Vintage or Lomography anyone?

[photographicsafaris]

I have an old folding 6x9 rather than 6x6 camera - they are prone to flair if aimed at a light source, so finding an accurate way to shield them without blocking the lens becomes a challenge

There is nothing to them really, you just have to get to know what the focusing marks relate to - its a £10 exercise as below.

Make sure the bellows are light tight, and the shutter blades move freely. the shutter speeds are prone to stretched springs so can be a light slower than indicated.
Buy a cheap light meter and you'll love it.

1 on a dark surface (road) Lay out a straight length of white thick rope as long as the focus marker scale on the lens and measure out then wrap a strip of black insulation tape for every distance marker identified on the lens.
2 Open the aperture (low number possible e.g f3.5 rather than f11)
3 place camera on a tripod at the end of the rope showing the closest distance with the lens the same distance away from the start of the rope as the first mark on the lens focus scale (in point of fact the scale should be measured from the film plane but this way gives you 5 inches of error margin either way)
4 frame camera to cover the full length of the rope - start to finish and try to include some of the Horizon, preferably with a close skyline interest e.g. trees about 100m - 200m away
5 Set an appropriate shutter speed for the light conditions, preferably above 1/30th
6 before each shot in section 7 write on a board the distance focused on in the shot, and place facing the camera so the it looks like it is adjacent the actual focus point it represents
7 Take one picture for every distance marker on the lens focus scale (remembering to wind on between shots) (if possible use a cable release)
8 go to step 6 until your have run out of film.
9 Process and Compare photos to see how the focus compares to the distance marker it was supposed to focus on.

The next task is to focus on something about 1/3rd the way through the focus distance on the lens and shoot a roll of film with differing apertures and not changing the focus - obviously adjust the shutter speed to accommodate for the different exposures

Make a note on a board in the picture what the aperture value of that shot was.
Make special note of the red for aperture and distance focus setting this should be the point of front to back focus. (Wishing that the shutter speed is high enough to carry a sharp image)
To make this exercise doubly interesting try shooting a fast flowing water/traffic scene

if you want to freak out the guys in the lab, get a changing bag, and wrap a roll of 35mm unexposed film inside a 120 roll and shoot a load of pictures. Then wrap back into a 35mm cassette and drop in for dev and print as framed....most amusing on a 6x9 camera and the panorama is awesome.

And yes, I still have and use some treasured Film cameras, that i can't bare to part with.

As an aside I really do wonder at the point of shooting 5000 photos a day at sporting event where/how do these treasured 5000 photos get seen by anyone, surely by flooding the accessibility you're restricting your own market?
I can't even begin to get my head around editing and then storing for archival purposes 5000 photos a day (assuming a 32 working week year with a Nikon d800 thats my version of hell!)

[Margus]

Not exacly vintage but I've done most of not all of my motorcycle trips carring at least some sort of a film camera. I did a RTW with 170 000 kms and the only camera that did from start to finish without losing a beat was a Pentax 67 that is as old as I am. While I worn through 4 different digital cameras - shows you how good the oldschool cameras are built to last - built like a tank in comparison!

Only on my Iran trip I had a vintage Moskva 6x9 camera that self-destructed - it's rangefinder just fell off (probably the motorcycle vibrations took it's toll). Fortunately it was freely given to me by a friend to be used as a backup camera in case my main camera failed so it was a happy ending since I just shot one roll with it. So I've not really looked into vintages after that, they can be very fragile, especially the folders.

So far mostly my film camera's been complimented with a compact digital that I use for documenting my travels, but this summer 5 weeks out to Iceland I decided to take only my film cameras with me since while I started my photography with digital I've gotten somewhat tired and bored with the digital gear lately - to my own surprise enjoyed the whole film-only travel photo experience considerably more than I ever did with any of the digital cameras I've had so considering doing my future travels with film cameras exclusevly as well. There's something truly awkwardly (in a good way) different, refreshing, inspiring and rewarding about shooting film on your travels, IMHO.

That being said I stay away from all the Lomography stuff - for me it's just an marketing hype of poor products at a ripoff prices. They sell old rebadged expired film, revive design fails and hype it all up like it's something new, basically treating the analog photography like it's just a one-trick-pony. Hipsters apparently love it and buy the "lo-fi" hype, but it's definitely not for me. While I also love lo-fi the analog film and gear is a much more capable than this.

(Indonesia, 6x7 slide)

For some over 5-6 years now I've learned and done my own darkroom enlarging, developed my own recipes and techniques, analog wet-printing is another hands-on time consuming but a very rewarding activity and a forgotten art these days - resulting a truly hand made photo. It's something film-shooters should look into too.

(Iran, handmade silver-gelatin Lith-print from a 6x6 frame)

Cheers,
Margus

[backofbeyond]

Originally Posted by photographicsafaris

As an aside I really do wonder at the point of shooting 5000 photos a day at sporting event where/how do these treasured 5000 photos get seen by anyone, surely by flooding the accessibility you're restricting your own market?
I can't even begin to get my head around editing and then storing for archival purposes 5000 photos a day (assuming a 32 working week year with a Nikon d800 thats my version of hell!)

It's not an everyday occurance - I've probably done about 20 events of that type this year.

Shooting 5000 pictures where 15,000 people are taking part means only getting less than a third of them and there will usually be a bunch of us at various points on the course - running or triathlons are the most common big ones. I've done a number of events over the years where between us we've shot about 100,000 pics in total - maybe a two day event such as the London triathlon. It's not uncommon though to shoot 25,000 at a "small" event - say 2000 at a cycle race.

Archiving them is not quite like it used to be in the film days. All you need is a database and about 10Gb of disc space. Constructing the database is farmed out to the other side of the planet so they'll be available for website viewing the next morning - just enter your running number.

As a rule of thumb the more you have the more likely someone will buy something - and of course the direct cost of taking more is very little. It does work - my wife bought the video clip of her overtaking everyone towards the end of The Great South Run a few years ago!

Technology does change things - I saw a drone being used at a triathlon this year to capture pictures of swimmers in the water at a triathlon.