A photo walk in Norwich on Saturday resulted in nothing useable after more than 5 hours so I took time out to grab a ‘quick’ drink in The Birdcage where I stumbled on this delightful couple.

Enjoying experimenting with putting sequences of photographs together in storyboards like this in the style of analogue ‘contact sheets’ and think I will look to do more of this.

After reading the Film is not Dead book by Jonathan Canlas, I sent him a message via Formspring to ask for his suggestion on a good medium format camera for a newbie to test out with.  I specifically asked him to suggest a square format as I have come to realise that I feel comfortable shooting in this format and want to experiment some more.

Following his suggestion, I traded in my newly purchased Olympus OM-10 and associated lenses and walked out with my first medium format TLR camera, a Yashica 124g.  A strange beast for anybody used to shooting with a DSLR and particularly for me as I had been shooting with the tiny Fuji X100 for the last 12 months.

Anyway, had the opportunity to run a few rolls of film through it at Brands Hatch a couple of weeks ago as we went along as a family to support my nephew Tom Jackson as he embarks on his maiden season as a member of the HHC Motorsport team racing in the Ginetta Junior Championship.  I guess the Yashica 124 g and my Fuji X100 aren’t the usual motor sport photographers tools of choice but they suited my purposes nicely.

In total I took a roll of Kodak Portra 400 and I each of Ilford FP4 and HP5 black and white film.  I sent the lot off to Loxley Colour to have them develop it but unfortunately they do not handle ‘true’ black and white – more of that later.

So anyway, a couple of days passed and I got back my first prints from the Kodak Portra 400 and am really pleased with 50% of them.  A few at the beginning of the roll were underexposed and look like ass soup but think this was down to my over-enthusiasm to get shooting.  As the day progresssed, I made better use of my Gossen Sixstar meter and the results improved considerably.

Shooting ISO 400 film on a bright sunny day on the Yashica produced its issues as the shutter speed is limited to 1/500 of a second so that meant use of apertures I wouldn’t normally use.  In fairness, a combination of apertures between f/11 and f22 and high shutter speeds probably flattered my ability on my first outing and gives me the confidence to go and try some more.

The images shown here are a result of scanning the prints using my home Canon MP560 – not good enough for anything other than web use here on the blog but good enough all the same.  The portrait shots of Tom are much more contrasty of a result of the scanning but not much I can do.

So what happened to the black and white films?  I have booked myself 4 hours in the darkroom at the Norwich Arts Centre tomorrow afternoon to try and process a couple of rolls myself and even print up a few of my favourites.

Victoria bus station

Another addition to the ongoing series ‘mags and rags’, this time a black and white image photographed at Victoria Bus Station last night.

Newspapers and magazines are a great distraction for us when we have idle time on our hands,  so waiting rooms such as this prove fertile ground for a photographer like me working on series looking at what may be the last days of physical newsprint.

With scenes like this though, it seems hard to envision a future of people of all ages, backgrounds and sexes united in a single pursuit.  There are no format issues, compatibility or hardware restrictions. Everybody has the same access to the available content in an affordable medium.

Not for me to judge, will just carry on documenting what I see.  You can see all of the black and white photographs from the ‘mags and rags’ series here.

post script:  Decided to continue to experiment with the square format by digitally cropping the original image.

Experimenting with square format photography

Okay, this is purely an experiment to see what a difference my work will look like if I consider adopting a square format for my photography.  I know us photographer suffer from what Zack Arias terms “G.A.S”, Gear Acquisition Syndrome, but I am seriously considering buying a square format analogue camera.  Something has been niggling me recently and it won’t let go and I think I may have finally identified it.

Why Square Format?

I bought an Olympus Pen at the first half of 2011, just after I cleared out all of my Canon 5D MK II kit.  The Oly Pen was to be my stripped back, start again, find my way camera.  And it would have stayed that way too but the optical viewfinder option was just too hard to get used to.  Perhaps if I stayed with it longer I would have found a workaround but I didn’t love it enough to persist.

Anyway, I digress.  What the Oly had was the ability to switch format to 1:1 which gave you a square format image.  Now I was framing via the optical viewfinder so it was hit and miss anyway but I liked the option but didn’t realise until this week how much.

The Oly Pen square format option was just an in-camera crop of the jpeg image into a square format.  If you only shot in jpeg, which I did on the day I tested this, you would get a square format jpeg back.  However, if you shot jpeg and RAW, the RAW file would retain the 3:2 format for you to work on as you chose later on but you also could download the square format jpeg.

Above: jpeg square format shot on the Oly Pen.

I currently shoot with a Fuji X100, a brilliant little camera capable of incredibly great image files.  However, the Fuji X100, the Olympus OM-PC, Oly Pen, Canon 5D MK II and Canon 450D I owned before that all share two thing that bugs me.

1. I absolutely cannot get used to, or comfortable with, orienting these cameras into portrait mode.  The Fuji X100, with its left sided viewfinder, is particularly difficult but the dSLRs as well always felt awkward to me in this mode.

2. I like to shoot in close but always feel with 3:2 format that I have something ‘extra’ at the edge, top or bottom of my frame.  I try to eliminate where possible by coming closer but still I have more than I want or need.

Going back to the image above of the lady smoking in Trafalgar Square, I don’t feel like I have extra space, nor did I have to bend my arms into a shape to change the way I held the camera to get this image.

I am also enjoying the instagram app on my iPhone which also employs the square format to my images.  I know this is by virtue of a crop but, regardless, this little app seems to do a good job of it.

iPhone 4 | instagram

But why buy a film camera if digital is the future?

As well as thinking about going ‘square’, I also want to move into Medium Format.  I will continue to shoot with my digital Fuji X100 for day to day stock photography and grab shots, but I want to experiment with producing much higher quality prints and for that I believe I need to look at investing in a medium format camera system.  Entering the MF arena in digital means an investment of upwards of probably £6-8,000.  Entering analogue film medium format second hand systems is much more practical with kits starting at around £100.  I appreciate on top of that there is film, processing and scanning costs, but regardless, it is the only option available to me at this time.

But there is another reason.  Although a lot of what I shoot is eventually processed as a black and white image, I do enjoy and appreciate colour photography.  The reason I don’t do more is that in many cases I actually don’t trust my colour manipulation and correction in post processing.  I know there is no right or wrong, but I don’t have the confidence in what I do with colour.  However, using different film stocks will allow me to experiment and find a colour ‘style’ or palette I am confident with and can apply to different shoots as I visualise them.  Whacking on different filters in Nik Colour Efex Pro on a trial and error basis just doesn’t suit me.

So why not save money and crop digital files?

The top image on this post is a crop.  I don’t normally crop any of my images.  If I don’t get it right in camera, then I have to suck it up and learn from my mistakes.  I will allow myself to straighten a horizon but other than that the orientation of the image stays the way it was originally created.

Today, I worked on a few images to see what would happen if I applied a square crop.  Some of the images look okay.  Again this is subjective but I can see potential in doing this. But, and it’s a big but, the way I shoot is determined by the format I am shooting in.  The top image would have been created differently if I had shot square at the time rather than cropped.  I could see that when I was experimenting with where to ‘fix’ the square cut out to the image.  So for me, I don’t think post-production squaring is going to work for me.

So what medium format square camera to go for?

I know little about analogue photography.  I know less about medium format photography.  So I asked somebody who knew more about both than anybody else I have encountered in the interweb.  Jonathan Canlas is a film evangelist and shoots with medium format cameras.  Whilst I don’t think square is necessarily his thing, he did suggest that a low cost way to get into square medium format was to buy a Yashica 124g or a Holga.  The Holga to me didn’t work.  I have played with these before but they feel too, I don’t know, toy-ish for what I want.

I want this camera to have the ability to create fine art prints and so would like to be able to depend on the results I will get back.  So, by process of elimination, I am now trawling through ads for a good / excellent Yashica 124g for not too much money.  Seems to be that around the £120 – £150 mark will get you a decent example.  I wanted a second opinion and so had a Twitter conversation with @timothycochrane last night and he highly recommends his Yashica, so much so he even photographed Richard Hawley with one in a portrait session.

What next?

1. Secure the funds for my new / old Yashica 124g
2. Find and buy suitable rig
3. Buy Jonathan Canlas’ book, Film is not Dead
4. Experiment with film
5. Attend the Film is not Dead workshop in Surrey, May 2012

Points 1 – 5 are feasible, point 6 I am still working on but it is a definite maybe as long as I can get the money together.

Whatever happens, experimenting with a square format will only do me and my photography good and I look forward to seeing the results.

Cropping? Think I will leave that to somebody else.

post script: links in this post to external sites / information is for your convenience only.  These are NOT affiliate links.

Bright lights of Londons office environment

The contrast of the night drawing in against the relative bright lights coming from London offices drew me to create this photograph on the X100 in Black and White.

I like the illustration of the square box offices that house many of us for over 40 hours a week too, like battery hens working to produce ‘ on demand’ for the benefit of profit.

Too profound?

First 'real' snow of 2012 in Norwich

Although a few flurries of snow have fallen in Norwich this year, last night saw our first real proper dump of snow.  Motivating myself to go out at 10pm last night was easy enough when scenes like this are just outside your window.

Originally processed in colour for my Alamy365 stock photography project, I went back to the image again as I saw that this could make for a dramatic black and white print.  Initial reaction has been so good that it is now available to buy as an open edition 12″ x 10″ Hahnemuhle Fine Art Pearl print, unmounted and unframed, priced at just £25.00 (excl p +p).

Shot on the Fuji X100 mounted on a Slik tripod.

A male character casting a long shadow on the streets of London

Photography rules suggest that shooting anywhere too close to midday is a no-no.   However sometimes it’s great to be a rule breaker.

With the sun higher in the sky around lunchtime, it creates lovely long dark shadows, something I think looks great in street photography.  It gives the whole a photograph a different narrative.  In this case, the male character photographed on the streets of London from a coach window looks more menacing.  In fact, he is probably just a normal person waiting for a lift or a friend.  But that’s the power of the contrasty shadows, obscuring his face and creating a looming presence on the pavement.

Always read the small print

Spending all day out in the cold on the street photographing can be tough on both photographer and their equipment.  I tend to find that on a typical street photography day the battery on my Fuji X100 will last until I get home, dependent obviously how trigger happy I have been.  However as the temperatures drop, the charge on my camera and iPhone seem to run low much quicker.

So I often take refuge in the nearest Apple store to recharge my phone, free of charge – thank you Apple, swap batteries over in my camera and generally try and get some warmth back into my feet and  hands.  Anyway, whilst waiting for the phone to hit 50% charge, I noticed this lady browsing the iPhone 4 with a magnifying glass.  She must have spent in excess of 20 minutes like this, oblivious to what was going on around her in a pretty packed store.

Street photography doesn’t have to be out in the street, human characteristics and traits are evident both indoors and out, you just need to keep your attention primed.

Now I can’t understand if this lady is long-sighted or short-sighted?  As a glasses wearer since the age of two, I still get these two terms confuddled.  Help out in the comments box below please.

Film is not Dead book - click to buy from Amazon UK

As I mentioned in the ‘mags and rags’ fine art investment’ post at the end of last week, I am doing whatever I can to attend the Film Is Not Dead (FIND) photography workshop run by analogue photography evangelist Jonathan Canlas in Surrey this May.

This workshop is limited to just 10 places and is the only one in the UK in 2012 and at time of writing just 4 slots remain.  Now by virtue of writing about this workshop on my blog, there is a very big chance that you, or somebody else, will hear about FIND for the first time, pull out your cheque book and go bag yourself a place.  And if you do, the chances of me attending just got slimmer.  But I am a believer that if I am meant to attend this workshop, then somehow I will get there.  And if I can help spread the word about analogue film photography, then I am happy to do that so others can explore another option to digital.

Savings to date for FIND Surrey 2012

Smashing the piggy bank today is another small addition to the fund.  May only be about £10 in here but as my old mum used to say “every little helps”.  And if it doesn’t get me to the FIND Surrey workshop this May, it will help pay for the Film is not Dead hardback book Jonathan has just released.  At least that will get me started in my search to understand film photography that much better.

If you wish to help me get to FIND Surrey this year, you can buy one of my photobooks here or a limited edition fine art print from the ‘mags and rags’ series here.

Update:  My Piggy only netted my £5.07, so got a way to go yet

If you are going to FIND Surrey, I hope I get the pleasure of meeting you in May.

And lastly, if you just want to know more about shooting film photography, Jonathan Canlas’ new book, Film is not Dead – A digital photographer’s guide to shooting film is available  now on Amazon UK.