shortscale photography thread.

[DanHeron]

My first foray into night time photography, a one second exposure of a fountain:

This is really cool. As well as being a nice photo I'm impressed your taking night photos on film. I've never really attempted, always worried I would screw up the exposure and waste frames/money.


My uncle came by recently and brought Marley round:

[Bacchus]

This is really cool. As well as being a nice photo I'm impressed your taking night photos on film. I've never really attempted, always worried I would screw up the exposure and waste frames/money.

Thanks! I try not to worry about wasting film. It is expensive, but I go out with a roll of film and expect to take maybe five good photos out of 24. If there's a photo I want I'll bracket a bit so I'm always going to "waste" two or three shots shooting either side of the setting that ends up working best. I don't regard these as wasted, as I'm still trying to learn. I'd like to get the point where I only have to take a shot twice, rather than three or four times. Also, I don't think it's wasted because in my head, that's how much a good picture costs in terms of shots, if that makes sense. It does mean that I spend ages looking at something, trying to work out how to take a photo of it, but that's a good thing I think.

This shot was one I'd been thinking about for a while and gave I think four or five shots over to, as I really wanted to get it right. I needn't have bothered, this good one was the first shot, so I got it right first time.

Wasting film is more annoying when it's something like this which I regard as a proper waste not just of film but of a good shot:

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The chooks were on a garden raised up high, so they were at eye level, and when I walked past with my camera they all piled over to the fence and stood tall with their necks stretched. It looked like they were posing to have their portrait taken, and I thought it was a great shot, so I quickly focused and took a picture using a setting that had worked well on a previous, overcast day (f/5.6, 1/500). I was really looking forward to seeing how this one turned out, but it was rubbish, underexposed. I suppose it's not a waste of film because it's taught me to properly pay attention and think about what I'm doing, that I can't just point and click, that I need to think about what the light's doing in every single picture and work out what that picture needs.

This one is a waste of film, as I think I've got the hang of judging exposure on that sort of overcast day so there's no reward for getting that bit right. I'm just taking photos that aren't interesting or really worth taking. There's no photo here, or if there was one, I didn't take it.

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[DanHeron]

Went to get a bit of fresh air today at Manchester Airports viewing park. My dad is a big aeroplane enthusiast... I am not.






AND THEN I saw Robin in town:

[DanHeron]

[Bacchus]

Hmmm, anybody have a 126 film cartridge lying around?

[DanHeron]

Posted this in the Olympics thread but thought it would get some interest here...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/ju ... smartphone

Dan Chung, a photojournalist, is shooting the Olympics using just his iPhone. He has a small snap on fish-eye lens and gets close up shots by shooting through a pair of binoculars. His photos are brilliant.


Also, even pros make mistakes sometimes:
[youtube][/youtube]

[laterallateral]

A collection of shots from the abandoned VT Building near my house.
These are either phone pics from my Android or Apricat's iPhone, or taken with a Canon EOS D30 and were taken on two separate days.

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Pictures of broken machines and decrepit grain silos

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Habitat 67

[DanHeron]

Everyone needs to watch this. It's the coolest/most inspiring thing I've seen for a while.

Ian Ruhter is an American photographer who uses an old 19th century technique - the collodion process.

The collodion process is complicated way of making photographs involving a piece of glass coated in wet light-sensitive chemicals. The glass has to be developed whilst the chemicals are still wet, so any landscape-type shots need to have some kind of portable dark room on site to develop the images. When succesfull the result is a black and white image on the glass sheet, there is no printing onto paper or negatives, the piece of glass you put in the camera is what holds the positive image.

What Ian Ruhter has done is amazing though. He has basically turned the back of a van into a huge camera, allowing him to create photographs on huge(seriously big, look at the photos - that is the camera 'film') glass sheets. Also it's portable and offers a dark space to develop the images too.

Here's the video:


Some pics:

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[DanHeron]

I am booking myself a place at a 2-day collodion process workshop in Manchester. Should be fun.

[gusman2x]

Awesome captures. I'm surprised at the skater one. I would have figured he was doing reasonably long exposures, but I guess not. I wonder how he takes the shot. The lens looked pretty much to be a lens and no shutter.

How did you find about the course in Manchester? Does it cost much? I really want to get into shooting film (medium and large format hopefully), but I would only really be interested if I could learn how to develop my own negs and make prints. Can't be bothered sending films off.

[DanHeron]

From what I've seen they just take the lens cap off then put it back on. Shutter speeds are usually seconds with the collodion process so that acts as the shutter. Im guessing they used a flash with the skater one.

I googled 'wet plate photography workshops' and found this guy: http://www.johnbrewerphotography.com/we ... -workshops
I emailed him for the prices, will let you know what he says if you want.

UPDATE:
Got a reply from the photographer who runs the workshops, John Brewer. The 2 day workshop runs from 10am - 5pm, Sat&Sun, and costs £250. Quite pricey but it includes all the chemicals and materials. And I guess you can keep the photography plates you create during the weekend. From what I've read people say a workshop or some sort of tuition is a good idea for the collodion process as your dealing with some pretty dangerous chemicals and it can be quite tricky to get successful images.

Also I found this video of the skateboarding image being created. They used flashes:

[Hurb]

Everyone needs to watch this. It's the coolest/most inspiring thing I've seen for a while.

Ian Ruhter is an American photographer who uses an old 19th century technique - the collodion process.

The collodion process is complicated way of making photographs involving a piece of glass coated in wet light-sensitive chemicals. The glass has to be developed whilst the chemicals are still wet, so any landscape-type shots need to have some kind of portable dark room on site to develop the images. When succesfull the result is a black and white image on the glass sheet, there is no printing onto paper or negatives, the piece of glass you put in the camera is what holds the positive image.

What Ian Ruhter has done is amazing though. He has basically turned the back of a van into a huge camera, allowing him to create photographs on huge(seriously big, look at the photos - that is the camera 'film') glass sheets. Also it's portable and offers a dark space to develop the images too.

Here's the video:


Some pics:

► Show Spoiler

Very cool Dan I love wet plate pictures.
A friend of mine is in the process of turning his van into a portable darkroom for wet plates. Hopefully I will get a go!

Have sent him this video.

[DanHeron]

Really!? That is cool, you've gotta get yourself in there to have a go! Maybe he can turn it into a huge camera to and get some massive plates produced

I'm still thinking about that workshop. £250 is a lot, although when you look at the price of the equipment etc it is understandable. The thing bugging me is that it is very unlikely I would be able to carry on the proccess afterwards myself. Would cost quite a lot to get all the stuff and to set up a dark room. And even then I would be stuck to just doing it at home. I prefer to get out of the house and take photos... I need a dark room van!!

[Hurb]

Really!? That is cool, you've gotta get yourself in there to have a go! Maybe he can turn it into a huge camera to and get some massive plates produced

I'm still thinking about that workshop. £250 is a lot, although when you look at the price of the equipment etc it is understandable. The thing bugging me is that it is very unlikely I would be able to carry on the proccess afterwards myself. Would cost quite a lot to get all the stuff and to set up a dark room. And even then I would be stuck to just doing it at home. I prefer to get out of the house and take photos... I need a dark room van!!

Yeah it is, he is a bit of a camera nut (in a good way I think) he has showed me some of his cameras he has. He did have this massive lens that he wanted to put in the wall of his house or something haha.

this is his flickr (well one of them anyway he tells me he has another that has none nighttime photography that he keeps secret haha) http://www.flickr.com/photos/interzone-inc/

as for the 250 quid, it is like anything really if you can afford it it may be worth it. If you are stuggling to justify it then maybe spend the money on something else(medium format camera perhaps?)

I would like to get into some of the alternative photography methods(large format different printing etc etc) next on my to do list is develop colour myself. I think there is a lot of mystique with colour devoping (c-41 process I am taking about here) but a recent link I found made me think about it differently and it really didn't look that hard! I would shoot a lot more colour film if I processed it myself.

[DanHeron]

Yeah a medium format camera would probably be a better buy!

What's the difference between developing b&w and c41? From what I've seen it looks similar, but with a bit more care and attention to the temperature of the chemicals. I would love to develop colour film, I would do it a lot more than black and white.

This looks pretty good: http://www.ag-photographic.co.uk/tetena ... -681-p.asp
Cheap enough to make some mistakes too.

[Hurb]

Yeah a medium format camera would probably be a better buy!

What's the difference between developing b&w and c41? From what I've seen it looks similar, but with a bit more care and attention to the temperature of the chemicals. I would love to develop colour film, I would do it a lot more than black and white.

This looks pretty good: http://www.ag-photographic.co.uk/tetena ... -681-p.asp
Cheap enough to make some mistakes too.

Yeah more stages to the chemicals and it is a standard one time fits all process for all films(with added time for push processing) Keeping temperature seems to be the bit that people flap over it is higher than b&w(38.something 'C or 100'F )

I will try and find that link later on where the fear of doing it is basically pulled away.

That site has a few good kits.

[DanHeron]

one time fits all process for all films(with added time for push processing).

That makes it incredibly tempting. When I first did my black and white film figuring out the time was pretty confusing.

I might have to buy that kit... I have a full roll of film that has been in the back of one of my cameras for ages, haven't got round to developing it.

[Hurb]

Here is that link

http://claudiamoroni.wordpress.com/2011 ... 1-at-home/

there are other links in the blog post but it is really all about the video(although it is full of wankers the technique looks really easy)

[DanHeron]

Cheers.

I think I will definitely give this a try at some point!

[Hurb]

Cheers.

I think I will definitely give this a try at some point!

Yeah it is worth a shot wont be this month for me though. broke!