January 27, 2012

Seeing Red with Redscale XR 50-200

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Gaaah! I want to kick myself.

Here are a few photos I took with Lomography’s Redscale XR 50-200 film. I bought just ONE PACK of this last December when I visited South Korea, an afterthought to my splurging on T64. I thought, I DIY my own redscale so why buy lots? Since it’s on sale, let’s try one pack.

So, one pack = 3 rolls. The first thing I did when I got back to Manila was sell one roll and give another one away, leaving me with just this one roll. I’m in love. But I’ve no more! Gaaah!

All shots taken with a Konica C35, variable settings on the ASA.

Must find more of this film stock. Now na.

 

 

 

January 26, 2012

Lomography’s New Zoo Crew

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Just over two weeks until Valentine’s Day, and if you were wondering what to get your camera-loving significant other for the occasion, then here’s an analog trifecta treat from the folks at Lomography. Three new limited edition cameras, each given a faux animal skin treatment. From left to right: the Fisheye No. 2  Python, the Diana Mini Leopard, and the Diana F+ Zebra.

Animal Appeal

There’s a slight premium tacked on of course. But, then again, you are paying for something quite out of the ordinary. The press release says these are limited to only 2,000 units, but isn’t clear whether that’s 2,000 for each model or all three. In any case, these will still make quite the impression on whomever you’ll gift these to.

What’s your favorite?

Personally, I like the Fisheye 2, with the green adding an almost amphibian quality to the otherwise reptilian case. Plus, it’s the only one among the three I can pull off carrying around.

 

January 18, 2012

Going Back to the Fundamentals

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For the folks who received cameras last Christmas, welcome to the fold! It’s a wonderful hobby, this photography thing, whether you shoot digital or film, have the most advanced of gear or the  simplest of cameras, are in it to express your creative longings or are in it because it’s the in thing to do.

You’ve probably already shot the hell out of your new toy. Are you pleased with the results? If this is the very first time you’ve used a camera, a film one at that, you may be wondering: where are all the awesome shots I was expecting? Where are the crazy colors? What happened to the vignettes? Why’s it too dark? Why’s it too light? Why’s it all black? This is, of course, if you’re honest. Many new photographers like to convince themselves that their photos are award-worthy, even though they’re just photos of random clouds.

We all want to be better photographers, and the first step towards becoming one is admitting there’s a lot to learn. That means you. That means me. Photography requires us to understand some things, the basics, before we move on to the meatier stuff. To help everyone along, especially the beginners, I’ve decided to embark on a series of articles on the fundamentals of photography. Rather than go all technical, I’ll be focusing more on the basic principles of the art and craft.

I’m not a professional photographer, just an avid amateur, so this serves as a refresher course for me as well. I don’t live and breathe photography the way folks like Scott Kelby or Kevin Meredith do, so a return to beginnings can only serve to deepen my own understanding of this hobby.

We’ll tackle topics like exposure, shutter speed and aperture. ISO/ASA as well. Basic composition and framing, depth of field, panning, the Sunny 16 Rule of course. If I can find guest bloggers, that’d be great, a breath of fresh air to be sure. All that and more. But, I am asking for your forgiveness in advance. I can only write these when I find the time. Some weeks, it’ll come fast and frequent. Other times, it’ll be an agonizing drip-feed. Gotta prioritize writing that puts food on the table, heh.

Well, that serves as our introduction to the course. Now let me go and prepare the first lesson. Cheers.

 

January 15, 2012

Happy Fifty to the Olympus PEN D!

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Fifty years ago, Olympus released the PEN D, a small half frame camera with a brilliant 6-element 32mm Zuiko lens. It had a selenium meter, uncoupled so you wouldn’t have to be a slave to its whims (or be stuck with a dead camera after the selenium went dead). Aperture went from the fast f/1.9 to f/16 at its most narrow, shutter speed from 1/8 to 1/500 a second, including a bulb setting for really slow shutter action. Like the Olympus 35 UC, the PEN D had a clever way of setting exposure, based on EV, which made it easy to maintain proper exposure settings while tweaking aperture-speed combinations. Focus is, like the other PENs (except the PEN F series), by scale focus guesstimation as well.

Of the PEN D, I have two, one with a meter that still works. The other one is easy enough to use via Sunny 16 rule or with a handheld meter. As always, image quality is stellar. Being half frame, the camera gets you 72 shots for a 36-exposure roll, which is great if you’re on a tight budget. The contact prints are just so retro cute.

Thought I’d shoot a bit of camera porn for the fans. For some reason the soundtrack won’t play at 360p, so just play it at 240p or 480p. At 360p you hear the koi pond waterfall in the background.

 

December 31, 2011

Travelomo PSA #2

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It's 2012. Smile, please.

 

December 31, 2011

Travelomo PSA #1

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It's 2012. Smile, please.

 

December 30, 2011

Baby, You’re a Firework

Posted by travelomo under Tips and Techniques | Tags: , , , , |
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Fireworks Shuttleworth

Photo by SWSmith Photography

Just two days until we bid farewell to the year that was 2011 and welcome in the Year of Our Lord 2012, most likely with wonderfully excessive displays of pyrotechnomania. And while I don’t recommend strapping Roman candles to your boobs and setting them alight (a la Katy Perry), I do encourage everyone to crank up their cameras for some firework photography. While luck factors a lot in shooting pyrotechnics, there are some techniques to put into play to improve your shots. To help those who may not have a clue how to go about capturing a massive chrysanthemum bloom in the sky or a Catherine wheel in furious spin, here are ten of the best tips I’ve learned.

2008 first Fireworks

Photo by Daita

1. Go full manual
Forget aperture priority or shutter speed priority or full-on auto. If you want to take even decent firework shots, you’ve got to get a camera that lets you adjust your controls (speed, aperture, focus) manually. If you rely on your camera’s on-board metering system, chances are, their readings will be out of whack.

2. Set your shutter speed to B(ulb)
A slow shutter speed is key to capturing a nighttime mid-air explosion in all its glory. It takes time for a pyrotechnic starburst to achieve its maximum diameter, and you’ll want your shutter to be open all that time. With the Bulb setting, you have control over how long your shutter will stay open, long or short. I typically play around from 5 to 10 seconds. Also, you never really know when the next rocket will go off, so keeping your shutter open longer increases your chances of catching a few choice explosions.

fireworks!

Photo by Probably Okay!

(more…)

 

December 24, 2011

Letting Christmas Lights Take Shape

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Have a ball this Christmas!

With just under 24 hours before we hit Christmas – in this slice of the world, at least – this might be a tad late. But, if you live around these parts, chances are great that you won’t be taking down your Christmas lights until well into the new year. There’s still time to do this!

By “this,” I mean using creative aperture techniques to add shape to background lights and highlights. See the above photo? Look at the stars. See how they shine for you. No, that is not a Photoshop trick. I’ve transformed the pinpricks of light coming from a string of Christmas lights into five-point stars by modifying the shape of my camera lens’ aperture. In this case, I am using my favorite lens for this type of shot: the Lensbaby 2.0. If you don’t know what a Lensbaby is, just follow this link.

Lensbaby lenses don’t have adjustable iris apertures the way most lenses do. To adjust the opening, either to open it wide or stop it down, you have to insert aperture disks manually onto the front of the lens. Normally, those aperture disks just have circular holes punched into them, corresponding to a particular aperture size, say f/8 or f/2. What’s neat is you can also have aperture disks with different shaped holes. In this case, a star-shaped hole. (more…)

 

December 16, 2011

Annyong Haseyo, Lomo Korea!

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Not Quite Open, Not Quite Closed

After a herculean yet ultimately futile effort to get to Seoul’s Chungmuro district, where all the vintage camera stores are, before closing time, I made a mad dash to Hongik University, where Seoul’s Lomography store was located. The cabbie dropped me off in front of the school, which sits in the middle of a hip and happening area, full of restaurants, bars, galleries and boutique stores. I asked some students to direct me to the Lomography store and after some gesticulating and stabbing at my iPad, we all came to an understanding. They’d walk in the general direction and I’d follow them. Thanks, guys!

I reached the store almost half an hour after closing time but was lucky enough to find them still open (not closed, would be more accurate). They let me in and I was able to see and touch, for the very first time, Lomography’s Lomokino and metal La Sardina cameras. Tasty.

Bought a few packs of T64 (see previous post) but had to bug out quickly as the night was getting long in the tooth and the clerks looked like they needed to get on home. Farewells and smiles all around.

Lomokino, Lomokinis

Tin Can Cameras

 

December 15, 2011

The Taste of Tungsten in My Mouth

Posted by travelomo under Galleries/Portfolios, Travel | Tags: , , , , , , , , |
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Lomography's Color x Tungsten 64

So a couple of weeks ago, I was able to pick up several rolls of Lomography’s Tungsten 64 slide film at the Lomography store in Seoul. While I’d shot slide before, this would be my first time to shoot using film that wasn’t daylight balanced. As the name suggests, Tungsten 64 is film with chemistry that compensates for the yellowish cast of tungsten light. If you’ve played around with a digital camera’s white balance settings, you probably know what this means.

I didn’t really have specific test shots in mind to showcase the quirks of the film under daylight of fluorescent light. I was on vacation, after all, so I just took my normal holiday shots, using a Fujifilm Silvi f/2.8 point-and-shoot.

Flash forward a week. I was back in Manila, waiting for my roll to come back from the lab. The technician hands me the envelope. I open it excitedly and see that the negatives have a green hue to them. Cool. Then I look at the index print: it’s all green, too! I’m thinking, there must be something wrong (but wonderfully wrong) because I expected the shots to come out with a pink hue. Turns out this was the first time the lab had ever come across tungsten film (in a few years at least), and the technicians didn’t know what to make of it. They scanned the negatives as a positive, giving the shots that cool radioactive green glow.

It wasn’t a problem at all. A simple color invert using Photoshop and I’d have the shots as they should have come out, all pinky and rose. That green glow kept nagging my senses, though, and I couldn’t let it go. I just had to use those original scans.

The solution was, to create diptychs that displayed both negative and positive, side by side, to show contrast and to make some clever statements. I know this might be anathema to many film buffs who disdain Photoshop, but I’ve always been a Machiavellian the-end-justifies-the-means kinda guy. If you can do all sorts of old school tricks in a traditional wet darkroom, then you should also be allowed some manipulation using a digital workspace. Just don’t go crazy HDR overboard, ya know what I’m saying?

So, here are the results. Let me know what you think.

Between Two Buses, Between Two Worlds

Crossing Over Dimensions

North Korea, South Korea

This Corner of the Universe

Travelomo omolevarT

Galaxy Express Bus

Travelers of the Multiverse

Bumping into Yourself

Palindrome

 

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