Spring in Royal Fort Gardens

On Thursday, I went for a lunchtime photo walk with Alex. We headed into Royal Fort Gardens, where there were large numbers of students enjoying the sun.

I was using my “new” RB67 with a wide-angle lens. It’s not exactly a lightweight camera for a walkabout, but I love using it, and the quality of the photos it produces. They’re extremely sharp and detailed, and this particular lens also gives unusual distortions.

We wandered past the chemistry department…

… and then back up St Michael’s Hill to the office.

Mothering Sunday

This weekend I popped home to see my mum for Mothering Sunday.

Mothering Sunday brought with it a visit to church, where I spotted the sunlight glancing off the bevelled edge of this headstone.

Later in the afternoon, the sun went down between broken clouds and formed a very dramatic sunset. Because human eyes have a better range of sensitivity to light than even the best cameras, the photo didn’t really do the scene justice, so I’ve boosted the contrast to bring back some of the extremes.

Taking the Mamiya out for a spin

Today I used my new (to me) Mamiya RB67 for the first time. It’s an excellent camera, albeit slightly heavy at around 3.5kg.

The sharpness and resolution are incredible, and using larger film means it’s easier to achieve a shallower depth of field.

These photos are only snaps I shot a few minutes’ walk away from my house as a test, but some of them I really like.

Like I said, I’m delighted with how these photos have come out. I’ve been building up a list of places I want to visit to take great landscapes, so now that I have a medium-format camera, a list, and impending Springtime and Summertime, I’m all set 🙂 Watch this space!

Bitton Station

Today I was visited by a friend from Nuneaton. We decided to enjoy the pleasant (but slightly overcast) Spring weather by cycling to Bitton Station on the Avon Valley Railway.

For the first time, I used Efke R 50 film and I took my Conway box camera. It has a low quality lens with poor contrast, poor sharpness, fixed focus and severe vignetting. All in all, it makes wonderful, soft, dreamy images that are perfect for shooting steam trains and old station buildings.

For the first shot, I used the built-in close up lens which says it works between one and three metres. I guess it’s out of calibration because the daffodils are blurred and the more distant fence is in focus.

On the platform of Bitton Station there are some old adverts. This one for Craven “A” cigarettes makes me wonder how on earth tobacco companies got away with such lies.

A couple of shots of the station platform at Bitton.

These two photos show a stretch of track nearer the Oldland Common station. Shame the locomotive approached a bit faster than I realised as I gazed through the viewfinder, and so it’s half out of the shot.

Super-moon

Tonight is the “supermoon“, apparently. It’s the closest it’s been since 1992 and should look larger and brighter. Delving a little deeper into the numbers, it is only a small percentage closer and the effects probably won’t be visible to the naked eye, without some sort of measuring equipment.

Whatever. We all know I love the moon, so I decided to take a picture of it as it was out so clearly.

Geek info: I used my Canon 450D with Tamron 70-300mm lens and 2× teleconverter. Neither of those two pieces of glass are up to much, so some sharpening was required in GIMP, as well as some correction for chromatic aberration (i.e., I made it black & white).

I’m quite pleased with the result.

Bristol dockside

Now the weather is looking a bit nicer, in the office we’re trying to arrange a weekly photo walk on Thursday. This week, Paul, Alex and I wandered down the hill to the dockside, and back via the Trenchard Street car park. I was shooting film, and these are my favourites from the roll.

Geek info: Canon AE-1 Program with Canon FD 28mm f/2.8 wide-angle lens, Ilford FP4+ 125 film and red filter.

First we started by the @Bristol complex, including Lloyds bank. It’s actually a circular-section building, but standing at the centre of the circle and using a wide lens it actually looks quite flat.

Moving on to the docks themselves…

The fairly crude 1970s lens I was using gives heaps of distortion when you don’t aim it levelly at something. This building was quite distorted so I decided to over-correct it and exaggerate the distortion in the other direction. The sides of the building are actually parallel in my photo, but it looks like it gets wider towards the top. And check out that bus…

Compositionally, I think this is my favourite of the day. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to get the shades of grey quite to my liking. When I boosted the contrast of the ground, water and sky the sun disappeared and became invisible. For me, the sun is an important element in this picture, so I had to sacrifice some contrast to keep both it and a little detail on the seated couple.

Once again, the wide-angle lens comes into its own with these views from the top level of the Trenchard Street car park.

All in all, a pleasant day and a fun walk. Lots more of these over Spring and Summer, I hope!

Wide angle views around the Avon Gorge

This week, in my quest to learn from Ansel Adams, I visited Avon Gorge and the Clifton Suspension Bridge to try my hand at some high-contrast landscapes.

I’ve had a wide-angle lens for some time but it hasn’t seen much use. I really enjoyed using this week though, and the third film using that lens is now in the camera.

Recreating a famous photograph

I decided to set a tricky Photo Challenge this week – recreating a famous photo.

For my own entry, I decided immediately that it should be in black and white. Rather than imitating a fine art photograph, I tried to think of famous documentary or news-related photos. Probably due to the fact that I saw this article about an iconic image of Obama, I had the theme of American presidents in my head.

I remembered that I used to do an impression of Richard Nixon some years ago, and so I decided to try and recreate his photo. I’m not quite sure when this one was taken, but I think it might be May 1973, as he promised “no whitewash on Watergate“.

Overall, I’m pleased with my result. Comparing it to the original, I think my face could be a bit lighter, and I could do with longer hair for backcombing! 😛

Passport photos

All the passport photo machines these days seem to be digital. There’s no flash, it only takes one photo, you get to see it first, and then it prints all four the same. Not to mention that it charges you a fiver. How boring!

I miss the machines that produce four bright flashes and then a few minutes later, out come four different photos. So I decided to make some photo-booth-style pictures of my own, by setting up a white backdrop, a white umbrella flash and a camera on a tripod. I put the camera in continuous drive with self-timer, for a photo every ten seconds. The camera took quite a few frames of me and Hannah. I’ve now developed the film, and I will contact-print the film strips directly onto photo paper to give little strips of photos, for that retro effect.

But for time being I’ve scanned the negatives and uploaded them here. This is the full set of photos, in order.