4x5photo

I picked up an iPad to used as a portfolio display, it's turning out to be more useful than I thought in other areas - It's not as easy to read books on as the Kindle, but works well enough.

I just picked up a blogging app that can post to a number of different blogs so we'll see how that works out.

Vince


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:Port Ludlow

I find it sad that the one really truly non-renewable resource we have seems to be the easiest to waste. I can waste time doing any number of things - although there's now one less, I sent the DISH network packing. I've more or less given up on computer games. Fortunately I don't consider reading a waste of time - if it were and wasting time was actually a crime I'd be put away for life.

I'm a very laid-back individual it takes quite a bit to get me P.O.'d but other people wasting my time will do it. Phones do it even quicker. People wasting my time on the phone win's every time. How many people do you know that can ignore a phone? One of the very few redeeming qualities of cell phones is that they can be set to vibrate, turned off, or the ringer can be canceled. How wonderful is that? Why is it that you can walk into a store money in hand and the people behind the counter will ignore you for someone on the phone? Why does a phone take priority over a person standing right there?

As to time wasting - I'm hoping that I'm finally about done shopping for camera gear. It's expensive, time consuming, does noting to improve your skills as a photographer, doesn't improve your art, doesn't make art and yet all photographers are compelled to jump into this morass now and then. More often since digital, less often since the economy tanked. I'm not completely out of the rat race, still tracking down a few last things in my attempt to go digital - I'm doing this on the theory that in the long run it will save me a lot of time and possibly some money but at the moment it doesn't feel that way. I also will have to spend some time selling stuff - at least there's a positive cash flow from that, helps take the sting out of the time gone into the sewer of wasted time.

I've been doing photography related stuff for weeks, and it's really getting me in a creative frame of mind.

1. Listening to Lenswork Podcasts while driving
2. Listening to Camera Position Podcasts while working with photoshop or driving
3. Reading about photography
4. Listening to my favorite music
5. Looking at other peoples work
6. Thinking about what a photograph is - or isn't.

My current definition:

A photograph is not about the thing your taking a picture of - it's about the emotion you feel when you experience that thing. If you don't have an emotional reaction to what your seeing, there's no value in pointing a camera at it, you'll just end up with a photograph that has no meaning.

Photography is predatory; we want to capture something that moves us in some way and make it ours, to keep it. Photography is altruistic; we see something that moves us and we want to share that feeling. Photography is arrogant; we point our camera at something, we make a photograph, we are saying THIS is important, THIS is special, the viewer should pay attention to THIS.

In photography, we can take something away with us, with out taking anything away. Our goal is to elicit an emotional response, it is not make it possible to experience life later. For a time, I thought it was to get the view to experience the same emotion I had when I decided to make the image. Later, I realized that not everyone would have the same response even if they stood where I stood, and saw what I saw. Now I'm satisfied when I get any response. I photographed a scene of ice forming on a creek, I experienced joy in the motion of the water, and wonder in the transitory sculpture, created by nature, who didn't care one whit if it was ever seen by single soul. Sharing the image with someone, they felt the cold and were curious about how the ice had formed, not the same thing but maybe close enough.

I've gotten in a creative groove, and I hope it keeps going because I can't do anything about it today - and maybe not much for a couple of weeks. Bad timing on the creative groove - but nothing I can do about it except try to maintain.

What I really need to do is clean the house (which I've started on but I think I need to break for brunch - then back at it House cleaning for me usually happens when I get to the point where the accumulation of stuff I've gotten out of where ever it was stashed for what ever reason builds up and I just can't take it anymore. Or, I have company coming. In this case it's both.

Now I don't want to give the impression that it's really bad - it's not. It's just stacks of stuff on every flat surface, and it's really time to mop the floors since I've been tracking stuff in for a couple of weeks. This goes back to the bad habits are easy idea, once the house is clean again, I remember - for a while - to take my boots off when I come in, I remember to put stuff away - for a while. At some point I'll be in a hurry or thinking about something else and poof - there it goes.

Well I've been scanning negatives and slides like a madman for the last couple of days. About 80 of them. Part of this is an attempt to see which ones my scanner is going to have issues with. It turns out that this stupidly expensive scanner doesn't like large areas of no texture - such as clear blue sky on a B&W negative (comes out essentially light gray) I get banding - not good.

I'm hopping Hasselblad can fix this and it won't cost me an arm and a leg. If it looks to be too much - it's just going to push me closer to a decision on a 24+ mega pixel camera. Right now it's between.
Sony Alpha 900
Nikon D3x
Phase One P30+
Phase One P45+
The Phase One systems I'm looking for used - way too expensive new but apparently hard to come by used.

Everything is a trade-off for something else.

Time spent reading or time spent photographing. Time spent waiting in airports or time spent driving. The quality of 4x5 film vs the ease and speed of Digital. Paying for film and developing as you go or paying for digital all up front.

Sometimes trade-offs are easy to figure, other times it's hard. It could be a simple as your current mood, or as complex as weighting opportunity costs of spending investment capital in a recession.

There's an old saying - "If it was easy everyone would do it". But everyone has to deal with trade-offs - does that mean it's easy?

I decided to cut my road trip short - I'll be heading out again in February. I've been struggling with camera choices. I can't say that at the level of camera I'm looking at that I'm very happy with any of them. I also have a problem with my film scanner - the problem is only apparent in images with large areas of very smooth tones - bald sky (no clouds) is the primary culprit - I get banding - subtle lines of slightly lighter and darker shades. So before I go choose a new camera I figured I find out how much it's going to cost to fix the scanner. As much as I love my 4x5 - it's not the ideal camera for a lot of conditions - it's fairly large and makes a pretty good sail when the wind is up. you can't use it for street candid photography - it requires a good size tripod. And it's film - currently there are ZERO places to process 4x5 color in Seattle - I have to send it to Spokane or one of the shops in California to get done - it's about $6.00 every time I click the shutter - B&W is cheaper because I by sheets and develop myself even so it's probably $3/sheet by the time I'm done and that doesn't include darkroom time, or scanning time. I can develop 12 negatives in an evening unless I'm really in a hurry - then I can do 24. 12 takes about 2 hours for setup development and cleanup. The next day I scan - that's about 30 min per image, sometimes it's a bit faster - maybe 15 minutes if it's an easy negative - on average call it 4.5 hours to scan 12 negs. Then again - I shoot two of everything (always make a backup) so I really only scan 6 of the 12.

As you can see - a digital system would pay for it's self in a few years (or less).

On cameras I'm down to 4 choices

Sony Alpha 900 - which I've all but ruled out because I can't do mirror lockup and bracketing at the same time (really stupid design decision on Sony's part) - Excellent lenses especially the Zeiss glass. Image stabilization that works with every lens because it's built into the body. No shift/tilt lenses yet (if ever?).

Nikon D3x - which is too expensive even though it's the best DSLR on the market today (maybe not next month - depends on when Canon returns fire). In any case I shoot Nikon now, and this would be the easy choice except for the 8K price tag. Some excellent glass but not quite on par with the Sony/Zeiss lenses. A few really nice Shift/Tilt lenses though - better than Canon or the non-existent Sony ones :).

Phase One/ Mamiya medium format - using the Phase One 39 Megapixel back. - Amazing image quality and I could use the digital back on my 4x5 - there's just a few little catches - a used back is going to cost between 15K and 20K - new they're 30K - Mamiya AFDIII is kind of bulk and slow - but that's fine on a tripod. There's no image stabilization which makes hand held a bit problematic as you need to shoot a fairly high shutter speeds - but none of the digital backs handle ISO's above 100 very well. That means basically hauling 3 cameras around for best results - 2 if I'm willing to give up any sift/tilt options. Kinda heavy - pretty expensive - lots of bulk.

Leica S2 - 37.5 Mega pixels Leica Lenses (best in the world) specifically designed for the S2 sensor. This should have the best image quality of any camera on the market. Then again - no image stabilization, only 4 lenses listed at the moment - but I know they have a number of them planned - what's unknown is the price - Leica being of German manufacture is not cheap. Also there's the Leica Name - so any way you look at it -this won't be a cheap system - wild guess - the body will sell for between 20,000 and 30,000 - yeah that's 4 zeros. In reality - I probably can't afford to do that so....

It's enough to make me want to scream.

A few from this trip.

Road Trip

I've decided to cut my road trip short. I'll be doing another one probably in February, then again but on the bike in May, the May Trip is primarily to get away while they close the hood canal bridge for 6+ weeks, making it a MAJOR hassle to get to Seattle - basically I either have to drive all the way around Hood Canal, to Bremerton (or Tacoma) 2.5hrs + 30 mins on Ferry, + ferry wait time. Or go up to Port Townsend and take a Ferry to Keystone, (about 1 hour if I time it right) then drive for almost 3 hours - or take yet another ferry.

Much better to be out of town :)

I hate new years resolutions. With that in mind -

I resolve to not make any :)

Have a good one.