Just ran across this fantastic example of the kind of work that Leica rangefinder cameras excel at. Not really my taste in the specific treatment of the negatives (this was done on film) but the images are great and as I said a fantastic example. If this is the kind of thing (range and proximity) of things you like to shoot. The M9 or M6 or M3 may be the camera for you. If you are too lazy to process and scan film then definitely the M9. This image...
I cannot believe that this subject is so popular. I also cannot believe that so many people are so paranoid of an sRGB output. I guess I am glad to see a lot of interest in printing and I think both Apple books and Blurb.com are a fantastic way to showcase your work – far better than just jamming them up on the web. Let me get to the point – I have made blurb books from Aperture and I am pretty certain based on my experience with a...
As most of you know I am not a landscape guy. Don’t have the patience for it but If I happen to be there, sure I’ll give it a shot. That happens very rarely, especially where I live. Don’t get me wrong, the bay and surrounding area are quite beautiful but if there is nothing in the sky it is kind of flat and very difficult to get a good landscape image that represents the feeling of the place. I have been working on a super secret project this...
A long long time ago I put up a couple of posts about a couple of ways to use Aperture’s easy to use but completely undocumented book layout tool for just about any book printing service. I guess all of a sudden these services have become far more popular and hence I have receive a bunch of questions specifically related to blurb.com and Aperture. Instead of trying to recap all of the information exchanged I am just going to give a couple of guidelines to help point people interested...
This film was one of the few modern black and white triumphs of Kodak. It is actually unbelievable. I have shot a ton of this stuff in both 35mm and medium format. I really was not that interested in the TMAX line when it appeared on the scene. Of course I did some cursory tests of TMX and it’s siblings to get a feel for it but I never really dove in until availability of Agfa APX 25 started to become a problem in the states and ultimately disappeared....
Have had time to catch up on a heck of a lot of email this weekend, as some of you have figured out by my recent posts. Seems I might be doing film and some of you a disservice in the way I have been presenting some of my film scans according to an astute reader that has a passion for shooting film. I guess my thought was that everybody knows everything about scanning film and what that “should” look like vs what an analog print looks like, etc,...
Had a conversation with a reader the other day who asked me why I am so down on Photoshop. Hmmm… I’m not. I am down on the what passes for a photo today. I am down on Time magazine covers that look downright horrible, like the glamourized Glen Beck. I am down on what I will call image abuse perpetrated via Photoshop. I don’t write a lot about PS because I think that there are way too many sites about how to screw your perfectly good images up with...
Just wanted to point out something that I have been harping on about for the last week – namely buying a film M series rangefinder to check it out prior to buying an M9. Assuming you have never shot one before. I would classify this as a reasonable deal – even if it needs a CLA it would end up being a good deal. This auction ended yesterday or the day before. Scroll to the bottom to see the actual auction history and images of the item. This is...
Remember the couple of semi-sarcastic posts I made a while ago? If you don’t they were meant in jest to educate and amuse. I was shocked that people were finding their way to this site with google keywords “Ansel Adams Lightroom presets” – sort of the epitome of missing the whole point of Ansel Adam’s entire philosophy of making a photograph. Anyway here is the deal, guess how many visits the site has from people that are searching for “Leica M9 autofocus lens”. Don’t bother – let’s just say...
Just a real quick post on my long overdue shooting film series, since I have been so big on shooting an M series film camera prior to taking the $9000 plunge for an M9 and meager Leica lens. Here is an old favorite of mine, always appropriate, renders skin tones well – a little too blue sensitive but hey that is what yellow filters were made for. Good ol’ Kodak Plus-X Pan. This example happens to have been developed in Kodak XTOL, a wunder-developer of the moment a decade...
