Its Cold Out There

I don't like the cold. When you see yourself knee deep in freezing water to get a shot, you're either stupid or crazy. I prefer the latter description.

ND filter (7 stops!) Its a Hoya multicoated. Fantastic filter. I "toned" like selenium (for you youngsters, its a darkroom thing) in LightRoom. The cool tones makes you want to put on your wool hat.

My foot slipped on a patch of ice on a rock dunking my leg into the freezing water. Hopping from rock to rock in icy condition is not recommended to the uninitiated. For photographers, highly recommended!

I used around 15 to 30 sec exposure. Iso set on 100 for low noise, around f9 to f11 for deep depth of focus, tripod, mirror lock up, 2 sec self timer so I don't shake the camera with my hands. This photosession is almost opposite of what I did on my last post. You do what you have to do to get the shot you have in mind.

My 5d mk2 worked flawlessly in the cold. Battery life was good too. Shooting in less than ideal situation is great training; You don't want to make the small adjustments and want to rush so you can go home. We have to fight that tendency to not care about the details. Thinking about details with a frozen foot is hard to do. Who says photography is easy?

Comments

Large Format ...Slight Return

Took out my Linhof 4x5 field camera out for a spin. Tripod, cable release, focusing cloth, loupe, lightmeter, and film holders! The gang's all here. Linhof Technica III, (circa 1940's) with Fujinon 150mm 5.6 a modern lens design. Bull Run Park near Manassas VA.The camera is wonderfully made with machined aluminum with German engineering. Like Butter. Working with a 4x5 is a whole different world. It takes long to set up and there are so many things that you can screw up. "Did I cock the shutter? check focus?, meter reading, dark slide out? lock the movements?... There are like 13 different steps that you have to make to take a picture. So why do it when I can just point my 5d and shoot in easy one two steps? Reasons may vary, but I do it because of the camera movements. The tilts, swings, shifts. These cameras were made so you can technically control how the image hits the film plane. You can achieve "technically perfect" images, whatever that means. ...

Polaroid Negative?

I've been wanting to do color large format for awhile. When there were photo labs around the corner, it wasn't hard to do a E-6 process in a day or two. Now that process has gotten expensive and if you're doing sheet film, its even more pain. So my solution... Polaroid! well technically, it should be called "instant film" since Polaroid is trademarked term. I'm using Fuji FP 100c45. But here's the twist. I wanted a different look. If I want true colors, I wouldn't bother with the cost of 2 bucks per shot. I also was fascinated with some surface texture that I saw on polaroids. I recently came across some sites that talks about turning a polaroid into negatives. Its true that Polariod years ago did have those positive/negative film, but they've discontinued all instant film a couple of years ago. The process is simple. you take bleach and take off the black stuff on the part that you throw away. Once the black part is off, you have a negati...

Boston: B&W Architecture with Leica Q2M: From a Purist Perspective.

I swear I was going to switch out my black and white ONLY Leica Q2M to a regular Q2 color camera before going to this trip. I"m glad I didn't. Oh, before I forget, take a look at my icandy slide shows . I will be making slideshows that is designed for big screen TV's. Take a look at this one: Ok, back to the topic on hand. So one of the most asked question about the Leica Q2M is, 'why limit yourself to just black and white when you can easily convert color photos to BW?' Very good question. My answer is, if you know with certainty you want the best quality BW image possible, you want the dedicated monochrome camera. Am I being a staunch purist? or is there a practical argument for it? Let's talk about it. Beacon Street Boston, MA One of many beautiful architecture on that hill. First, this camera doesn't have any moire filter on the sensor. Moire filters are on most color camera sensors to get rid ...

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