During the week I was able to visit my good friend the photographer Imran Ali. He runs his studio from Liverpool Bluecoat and along with the excited conversation of catching up with one anothers’ exploits, we were able to tinker with the range of goodies in his studio.

I’ll confess he was impressed/amused at the bag of camera bits I took along for the session, but no-where near as impressed as I was with all of the lighting gear, reflectors and general electronica he had available for our photo-fest.

And as a delightful addition, we also had blogger friend Debra join us and add Vlad the Hasselblad into the equation.

“So How would you set up this lighting?” asked Imran, as my mind swam into a vortex of unease at the sheer range of options on offer.

“Er, something at the front?” I ventured, “And maybe something ELSE at the side?”

It was clearly too much for me and I was having trouble remembering the different between a grid, a snoot and a sparkling water.

“Reflector” I clung to. “Reflectors…We’ll need to use some reflectors”

Because Debra and I arrived at different times I was able to witness the same effect when she was asked similar questions. We both did that sharp intake of breath when we first noticed all the gantries and swivelly things.

There’s a clear need for vocabulary and a way to overlay structure onto what could otherwise look like chaos.


My compliments to Imran though. A combination of patience, indulgence and some basic disciplines shepherded both of us through the initial stages of using the lights.

Here’s the basic build we used.

1) A ‘beauty bowl’ front light comprising a bowl containing two diffusers.

2) A grid rim light to provide side highlights

3) A snoot projected backwards onto a black background to provide background colour via a gel

I can make it all sound glib here, but trust me, it took time for me to get this set up and balanced. By comparison watching Imran work was a revelation as he would change the degree of feather on a light with one hand and be simultaneously correcting the power output with the other hand.

Debra and I both experimented with the build up of lights one at a time. It was useful to see the effect of one item such as the side light and what it did to the subject. There are plenty of shadowy pictures of each of us now as we trialled the various combinations.

Another thing that was interesting was that we were shooting at ASA50, with quite stopped down apertures (f7.1) and 1/125 shutter. The available light in the room was negligible compared with the power of a thousand suns as the main strobes/flash units fired.

Anyway, I think it worked.


It was incredible how quickly the time passed and we’d planned a grand finale with Debra’s Hasselblad film camera (Vlad). ‘He’ was proving a little moody in this digital world and had to be coaxed to play with the strobe lights. We had a combination of a bulb and an electronic flash firer which Debra had to press simultaneously for her self portrait.


We created a few black Polaroid pictures along the way because the co-ordination required was to the nearest 125th of a second. Gulp. Anyway, the snap above is of the modelling light setup for the shot which we tried several times. I await Debra’s development of the film with bated breath. In the meantime, here’s a lovely square mono picture from the Canon.


The time ended all too soon but we were all quite pleased with the picture taking and progress. I learned a fantastic amount and it was fascinating working with Imran who mainly shot great pictures SOOC (Straight Out Of Camera) and just used colour correction, minor RAW exposure correction and minimalistic cropping.

I’m already thinking about a return visit!

1) Coffee-cam = No: At one time I tried using a ‘coffee cam’ which was a camera I’d put into a coffee cup. It was really a bit of whimsy, but illustrated the need for something with greater precision. 

2) Smaller camera works best: It also occurs to me that a smaller camera works better for what would be candid shots, compared with an SLR with a zoom lens. 

Part of the challenge is to be able to include other folk in the shot, without them ‘striking a pose’ or glaring. 

3) Go busy: I have decided at the moment it is easier to take these type of pictures in busy and touristy areas. There’s more people around with cameras, so most people are already inured to the thought of being snapped.

4) Blend in: Having also returned from holiday, I realized it is easier to look a bit touristy as part of blending in. 

5) Look like a snapper: Then its good to establish that the way of taking photographs is to point the camera at a big landmark and fiddle using the viewfinder to get the shot. It is also useful to keep the process lengthy to establish the theatre of shot-taking.

6)Switch off all the bleeps: The other thing to do is switch off all the tell-tale LCDs and clicks and beeps. I’ll call that ‘stealth mode’. And remove the lens cap (!) – I use a filter instead.

7)Go Hyper focal : What!? Beam me up Scotty. For daytime, it seems to be better to set a focal length and aperture size that creates a reasonable depth of field – somewhere between 2-5 metres gives quite a range in focus. I’m playing around with 35mm lens, f11(sunny) or f8(shady), ASA800 (quite high) and then expecting the shutter to be at least 1/150. I’m sure this could be more fancy based upon autofocus, but (especially with small cameras) I’m not convinced the autofocus is fast enough.

8)Being static: I can’t help noticing that anything I take whilst moving is more accident prone that when stationary (camera shake, motion blur, bad framing). I have not really explored this properly yet, but the act of walking, moving the camera and trying to frame all contribute to art over precision. Next step will be to find some static points.

Having started to experiment with this form of picture taking I can now start to work out the simpler shots. Silhouettes, back views, aerial shots, shots when with others, shots through glass are all somewhat easier than ‘alone to roam’.

We shall see.

I expect the camera buffs will talk about sensor size, chromatic aberration and megapixels, but I simply preferred that the Fuji has a (non exchangeable) manual twist zoom instead of the generally slow electric zooms on the Nikon and Canon models. At a non technical detail level they are all very similar, with (in my opinion) a slightly more robust apparent build quality on the Fuji.
And as a comparison, I’d usually take a Nikon DSLR, probably a D300 and maybe a couple of extra lenses, which would be 2-3 times the bulk of the Fuji.

So what happened?
Firstly, the camera does take pleasant pictures. The colour looks good and there’s enough pixels to mean some cropping is viable. I know, with a good SLR the cropping might not be needed, but its still a matter of balance.

The Fuji also had an automatic mode with a sort of dynamic range enhancer called EXR, which was supposed to stop sky highlight blowout and to improve detail in shadows. I didn’t find this setting to my liking, it seemed to slightly over-expose, so instead I used the ‘P’ mode and set the exposure down by 2/3 of a stop. This kept detail in the sky and although darkening the whole picture it ultimately gave more data to work with.

The camera also has a viewfinder, which was one of the other things I wanted; some of the bridge cameras have removed this, but it is still useful for framing, although the electronic viewfinder on the Fuji had a slow refresh and would go blank at the moment the shutter was pressed.

This leads me to the main drawback of this type of camera. I’d sort of forgotten about ‘shutter lag’ because of using DSLRs and other mechanical shuttered digital cameras. I once had a very smart looking Nikon compact that had a discernible ‘and one and two’ between pushing the button and the picture. This camera has a similar drawback.

What about the defining moment?
Digital photography misses the point if the defining moment of a shot can’t be captured. Cartier Bresson showed this in his work and there’s plenty of other famous examples.

To illustrate a basic challenge. Driving along the Camino Real it would be fun to take a photo of one of those bell markers that showed the route of the old Mission road. They are about every mile or two and can be seen from a long way away. I’d slow the car to make it easy for my co-pilot to ‘grab’ a shot, but it was surprisingly difficult with this camera. Firstly, it would power down and take 3 seconds to awake. Secondly, it would confuse itself about whether to display the image on the back screen or in the viewfinder. It would then take too long to work out the focus. And blank at the moment of picture. The end results were some ‘near misses’ taking these pictures. And this from a camera which includes ‘dog’ and ‘cat’ modes…

In general use
For general use in cityscapes, landscapes and general coverage the camera works fine. The built-in flash is also subtle for fill in and the ISO range is quite forgiving and can be set to an auto maximum, which will drop to the lowest sensible setting most of the time.

It could take regular AA batteries which meant not having to worry about running out of power anywhere.

In bright sunlight the back screen wouldn’t show anything clearly and the viewfinder images would be dark if I used the -2/3 setting which I needed to get the best exposure.

So did it work?
Mostly, yes. It handled the main travel pictures well. I learned to handle its peculiarities to get good pictures most of the time. The usual ‘halfway down’ button pressing worked to help the shutter lag, by effectively pre-loading the focus and exposure – although I suspect a lot of people wouldn’t know to do this type of thing.

Would I do it again?
Probably not. I have no regrets about the pictures I’ve taken – most of which have come out fine, but I do feel that the camera presented more of an obstacle than I’d expected. I don’t think I’m ‘blaming the tools’ here or particularly picking on the Fuji; I know I’ve had similar experiences with an equivalent Nikon in the past.

The camera’s strengths are a lens that runs from 24mm to 720mm with image stabilisation and pretty good colour on plenty of pixels. The best way to use it is to prepare for the shot (I know, I know).

That’s OK in theory, but not always possible. I know that when we used a pocketable Lumix for a few around town shots there was a sigh of relief that its fixed ‘28mm’ lens gave us shots at the exact moment we wanted them.

Sometimes I’ll use big SLR cameras with bulky lenses, but its also good to have something more portable. I typically use a little Lumix camera (LX3 or GF1), which can be unobtrusive, but both only have a rear screen for taking pictures. Its OK, but sometimes a more ‘to the eye’ style seems more natural.

I’ve just received the little Helios clip on viewfinder from an inexpensive eBay auction and added it to one of the little cameras.

Its amazing.

It won’t give me the exact view through the lens, but is a good way to frame a shot like a using a traditional camera. It even has markings for three different lens lengths, 35mm, 85mm and 135mm.

It’s a great match for the Lumix 20mm f1.7 (40mm equivalent lens) and surprisingly accurate for framing.

I’m hooked.

Yes, I received a book about ‘Light’ through the post a couple of days ago – With all my evening and night shots at this time of year, perhaps its also a hint to me to take more care in the way view Light?

This Brian and Janet Stoppee Guide to Photography and Light covers an aspect fundamental to photography, but as I read and thought about it I realised how much I didn’t know.

Quite often when I obtain reference books on varied topics, its a quick flick through to find some new points, or to help solve a particular problem. This was different because I could gain new information from most chapters.

As well as covering the theory of light and colour spaces, it moves into ways to manipulate or take advantage of light to handle different situations.

Its a heavy book to carry at some 500 pages, but its well divided into sections and has comprehensive areas around lighting, reflectors, tripods, stands, flash, post-production and indoor and outdoor work. Even the little section on light incidence at times of day and in different seasons is useful.

I guess a more experienced photographer may have most of this knowledge, but for a more casual snap-shotter like me its a strong reference by professional people who have obviously learned by experience.

The authors have film camera heritage but work digitally now, and in addition to the sections on post-production with Adobe and similar, there’s a strong emphasis on getting it right in the camera.

SOOC as I call it (Straight Out Of Camera).

The second part of the book takes many topics across a simple two page spread format, which is a handy way to browse, whilst also keeping related topics together as a narrative.

If I have a criticism, its of some of the actual photographs that make it into the book. My guess is that the book was quite a long time in production and may have been two books pushed together or has had some sort of makeover. There’s some signs of this with a few early pictures that suffer from heavily jagged edges – presumably from small originals. There’s also sections that are quite polarized towards a particular product set around Nikon cameras and Matthews Stands and Lighting equipment. I happen to use Nikon so its no big deal and the points made are applicable to pretty much any dSLR combination. My guess is that perhaps the book was originally destined with a different title or similar.

For me, the sections around light placement, metering and colour temperature all had good ‘Ahah’ moments and thats just scratching the (shiny) surface of what for me is a good reference volume.

Photography and Light – Brian and Janet Stoppee – Focal Press 2009 – well worth a look.

WIth it being New Year and all, here’s a link to balakov, where a few well known pictures have been rendered in Lego and also includes the ‘setup’ shots showing how they were made.

1) focusing 2)feet
This was part of my experimentation with hyperfocal focusing for street photography. A reasonable wide angle lens, pre focused (ahem) and then clicking a shot from waist-height. It didn’t quite work. Its a bit out of focus and its cropped their feet. I know proper street photography is in black-and-white, but I’m just practicing at the moment. I may use a digital for a few tests before I try more film stock for this.

Olympus OM2, 21mm f3.5.

1) focus 2)camera shake

What’s quite interesting with this type of photography is that there’s an element of ‘stolen moment’. I know the theory of presetting the shutter speed/focus/aperture but one needs a calmness to make it all work. I watched a guy in New York taking candids on a road crossing and he was all a bustle with a small Leica. In reality, some care is still needed to get the picture to freeze in sensible focus. Needs more work.

What was interesting about both of the above pictures though, is that the exposure seems pretty well spot on according to the equivalent computer calculation by Aperture. Not bad for a 1970s’ camera.

1) crap composition, 2) focus, 3) POV

Those that know my main blog will know that I don’t really do negative over there. This is something of a departure, putting up my own pictures and then criticizing them. I also deliberately use blurs and smudges over at rashbre central, so its amusing here trying to get some clean shots. The interesting thing for me with this little set was that I’d decided to experiment with ‘street’ settings but hadn’t really prepared. So I knew the theory but not the practicalities. And I suppose I was also in too much of a hurry as well. So the above picture taken with a 21mm lens has a large white van plonked in a silly place in the foreground and the interesting stuff going on in the arch is out of focus. It doesn’t pass the ‘brick’ test either because they are out of focus. I could have done so much more with the metalwork of that fork lift truck too.

Nice exposure though.

A few lessons for me:
1) Prepare for street shots; understand about pre-setting the camera
2) Still think about where the shots will work best
3) Use something moderately wide angle to gather the shot
4) Practice some non eye shots
5) Find some interesting areas for the shots/ backgrounds
6) Remember many of the best street shots can be black and white (I know I had a colour film at the time)
7) Get up close – I know I didn’t.

Call this a practice run.

I’ve been playing around with 35mm film and full frame sensor DSLR since the last post whilst I pondered the Depth of Field effects which are so much easier to get on cameras with large sensors. There’s some mathematics about calculating the near focus(NF) point, the far focus(FF) point and the consequent Depth of Field(DOF) in between. There is also the extra point called the Hyperfocal(H) point where from half that distance to infinity is in focus.

Why mention all of this? Mainly because just understanding that the points exist helps inform some types of photography. Its is less relevant when using auto focus or auto everything, but can provide some creative adjustments when wanting to throw background or foreground in or out of focus or to have a piece of the picture in focus alone.

I also noticed that it is easier to achieve with the larger format sensors and (less surprisingly) with wider aperture lenses. Quite interesting because there are a few commercial points to consider too:

1: most compact cameras have really small sensors – to keep down costs and to keep the camera small and slim. Neither point helps provide depth of field.

2: most DSLRs come with a zoom kit lens and many people don’t go beyond it. Many kit lenses stop down to around f3.8 and some of the really pronounced depth effects would typically be at larger apertures. The kit zoom is a pragmatic solution because the camera manufacturers know that changing lenses on digital is more dust prone than with film.

3: the sensors on most DSLRs are bigger than compact cameras, but still not as big as 35mm film, so the effect of the field is less pronounced for the previous mathematical reasons.

I guess it illustrates that the pixel race isn’t the only consideration with digital cameras although sensor size gets far less ‘publicity’.

Olympus OM1, Zuiko 24mm f2 Kodak ASA200

The strangest aspect is how small these lenses look on the digital camera body because they don’t have internal electronics and servo motors. These 20 year old lenses actually work quite well. The focusing is manual, but the camera makes a reassuring ping when its internal focus circuit detects that a point of sharpness has been reached. The aperture needs to be stopped down manually too. For anyone used to film SLRs this is really no big deal, and for many people working beyond ‘point and shoot’ with digital camera this is also pretty normal.

The other interesting thing is the relatively inexpensive nature of what are really quite good lenses. I think the Olympus Zuiko lenses are surprisingly sharp and well-behaved when used in this way and for relatively small change its possible to build up a selection of prime lenses which have effectively been traded in by ex film photographers who have gone digital.

I spotted a few reviews by lens gurus comparing the Zuikos with various Zeiss, Canon and other lenses and the Olympus Zuikos generally came out very well, usually getting some top marks.

I won’t be as fastidious as that, but I am interested to see if they’ll take a good picture and so far the results are encouraging.

I think its quite a good little secret to be able to pick up a 50mm prime f1.8 with a filter for less than the price of a Canon filter alone. This also extends to quite a few of the other useful lenses; I acquired a 28mm f2.8 for the cost of a Starbucks Latte. Of course, this was part of my little eBay project and I thought it best to finish my collection before declaring anything in case the prices suddenly all went up.

I’ll add a few pictures when I’ve taken more than just some test shots, but for the moment here’s a couple of ‘straight from the camera to illustrate the effect.

depth of field test- Zuiko 50mm f1.4 on Canon DSLR full frame – No PS

rainy window – Zuiko 50mm f1.4 on Canon full frame – No PS

Zuiko 28mm f2.8 on Canon full frame – No PS

My digital camera can take 2,200 12 Megapixel shots at fine Jpeg or 500 raw before the card is full. Burst mode is 6 frames per second. My film camera takes a maximum of 36 shots and I have to wind the film in between by hand.

The DSLR can upload directly into my photo management software Aperture and the snaps can be on the internet in a few minutes – handy for the rashbre central blog where I want something current to accompany my daily story. Likewise my cellphone can post pictures direct to the internet. By comparison, I’m posting pictures here from a stroll last Sunday with the Olympus, because I’ve only just got the pictures processed. Today’s film shots are still in the camera because I’m only on shot 22 out of 36. Maybe I’ll finish them this weekend, or maybe I won’t.

I suppose the film camera is reminding me about how sometimes slowly planning a shot can be part of the process. The little analogue 35mm SLR I’m using has manual aperture settings and a needle to match for exposure so its also good as a way to rmember photograpic technique, which can blur away in a microprocessor instant, with auto everything. I still find the DSLR will refocus because ‘it knows best’ if I’ve forgotton to override something.

Today I was out walking by the sun-lit River Thames whilst carrying the inconspicuous SLR and I mused that probably f11 would be a good aperture for some general wide angle shots. I don’t think with DSLR I hardly ever bother to think or make such preparations – knowing that the computerised ASA will automatically adjust if I forget a setting.

My point is the simplicity of the viewfinder, aperture and speed setting that the film camera re-instills. I shall continue to take pictures with whatever device is to hand, but I’m regaining my appreciation for the simplicity of film and the techniques employed.

The pictures to accompany this were shot using the eBay acquired Olympus OM2, with a likewise eBay acquired 21mm lens, mainly taken at around f8. Last Saturday, I took a short stroll with the camera and decided to play with perspective. Unlike my digital shots, these are ‘straight from the camera’, without any adjustments or cropping.

…but you know something, I can’t resist cropping the middle one…