My Lomo Fisheye Camera

A few words about my Lomo Fisheye Camera.

Starting with the technical details. The camera is a 35mm film camera with a 170 degrees field of view! The focal length is approximately 10mm (which is very wide) and the lens aperture is fixed at f8. The shutter speed is also fixed at 1/100 sec and there is a little flash available on the camera but no hot shoe.

Now, these are the specs of the version that replaced the one I actually have, but they seem reasonable based on the results of my first roll of film.

If I had known the technical details before I loaded my first roll of film I would probably have taken entirely different images with it. For starters even with a 400ASA film this is definately a camera for brightly lit situations!

Yes I know the very first photos I attempted with it were in a dark pub, but, the photos were all significantly underexposed. Even the photos taken outdoors in Richmond park on an overcast spring day were underexposed. However summer is coming, so I'm going to load it up with some 200ASA colour film next and hope for the best.

The lack of a hot shoe is a bit problematic for indoor photos. The built in flash isn't very powerful and the lens obstructs some of the light as well. I'm thinking that I might get a slave flash. Apart from helping to even out the illumination it opens up a whole barrel of creative possibilities, which I'm looking forward to experimenting with.

I do however have to find a slave flash unit that will also work with point and shoot digital cameras and have no idea as to where to start looking, so it may be some time before I find one.

That's about it, more photos to follow when I get around to scanning the negatives.

SLR Lens Repair

I came across this very useful article on how to repair aged lenses where the glass has turned yellowish in colour after a few decades. You can find the article at Brian Ayling's photographic repair tips.

Digital Photo Frames

I've been looking into digital photo frames recently as I thought that one might make a good Christmas present for someone.

I went to John Lewis so that I could get my mits on the new Philips Digital PhotoFrame™.

Whilst they were quite interesting they did look a little cheap and plasticky, and were fiddly to use. More annoyingly (at least for me) they has a nonstandard aspect ratio of 3.3333:2 which is really bizarre. The resolution was quite good though at 800x480 pixels, available in two sizes 7" and 9". I preferred the 7" frame.

There was also a BT 9FFCW0 LCD Digital Photo Frame, which whilst being quite small at 5.6" at least had the virtue of having a 3:2 aspect ratio display. Unfortunately the resolution was very low at 320x240 pixels.

Dissapointed in the selection I had a look online where I found a number of frames of varying sizes from 5.6" to 10", unfortunately they all had relatively low resolutions and were for the most part 4:3 ratio screens. There was a 15" frame with a 1024x768 pixels screen, but again that is a 4:3 ratio.

Finally I decided to take a look on Amazon which has a surprisingly large selection of digital photo frames and I stumbled across the Linx 8" High Resolution Digital Photo Frame which has a 3:2 aspect ratio and a reasonable resolution of 720x480 pixels. It even has a remote control! Wicked the perfect gift.

Well it would have been if I had any money left! Christmas shopping, it is always a nightmare.

Fujifilm Klasse W

I've just come across the Fuji Klasse W camera.

It is a compact film camera from Fujifilm with really nice retro styling and reputedly a fantastic 28mm f/2.8 lens. Why is it that Fujifilm are the only company that seems to be still interested in making high quality compact film cameras? More importantly why do they only market them in Japan?

There used to be so many high quality film compacts, Nikon made the 35Ti & 28Ti, Contax the T2, Yashica the T4 & T5, Konica the Hexar AF, Ricoh the excellent GR1 & GR1v.

I guess Leica still makes the CM and Olympus the µII. But who can afford the Leica? And the Olympus whilst reasonably priced and very capable has a 35mm lens which isn't really wide enough. Also the µII looks nowhere near as good as the Fuji Klasse W.

That said I may still pick up a µII if I see one at bargain prices as it is so easily pocketable and robust.

Meanwhile Fujifilm have been busy producing quality little compacts. I've hankered after a Fujifilm Natura Classica for ages and am quite interested in the black Fujifilm Natura S with its fantastic 24mm f/1.9 lens for a while now.

<< Sigh >>

If only they were cheaper and available in the UK. Oh well, there's always eBay!

Fuss & Bother

There has been a lot of fuss and bother over photographer Jill Greenberg's series of children's portraits entitled 'End Times' recently. The photos of very young children in distress (caused by her taking away their lollipops) have made her the target of a number of unpalatable and aggressive comments.

She is taking babies, toddlers under three years old, stripping them of their clothes and then provoking them to various states of emotional distress, anger, rage etc. -- so that she can then take photos of them this way to "illustrate her personal beliefs." If you'd like to see how worked up she can get these kids you can click through here. Be warned that it is graphic. Although the children are not sexualized, I consider what she is doing child pornography of the worst kind.
- Thomas Hawk's Digital Connection

I believe that the moral dimension of "End Times" cannot be ignored, and that an artist need not profit from societal objections to their work if those objections are sound and widely shared. I further believe that Jill Greenberg's work should not be viewed through the art-historical lens of edgy, contemporary art, but is instead a cultural hiccup that should be shelved with divisive cultural artifacts like black minstrelry, art involving the physical abuse of animals, and other works that reflect a sensibility so alien that it is better approached not as art, but as the fractured product of a diseased mind or a necrotic culture. - Jeremiah McNichols

Some commentators have labelled her a torturer, others have hinted that she is a child abuser and perhaps worse. Usually when people exhibit these levels of hostility, they are being driven by an emotional rather than a rational impulse. Such people usually develop a self sustaining and gratifying positive feedback loop fuelled by their own tirade of anger and abuse and blow things out of all sense of proportion. I think that this case is a perfect example of that behaviour.

Having seen the photographs myself I think that they are quite interesting. Portraits of children usually portray them as 'little angels' or 'cheeky devils' and usually don't elicit much of an emotional response in the viewer other than 'ooh; isn't that cute'.

These are very different from the normal candy floss, saccharin examples of children's photographs that are usually displayed. They show other equally valid and very common emotions that children display.

The fact that the photographer had to set up the conditions under which the children would show this emotion is perhaps the only point in the whole process that could be considered to be objectionable, but as the parents of the children did not object and the cause of the distress was such a slight everyday occurrence.

I don't think that after a few minutes thought any balanced individual or parent would make a serious objection to the technique used. It is very common for young children to get upset numerous times a day for all sorts of seemingly silly reasons.

Yesterday I saw a child in a complete tantrum, screaming and crying over the fact that it was time for him to go home from the playground! I didn't see any other parents hurling abuse at the parent of the child, it was simply a child's emotional response to not getting what he wanted. If any emotional response was present in the other parents it was one of empathy for the parent of the unbelievably loud, tantrum throwing child.

It just isn't possible to apply an adult emotional context to the levels of 'distress' displayed in the photographs. Firstly because they have been digitally manipulated to make them appear more distressing, and secondly because in the context of a child's emotional landscape the level of distress required to trigger the response displayed is actually very low.

The fact of the matter is that the kids that Jill Greenberg photographed (including one of her own) will have forgotten all about it (and probably did so within five minutes of the photographs being taken, and being given back their candy) and are getting on with the business of being kids, should be enough of a hint to any reasonable adult that there is no real issue to debate.

Flowers

Photos taken in Oxford a few weekends ago. Click on the photos for a larger view.

Photoblog

I've started a Photoblog! Okay I have added a section to my site which I am hopeing to update regularly with photographs. Close enough I think.

As always, comments and suggestions are welcome. I'm going to try to add at least one photograph a week. Not having a digital SLR as yet many will be old photos that I will scan, but I'm going to try to use only my best photos.

Truth be told I actually added it many months ago, but never got around to adding any photographs. Hopefully over time if I'm disciplined I will see an improvement in the quality of the photographs I am taking.

Canon EOS 1D Mark II Fun Time.

I got to play with a Canon 1D mkII for about an hour on Christmas day. The camera had a 24-70 f2.8L lens attached, a ST-E2 wireless transmitter and a couple of 550ex flashguns. First impressions was "Damn this is heavy", second impression was, "wow this is heavy".

Apart from that it was a great deal of fun, the layout is very different from my EOS 33v and took a while to get used to but the wireless flash was fun.

I wish I could say that I had some great photos to show you, but unfortunately whilst I cannot fault the camera, I was, let's say, a bit tipsy (oh c'mon it the season for charity) at the time. Although the photos are all sharp and in focus, the subject matter and composition are, well, of a lower standard than I feel comfortable displaying here.

The upside of my hours playtime is that I know that I like the camera and I know that I like the quality of the results. Roll on lottery win, I'm ready for you now :)

Today I have been mostly post processing scanned negatives :(

The process has been made a little less tedious than usual due to the recent addition of more memory to my PC. The end results are quite nice, but I think that I am heading towards RSI of my right index finger due to all the cloning required to remove dust and scratches from the scans.

I'm going to have to purchase an anti-static film cleaner before doing any future scanning if I am going to save the finger, but as I have a ridiculously large quantity of scans still to do this is a purchase for the future. It'll be Christmas before I finish the scans I already have to process.

The Joy of Scan

Plugged the scanner in this evening, instantly recognised by VueScan. Set everything up and scanned the first negative - perfect, no problems whatsoever. Things can be so easy sometimes.

Except for the fact that at some point the cludgy VueScan interface didn't update between tab changes as I moved the slider to frame two (to scan frame two), not realising that the interface hadn't updated and inadvertently was sliding the tiff compression value. Ended up with half of the scans at half resolution :(

Its not that bad though as the files are still large enough for what I need them for, but all the same it is irritating. I'm hoping that the next version of VueScan will allow you to lock settings that don't need changing very often so that this kind of accident becomes a thing of the past.

Scanning the last frame as I type this, hopefully tomorrows scanning will be just as smooth but without any mistakes.

Scanning is Hell!

I've just spent the last hour trying to scan a single frame of film. For the first half an hour VueScan refused to accept that there was even a scanner attached to the PC, despite Windows and me claiming to the contrary.

After several reboots, rescans of the SCSI bus and two dance of shames, the software eventually gave in and accepted that there was a scanner attached - hurray! or so I thought.

VueScan then decided that it could still win and that whatever I scanned no matter what the settings were that it was going to get its revenge by f*@king up the colour of the scanned negative. I used exactly the same technique that I have been using for the past few days (forgot to mention that I now have the scanner until Thursday), but no joy. Changed the setting to defaults and started again from first principles, no joy. Did the dance of shame, no joy. Did the dance of joy, no joy.

I've packed the scanner away now and will challenge VueScan to a rematch tomorrow. Did I mention that scanning is hell?

UK Photo Calendar

I've been working on a pet project for a while now (with more than a little help from my friends) called UK Photo Calendar. The idea being to build an online calendar with photographs for each day of the year taken on that day in a previous year. Eventually I am hoping to get a calendar that gives some sense of the changing seasons, but not restrict the photos to landscape photos, so that there is a spattering of other interesting photos.

The layout needs some work, maybe quite a bit, but for now I am focusing on the administrative aspects. If anyone has any suggestions please leave a comment. There already have been a number of suggestions but the more the merrier.

So far the project has been moving along reasonably nicely and there have been a pretty good response with a number of people submitting photos. There is however a serious lack of photographs so if anyone would like to contribute please visit the UK Photo Calendar website and register and start uploading.

All I want for Christmas...

Well I'm still scanning, been browsing looking at a plethora of articles on scanning and post processing technique. I think that the best solution would simply be to obtain a digital SLR. Yes there would still need to be processing of the RAW files but compared to scanning that would be a doddle, and for the occasional snapshots I could just use JPEGs.

To that end I've been doing some 'pie in the sky' research and have decided that a Canon 5D is the one for me. And whilst I'm in virtual lottery winner land I'd have an EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM lens to go with it.

Anyway going to take a break to watch the Brazilian Grand Prix, the sound of a microstepping motor is now well and truly fixed in my auditory memory!

Twist of fate?

As luck would have it, it turns out that I'll be in possesion of the scanner for at least another six hours, which I suppose is lucky as there are many more frames to scan. However it is a double edged blade as this means six more hours of the most tediuos task in the world (see below).

Well I've decided to make hay while the sun shines and am off to do another marathon session of scanning. Think of me whilst you are enjoying what looks like a nice, sunny Sunday.

The most tedious task in the world?

I have spent what seems like the whole day scanning negatives. This has to be the most tedious task ever!

I borrowed a scanner and a nice one at that - an ArtixScan 4000t, with the intention of scanning some holiday photos taken in August this year. I thought that it would be nice to share the photos with some friends and relatives and hey I wasn't planning to do anything else today.

For those of you who have never had the pleasure let me explain a little about the art of negative scanning. First you have to review your prints and decide which frames you would ike to scan. Secondly you have to place the strip of four negatives very carefully into the negative carrier, being extreemly careful not get any dust on the negatives which (being primarily cellulose) pick up even the slightest electrical charge and then act as dust magnets. You then place the carrier into the scanner.

Once the scanner has loaded the negative carrier, run through a series of checks of the stepping motor, and adjusted the focus of the scanning head (all of which takes a minimum of one minute). You then use your scanning software (in this case VueScan) to preview the frame that you would like to scan. The scanner then scans the frame and corrects the colour (a cool three to five minutes depending onthe density of the negative). You then adjust the crop marks and as its viewscan you save the high resolution preview (4000 ppi). If you are lucky enough to have more than one frame on the series of four you move on to the next one otherwise its back to finding the right strip and loading the negative carrier.

Bored yet? Well I wasn't either for the first hour or so. Continuing onwards...

The negatives have been cut into strips of four and it would seem that the people in the processing lab have an uncanny knack of determining which frames I would like to scan and ensuring that no two are on the same strip of four negatives even if they were sequential photographs!

Well so far today I have managed to scan a selection of frames from four rolls of negatives, thirty nine frames to be exact. Not bad but as I have twelve rolls still left to scan I'm beginning to feel that I made a BIG mistake even starting.

Once I've finished scanning I have the joy of post processing to look forward to. As the ArtixScan 4000t does not have an infrared scanning head, the scanner does not support any form of automated dust and scratch removal I have to do this manually. The tiniest particles of dust and the finest of scratches - not noticable with the unaided eye become huge on the completed scan so you have to remove them. So for each scanned negative the joys of 'spotting', cropping, rotating, levels and curve corrections and some light sharpening are all necessary prior to resizing for whatever the intended purpose, be that printing, posting here, emailing or whatever.

Well I'd better stop bitching and get on with it, I have to return the scanner tomorrow morning and will try to scan as much as I can tonight. If anyone out there has a scanner with dust and scratch removal like a 'Nikon Coolscan V ED' or better yet a (much quicker) 'Nikon Coolscan 5000 ED' and they would like to lend it to me please let me know :)