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February 25, 2012 by emasterphoto

K1000

About a week ago I picked up a Pentax K1000 35mm film SLR. It was mint condition with a Pentax 50mm f2 SMC-A lens, and is about as old school as you can get. If you follow the links, you can learn a little bit about the history of the camera, but essentially it’s a full manual film camera that was made in large numbers for a fairly long time, and is considered one of the top, if not the best, student cameras ever made.

Why did I buy one? A couple of reasons. One was that I’ve had an itch to shoot with a film SLR again for some time now. Second was that it was the very first SLR I’d ever used and I thought it’d be fun to relive that experience a bit. Third, and last, was that it’s been really hard to find a truly compact DSLR that is of the same quality as a lot of these old film cameras. You may remember that I had owned an Olympus E-420 a year or two back, and that was as close to an old film SLR feel as I have ever gotten in a digital camera. Eventually though, I sold it because I thought it was distracting me from using my D200 which had been basically sitting around collecting dust at the time as a backup to the D3. Truth be told however, I fairly regret it as it was just such a handy little thing and really provided a unique experience with reasonable image quality. Still, it’s gone and I have no intention of getting another as in the end I’ll  go right back again to where I was when I sold it, I think. Of course, I could check into one of the new OM-D’s from Olympus, but it’s not a true DSLR and I absolutely hate electronic viewfinders, so no good, though it looks like a good camera by every other measure.

In any case, the K1000 showed up last Friday and over that same weekend I put a test roll through it when we went to Mill Creek Park to kill some time as always. As you’ll see from the pics below, it takes a fine picture. Exposure was spot on for the most part and required very little adjustment in post. Resolution-wise it’s somewhat of a mixed bag though, but that’s a film limitation more than anything; all my film cameras suffer the same issue, and that may have more to do with scanning the film than any fault of the lens and film itself. I use a fairly inexpensive Epson V500 Photo scanner, which for my needs is adequate, but there are better units out there if you hunt around.

Anyway, for regular use I typically scan my negatives so that I end up with about a 19MP file in the end, which is quite large, so at 100% you can see every little fault which can lead oneself to make the mistake that the overall IQ isn’t very good. Fact is though, if I print the files at normal sizes (4×6, 8×10, 12×18) it is very comparable to digital, and at web sizes it’s almost the same as you’ll see. Still, digital surpasses it for the most part overall in many ways, so YMMV.

Now to the fun part – the pics. Here’s a selection of photos from the test roll. No art, just some decent snaps while out walking and enjoying the fine February weather (how about that this year?!). Note that in some ways they look very digital, but in others – namely color – they have that certain look to them that signifies film in almost every instance. Whether you like that or not is up to you, but I don’t mind it at all, personally. Film was Kodak 200 Gold, so nothing fancy, but more than adequate.

What do you think? Not too bad, huh? Quite nice actually. If after reading this your interest is piqued, hop on over to eBay and have a look. Fun cameras to use, cheap, and a very relaxing change of pace from your typical DSLR (which I still love).

 

 

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February 8, 2012 by emasterphoto

Stripper

Did a little bit of street shooting this past weekend while walking around the Strip District in downtown Pittsburgh. We were out running some errands in the area and since it was such a beautiful day we thought it’d be relaxing to kill some time there. I had my D200 with me, so it was only natural to pull it out and see where the flow would take me. Lens-wise I had the light and compact Nikkor 35mm f1.8 DX lens (the only DX lens I own) mounted, so it made for a fairly lightweight rig to haul around. As much as I love my D3, sometimes I just don’t want to deal with its bulk, so something like the D200 and a prime fits the bill. What I really need to do is find a better compact carrying solution for a D3/prime combo, but since we have like zero true camera shops in the area with any kind of selection of bags to browse, it’s likely going to be a while before that happens. For now, I simply deal with the lesser camera and get on with things.

This next shot has fantastic natural lighting I think, so let’s finish off with a dash of color for variety’s sake.

 

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January 24, 2012 by emasterphoto

光 : Hikari 4

Wanted to show a few more recent photos from my 光 : Hikari project. The majority were taken at night and you can immediately see the dramatic difference it makes in the final images. Only wish it weren’t so cold so that I could go out and shoot some more night sets. In many respects, they could almost comprise a separate project on their own. Anyway, hope you enjoy these.

And one more based on daylight:

 

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December 11, 2011 by emasterphoto

Out And About V.3

Moving along with my Out And About posts, I have a small batch of photos that were taken here and there with a couple of my film cameras, the Konica Auto-S and also the Canon Canonet QL17-GIII. These were from the summer, but the film sat for sometime before getting processed and scanned. I use an Epson V500 flatbed scanner and the results are nice for my purposes. Yes, there are much better and more expensive scanners available, but I don’t shoot the volume of film that I think would warrant their cost, and truth be told, reasonable-sized prints (8×10, 12×18 max.) look perfectly clear and clean from the scans I’m making, so I can’t find a reason to upgrade.

The photo above and the next few were mostly from a church festival here in town at St. Vitus Church we attended, and were shot with the Konica. Film was ISO400 Walgreen’s Color film (which is Fuji), though I converted most of them to B&W after scanning. The rest were with the Canon from various outings here and there, same film.

 

And now the Canonet:

Bonus Shot. This is from my G12 and not film at all, but take a look at how well the G12 does B&W compared to the film shots above. I find it very filmic in the way the images come out, at least with some massaging in Lightroom 3. If it only had a decent and usable optical viewfinder, it’d be a perfect substitute for the Canonet in many ways.

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December 11, 2011 by emasterphoto

Out And About V.2

This is a follow-up to my prior post Out And About V.1. Finally got a chance to post as I’ve been sick for a bit and just felt too beat to work on much of anything. Good now though, so let’s get it on.

If you read the earlier post, I posted some photos I took a short while back from one of our trips to nearby Mill Creek State Park. Mostly it was of the wetlands and scenes from the Fellows Riverside Gardens area. Today’s photos are from an even more recent outing and are from the Lanterman’s Mill & Falls area of the park.

One thing I should point out is that often we go to the park on a whim without having planned to do so. That’s usually because we’re shopping in the area and have some time to kill so decide to get out in nature a bit. This time was no exception and so I had only had my G12 with me which is what I shot these with. Great little camera, the G12, and it’s more than capable of producing quality results as long as you know its limitations. The day these were shot was fairly warm, but quite overcast, so didn’t have to deal with the wide dynamic range that you’d get in full sunlight. You lose a bit of contrast and color saturation, but that’s natural and how the scene looked at the time, so it’s acceptable I feel. The G12 handles these kind of days nicely, and the proof is in the shots I’m posting here. Enjoy!

And for variety’s sake, an abstract taken on the same outing:

 

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November 30, 2011 by emasterphoto

Out and About v.1

Haven’t posted much on personal activities lately, so today I’m going to start making up for that. With the weather having been reasonably decent over the last month or so, me and the fam made a few outings to our favorite spot, Mill Creek State Park in Youngstown, Ohio. As as a result, I have a few batches of photos to share which I’ll spread out over a few posts just to keep each one within a reasonable size.

Today’s batch was from a few weeks back. The weather was fairly comfy, but overcast, and I had the D3 w/ 80-200 f2.8 for the day. Unlike some photogs, I’m not one to carry a big kit with me when I shoot – at least not for unpaid, pleasure work. Instead, I’m usually one lens/one camera, and maybe a flash if I think I’ll be in a situation where I’ll need it. Any more than that and it becomes a hassle to me and also to my family as I’d be more worried about my gear than them or the outing. Besides, I’m lazy – shit gets heavy after 3-4 hours of traipsing around with my whole kit.

Anyway, like I said, this time out I had the long zoom on for a change because the reach is actually pretty handy when hiking near the river and also because I’m kind of bored shooting wide/normal all the time. Glad I made the choice because I had a few nice ops for candid shots that would have been impossible with the 24-70. I also processed the shots mostly as B&W as it was so cloudy the colors were crap anyway and B&W would let me get serious enough with the contrast to give them the pop they’d be missing otherwise because of the weather.

With that, here’s my faves from the day. Mostly landscapes, with a few candids thrown in for variety. But then, that’s pretty much Mill Creek in a nutshell, so there ya’ go. Enjoy!

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October 17, 2011 by emasterphoto

光 : Hikari 3

Some recent additions to my 光 : Hikari project. I find it so interesting to see how various locations can have such a dramatic effect on the final results. It seems that perhaps it may be impossible to eliminate all detail from any given scene as any scene itself is, at its core, simply another detail in a larger overall scene.

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