, roller blading and the Rachel haircut. The same design sensibility carries through with its ‘champagne’ coloured plastic. You saw it on your Dad’s Honda Accord and you see it here… sleek and spangly, promising opulance like a knock off burberry handbag.

In the end, this is never going to win a camera beauty contest in the same way that a sumo wrestler isn’t going to be crowned Miss Universe. Its size alone makes this look gauche and clumsy. But as I keep protesting, looks aren’t everything. How does it perform?

Roll One

For the first roll, I shot Ilford Pan F Plus 50, which is a wonderful sharp film but in the dark wintry streets of Nakameguro perhaps was not the best idea.

You can probably tell that it has a sharp lens. With ten elements in ten groups, it has quite a complex design but with two limitations. Firstly, it’s has a measly 1.6x zoom range of 55-90mm. That makes it equivalent to 34-56mm in 35mm terms or ‘not very wide to not very long’ in human vernacular, and it moves in four steps rather than allowing you to zoom seamlessly.

Secondly, it struggles with a slow maximum aperture of F/4.5-6.9 through the zoom range. So Ilford Pan F 50 is probably not the best choice. Ultimately, it’s a point and shoot with all of the trade-offs that come with it.

It takes a while to start up and is not particularly responsive. It certainly gives you more control than a regular point and shoot, though, having two aperture priority modes, with the AS maintaining normal metered exposure so you can use flash for fill light rather than as a replacement for light. You can also shoot manual with it, though that’s an awkward process and I tend not to. Most of the time I leave it on Program mode, which is basically automatic but with the advantage of still requiring you to manually pop-up the flash. That works for me because of my biggest frustrations of most 35mm point-and-shoots is their tendency to default to autoflash when you turn them on.

It has autofocus too, obviously, and for the most part it works well. Again, it’s just like a regular point-and-shoot, where you focus on the centre of the frame with a half press and then recompose before releasing the shutter. It’s not fool proof, at least not for a fool like me. It misses focus occasionally. It does have one great feature, though, in that it let’s you know the general distance in the viewfinder before you take the shot. That gives you the chance to check beforehand and the fact that I find myself looking at it most of the time is probably a good indication that you need to be careful. It is still a step up from a regular point and shoot where you never know how it’s going to come out. It can also manually focus, which is kind of pointless here, since there’s no feedback to tell you whether you’re subject is sharp or not. You have to guess the distance and it’s so slow as not be not worth it most of the time. The only time I really see myself using this is if I want to shoot a set distance and I can’t move the camera because it’s on a tripod, or if I have to focus on infinity through glass and am worried about reflections tricking the focus.

So it is an awkward creature in many respects. Both frustratingly automatic and irritatingly quirky. Being a viewfinder camera, I have shot more than a few frames with the lens cap on. It actually does have a lens cap sensor that you can turn on that I didn’t even know that until I started to digging through the manual for the camera specs  for this video. You have to push up the zoom lever and turn the camera mode dial to the ISO setting. Not very intuitive. You can also turn the beep on by using the ISO setting with self timer but I just leave it off . And I promise you, I’ll completely forget how to change these settings after having published this.

Another quirky feature of this camera is the vertical viewfinder. Being 6×4.5, it’s pretty much a half frame camera, fitting two portrait images in a 6×9 frame. The best thing about this design, honestly, is the grip and the shutter button. The camera feels good in your hand, despite its size and I found my finger naturally fell on the button, even if I had to rotate it to do a normal landscape photo.

And you can use this camera quite well one-handed but it is fiddly. I did drop this in the centre of Shibuya several years ago but that was more because I was relying on a generic wrist strap purchased on ebay that broke on me than a problem with the grip. It survived well but learn from my mistakes here, kids, do not attach a flimsy Aliexpress wrist strap to your Leica M11.

So Harvey is something of a clumsy leviathan of a point and shoot and that’s not something you typically want with you when you’re out on the street. In dim light with slow film you’re battling with the exposure triangle, particularly  at the modest 55mm equivalent long end with its f/6.9 maximum aperture.

But what if we change film and actually give it a fighting chance? Can I do proper street photography with it?

Roll Two

The second roll was more successful and no prizes for guessing that HP5 at 1600 is my preferred combination for this kind of photography. Being medium format, even when pushed two stops, the grain is small and refined and black and white streets lend themselves to a bit of grit anyway.

There are those that would argue that 6×4.5 isn’t true medium format. But a 6×4.5 is still 2.6 times the frame size of 35mm so that’s more than two and a half times the megapixels in today’s currency.

You still have room to crop but I find I’m less likely to do that than with my square frame medium format cameras. Here you have a 4×3 ratio that is exactly the same as my micro four thirds camera, and much more flexible than a square format. If you crop a 6×6 frame for horizontal or portrait orientation you lose the benefits of the larger real estate anyway. You could certainly go bigger but if you were 6×9 you’d need a bigger camera with a bigger lens and you would only get 8 frames. I do have a 6×9 camera but don’t use it as often just because of cost of consumables. Film has gone up in price and while we all have to make sacrifices to fund our hobbies my wife told me that apparently my kids still need at least one functioning kidney each to survive.

So this can be more economical on film but you do miss out on a little bit on that medium format ‘look’, where even with a moderate aperture and focal length you can throw out the background to get that soft blur and 3d pop. The out-of-focus areas are actually quite dreamy with this lens but with all of the compromises of the smaller frame and slow lens, combined with the focusing distance of 1m, you are limited to shooting people no closer than waist high, which doesn’t often make for a dramatic portrait, even though it could be a great tool for corporate head shots.

But if you want a studio camera, get a Hasselblad or Mamiya RZ. This a point and shoot. A point and shoot with one huge difference. It’s sharp. The lens resolves detail with surgical precision that can beat any 35mm camera and lens combination. With this in your hand, you’re really carrying with an analogue powerhouse.

Roll Three

I was not done yet. I had one final roll of film to go. Now for some Tokyo night photography, this time using Kodak Portra 800 Colour Negative film.

I was surprised how well I was able to shoot at night. I love 800 speed colour film, though most of the time, its cost puts me off using it. Perhaps it would not have fared so well in the darker corners of Tokyo but in the bright lights of Shinjuku, I was still able to do hand-held street photography quite comfortably.

Recommendations

As I said, at the beginning, I am ambivalent about this camera. I find the shooting experience to be the same as shooting with a regular point-and-shoot. The small viewfinder, slow response, lack of feedback and overall plasticky feel of the camera body gives me a sense of remoteness from the experience and to use a well worn cliché using it doesn’t ‘spark joy’ the way some of my other old cameras do.

And yet, I find myself using it more than any other medium format camera I own. While not exactly pocketable, it is compact, convenient, and once you get to know its quirks, using it as an auto-everything photo maker can be quite liberating. This has been with me around the world since I first got it in 2015 and I’ve taken some great shots with it.  The good thing about it being so ugly is I never feel that I’m going to get mugged while I carry it through some of the sketchier parts of town. Straight after the safe streets of Tokyo, I took it through the chaos of the Pettah region of Colombo and it drew only the occasional glance of confusion or mild disdain. And I’m used to that.

That doesn’t mean I’m relaxed about Harvey, though. Everything’s electronic and I suspect I’m living on borrowed time. Like a lot of automatic zoom cameras of the era, many of the parts are fragile and there are lots of stories about ribbon circuits in particular flexing and breaking after long-term use. That will kill the zoom mechanism eventually and one of the known problems with this is the cable that connects through the back of the camera to the LCD makes it difficult to read the frame counter when it wears out.

The fact that there you can buy new generic replacement ribbon cable parts for this camera is probably the best indication that it’s a ticking time bomb. Even if you can source the parts, though you will have a hard time getting it fixed. I bought this camera for AU$650 eight years ago but now the price has jumped up so much that I’d hesitate to replace it if it broke.

Would I recommend it to others? In some situations, yes, and in others no. As I wrote, I’m ambivalent. And you know the old joke about ambivalence. What’s the difference between ignorance, apathy, and ambivalence? I don’t know and I don’t care one way or the other.

That’s not true about this camera. Whether I’d suggest this camera to others, is not a straight yes or no. This is a camera that has some limitations and requires you to get to know it to use it properly. But once you do you can be stunned by the results and it inspires anything other than apathy. Just carrying it labels you as a 90s icon, it’s champagne accents perfectly complementing the frosted tips of your bleached blond hair as you cut a swathe through the crowd at that Fresh Prince concert to capture those classic hip hop poses on celluloid.

I know that I for one can’t help but get a little bit jiggy with it when I try to squeeze it into the pockets of my cargo pants while I’m out on the streets of Tokyo.

Photographing Nothing

Posted on Posted in Film Photography, Photography, Photography ReviewTagged , Leave a comment

What is nothing? Is there even such a thing as ‘nothing’? And if there is such a thing then it’s something, right?

Now I could get spiritual on you and talk about emptiness as the doorway between the material and ethereal worlds, that only through emptiness can we experience fullness but even I have trouble keeping a straight face with all of that stuff.

One thing’s for sure though… Australia has a whole lot of emptiness. It’s everywhere. The hard part is making it interesting.

It was Australia Day 2023 and I’m walking the tracks around the back of the caravan park at Leeman, a small town two and half hours north of Perth experiencing the richness of emptiness.

The Emptiness of Australia

Now before you tell me that it’s not empty, I know that. I’ve seen the David Attenborough series where he shows you termites thriving in the Alaskan tundra. And I’m also the first to acknowledge that I have a tendency to see the world through European eyes. I’m looking for quaint Welsh cottages dwarfed by the majesty of Snowdonia and there really isn’t much of that here.

It’s not empty. The traditional custodians of this land know that. This is a culture that has names six Australian seasons while I struggle with ‘hot’ and ‘bloody hot’.

But since it’s Australia Day I’m going to try and capitalise on the fact that I live in this amazing country. After all, Australia has 60 different wine regions, so it’s not like we lack diversity, at least when it comes to getting drunk.

And one of the things that I do love is minimalism, and the good thing about nothing is that it provides a great backdrop for something.

Before you get your hopes up for austere and tasteful photographs of a lonely cloud floating over vale or hill, or even a solitary tree breaking the serene landscape, you might just want to notice that the vegetation is pretty scrubby and messy, the light was casting shadows and I picked Australia Day to shoot this video which is perhaps the busiest this place gets. It’s amazing how hard it is to find nothing when you’re looking for it.

Perhaps the problem is that I’m very familiar with Leeman and have become blind to what’s around me. All the variegations and corrugations of a small town nestled on the coast can be lost in the expanse of sand, scrub and sky until you actually place a camera in front of your eye and start to look closely.

The Humble Nikon N55

For an empty landscape, I had a nothing camera. The Nikon N55 is not a workhorse tool. In fact, this is my third one, having picked up several over the years that have been selling literally for the price of a cup of coffee and lasted just about as long. Two of them ended up suffering from electronic issues relating to autofocus, though this one has lasted a few years now. As of 2023, you can still pick up one of these for less than $100 and if you’re patient, you might even be able to get one with a lens.

So why do I have a soft spot for this camera? Well, it’s super light with the lens I used, even lighter with the 28-80mm kit lens it came with. And it’s not like I have to worry about someone mugging me or really even noticing me, it’s so unobtrusive.

The Even Humbler Nikon 35-70m f/3.3-4.5

This particular lens has a fairly ignominious reputation. The optical formula is based on the previous manual version, manufactured at a time when zoom lenses just weren’t that good. You get a limited range, moderate aperture and mediocre optics. Look, it’s not that sharp but it’s sharp enough. The bokeh isn’t beautiful but you can still separate the background. It distorts throughout the zoom range but particularly at the wide end and suffers chromatic aberration at wide apertures. But you can fix that later. And It flairs more than a JJ Abrams star trek movie but just don’t point it into the sun.

It’s probably about the cheapest Nikon lens you can buy. The fact is, the build quality of the autofocus version is pretty good and it pairs really well with this camera. One of the biggest limitations of the Nikon N or F 55 is that it won’t meter with manual lenses at all and it won’t focus with AFS lenses that have the focus motor built in. But for these older screw drive lenses this works great. In fact, in good light, the short focus throw makes this particular lens quite fast to lock on to your subject.

And it’s loud. Certainly not discreet at all but be honest, you’re not a professional wedding photographer taking photos at the ceremony nor are you worried about scaring away that curious but skittish aardvark approaching your hide in the African savannah.  Remember, this video is about photographing nothing and.. just maybe… a nothing camera is the best tool for that!?

Telephoto Film Photography on a Budget

Posted on Posted in Film Photography, Photography, Photography ReviewTagged , , , , , , Leave a comment

I will begin this article with a quick disclaimer. I am NOT a wildlife photographer.

Wildlife photography requires lightning sharp reflexes and a good knowledge of your subject matter. My reflexes are like molasses and while I know my camera pretty well, I’m not used to wielding a long lens. And my understanding of wildlife reflects both my ignorance and complete lack of interest in anything remotely resembling ‘nature’.

I’ve spent my whole life avoiding birds and plants. There’s something about birds in particular. The way they fix you with those beadie little eyes. That quiet prehistoric malevolence, you know they’re just waiting for a chance to attack. I’ve seen the Hitchcock movie.

So moderate your expectations before you settle in. It’s not that I’m dismissive of the genre. There is definitely something special about wildlife photographers and I love experiencing their forays through nature, vicariously at least, on YouTUBE. There’s something calming about the way they can just sit there in a hide waiting for something to happen while munching on their apples and egg and cress sandwiches. Sure I can slash through the undergrowth with my sigma like it’s a machete and I am the right age and gender – and actually my wife can make a pretty mean salad roll but I have neither knowledge, nor patience, so I’ll leave the flora and fauna philosophy to those far more experienced than I am. Instead, I will just describe my own personal experience using a Sigma 170-500mm f/5-6.3 DG APO lens, trying to capture the wildlife of Lake Monger in Perth, Western Australia.

About the Sigma 170-500mm f/5-6.3 DG APO

So what can we say about the Sigma 170-500mm f/5-6.3? Firstly… yes, it’s slow. It has an aperture smaller than the eye of a needle and it focuses glacially, loping backwards and forwards like me trying to learn to samba.

But it’s sharp enough when it finally finds its subject. The lens is apochromatic, which is what scientists say to sound cool and basically means that the glass elements focus in such a way that the individual colours don’t smear to create that horrible colour fringing you see in some high contrast scenarios, like shooting leaves with the sun behind them. All made possible by an aspherical lens and three special low dispersion or SLD lenses. But let’s forget the spec sheet, what’s it like in the hand?

Well yes, it’s big. Robust and manly in appearance with hard plastic ridges and a sense of purpose, that purpose being ‘I’m going to be as indiscreet as possible as I try to take photos through the motel window to blackmail you with later’. It’s not one to take to your daughter’s netball game.

It also trombones badly when you want reach and with no focus lock, it suffers badly from zoom creep when hanging down. Insert gratuitous penis joke here.

Anyway, it’s not a discreet lens, which is a shame because it’s surprisingly light.  About 1.3 kilos, I was able to sling it over my shoulder happily for a couple of hours and handhold all of my shots.

Pros and Cons

One negative is obviously the size and it has an 86mm filter thread so if I were to buy a polariser for this thing it would probably cost as much as the lens itself.

The small aperture combines with another negative – It doesn’t have Vibration Reduction. That means if you’re zoomed in to 500mm you’re probably going to want to shoot at a shutter speed of 1/1000th of a second. The way I dealt with that was I shot Ilford HP5 pushed to ISO 1600 on a sunny day so it wasn’t an issue. It also brought a bit of contrast and crunch to the images that probably added to the perceptual sharpness.

That said, I’d say the sharpness of this lens is already a pro. While it’s not going to even approach the sharpness of a Nikon 70-200 f/2.8, that doesn’t have the focal range that this does. Same with a 300-500mm focal length. You get the reach but you’re stuck if you want to rack back to something closer. And you can forget carrying both of those out into the field with you. That’s not even considering the cost of two high end zooms.

This lens gets mixed reviews. If you look online you’ll find people saying not sharp beyond 300mm. Others say, use a sturdy tripod and find critical focus of a slow moving subject and it’s a razor. I tend to side with the latter. But it highlights the fact that you need good technique to be able to get the most out of this or any other vintage long telephoto zoom for that matter.

One thing’s for sure, It’s a dream on the Nikon N65. It’s like the camera this lens was made for each other, particularly with include an MB-17 battery grip accessory. I didn’t have it with me on the day and I probably should have – the grip makes you look a bit pro, whereas this just looks kinda daft. I didn’t really feel I needed it, though, and it made for a lighter and leas threatening set up.

Recommendation

Should you get this lens? Sure, if you can find it at a good price. I worry a bit that this blog is turning into a forum for me to brag about how cheap I am but it probably pays to be patient if you’re looking. It’s a solid lens but the bulk, build quality, screw focusing and lack of VR mean it doesn’t always get the love it deserves and you might find it cheap. For me in 2022 that was around AU$200, though it tends to go for more on eBay.

As for wildlife photography… I’d like to get better at it. I DO need to develop a bit more patience, though. Give me 30 years and I mightget there.

When I do, God help me, I’ll be one of ‘those’ photographers. I’ve actually been eying of a beige tactical vest on Ali Express that I’m sure is designed for people who want to shoot up high schools but I can really see myself slipping a lens cap, spare battery and muesli bar into the pockets and hunting down that perfect sea egret. I just plan to keep challenging myself. I do think trying other genres, even if you’re not good at them is how you grow as a photographer.

If you do want to witness my growth (and I’m not talking about lens size here) then keep reading this blog and subscribe to me here and on YouTube.

Photographing Industrial Areas on Film

Posted on Posted in Film Photography, Photography, Street PhotographyLeave a comment

It was the first day of a new year and everyone else was at the beach. What better way to spend a morning than take the dogs to the local industrial area and shoot some Kodacolor 100 film that expired in the Year 2000?

Kodacolor 100

How can you really evaluate a film that expired 20 years ago? It’s like judging french pastry by eating a 3 week old croissant.

Or my sandwich making after I found my daughter’s school lunch in her old bag 3 years after she moved to Melbourne for university. Yes, that did happen. And no, I didn’t eat it. But I did shoot this film.

I couldn’t find out very much about Kodacolor 100. Wikipedia mentions a Kodacolor Gold 100 film that was discontinued in 1997 but the only listing for 100 speed Kodacolor that wasn’t Gold was a film they stopped making in 1963.

So this is kind of a mystery box. But that would be true anyway given you’re unlikely to really know the personal history of any roll of expired film you buy. I can only guess that this is a consumer-grade film. Since it doesn’t have the Gold moniker, maybe it’s a little more neutral in terms of colours.

My deep forensic analysis, otherwise known as reading the back the box, told me that this was made in the USA, perhaps for an overseas market given the funny writing in red.

Could it be a bit more like Colorplus or maybe Pro Image 100? The same speed, low grain, punchy colours? Pro Image is made for an overseas market, supposedly tolerant to heat and humidity so that would make sense if this was a similar formula.

Please if you know anything about this film, let me know.

In any case, I very much doubt it’s quite the same 20 years later. I developed it in fresh Cinestill CS41 chemistry and the film base came out a strange greeny colour with a bit of fogging but as you can see, I managed to get usable images from it.

Street Photography with a Nikon F100 and a 24-85mm f/3.5-4.5 VR Lens

Before we move on, though, let’s talk about the camera and lens. One of the reasons I was using a Nikon F100 is because I trust its matrix metering and I knew that I’d get at least consistent exposure. The other reason is that for once I didn’t need a particularly compact setup. The lack of people meant I wasn’t drawing attention to myself as some kind of potential pervert, private investigator or beardy analogue hipster.

The Nikon 24-85mm lens is a mixed offering. It’s sharp and the built in vibration reduction saves you several stops of light with still or slow moving subjects. That is useful when your ISO 100 film is effectively ISO 25. But it’s not the best film lens, largely because it does distort wildly. Straight out of the camera, the results are horrible: pincushioning at one end of the zoom range; barrel distortion at the other. It’s easily corrected in Lightroom. It’s a fiddly manual process but fortunately the distortion is quite regular. Of course, that’s not going to help you if you print in the darkroom. If that’s part of your process, though, you’ve already gone way too far down the dark rabbithole of film and are probably lost to the real world.

I did follow the ‘overexpose one stop per decade’ rule and 2 stops overexposure did seem about right. My scanning process is always a manual one. I don’t use Negative Lab Pro, though I probably should. I just scan as a raw image and then invert and adjust colours in Lightroom. I do have a bad habit of trying to ‘correct’ film when I scan it and if I find myself having to get into split toning then that’s usually a sign that I don’t have confidence in the film colours or I’ve exposed or developed wrong.

There didn’t really seem to be any sweet spot for correction here, so… what you see is pretty much want you get.

I don’t mind the results. Many of the photos had nice, albeit not very natural tones. Balancing out the white in the barbed wire photo gave the sky a beautiful azure quality and I liked some of the pastelly greens that I got from foliage. That’s not the same green as I saw or got from the video though.

I was lucky to be gifted this roll along with a few other random ones by my brother in law who found a shop in Spain selling expired film. The first one didn’t turn out but more fool me for exposing at box speed. That was Agfa Vista anyway and I loathe that film with a passion even when it’s in date, so no great loss there. But this roll turned out interesting!

Am I a convert to the world of expired film? No, I didn’t find God in in the grain of my Kodacolor any more than I did in the burn pattern of the toast I had this morning. You’ll see from the telegraph pole image that I did find religion, though. Not MY religion, let’s face it. At Victory Life, God loves everyone, unless you’re gay in which case you’re an abomination.

Personally, if I really wanted to indulge a remote and unobtainable religious fantasy you’d find me peering in the windows of a Leica store. That’s a good enough alter to worship at until the celestial spaghetti monster arrives to deliver me from the industrial wasteland to a magical land where unicorns poo rainbows and 58mm Noct Z lenses. I do suspect I’m headed down the elevator to the basement where they keep the Casios and Kodak Disc cameras, though.

I’ve really never seen the appeal of expired film. It seems like you’re paying a huge premium for that Lomo aesthetic and if I want to take bad photos I can do that perfectly adequately myself without having to resort to a 40 year old roll of overpriced pantomatic.

But this was fun and arguably well up to the task of capturing the beauty of bin bags and barbed wire. There’s something strangely calming about the minimalism of urban landscapes and the weird colours kind of complimented rather than distracted from that. I’d love to read your comments. Let me know if you thought any of the photos were noteworthy. Seriously, I think I’ve taken some of the best photos so far this year. Not a hard call, since it’s January but I’m worried I’ve peaked early. It’ll probably be 11 months of disappointment here on in.

Creative Affordances and Constraints of a Wide Angle Lens

Posted on Posted in Film Photography, PhotographyLeave a comment

Ultra wide angle lenses can provide a unique and dramatic look to photography but they make composition so challenging!

On a recent photowalk around Leeman, Western Australia, I settled on one film camera, a primitive Canon P rangefinder, and a Voigtländer 15mm Super Wide-Heliar f/4.5 LTM lens, to try to capture the beauty of the coastline. The light was harsh, the scenery barren, and I struggled to fill the frame.

The Problem of Choice

I find too much choice can induce anxiety. I don’t mean the kind of anxiety where I have to cover my social ineptitude by feigning interest in others and sustaining interactions though awkward cliched conversation. I am referring to decision anxiety. When faced with a myriad of cameras and lenses, I have difficulty settling on one combination. It’s the equivalent of standing helplessly in the supermarket with a cos one hand and an iceberg on the other, unable to decide which lettuce would go best on my burger.

I could just shoot digital and pack a superzoom with the goal of not having to miss any photographic opportunity but the advantage of limiting yourself to a small range of gear is that it can often help stimulate creativity. All tools have affordances and constraints – things you can do with them and things you can’t. A wide angle lens is great to be able to capture a broad field of view but they can make a scene look empty if you do not have foreground interest and it can be very difficult to remove distractions from within the frame.

Limiting yourself can be liberating in that it forces you to think in different ways. In particular it helps to stimulate divergent and convergent thinking.

Psychologist J. P. Guilford created the terms convergent and divergent thinking in 1956 in his research into Creativity. Divergent Thinking involves brainstorming for many possible answers to a question, while convergent thinking focuses on reaching one well-defined answer or solution to a problem.

They both have their uses.

You’d think that a high level of affordances, promotes divergent thinking. There’s a reason why normal people buy modern full frame digital cameras and honking wide aperture zooms. You can pretty much shoot in the dark at high shutter speeds with high ISOs and even if you can’t, your in body stabilisation will make up for your trembling trigger finger.

There are constraints too too. A bigger sensor will give better low light performance at the expense of size, weight and depth of focus. Your phone on the other hand is tiny and always with you but you’re not going to get those gorgeous bokeh bubbles behind your awkward bathroom selfie.

Convergent thinking is about narrowing things down. In most cases, it’s about finding the optimal solution to achieve your goal. But it can also be about working creatively within the few affordances of what you have. In film photography it’s about deliberately putting up road blocks and having to find ways to overcome them.

Cameras, Lenses and Film

There is a lot you can not do with a Canon P, or any 1960s rangefinder, for that matter. Do not try to focus closer than one metre or capture anything that happens in a brief moment; or even expose properly without having to guess or carry an external light meter.

What it does buy you is the cachet of carrying around a piece of industrial jewellery that makes you almost as cool as a Leica shooter, meaning you’re instantly classified as a lawyer, doctor, or just geriatric hipster. Or hipster wannabe since it’s obvious you can’t actually afford that new M6.

And then there’s the lens. By choosing 15mm you are really limiting your options, particularly in the desolate nothingness that is the Australian seascape.

For that reason, I do find 15mm too wide for me with landscapes. It worked when I shot the Pinnacles Desert. It made it look bigger than it is. The Australian Summer is already big and empty, however, and 15mm gives you nothing to look at.

Then there’s the film. I’m probably in the minority here but I think sometimes Australian summers look best in black and white. While we can have amazing sunrises and sunsets in Australia, they only last about half an hour and the rest of the time you are dealing mostly with bright sunshine, empty skies and sparse vegetation. Leeman is a unique place and well worth capturing but you tell me if the final images make the best use of the wide field of view.

Of course, I chose Kodak Colorplus 200 which is possibly the blandest colour film but also the cheapest. Given the current state of  film prices at the moment, admittedly, that doesn’t mean very much. It is like being the least annoying character in an Adam Sandler movie.

Ultimately, it was an interesting experience. But it was a challenging one and I remain unconvinced that, at least in this case, the constraints promoted the kind of divergent thinking that made for anything particularly innovative.

It also did not help that every nearly every photo included the accidental inclusion of my hat, my feet, my shadow etc in the corner of the frame.

To sum up. affordances and constraints are good. They promote the kind of convergent and divergent thinking that stimulate creativity and help direct it towards an optimal solution. But constraints ain’t easy. The reason I ended up going to the foreshore was just to find something to stick in the foreground, other than my toes or the shadow of my GoPro. A good jetty can be a saviour to a wide-angle photographer.

2022 – A Year in Review

Posted on Posted in PhotographyLeave a comment

How was your 2022? For me, it was an uneven year, at least in terms of photography. My Instagram ‘Top 9’ told me which of my pictures were most popular. No surprises, the Likes leaned heavily towards pretty and colourful landscapes rather than gritty black and white street photography. Many of the photos weren’t actually taken this year and how many sunsets and rainbows do you really need?

My Instagram Top 9 from 2022

I set myself the challenge of picking my own favourite photos that I actually took in 2022. One per month, that’s twelve images in total. It was difficult trying to find photos I liked for every month. Having visited South Korea in October with a camera permanently grafted onto my eye, that month was easy but there were plenty of slow months, characterised by a few dog walks on black and white film and photos of toenails and dinner.

The one thing that struck me most was that I can’t really describe my ‘style’. None of these twelve images could be pulled together into a coherent collection.

What characterises 2022 is a mix of colour, black and white, film and digital, streets, landscapes and travel photography. Admittedly not much in the way of portraiture but maybe that can be my project for 2023?!