In Recent weeks ive been getting a tad bored with Digital Photography. Experiencing the limitations that made me hold off on buying digital SLR’s for so many years. Digital Camera sensors still cannot produce a decent film like quality in low light / long exposures or even produce multiple exposures on the same frame. Other things missing from digital is TRUE IR (infrared) which can only be done using IR film. (Digital Cameras can be modified to take IR like images however rendering the camera useless for anything else)
So I started to investigate full manual film cameras again. However these days the only decent film cameras available new are hi end pro cameras such as the Leica M7 or a range of medium format cameras such as the Hasselblad 500cm or 202FA costing up to 5-6 thousand dollars for the body alone.
Then I remembered I had an old working 1959 Box Brownie Flash II in storage. A very simple camera costing $14 back in 1960, and very basic controls such as two shutter speeds of 1/50sec or Bulb setting. No batteries or automation, just hand wind, 2 view finders, one for portrait one for landscape and a pull out ‘closeup’ lens .
The Kodak 620 film is no longer made by Kodak however some Photography shops will still supply 120 film respooled onto 620, otherwise you will have to respool it yourself in a dark room or bag.
I would love to get my hands on a medium format Hasselblad however in the mean-time Ill be playing with this over the next few months and see what I can get out of it, and post them online.
There is an art to capturing an artists live performance.
A common mistake it to take photos of the singer mid song, usually ending up with odd facial expressions or just missing the shot completely.
My little trick is to wait until the music stops and try and capture the interaction between band members or the crowd. …This is much more successful as they are more natural, relaxed and you may even cature that ‘in’ joke such as the image above, of Michael Rogers from Miguel.
If you missed it, A partial lunar eclipse took place June 26th 2010. We were lucky to be up at woodford for a tree huggers weekend so we had a lovely clear sky for a most of it. And rather than take the usual photos of an eclipse I decided to take a time lapse using my Canon 50D with a 10mm and 500mm lens. 1000 Frames later is what I ended up with above. Available in Full HD also. Below are a few of the frames. The halo star thingie is due to my 10mm lens fogging up. Enjoy.
After the inital Photoshoot comes a painstaking 10 hour editing job. 70 Photoshop Layers using photographic elements i have been creating and collecting for a few years now.
The bulk of the time is spent hand painting with dodge and burn overlay layers which allows you to paint with exposure. Also not to mention there is about 10 Layers, 100% hand painted within this image.
The Fire elements were gathered during a hispeed photographic experiment late 2009. Using kerosene and an LPG Torch, Canon 50mm f1.8lens @ 1/8000 sec. (Dont try this at home however, this was conducted in an industrial environment with fire safety equipment at hand)
Heres the specs.
- Canon EOS 50D.
- RAW CR2 @ 15mp
- Sigma 10-20mm @ 20mm F8.0
- Speedlite 580 EX II on camera w/ Gary Phong Sphere.
- Speedlite 430 EX II w/ Shoot Through Umbrella to the left above.
- Speedlite 430 EX II on floor to right.
Taken from above on Ladder
PHOTOSHOP:
- 10 Hours
- 70 Layers
- 1.2gig
- 16 bit
- Final Res 18,000 x 11,980px (60 x 40 inch @ 300dpi)
Model: Sheena Phoenix
Set & Flowers : Rosanna Case
Sheenas Director : Pablo Muller
Photographer & Photoshop : Damien K Quick
