NEW YORK, NEW YORK – This afternoon I walked the Brooklyn Bridge from the Manhattan side. It was seriously crowded. I shot with my Alpa and the 72mm Schneider lens. Framing continues to be a challenge. Out of the 30 or 40 images I thought this was the best point of view, but it’s flawed because I didn’t recognize it at the time so I didn’t take the time to wait for the optimum moment in terms of the pedestrians. Near misses for me two days in a row. Here it is:
Brooklyn Bridge
On this day last year: wildebeest migration. I had so many images that I did three posts for the day. Here’s a crocodile killing a zebra.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – I walked to the office today with my Alpa and the 72mm Schneider Digitar. I’m experimenting to see if it’s possible to hand hold the camera with this lens. (Longer lenses are more demanding in terms of camera movement than shorter lenses.) The light was just ok. There’s a no name spec building at the Northwest corner of 57th street and Lexington Avenue. I played around with the plaza in front of it, and finally realized that the shot for the day was looking straight up. You’ll see that the framing would have been better if I had included the full circle on the sides of the frame. The Alpa finder is kind of approximate – based in this fairly disappointing experience I’ll be trying some of my Leica finders on the Alpa to see if I can get more accurate results.
WARREN CONNECTICUT – Back to photographing in the actual world (as opposed to taking pictures of cameras). There was a lovely, fleeting moment at sunrise in Connecticut to today when the first rays of the sun caught the ground fog. I grabbed my Alpa TC with the IQ 180 and Schneider 3mm XL attached and captured the moment.
Later in the morning I went to the town of Warren to experiment with my new 120mm lens, capturing the Warren Congregational Church from a slightly different angle.
Fog at sunriseFog at sunriseWarren Congregational Church
On this day last year: The beginning of our safari in East Africa. One year ago things start getting really interesting for the next week or so. The Cliff Notes version of our safari is the top gallery on the right of this site.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – I’m writing a page on my equipment which I will illustrate with my photos. My pictures of my Alpa TC and Alpa Max, posted on August 9 and August 17, should do for those cameras. I decided to shoot my Leica M9 today, Here it is photographed with my Panasonic GH2 – I’ll be using these images in the the description of my equipment that I’m presently working on. The lens on the camera, by the way, is the pre-asph 35mm Summicron – called the “bokeh king” because of the creamy quality of the out of focus portions of images taken with it. It’s also really compact.
I’be put a Thumbs Up faux rewind lever on the camera – it balances much bette if there is something to catch your thumb on as you hold it. Note also the wear on the edge of the end of the camera. The finish is black paint over brass – “bronzing” on the edges of the camera are considered a mark of honor in the Leica world.
By the way as I was working on the description of the long list of cameras that I’ve owned it seemed to me that it’s odd that I don’t have a film Leica, so I bid on a two-strokr M3 on ebay today. I’ve got some film in the freezer in Connecticut and know a guy here in New York who develops it, and I have a couple of scanners. We’ll se what happens.
Leica M9Leica M9
On this day last year: Nairobi This is the start of last year’s Africa trip – for the next two weeks “on this day last year” is actually of interest.
NEW YORK NEW YORK – So what’s so technical about a “technical camera”. Here’s a link to last week’s post on my Alpa TC but it just looks unwieldy and it lacks a lot of things (autos focus and automatic exposure) that we take for granted on a pocket point and shoot.
First, what’s so technical about these things? Well last week’s Alpa TC is actually the little brother of the Alpa Max, a camera that permits the back and lens to be shifted relative to each other, and permits the lens to be titled relative to the plane of the sensor with longer focal length lenses. The ability to shift the lens upward to look up while keeping the camera level permits great flexibility in composition while keeping vertical lines properly parallel (if you tilt the camera up they appear to converge). Of course once you move into shifts you are committed to working on a tripod. In my setup composition is done through live view on the IQ 180’s lcd panel (live view is common in consumer cameras but for technical reasons is hard to implement in medium format digital backs). Working with the Alpa Max is fully the digital equivalent of working with a view camera and 4 x 5 film (the debate on the “quality” of film vs. digital ended a long time ago – on a resolution basis the IQ 180 is fully comparable to r=legacy 8 x 10 film, but the look is different).
Here’s the Max with the lens shifted upward relative to the back:
Alpa MaxAlpa Max
This setup (the tripod and the need to fiddle with a complex camera) forces one to work slowly. It leads to consciously “composed” work. Some of my best work is actually shot off-hand and intuitively. The challenge for me in working with a large camera is to keep the images interesting (getting them to be perfect is not that hard). The following capture with the Max has the character of thousands of other images captured with similar equipment. This bothers me a bit, but I suppose it shouldn’t – it’s really no different that the millions of “mom and pop at the beach” snapshots that all look the same except for who mom and pop are.
Central Park
I’ve included a grayscale conversion of this image that further emphasizes how this method of capturing images nudges you in the direction of traditional landscape.
Central Park
On this day last year: A travel day. A travel day last year, on our way to Nairobi and a date with some wildlife.
