Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Nikkor 85mm f/1.4G Lens

Nikon AF-S Nikkor 85mm f/1.4G lens.I’m happy to report that I’ve become an owner of a portrait lens that I coveted for several years now — Nikon AF-S Nikkor 85mm f/1.4G. Over the years I’ve read multiple reviews and saw a lot of images taken with this lens. But the price is quite steep, so we waited, pretty much since its release in August of 2010.

Alena. On the fly shot taken at f/1.8.Portraiture is what this lens was made for. The focal length of 85mm is great for rendering faces in a flattering way and the maximum aperture of f/1.4 is perfect for separating the subject from the background and washing out said background into a milky smooth blur. This is my first 85mm prime lens and my first f/1.4 lens. I think it will solve a number of issues for me in certain situations.

Nikkor 85mm f/1.4G vs Nikkor 50mm f/1.2 AI-S.I have a great manual 50mm that I love, but it’s not always ideal. First of all manual focus limits the number of quality shots I can take of Arosha — he is too quick. Also it makes me uncomfortable asking to take somebody else’s photo knowing that I’ll have to fiddle with focus for too long. Another issue is that it measures the exposure only at the center, making explaining to other people how to properly take a shot is close to impossible and is also a time constraint on when I’m using it.

Daniel. Taken at f/1.4 with +9 AF tune. Check out that bokeh.All in all, I got the lens from B&H fairly quickly and had to exercise a great deal of patience before getting my hands on it — it was my New Year gift from Alena and my parents. The lens itself is quite a lot bigger than my 50mm is. It also is quite heavy as it turns out. I saw the technical specifications on the lens beforehand, but it’s hard to know how it will feel until you actually touch it. It does pair up quite well with my trusty Nikon D700.

Cyclist. Taken at f/16. The blur on the cyclist is my hands shaking. Has nothing to do with the lens.However nothing comes easy. Soon after I had a bit of a disappointment. When looking through some experimental shots I took I noticed that the lens exhibits an obvious front focusing issue. In simple terms when you try to focus on the eye you end with focus plain falling on the nose and eyes are not sharp. The issue becomes quite a bit less noticeable by stopping down to f/1.8, but if I wanted to shoot at f/1.8 I would’ve gotten a lens that costs 1/3 of the price of this one.

LensAlign test target.Luckily D700 allows one to performing auto-focus fine tuning. And while it’s something that becomes quite complicated for a zoom lens a prime is much easier and more practical. I did some quite unscientific testing and arrived to +9 adjustment on the scale of -20 to +20 with 0 being default. But to make a final decision of whether to keep it or try to exchange it I placed an order for LensAlign kit — something that I wanted to get for some time now anyhow. I also bought of copy of their FocusTune software. FocusTune1 in itself is a great tool allowing one to tune the lens not by eye and not from a single sample, but from a bulk of shots.

One of FocusTune chart.I took a large number of test sets — each set consisting of 100+ shots and actually ended up with fairly consistent test results2. The recommended value that I arrived at on multiple instances is +6. I also read that pretty much everyone of these lenses will need to be tuned due to variations between the bodies and lenses — which in reality are extremely small, so exchanging the lens is as much of a gamble as anything. On most lenses it will just not be noticeable, but when you deal with a long and bright lens — you want it to be very precise.

Family. Taken at f/1.4 and +9 AF tune. Great bokeh again.Either way — our testing at +9 produced some nice shots and we won’t know how well +6 does until we go out on the upcoming weekend and do some testing in the wild. But if practice agrees with theory — and I don’t see why it wouldn’t — the lens is a keeper.

Arosha's BMW. Taken at f/1.4 with +6 AF tune and focus point on the plate.

  1. FocusTune actually doesn’t need LensAlign target to work. It can be used with a number of targets that can be printed out by the end-user himself. []
  2. I will not go into detail of properly setting up for a good end results as the author of the system provides great info on his site. []
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Wednesday, November 7, 2012

First Snowfall

First snow out of our window.It is suddenly snowing outside. And quite heavily at that. Today is marks the first snowfall of this incoming winter. The snow itself is not sticking to the ground yet, but tree branches, cars and house roofs are turning white. The view out of our window is quite picturesque.

Trees through the snow.
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Monday, October 22, 2012

Seven Lakes

Autumn on Lake Kanawauke.Yesterday was yet another nice warm autumn day. Alena, Arosha, my dad and I decided to use it wisely and ended up spending it in the area of Seven Lakes which is located not far north from New York. Even though it is only 60 miles away getting there is not easy as it is on the most opposite corner of New York City from us and we have to drive through it all. And driving through New York is never quick.

By Lake Welch.However it was worth it. The colorful autumn is in its peak. The drive along Palisades Parkway is beautiful. The road is tightly hugged by forest on the both sides and on a sunny day it’s all painted in bright reds, yellows, orange and everything in between. Seven Lakes area itself was beautiful as well — colorful trees reflecting in the water.

Alena and Arosha.Arosha had a great time running through the dried autumn leaves on the ground, but the best part was the discovery of recently used char coals in somebody’s fire pit. He would throw the leaves into it and the fire would pick up and Arosha would look at it, smile, add more leaves and so on. I think he spent at least 30 minutes doing that and was totally fascinated by the whole process.

Lake Welch.I took the chance to capture some of the colors on “film”. I tried taking a number of long exposure shots, but ended up disliking all of them in the end — too much detail gone. I’m attaching my favorite non-long-exposure shots of the bunch to this post. All of these were taken on my wide-angle lens at 16mm.
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Friday, August 24, 2012

Nikkor 16-35mm f/4G Lens

I’m a lucky new owner of a brand-new Nikon AF-S Nikkor 16-35mm f/4G ED VR lens. I want to share a couple of thoughts on how that came about, choice, acquisition and planned use.

Wide-Angle Decision


Nikon AF-S Nikkor 16-35mm f/4G ED VR lens.I mentioned earlier that there exists a possibility of us taking a trip to Grand Canyon in the near future. As I was looking through my old shots of the canyon taken with my old D70 camera — a lot of them were taken at 18mm (the widest I had — 27mm equivalent on full frame) and a lot of them feel kind of crammed — like there just wasn’t any more room left in the frame. Landscapes are the primary reason why I would want to own a good wide-angle lens.

There is always an alternative to using wide-angle lenses that could work in a lot of cases for landscapes. Just take several shots with a normal lens and then stitch them together in a panorama. However there are certain problems with that approach — taking an HDR shot for example would be much more complex. Using a long exposure filter such as Big Stopper would be it impossible.

And then there is a number of other types of photography that can be done with a wide-angle lens forcing a photographer to get much closer to the subject, thus changing the perspective — an interaction of the subject with the background.

Budget


Wide-angle Shublik.I had my eye set on a prime Nikon lens for portraiture — 85mm f/1.4G — for a long time now. The problem of course is the fact that this particular lens costs $1,700, however all the reviews confirm that the lens is worth it. Or at least that was the case until Nikon released a new 85mm f/1.8G lens.

I read a number of reviews on the new lens and a lot of them show that it performs as well as its big brother in a lot of cases. It doesn’t have nano-coating which reduces the flares and it loses 2/3 of a stop as far as aperture goes. But the kicker is that it costs $499. Now that’s is a huge difference. For a professional photographer that 2/3 of a stop might be worth it, but I as an amateur just cannot justify paying an extra $1,200 for something that would be simply a nice-to-have at my level. I just can’t.

By settling with a f/1.8 lens I was able to free up a large chunk of change from the budget that was allocated for 85mm purchase towards the New Year.

Wide-Angle Lens Options


Nikkor 16-35mm f/4G vs Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8G.Choosing an actual lens from the available options was surprisingly easy. I was not considering any 3rd party choices as I am extremely happy with all my Nikkors. Out of available Nikon option there were really only two lenses that were in the final “competition” — 16-35mm f/4G and 14-24mm f/2.8G lenses. The older 17-35mm f/2.8D lens has been bested and at this point doesn’t make much sense.

To break it up I ended up picking out 16-35mm lens over 14-25mm lens for the following reasons:
  • It has filter thread, while the other one does not. Even thought 14-24mm can be outfitted with filter it becomes a huge expense on its own with the need of a special and expensive mounting bracket and much larger filters.
  • Cost — $1,139 vs $1,996.
  • Better flare control — the other one has a very spherical front element.
  • Not as wide, but bigger range — really nice thing to have for walking around, without constantly swapping lenses out.
  • Weight — 680g vs 969g for 14-24mm and 900g for 24-70mm.
  • VR II — Nikon’s lens stabilization system that promises 4 extra stops. Not really a factor for me, but I guess it’s nice to have.

Arosha playing on iPad.The lens doesn’t let in as much light at f/4 as the other one does at f/2.8, but as far as landscape photography goes this is a non-issue at all, since most of landscape shots will be taken at least at f/8 and on a tripod. Even though 14-24mm is a superb lens and 16-35mm has a lot of distortion at 16mm (easily fixed in post), 16-35mm was clearly the best choice for me that offers great sharp results with a lot of versatility.

Buying The Lens


These days it seems that after doing all the research and making a decision, actually buying a Nikon lens is the hardest task of it all. There was no stock at B&H, Adorama, Amazon or any other vendors that I’m familiar with. The price at Adroma was at $1,159, at B&H it went up to $1,179 and there was still no stock and Amazon kept getting them 1 item at a time (returns?) and was pricing them at $1,259.

Difference in perspective. Flash heads at 16mm.I saw a mention on one of the forums that Samy’s Camera has them in stock, but since I was unfamiliar with that store I decided not to risk it. Meanwhile I kept checking all the verified sources and ended up stumbling on a seller offering these up for sale through Amazon for $1,139. And what do you know? It was Samy’s Camera. They had 4.8 out of 5 stars rating with more than 2,800 votes in the past year.

Considering that it was the best price that I’ve seen and having the safety of ordering through Amazon I placed an order. The lens was shipped to me the same day and I received it soon after. I’ve done some minor testing within the confines of our apartment and I like how it handles and performs so far very much. Here is another good vote for Samy’s from this happy customer.

Difference in perspective. Flash heads at 70mm.Now I just need to get outside an do more shooting and start learning to work with a wide-angle lens — I didn’t have one in a long time and for some reason I never used the one I did have for my DX camera. We’ll see how I do with this one.
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Thursday, August 9, 2012

Grand Canyon

Grand CanyonTwice in my life I’ve been to Grand Canyon and both times I have been amazed. It is the wonder of nature that left the strongest impression in my mind. I think every person should do themselves a favor and see it with their own eyes at least once. Now there is a possibility that I will get a chance to see it yet again in a not so distant future. It’s not a certainty, it’s only a possibility, but it’s the one that I’m looking forward to becoming a reality.

Grand CanyonI decided to look through some old photographs we took during our Phoenix, Sedona, Grand Canyon, Las Vegas road trip that we went on with Alena back in October of 2005. Since our blog didn’t exist back then I picked out several raw photos that I liked the most and decided to post them here.

Grand CanyonIt is evident to me that my photo processing skills have clearly improved from 2005. Rather I should say that in 2005 they were pretty much at zero — non-existent. I’m thinking of maybe promoting one of these three photographs into my photo gallery section. Which one do you, dear reader, like the most?
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Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Tokyo Canvas Print

Canvas prints in my office.It’s been almost exactly a year since I’ve printed out my Empire State photograph on canvas to hang in my office. Today I picked up another print that I’ve been thinking of doing for quite some time — Tokyo.

Closer view.The first one I took from the Top of The Rock observation deck and the second one I took from the top of Roppongi Hills Tower. I think it came out really well and Costco1 did a really nice job again. I think these look really good hanging side by side. What city comes next?

A pair of canvas prints on the wall of my office.

  1. Paid $74.43 with tax included for 30×20 inch print. []
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Sunday, July 29, 2012

Manhattan Bridge Weekend

Manhattan Bridge.Lately, every weekend we’re trying to use the free time to full potential. We pick a new, or old for that matter, place and go there to explore, visit, walk and photograph. Last weekend was no exception.

Manhattan Bridge tower.We picked Manhattan Bridge as our target. We already walked over Brooklyn and Williamsburg bridges before, but we never had a chance to walk on Manhattan Bridge until then, while it does have a pedestrian walkway as well. Alena, Arosha and I got into the car and drove over to downtown Brooklyn.

Arosha looking through the guardrail.We easily found parking right in front of the pedestrian ramp to the bridge and got on our way. Manhattan Bridge has subway trains running on it, so I was afraid that such loud noise would scare Arosha. But to my surprise once Arosha saw a train go by he started demanding for more trains! Even though he was covering his ears with his hands every time a train would go by he would stop, look at it and smile.

Brooklyn Bridge and construction of the Freedom Tower.As for my main objective — I wanted to see if I could find a good vantage point of view of Brooklyn Bridge for some cityscape shots. And as I suspected the views were spectacular. Even though there is a metal mesh covering the side of the bridge there is just enough space to squeeze a lens through guardrail. I only had my 50mm manual lens with me though, so I couldn’t get as wide of a shot as I wanted to. But it just is another reason to revisit.

One of the downtown streets.We didn’t get too far — we walked as far as the first tower of the bridge. By that time we had enough photographs, Arosha has seen enough trains, managed to pull on every handle in the maintenance covers on the bridge and drew a conclusion that it was not a good idea to jump into the water from here.

Clock Tower. Arosha loved it.On our way back I showed him a clock tower with a large clock on top of it and he liked it so much that he kept asking to see the tower for the next couple of days.

Manhattan Bridge pedestrian walkway.After we got off the bridge we decided to explore the park right on the water under the bridge that we noticed from the top. It was a long walk there, but there was a good playground with a fountain for Arosha and more great views for me. Brooklyn Bridge on the left and Manhattan Bridge on the right. But again my lens was not wide enough to get both bridges into the frame, but I’m pretty happy with some of the shots that I got.

Hole-in-the-wall gyro place — the best gyro in Brooklyn.And to finish our day we dropped by my favorite gyro place in the whole country. Certainly the best gyro in Brooklyn. I used to eat in this hole-in-the-wall place very very often during the time when I worked at my first full time job nearby at the end of the 90′s. We got a pair of gyro platters to go and the gyro was still as good as I remembered.

BQE. Brooklyn Queens Expressway.It was a good day.

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Sunday, June 17, 2012

Red Bowl Photo

Alena and Daniel at Red Bowl.Several weeks ago Artem was in our part of the world and we met up with him in our favorite place in Williamsburg — a small Asian fusion cuisine restaurant owned by our friend David — Red Bowl.

Artem had oodles of photo gear with him. We setup a flash (otherwise its quite dark in there) and Artem took a photograph of us that we liked. He was kind enough to send me a resulting file in a RAW format, which I dropped into Photoshop and spent an hour or so on it to correct certain things caused by flash as well as I could.

We thought that the end result looked decent, so we’re posting it here.
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Friday, April 27, 2012

Space Shuttle Enterprise

Space Shuttle Enterprise on top of Boeing 747.I’m totally psyched! We just got back from Fort Wadsworth where we drove to this morning to witness the final voyage of Space Shuttle Enterprise strapped to the back of Boeing 747 to New York Intrepid museum.

Shuttle carrier escorted by a fighter plane.When several weeks ago I heard about Discovery flying in the same manner all over DC I was very jealous of Washingtonians. Needless to say when I heard that the same thing will be happening over New York I immediately took a morning off from work. The flight got delayed twice because of bad weather and it finally happened today, on Friday, April 27, 2012.

Flying over Verrazano Bridge.When I heard about the flyover I thought that Fort Wadsworth would be a perfect location to view it from. It is located pretty high up, overlooking the bay under Verrazano Bridge and has a good view of lower Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty, although the statue is pretty far and is somewhat hard to see on the photographs taken with a normal lens.

View of Enterprise from Fort Wadsworth.Early in the morning I packed my gear — my usual 24-70mm lens, but this time I also took my 70-200mm lens and the 2x teleconverter that I have laying around which never gets any use. And I’m very glad I did.

Flying over the Statue of Liberty.We were really hoping that it will get closer to our location than the Statue of Liberty and this morning I had found two maps of its possible fly path and on both of those there was at least one pass over the bridge. Since NASA never disclosed an exact fly route I was hoping that these maps were true.

A big crowd has gathered at Fort Wadsworth.When we got to Fort Wadsworth I realized that my secret spot isn’t so secret. It was as crowded as I’ve never seen it before, but it wasn’t bad at all. There were plenty of parking spots left and we easily found a good viewing spot near the edge where I setup my tripod. Even though I knew I can’t fix the camera completely it still provided good support for those telephoto shots.

Arosha being completely unimpressed by the shuttle.There were a couple of guys with radios who were getting constant updates. They told everyone when the plane was 2 minutes out. And then it appeared through the cables of Verrazano Bridge. I started with my 24-70mm lens to get good landscape shots of the bridge with the plane.

My dad and I.By the time it passed the bridge I switched over to my 400mm setup, but was quite late to get any decent shots. Nobody was sure if we were going to see it again or if it was going to cut through the middle of city on its final route to JFK.

Flying by Freedom Tower.Luckily we didn’t have a long wait. It again showed up over the Statue of Liberty — it was hard to see with a naked eye, but I could see it very well through the lens. To the happiness of all the photographers and observers the shuttle carrier did a second pass right over the bridge and I got a good number of great close up shots with the plane taking up the full frame.

Space Shuttle Enterprise on top of Boeing 747.I was so ecstatic that I started clapping and the other people followed too. It was a good and fun event for us, but Arosha found it quite boring. Later he is going to see these photographs and he’ll be able to say that he was there, although not too happy.
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Wednesday, April 25, 2012

iPad Retina Wallpapers

When Apple released iPad 3 with a retina screen I had to update some of my favorite wallpapers to take advantage of the full resolution of the new device. I have been meaning to share these wallpapers with whoever might want to use them. For those of you who like the photographs, but have an older generation iPads I’m posting the images in both resolutions — 2048×2048 and 1024×1024.

Path


Path

Wood


Wood

Grass


Grass

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Sunday, February 26, 2012

Lee Filters Set

Old pier on Rockaway. 10-stop ND and 2-stop soft GND.Last summer I have managed to misplace a couple of my graduated neutral density (GND) filters that I have acquired years ago and was using for my landscape photography. My original set was made by Cokin (P) which was just OK, but not exactly perfect. I decided to take this opportunity and take my filter kit to the next level.

LEE filter set.After doing some research I decide to go with LEE — a company based in UK that has made a name for itself it in professional photo filters. The problem is that all of their stuff is handmade and they just can not keep up with demand. None of the major stores had ANYTHING in stock, but after reading a lot of good things about a New Hampshire based reseller — 2filter, I decided to give my business to them.

Filter holder with a single filter attached to a lens.I placed my order in August of 2011 and thus put myself on a waiting list. They are very quick to reply to any communications and keep everyone updated with progress of shipments from LEE on their Facebook page. It’s been a while, but this past Friday I’ve gotten the last piece of my order from them. Can’t stress enough how good they’ve been and if you need filters — I wouldn’t hesitate for a second and do business with them.

Back side of Big Stopper filter. The foam prevents any light from leaking in during a long exposure.Without any further ado I present my new LEE setup — LEE 100mm filter holder (can hold up to 3 filters), LEE wide angle 77mm adapter ring, LEE 4×6 3-stop hard GND, LEE 4×6 2-stop soft GND and the famous LEE Big Stopper — a 10-stop 4×4 glass ND filter. The Big Stopper was actually the biggest hold up — it’s the item that I got this Friday.

Marine Parkway Bridge to Rockaway. 10-stop ND and 2-stop soft GND.At this point I didn’t really have a lot of chances to experiment due to weather, but I was able to take some experimental shots yesterday in the morning. These are not very impressive, but should give a sense of a feeling what can be achieved with these. Big Stopper filter is the most interesting of the bunch. Our trip next week should provide a good opportunity for some great landscape shots.
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Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Second Roll

I’ve received the scans of my second film roll about a week ago and still haven’t posted the photographs. There are a lot of good shots again. I found these the most interesting. The most processing I’ve done on these was cropping and straightening in Photoshop. Nothing else.

Looking up.Arosha was reaching for something up high and I asked Alena to look up as well. It’s not very sharp, but it just works on this photograph.

Chess.I walked up to these guys and asked permission to take a photo. No response followed. Then one voice said — the silence means agreement. I took a shot and thanked them. No reply followed — they are all in the game.

Seagull at Sheepshead Bay canal.There are a lot of seagulls all around Sheepshead Bay canal. Each pole is occupied.

Alisa.The daughter of our friends Vika and Ignat — Alisa — playing in one of the local parks.

Shublik.Our Shublik is beautiful even in black and white. With age he’s got much easier to photograph even with a manual camera. He’s not a kid anymore.

Verrazano-Narrows Bridge.Verrazano-Narrows Bridge — even to this day every time I see it I’m amazed by it’s beauty and sheer size. Whenever I have somebody come over from overseas this is the first spot I take them to.

Roll & Roaster.Roll & Roaster is one of the oldest places on Emmons Avenue. This antique car looked very fitting in front of it.

Silhouette.I was sitting on bench at the end of the canal when I saw this man going somewhere in a suite and old style hat. It’s a good place to take photographs of people going on about their business without intruding.

Yom Kippur.On the last warm day of the year people were coming out from synagogues on a day of Yom Kippur to enjoy the passing summer.

That’s all for today. A good set, but I probably won’t be doing more film anytime soon. The age of instant gratification has ruined me.
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Friday, September 30, 2011

More Film

As I said in my previous post I will select more images from my film batch and post them. Here they are. No processing work on these, except for resizing. Straight up scans from the lab.

Williamsburg bicycles.
Manhattan skyline from Williamsburg.
Brooklyn Heights promenade. Arosha's climbing.
Typewriters at Brooklyn Flea.
Arosha and Alena. Not far from home.
Brooklyn Heights.
More bicycles, this time at Brooklyn Flea.
Alena and Arosha at Floyd Bennett Field.
Alena and Arosha at Floyd Bennett Field.
Alena at Floyd Bennett Field.
Crab at Floyd Bennett Field.

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Wednesday, September 21, 2011

First Film Results

Arosha up close.This morning I got an email from The Darkroom about my film — it has been developed and scans were available for download — they will send the CD with them and the negatives in the mail later. What can I say? I got extremely excited and anxious about looking at them and now that I did look at them I’m even more excited.

Alena at Floyd Bennett Field. Not sure what caused the scratch.Pretty much all of the photographs came out well. Some might not have a great subject or not have a good composition — this one I definitely should pay more attention to, but overall — great results that are beyond my expectations. Good exposure, good light, good focus, good subjects, great results.

Street. Williamsburg.I’m looking and looking at these over and over and I’m completely psyched. As my friend Andrey said that this moment with film is much more pronounced than it is with digital. You’re taking the photographs without seeing what they are, you are waiting to complete the film, you send the film out, you wait for the results and all this time the feelings get built up and then you see the scans. And when they are a good — excitement overflows you! That’s what I’m feeling now.

Brooklyn Heights. Promenade over looking Manhattan.In fact, and this is a rare one, the only thing that I needed to fix on some of these is the level of horizon. Also some scan got a large thin scratch going through them. I’m not sure weather it’s my fault or the lab did something wrong. Otherwise I’m very happy with sharpness and contrast. I love the grain and how the light got rendered. I really don’t have anything to fix.

Williamsburg shore line. Brooklyn Flea.I’m still surprised by the forgiveness of the film with respect to the exposure. If my D700 can adjust aperture and shutter speed with 1/3rd of a stop and has a very advanced metering device, Zenit advances in full stops and has an antique metering wire powered by selenium. A lot of these shots in very different conditions were taken with me somewhat winging the exposure setting, yet none of them are ruined.

Flowers. Floyd Bennett Field.Maybe a lot of the credit for this should go to The Darkroom. I’m not sure whose fault the scratch is, but I surely am going to use their service in the future. I also will be shooting more film it looks like. I bought two rolls to start with anyhow.

Self portrait.I can go on and on with my rambling and photos, but I think I’ll stop now. I’ll pick out some more photographs from this roll and make another post. But do not fear, I will not post all 36 of them. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go and load a new film into the camera.

P.S. I don’t remember the last time I posted straight out of camera photographs. Remarkable.
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Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Film Photography

Soviet made Zenit-E SLR camera.As I have mentioned in some other posts I decide to try some film photography. I don’t think that it’s anything more than an experiment. I just want to try. All this vintage feel to it attracts me for some reason. The days before everything got consumed by plastic.

Ilford HP5 Plus 35mm black & white film.The camera that I’m going to try first is soviet made Zenit-E. It belongs to my dad and I remember it very well from my childhood. Not only the lens focusing is manual, so is the metering. This one has a guide of a kind. It measures light with a built in light sensor on top of the lens and a small wire moves around in a window. You use that to manually calculate the right exposure.

Soviet made Zenit-E SLR camera.I bought 2 rolls of Ilford HP5+ black & white 35mm film. I loaded up one of them into the camera and I’m ready to shoot. There is a pretty big chance that I’m going to end up with 36 blurry photographs that were not exposed right, but that’s what the experiments are for.

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