[damien.murphy]

May 28, 2012 at 1:55 pm

Camera batteries these days are ubiquitous. Most metered cameras made/ designed during or up to the 60’s and many during the 70’s use mercury batteries however, which have been outlawed in most of the modern world these days and thus unavailable. Workarounds exist, such as Wein Cells/ etc, or even having a camera tech switch over the voltage in your camera, but to be aware of.

Famous example of cameras that use mercury batteries, include the Nikon F, Olympus OM-1 and most fixed lens rangefinders, amongst others. For most manual cameras or rather those without electronic shutters, the battery only powers the meter in the camera and thus the only functionality you will lose without a battery will be the use of the meter.

In any case, the best of luck with the course, and the eventual cameras you choose :-)

[damien.murphy]

May 26, 2012 at 1:19 pm

dubtom wrote:

I’m fairly sure though your teacher doesn’t want you to buy the bee knees of a camera,the more basic the better.

Would definitely agree with Tom above, and not to get hung up your ultimate choice of camera. Your photography teacher will be used to seeing all sorts of students slrs & dslrs, and there really is no bad choice I imagine. As long as both cameras allow for manual operation (which virtually all slr’s & dslrs will), you’re laughing, and then it really all just comes down to your budget and the potential of your chosen kit to grow with you.

In any case, good luck with your search and your course, and perhaps you might even let the more curious of us know what course it is you’re taking :)

EDIT: with regard to older film slr’s, many take hard to get zinc batteries, so just ensure you can get batteries or replacement batteries for your chosen camera.

[damien.murphy]

May 25, 2012 at 6:20 pm

Fantastic – thanks for posting this link. Really love this work, and reminds me of when I watched one of the making-of documentaries on Lord of the Rings many years ago, how many of the shots had been shot from carefully constructed miniatures, and seeing this work reminded me of that again.

[damien.murphy]

May 25, 2012 at 6:01 pm

Try the classifieds here, and elsewhere. If you need both a digital and film slr, I would advise getting one that has the same lens mount, so you don’t need to double up on lenses. Also speaking of lenses, I would let lens costs dictate the slr you choose, if budget is your main concern.

Film slrs will be reasonable enough, and you should easily pick up something capable for €100 maximum, and most likely quite a bit less. Dslr-wise, go back a generation or two, and you will find a lot of bargains to be had if you buy used. There is a floor of about €200- €250 though, so no matter how hard you look, it will probably be impossible to find one lower than that.

I’m a Nikon guy, when it comes to slr’s and if looking for a recommendation in that regard, would advise something like a D80 which you should pick up for about €250- €300, pretty much any Nikon film slr, and something like a 50mm f1.8 Af-D autofocus lens for about €100 which can be used on both slr & dslr (but will act more like a 75mm lens on your dslr, due to the crop factor. That should set you back about €350- €400, so not sure how that fits in with your budget. In any case, the film slr can be very cheap, the lens reasonable, and the dslr the most expensive part of the trio.

EDIT: you may get a cheap zoom lens thrown in with the film camera, which will also be able to be used on both cameras, in the case of my Nikon example above.

[damien.murphy]

May 25, 2012 at 5:51 pm

Very interesting thread, and something that is never far from my mind. In my opinion, there is only one maxim, and that is an idea not recorded immediately, is more than certainly doomed to be lost.

I try to carry a very small notebook around, in which to jot down ideas, but to be honest, if it is not ubiquitous then again it is not an effective solution. Best solution in my book is the combination of a note-taking/ text app and also a voice recorder app on your phone, as most people will usually have their phone with them at all times.

On a more lateral note, I sometimes find words not the most effective way to capture ideas, and have long yearned to be able to sketch quickly, as a way of encapsulating what is in my mind.

[damien.murphy]

May 24, 2012 at 1:37 pm

Interesting. If shooting solely for black & white, even just shooting in raw and having the black and white profile turned on, so you can see your results on the lcd would be helpful I imagine. Still, I can imagine the mentality of shooting solely for black and white, and not just colour and a possible conversion later, makes a big difference to your approach and results. I’ve experimented a little with black and white straight from the camera, but have never felt satisfied, or rather to get an image that was either not too flat or didn’t have the shadows blocked up. May give it another shot, when I work up the will to lug my dslr about though, as at the moment the D300 stays at home.

Everything is still open for me at the moment, myself, and have found myself stubbornly returning to Lightroom an exploring conversion options, to see if I can get it to give me results I want. Those borders from Silver Efex though, sure are nice, and would be nice if Lighroom included some sort of post-crop border option, in a similar vein to post-crop vignettes.

I like Silver Efex, but having no flexibility to change, see or duplicate the options I have taken to get an image where it is, irritates me a little, and is partly responsible for sending me back to Lightroom to re-explore converting there. That, the additional Tiff files generated by a round trip to Silver Efex, and the slow batch processing keep me returning to Lightroom. I guess I am stubborn to master the b&w options there, and keep everything under the Lightroom roof.

For what its worth there’s a simple black and white mapping software out there called True Grain which I came across, which might be just the ticket for those like me happy to apply a uniform look to all their conversions. Results seem nice, and they have an easy batch processing option too, but have yet to make my mind up on whether I want to drop additional dollars on b&w conversion software..

[damien.murphy]

May 22, 2012 at 11:12 am

aoluain wrote:

compared to olympus – probably not

Well, more compared to compact in general :)

Would have thought the benefit to removing the mirror was to make the camera smaller, although given the mediocre optical viewfinders, sizewise, on all dslrs, perhaps an electronic viewfinder might provide a larger field of view, which would be nice.

[damien.murphy]

May 21, 2012 at 3:34 pm

Seems like it won’t be too svelte..

[damien.murphy]

May 21, 2012 at 11:40 am

I’d consider if f2.8 will be fast enough for you, if you haven’t already solved your shooting dilemma. Typically an average lit room in a house/ apartment at night will require around 1/30 f2.8 iso 1600, and a club or nightclub will be darker than that. I would check out the venue beforehand with the lighting you will be shooting in, which will let you know if simply bumping the iso with lens f2.8 will work for you. Obviously bumping the iso would be predicated on having a camera where you feel comfortable with the quality you get at higher iso’s.

[damien.murphy]

May 20, 2012 at 9:20 pm

Indeed – looks like my M3 will see a lot more action in the meantime :)

[damien.murphy]

May 19, 2012 at 7:57 pm

Hi Mike, no worries, and did not seem to be harsh above.

A reverse S curve is pretty much the reverse of an S curve. So if you can imagine the tone curve, and the typical S curve that people use to add contrast to an image, darkening the shadow areas and lightening the highlights, the shape of the curve itself resembles a slight S. Just reverse it, so instead of darkening the shadow areas and lightening the highlights, you lighten the shadows a little and darken the highlights a little. Will add a little more tonality, with a little more detail in the shadows and depth in the highlights.

Found a quick example through google images at the following link: http://www.wildscapeimages.biz/storage/BPN-TonalTweaks/Reverse-S-Curve.jpg” onclick=”window.open(this.href);return false;

[damien.murphy]

May 19, 2012 at 1:42 pm

shutterbug wrote:

Thanks Damien, the grass doesnt look overly green on my screen, but that doesnt mean
that my screen is right of course :lol: Thanks again for looking!

Ha ha, well its not the saturation of the grass for me Jenny, but the brightness, and that subconsciously the eye is not expecting to see the grass that bright, but rather in shadow a little. I think our eyes have been conditioned in seeing a certain way for so long, especially with where to expect to see shadow/ darker areas, and that is why a lot of HDR looks a little unnatural to many, I suspect, as it is jarring to what the eye/ brain is expecting to see. Just really thinking out loud here more than anything :)

[damien.murphy]

May 19, 2012 at 1:32 pm

Nice shoot, and must say the first one really stands out for me, perhaps its the powerful compositional triangle from their faces to their chest/ navel. Really nice work, and only comment would be as to the visual fabric connecting the images, as the three you posted seem could knit more strongly as a series I feel, with maybe the second image being the weakest for me.

In any case, lovely work :)

[damien.murphy]

May 19, 2012 at 1:26 pm

Nothing to see, alas.. perhaps it’s gotten lost in your flickr shuffle..

[damien.murphy]

May 19, 2012 at 1:25 pm

A nice set, and a lot of fun shooting I imagine. Really nice images, and love the expression you’ve captured. Seems like you might have a lifelong model to work with :)