Category: pictures

So. The Ixus. Fantastic, so I got another one – and so far it hasn’t been stolen. Unfortunately, the APS film format now seems to be dying out – it never did kill off 35mm with it’s user-convenience being outweighed by the smaller negative and more costly processing.

Of course 35mm (the 135 format) didn’t kill off roll film – 120 film, with its 6cm square negatives is still very much alive and kicking about 100 years after its introduction. Reckon we’ll still be using Compact Flash in 2094?

So after a few years, digital inevitably reared its head, and in 2003 we bought a Canon Powershot A40, which is still my only digital camera (I don’t count the camera in the phone). The A40 was rather liberating in that it allowed us to take hundreds of pictures without a care for the cost of processing – however what that actually meant was that we hardly printed any pictures at all!

Then there was video. I had an idea that I could start making music videos (and I have done – see elsewhere on the site), so I bought a Canon MVX250i. It does widescreen, has firewire, and can take half-decent stills (and has a monster optical zoom too).

And video prompted Super8 (I know, but I was looking for a different angle for shooting movies) and only 3 minutes and 30 seconds of film – not reusable like video of course.

This was actually liberating – rather than videoing everything, Super8 meant that I was selective – which is much easier to deal with in post-production! And after shooting movies on film, it seemed logical to go back to taking stills on film too, and a local freecycler provided me with two Yashica SLR Bodies (an FX-3 and an FX-D), along with 5 lenses. The light seals and body-covering were shot, but ebay provides, and soon I had two perfectly functioning cameras (the FX-3 can even do without batteries).

Since then I’ve acquired more cameras (including some medium-format cameras using the above-mentioned 120 roll film – very nice results) and basically home-processed a load of black and white films and prints. I guess I’ve come a long way since the instamatic…

This photography lark might be getting a bit more serious… I’ve just joined York Photographic Society, enrolled on an evening class (‘The Art of Photography‘), and subscribed to Black and White Photography magazine.

Here’s looking to better pics!

My first camera was a Kodak Instamatic 177X which I was given for a present (Christmas I think) when I was something like 9 years old. This was a fixed-focus camera with ‘cloudy’ and ‘sunny’ settings, and using 126 cartridge film. If it was too dark, extra light could be supplied by ‘magicubes’ – little plastic items containing four flash bulbs. The pictures (when they’d been developed and you’d got them back from Boots) were square which, looking back at them, seems a bit odd.

This was my main camera until some time in the mid-80s when I upgraded to a Canon AF35J – motor wind, (and auto focus if I remember correctly). Unfortunately, the camera died some time toward the end of the decade, whilst the Instamatic still carried on being used.

Now, the next camera I remember getting was a Canon Ixus in 1998 (a graduation memento), so I either kept on with the Instamatic, or there’s a camera in there that I’ve forgotten about.

I absolutely loved the Ixus. Ok, so the APS film format is not going to give me the best prints, but the sheer size (or lack of it) meant that I carried it around all the time: “The best camera is the one you have with you”…

Unfortunately, the camera was stolen in a burglary on our house in 1999. I obviously should have been carrying it around more…

A recent press release from Ilford gives film users reassurance in film’s future – a renaissance even: THE FUTURE OF FILM (14th May 2007).

As you may have noticed, all of the photographs on this site were taken on film (discounting screenshots of OS X screensavers, CGI, and video of course).

Why should anyone living in the 21st century still cling on to such an archaic form of image capture? Personally:

• I like the quality of a real photograph; sure, having taken the picture, developed and printed myself adds something to the artefact itself, and yes, it’s a long process (a quick turnaround would be a couple of days between taking the shot and hanging it on a wall), but there’s something about the visual quality that just pushes my buttons..!
• I’ve never been happy with the quality of images printed from a computer – they seem kind of flat somehow. Maybe I need to shell out on a better printer. Or a better digital camera. Or both.
• Knowing that I’m dealing with a finite resource (I may have packed an extra roll or two of film, but that’s still limited compared with a 2GB memory card) – and getting to medium format? Only 12 shots per roll!

Using film also means that I’m take more consideration about shooting; shots are framed and focussed, depth-of-field and shutter speed are taken into account with more deliberation.

Sure, maybe I’d be the same with a nice DSLR (one day, one day!) but with that LCD, there’s the temptation to chimp 🙂

I also found this when I started using Super 8… DV tape is a reusable commodity (and a tape will last an hour!); Super 8 forces shots to be considered (and rehearsed) – 3 minutes 20 seconds at 18fps – or 2 minutes 30 seconds at 24fps is not a long time – better get that shooting ratio up!