Hey Ya'll! Hope you're having a great week! Me? Super! Tomorrow I leave for a photography trip with my club and I'm super excited. But that will be another blog. This week I want to talk about a project I'm thinking of doing. If you follow this blog you know I'm in the middle of a film project and I'm really enjoying it. So I was thinking what kind of project can I do next year that involves film. Right now I'm shooting 35mm film and its easy to get and I' used to using it. But what about another type of film? Then I thought what about medium format film? Now I didn't know anything about medium format film. Never shot it and don't even have a camera that will shoot it.  So I had to start researching medium format film. Let me tell you there is lots to learn. First of all there is the film. The film most commonly used is 120mm film. There is also a 220 film that is basically the same as 120 but longer so you can get twice the shots on a roll. But 120 is the most common and many manufactures make it as for 220 I could only find one company that still make it and its in China. So that's the type of film but it's not that easy.  Depending on what camera you get determines what size the negative will be.  There are many sizes. There is 645 cameras. They make a negative that is 6cm X 4.5cm thus the 645. There is 6x6cm and 6x7cm they are kind of close a square and not quite a square.  Then there are the 6x9cm which is more a traditional aspect ratio. Now that's a lot to take in. The bigger the negative the less shots you get on a 120 or 220 roll of film. So with the price of film that has to be taken into consideration. The bigger the negative the more resolution and the less grain and sharper the image will be.  

Next is the camera type. I've only used 35mm before and have used SLR and Rangefinder type cameras but with medium format there are all kinds of cameras you can get and use. Like 35mm camera's these cameras are old and they really don't make them anymore. But there are so many different kinds. There is the twin lens reflex. TLR's. They are the ones with two lenses in the front and have a viewfinder that you look through the top while the camera is at waist level. There are foldable camera's. They fold up fairly flat and when you open them there is a lens and bellows system. But you must be careful when buying so you don't have light leaks in the bellows. There are Rangefinder type of cameras that look like their 35mm little brothers but much larger. These camera types are either fixed lens camera's or in the TLR's hard to find lenses to change out if at all. You have SLR cameras that look like the 35mm cameras but much larger!  Then you have system SLR camera's. The system camera's are more versatile than all of the above. They have interchangeable lenses. They may have interchangeable view finders. (A waist viewfinder and a conventional viewfinder.) The most cool thing is the interchangeable film backs. With these film backs you can shoot 120, 220, 35, polaroid, and digital if the backs are available. These camera's were mostly used by professional photographers. Some of the film backs also rotate so when shooting you can go from landscape to portrait without moving the camera you just rotate the film back. All of these cameras can come with a leaf shutter or a focal plane shutter. The advantage of a focal length shutter is the speed you can get faster shutter speeds. With a leaf shutter you can sync your flash at any shutter speed. Focal shutters are louder and leaf shutters are quieter.

So there is lot to figure out. What size negative and what type of camera . The prices of these cameras can go from 3 to 4 hundred dollars for a camera to thousands. This all depends on type, condition and of course brand. A Hassabald is much more expensive than a Yashica. I also need to figure out what I want to shoot in this project. I plan to shoot fine art type of photography. Landscapes and Still life. Shooting Medium format is a slow process. Not fast like 35 or super fast like digital. I have made a couple of decisions after all of the research I've been doing. I have decided on the 645 size of camera and negative size. This size is more than twice the size of 35mm film and should give me the look I'm Looking for. I have also decided on a camera. I purchased a system camera set up. It's a Bronica ETR SI. It has interchangeable Lens , film backs and viewfinders. I'll go over it in another blog. I got a great deal on Facebook Marketplace. I got it early so I could practice with it and I can use it in my film project I'm doing now so when I get ready next year for the Medium Format project I'll already be comfortable with the camera .

Projects are a great way for a photographer to learn more about theirselves and to challenge them in photography. I hope you can find a project that motivate you to get out and shoot. So until next week Get out and Shoot!

Hey Ya'll! Hope you're having a great week. Me? Pretty good. First of all I want to start out to give props to Derrick Story who has one of the best Photography Podcast around! I borrowed this title from him. He has a podcast on this topic and it really resinated with me. Because that's how I feel about photography. First if you haven't listened to his podcast it's the Digital Story and it can be found in any of the podcast services or you can google "The Digital Story" and listen to it there. Now back to the subject. When your buying a camera or camera system is the most important thing to you image quality? Or does the camera have to feel good in your hand? To me it has to feel good. I have to like where all the buttons and gismo's are. Shooting should be fun and not complicated or uncomfortable. But for some people it's not like that it's the bottom line of image quality that is the most important. How many megapixels , what's the burst rate, how fast does it focus . Image quality is everything. If you're a professional photographer I can understand that. But very few of us are Professional. Since this is my blog and it's all about me! LOL I'm going to take the other side of this argument and say that the Shooting Experience is more important that the image quality.

I have been in photography for a long time. When I got my first camera image quality was the furtherest from my mind because all film camera's pretty much had the same quality.  It was the shooting experience , how the camera felt in our hand , the taking of the photo's with friends and family. That was the fun part. Getting the photo's back from the lab and looking at them a week or so later it wasn't on how sharp the photo's were but the people and things in them. Now when I got into digital there was a time when I was obsessed with the megapixel count and how fast it shot (the image quality) But then I got away from that and started shooting crop sensor camera's and the image wasn't as important as the experience. You have a much better experience hauling a crop sensor camera and lenses compared to carrying around a full frame sensor camera. And the quality didn't change much. If you look at my website 90% of the photo's are shot with a crop sensor and they look great! (or at least i think so) I have shots on my website that were shot with point and shoots and with iPhones . So I think getting a camera for quality isn't as important as it used to be because any camera you buy today will give you great photo's. Even your phone. So maybe that's why I like film so much it's the experience, the feel, the sound of the shutter and the mirror slapping up and out of the way. Zone focusing, using old lenses on new digital camera's just for the feel of the old lens even though new lenses may be sharper. I like to set up my digital camera's as much as I can like old film ones . I like using lenses that have aperture rings on them to set the aperture like I would on an older film camera. I usually shoot in Aperture Priority or Manual to keep it close to as what it was when I was shooting film. I do like smaller cameras to shoot because large ones are just too heavy to tote around. I would rather take a point and shoot camera to shoot on a photowalk instead of a big bulky camera like I did on the last trip to the low country. I used a point and shoot and a film when walking around Savannah and had really good images. Were they as sharp and flawless as a more modern full frame camera kit? No but I don't even own a modern full frame camera kit. Mine still works fine. I think of camera systems as tools that you use. I wouldn't take a film camera to capture a race car race. I would take a big lens and camera to catch what I could. But I would take the film camera for a walk about a town and not the big lens camera.  I would take a crop sensor camera on a hike because it would be more comfortable (shooting experience) than a big digital camera that might have better quality images. How a camera feels in your hand is more important than the technical aspects of it. If you're not comfortable you won't take very good photo's. But I've seen photo's taken with a phone that are great because it was the right tool for the job at the right time and the photographer was comfortable using it.

I feel as I've gone off of the reservation a little. What I'm saying is that its not the technical aspects of the gear that is important its how it feels to you when your using it that is important. I have a Sony 24- 105 lens that takes great photo's but its just too heavy to take around with me so I'm having the conversation with myself should I change it out for a 20-70mm lens that is newer and lighter has an aperture ring that my 24-105 doesn't .  I'm thinking so I just haven't pulled the trigger yet. To me the 30mm difference in the lens is less important than me hauling a twice as heavy lens with me. I would get better photo's with a lens that I'm bringing with me and using instead of a lens that sits in my bag because it's too heavy. The shooting experience is more important than quality of the image. Well I've gone on enough on this subject. Please enjoy your gear and don't get it just because it's the newest and the greatest it should be comfortable to make the shooting experience greater ! So get out and shoot!

Hey Ya'll ! Hope you've had a great week! Me? Pretty good! This week I want to talk about a subject that will improve your photography by leaps and bounds. We as photographers are always trying to find the magic cure or recipe to great photography. We try new gear or special editing techniques. We download all sorts of presets hoping some other photographer has found the magic combination of settings in Lightroom. But there really isn't any secret sauce! The key is to keep it simple. Make your photo's simple. How do we make a photograph that will catch someone's eye? It's by taking out everything that is not needed in the photo .  Taking away all of the distractions for the viewer to see what was so special in the photo you took. By Subtracting! Why do we want large megapixel camera's? So we can crop and still have good resolution. Why do we crop? To get rid of unwanted things in our scene. We Subtract. To me that's the main reason to Raven's Roost Va. have a high megapixel photo. So we can crop or subtract. Thats why cropping works! 

It's not what you leave in but what you leave out that will make your photographs good. People use longer focal lengths for that exact reason when shooting street photography or wildlife or landscapes. To isolate what is important in a shot and to take away everything that is not. One of the great sayings in photography is " If your not getting good photo's move closer your not close enough" The saying is true because when you move closer you take away all of the surrounding stuff that doesn't matter to your photo.  Your Subtracting the junk to make your photo better. When you edit one of the final steps in editing is to do a boarder check. Checking the boarder for unwanted things that are poking in your photo. Subtracting the junk that isn't needed or wanted for the good photo. Distractions! Less is More!

Cades Cove Tree Someone long time ago asked Michelangelo the famous Renaissance sculptor and painter. " How did you make the "David" statue out of a single peace of Marble. He said " I took away everything that wasn't David". He Subtracted! So as we can see this system ins't new it has been going on for centuries ! Now I'm not saying that using this method that you will become the Michelangelo of photography but it should make your photographs more appealing and simple. Without all of the distractions you can show the people what you liked about the photograph to begin with.

So how do we do this in practice? It's all good to say that we need to subtract the distractions in our photo to make them Light House Stairs better but how? I think we should slow down. Get back to basics. We've become button pushers and don't take enough time setting up the camera , composing( framing) or waiting for just the right moment. We want to click , click, click and move on to the next thing. I am very much guilty of this process. As a matter of fact until I started shooting film again I was very much the "Clicker of Photos" My expensive camera just became an expensive point and shoot.  So I think that slowing down getting the correct aperture , composition and waiting for the correct moment to push the shutter is how we eliminate (Subtract) distractions. 

So that's it for this week. Subtract distractions for better photo's. So until next week Get out and Shoot!