Old is sometimes better than new

I'm just wondering if there will ever be a price/demand rebound on top-tier film equipment which would properly reflect its usability and quality.

I shot a ton of film this week in the OM-3Ti and OM-4T. What an extreme pleasure it was to use such quality gear in an environment it seems to have been specifically designed for.

A couple of observations about camera gear:

1. As autofocus gets better, focus screens get worse.

2. As autoexposure gets better, the operational conditions it will work in gets narrower.

To expound on these two points: I could very easily manually focus any lens in the OM bodies in difficult and poor lighting conditions. Autofocus was about the same speed, but not nearly as accurate. Manually focusing a lens in an AF camera is almost a lost cause in comparison to the OM body with 2-13 screen.

Autoexposure of the latest/greatest wonderbrick is easily defeated by something as simple as wearing glasses. Notice how some people always have to dial in + 1/2 or so of exposure compensation? It's because too much light is entering the eyepiece and throwing off the sensor's accuracy.

Day Two Redux

The 'brellas were just short of worthless. The lightloss was rather extreme. However, the shadows were much better. I'll sleep on what to do tomorrow night, but will probably go back to normal on them after the group shots are completed earlier in the evening.

I had the T45 on the OM-3Ti tonight. We'll see tomorrow how the those pictures turned out. I did drag the shutter to 1/30 to give myself some ambient stage lighting. Tomorrow night, I'll have the T45 back on the E-1 (along with the ebay trigger) as I really need it there more than on the film camera.

The OM-4T had an MD2 mounted, but I won't use it tomorrow night. It just makes a touch too much noise for this event. Chances are, the OM-4T will get bagged and kept in reserve.

Biggest surprise was the 300/4.5. Frame-filling shots of the face of the keynote speaker turned out great.

I used the OM-3Ti, OM-4T, 24/2.8, 35-80, 300/4.5, 100-300/4 ATX, E-1, 14-54, T45 and monolights tonight. Tomorrow night the kit will be much more narrowly focused. The 100-300/4 ATX will be the lens of choice (along with the T45 flash) when the awards ceremonies happen.

So far, my frame rate has been a bit low. Only took about 400 pictures tonight and about 125 last night. Tomorrow night will be a good thousand I'm sure--all within two hours. The T45 battery is charging up right now.

Day One Redux

The first day of the big event shoot was a banquet held in a large gymnasium. Of course, the lighting is ghastly. I shot one roll of film in the OM-3Ti with the 24/2.8. ISO 400, F4 at 1/30. To be on the smart side, I used the Expodisc for a single frame so I can white-balance in the computer. The rest of the images of the banquet were with the Olympus E-1 and T45 flash.

The T45 has been performing flawlessly. This is, by a country mile, the finest flash I've ever used--bar none. Not only is it obscenely powerful, but the quality of the light is incredible. I'm tempted to get a couple more of these flashes and replace the Vivitar 285HV flashes with them. I know I keep yabbering about the T45, but honestly, it is in a league of its own in every way. The only shame is that the flash is off to the side a bit, which casts shadows differently than my stroboframe equipped Vivitars.

I set up the monolights in the balcony of the auditorium. This year I brought them in from the sides a little bit more, but I'm not sure I'm going to keep them there. They are at the same position as most of the primary stage lights (five clusters of them hung from about 3/4 of the way back in the room). Distance from lights to stage is over 60 feet.

I've almost always run the monolights just with their reflectors, but I'm going to try using umbrellas tonight. The shadows are just a touch too harsh as you'd expect from 60 foot distance and the hanging microphones, lights, speakers, etc., cause a lot of nasties on the background. Strobe height isn't an issue, and I can get up to the 30 degree point easily--but must do so from a slightly different position as my lightstands are tall enough to block the stage lights. The umbrellas will kill a stop of light--a stop I can barely afford to lose. It'll force me to be around F4 at ISO 400. But by dragging the shutter a little bit, the colored stage lights will warm things up enough to be interesting instead of stark. I did attempt to use the umbrellas last year, but my light position was too far to the sides.

If the umbrellas don't work out, I'd rather find out tomorrow night so I can have it corrected for Wednesday's grand finale.

Another oddity this year--I did not shoot RAW last night. If my in-camera settings are correct, there is little to no reason to bother. SHQ JPEGs with in-camera sharpening set to "0" are as easily processed in post as most RAW files. I'll chicken out and shoot RAW tonight because the mixed lighting and going back and forth between flash and no-flash exposures is a great way to induce human error.

Packed up for a three-day event shoot

I'm all packed up for this week's event shoot. I've already figured that I'm going to be shooting in the neighborhood of 2000 pictures. This is down from last year's 3000+. I'm trying to learn how to rein in the over-the-top picture taking.

It's rather interesting because I'm hugely film this year and combined with digital means that I'm having to haul dual systems around. I used to do this back in the medium-format days when I'd use 35mm for the general-purpose stuff and medium-format for the higher-quality stuff. Strangely, it's shifted to 35mm for the higher-quality stuff and digital for the general-purpose stuff.

The camera configurations are slightly altered. My hands are experiencing some grip problems this week (carpel-tunnel symptoms) so I'm attempting to keep the weight of the cameras to a minimum. I packed an MD2 for the OM, but may end up leaving it off. We'll see how it goes tonight at the banquet. However, when shooting with the 100-300/4, having the additional grip and mass is quite helpful, but I doubt I'll use that lens tonight.

Setup of the flashes in the main auditorium will take me about 45 minutes. I'll post pictures of them. I'm attempting to do something different this year. Instead of bare reflectors on the monolights, I'm going to try and use umbrellas to diffuse the shadows a little bit. However, I know that my levels are just on the edge, so I don't know if I'll be successful or not. The reflectors are quite yellowed with age, which helps warm them just enough to be a closer match to the stage lighting.

What's in the Bag?

Today's camera bag is a throwback to days past--before the age of Digital Cameras and mega-zooms. Contained is an OM-3Ti with 24/2.8 mounted, a 50/3.5 macro, 100/2.8, 200/4 and 300/4.5. All of which is contained in a quite small camera bag. The 300/4.5 is probably the heaviest part of the entire kit and even at that, the bag is comfortable to carry.

How do you keep smaller lenses from clanging around on each other in a shared bag space? Take two rear lens caps and glue or stick them together. I used double-sided foam tape designed for hanging pictures on the wall to secure these two caps together. The combined lenses fit in a single bag space without rattling.

Curses and Joys

I've not seen too much daylight this week because of the extensive quantity of scanning I've been doing.  17 rolls of film?  What was I thinking?  I keep forgetting that "time is money" and spending the money for a photo-CD at time of development is actually a good thing.  I can whip through an entire roll in a minute or two figuring out my keepers and then scanning at 4000dpi only the ones I want to mess with--otherwise, even the trashy automated scans aren't horrid for most uses. 14 of those rolls are specific to the event shoot from Friday night and Saturday.

This next week, (Monday-Wednesday) I have a major event shoot, followed by another event on Thursday. I bought 19 rolls of film today to handle this.  Yes, I'll stop being a dope and will pay the extra for the photo-CDs... It's worth the time savings. I didn't bother this last time, because of the low keeper rate.

Now, that said, I've been extremely pleased with the quality of the images--even from ISO 400 and 800 consumer films. There is a depth to the images which the digital images just can't match. I'd show you pictures, but don't have general release from the primary client yet.  I do know that next week, about a hundred pictures will be used in a large-scale presentation being assembled right now by the client.

I know that if it wasn't for the killer OM kit, I'd have gone out and bought a new digital camera last year, but the reality is, I can buy a ton of film (and in this case, the clients paid extra to cover the expense) and still come out ahead financially. And besides, shooting with the OM kit is actually enjoyable and relaxing.

Relaxing?  Enjoyable?

Yes, for me it is.  Event coverage with a digital camera means a lot of "overshoot". I don't have time to chimp other than to make gross adjustments, so knowing that I'm handicapped by the dynamic range, noise-floor, autofocus speed/accuracy, and the lack of OTF flash control, I'm shooting several times more images than I ever did with film. Unfortunately, this past weekend, I was shooting film like it was digital...  That's Old/New habits for you.

So, going into next week's events, even though I have as much film as I did the previous event, I'm going to slow down on my shooting rate and really make sure that I'm getting the shot correctly up front--ie., pre-editing. I had hoped to shoot, maybe 1000-1200 pictures last weekend, but ended up just short of 3000. Granted, much of that was due to the extremely difficult lighting conditions (inotherwords, it was way too dark), but much of it was also due to my own sloppiness just because I could.

Defeating Digital Imaging, One Image at a Time

One film picture, 980 Billion to go... Impossible you say?

Maybe, but a journey of a thousand rolls begins with one click. If enough of us MAKE THE EFFORT instead of just taking the easy way out, we'll keep film viable for a long time to come. Digital is easy, way to easy. Has it improved the overall image-quality for the masses? No question about that. But in the hands of a skilled photographer, there is usually a very specific gain in one format over the other and film still maintains advantages in certain circumstances.

A "skilled photographer" is not the same as a "professional photographer". Most professional photographers are no more skilled than than a professional call-center telephone operator. It's just the job they do. You have good ones, and not so good ones. Just because somebody earns a living doing something doesn't mean they are any good or talented or have a clue what they are doing. Frankly, most skilled photographers aren't professional photographers and most professional photographers aren't skilled photographers.

Where am I going with this? My point is that in the hands of a skilled photographer, the medium is generally selected not for convenience, but for specific results. A skilled photographer will make whatever sacrifice needed. Often times, in the digital age, this means investment in Photoshop, L-glass, full-frame sensored cameras and widgets galore. But it may also mean using a film camera.

BTW, I got my new National Geographic yesterday... There is an article in there where the images are definitely sourced from a film camera. Nice to see. If I had to venture a guess, the choice of film was specific to the location not being conducive to charging batteries as well as it being a high moisture environment.

I know that I'm not going anywhere--shooting film is just too rewarding to me. I've learned so much from shooting digital and taking what I've learned and applying much of it to film has been a wonderful eye-opener. But mostly, there is tremendous satisfaction in taking what is arguably one of the two or three finest 35mm cameras ever made and shooting with it. Who cares about the back-end process--once digitized, the images are all digital anyway, but it's about the shooting process that is so different and rewarding. Sometimes, as stated above, there are other inherent advantages to one medium over another or one camera over another.

Besides, for the quantity of pictures I shoot, both professionally and personally, to stay reasonably current in digital photography is a $1000 per year investment. By altering my "style" and giving myself a signature look, I can spend half that on film and processing. The numbers just don't work to be digital only.

The bad thing is that I'm now got a desire to acquire a very specific lens. A rather costly Zuiko. Grrrr.....

The curse of the big project

This past weekend I shot a concert and youth convention. In 12 hours of shooting, I racked up almost 3000 images on the Olympus E-1 as well as an OM-4T.  14 rolls of film were shot!  Remind me again, please, why I had the motordrive on the camera?

Big events require lots of pictures. First of all, there are the required "grip-n-grin" shots for awards, and special recognitions.  Secondly, there is the required coverage of the bands, special-guests and keynote speakers. Thirdly, crowd coverage!

A question can be asked, why 3000 pictures?  I normally wouldn't shoot anywhere near that many, except the stage lighting caused extreme difficulty in getting decent shots due to motion blur and the darkness.  The venue's house lights were off most of the time and the majority of the stage lighting spillage was from those LED tri-color lights.  What a miserable thing for photography those LED lights are!

My first pass at culling the images resulted in a 50% deletion rate for motion blur and misfocusing. In reality, this isn't too bad!  The second culling will get rid of another half of the remaining.  I'll probably have around 600 final images for the client.

I am very glad I shot film for this event. Stage lighting and digital don't mix very well and I have numerous images which the film version is much preferred.

Once I get to see a horizon again, I'll post samples.

Rural Tama County, Iowa - Ruins

I have a fascination with old abandoned farmhouses. The residents have long since moved out and most likely dead. It takes years for the first bits of shingles to give way--exposing the wood underneath to the elements. It is said that if you can keep a coat of paint on the sides and a dry roof over the top these structures (like barns) will last indefinitely, but let that first bit of moisture in and the days are numbered.

I used Picture Window Pro 5.0 to convert these images from color to B&W. During the process, I backed off the amount of monochroming, and found a nice balance--one that makes the images look hand-tinted. I used a yellow filter during the conversion to enhance the sky. PWP handles this correctly--it applies the color filtration to the entire image, monochromes it and then allows you to blend in a percentage of the orginal color photo. Here is the original color version.

I'm Back

It's been a while since I posted last in this blog.  If you visit www.zone-10.com you can see why. That has been a labour of love which has taken me away from my own photographic chitchat, so to speak.  I'm going to remedy that now.  I'm back!!!  Zone-10 is alive and well, but I've decided that I need my own voice back again.