General Photography | A Summer’s Day In Brighton.

Late September 2011, the day started with a half plan and what a half a plan it was. It mainly consisted of five words.

Today, we’re going to Brighton.

I went home and grabbed my Konica C35 and a roll of 35mm film. The Konica C35 is a compact 35mm rangefinder camera. This means that manual focusing is far more precise than it would be in a standard compact analogue camera and it the operation of the camera is near silent.

I have had this camera for well over a year but I never really used it, aside from the first roll of film that I used in it. The development of which yielded no amazing results, if only a couple of photographs for Facebook. I got the camera from Woods and Porter, a camera shop local to me that closed down. If you would like to see photos of that and an interview with the proprietor then click here.

the journey to Brighton took around an hour and thankfully the weather held out till we got there. Whenever I go somewhere the weather is OK when I leave and generally gets worse the closer I get to my destination. It seems that my leaving the house and travelling any notable distance seems to summon a stratus cloud. In all fairness I never check the weather report for where I’m going but that’s beside the point and I seem to have digressed somewhat.

But I must say that arriving in Brighton with my girlfriend to be welcomed by a cloudless sky made me quite happy. The car parked, and a short(ish) walk later we found ourselves on the seafront. I would say beach but to me a beach has to have sand that you don’t have to dig for.

The Konica C35 camera is pretty much automatic in regards to metering. Focus is fully manual as is ISO selection. The camera displays what aperture and shutter speed it’s going to use in the viewfinder with an indication to over and under exposed shots. It’s a really nice camera to just take around with you, if you’re looking for a compact 35mm camera with control over focusing. With this post I have included eleven photographs, I can’t remember what film I used because I grabbed it and put in without making any sort of note, but it’s more than likely a Kodak Everyday film at ISO 200 (but that’s just a guess).

Enjoy the photos.

Music Photography | Cardboard Cut-Outs 2

It’s currently 2:37am and I knew it would happen like this. Lately I haven’t really had the urge to write, I’ve tried believe me, with so much that I need to get done I had the desire to write but with no real urge to write. I tried a few times, but that just lead to a whole page of A4 being deleted and never seen again. So I kind of had a feeling that I would suddenly get the urge to write at a time where I should be considering sleep. Ah well, just glad to be able to write again.

In today’s post we have photographs from my younger brother’s gig that occurred a few weeks ago in all honesty, but it took me a while to get the film back. This isn’t the first time that I have photographed the Cardboard Cut-Outs, if you wish to see the photographs from the first gig of theirs that I photographed feel free to click here.

The photographs in this particular post were taken at R Bar in Gravesend, Kent and I thought that I would try and use the Olympus OM-10 and some black and white film like I did way back when I photographed Jason Olveira in Lewisham. There were a couple of problems though, firstly the highest rated black and white film that I could find was some ISO 400 Ilford HP5 film and my Olympus OM-10 decided to break.

My cameras don’t generally break so that was a major surprise, at first I thought it was the battery so I went a bought a new set and alas it was not the battery, the camera is just broken. So I used the Ilford HP5 in a different camera, my Canon EOS 3000 35mm film SLR. I haven’t really used this camera much before. I had got this camera from a charity shop in Bromley, if memory recalls, it also came in its box. So, we’ve solved the problem where I would be lacking a camera but alas we still had the issue with my film.

I really didn’t believe that ISO 400 would be enough, so I pushed the film. I rated the film in-camera at ISO 800 and wrote all over the canister in Sharpie so that whoever developed the film couldn’t be mistaken. The Canon EOS 3000 uses Canon EF lenses so I used the only two I had. The shots on this blog post were taken with wither a Canon EF 28mm f1.8 lens or a Canon EF 50mm f1.8 lens. You may notice that this blog post is a bit video heavy. The two videos at the top are from the Cardboard Cut-Outs gigs (the top being the first and the bottom being the second) and the video under the photographs is just a short one that I found on my computer that has nothing at all really to do with this blog post. There are eleven photographs and if you’ve been reading the post up to now you will realise that they are all in black and white.

There are a few more blog posts coming up, another gig post, a wedding and a few more. I have been busy recently, I’m going to go to sleep now, but, hopefully this ability to actually sit down and write will carry on into tomorrow and I’ll be able to delve into those short scripts I slightly abandoned. Hope you enjoy the photos.

General Photography | Lost Films Part One

A short while ago I decided to catalogue all my cameras so that I could keep track should I ever decide to lift my ‘no lending’ rule. In doing this, not only was I surprised by the amount of film cameras that I had somehow acquired over the years I was also surprised to find how many had half used films in them.

Half used films would usually happen from when I would take the camera out for a specific event and then completely forget to take an adequate amount of photographs.

I found around 25 films in total and I thought that I could make it a regular feature. I find waiting for the photographs to come out one of the interesting aspects of film photography. So when it comes to handing in a film without even knowing whether anything has come out at all I find getting the result quite exciting. When it comes to actually getting these films processed I generally opt to get the film developed without getting any prints made. This is mainly because I haven’t a clue how many (if any) photographs are actually on the roll of film and if I were to pay to get prints as well, it would prove to be quite expensive in the end. This is especially true if the films only yield one or two shots.

For our first instalment I’m going to use what must be the most recent of films. This film was first started in Meopham a few weeks ago on some Kodak Everyday ISO 200 35mm film (I seem to have a surplus of ISO 200 film at the moment). The photographs aren’t all from the same day, this is mainly due to what I said earlier, I take along a thirty-six exposure film and manage to take only ten shots. This leads to a variety of photographs when it finally gets processed. The photographs were taken on a Belomo Villia; a simple 35mm point and shoot camera. I received this camera as a gift some time ago and I’ve not used it as much as I should have.

I have just noticed whilst scanning the film, that the name of the film changes halfway through. It goes from Kodak Everyday ISO 200 to Jessops Diamond film.

So hopefully this can be the start of a new series of blog post showing photos from moments past and forgotten. It should provide a wealth of material as I have quite a few rolls still to get processed.

Music Photography | Cardboard Cutouts

Any band that I have photographed in the past knows that I love to do gig shots in monochrome. This is mainly because, through experience, I have found that venues tend to want to create an atmosphere and this usually is achieved through the use of awkward-to-photograph-with lighting. If it isn’t constantly changing colour it’s a colour that the white balance doesn’t know how to cope with. If you have found yourself in this situation then you will also know that manually adjusting the white balance hardly ever works. There are obviously ways around this, an external flash gun for example. But I really hate using flash guns if I can help it.

Another thing to add is that when it comes to gig photos I like to do it all manual, like I used to do with my film cameras. Part of it is guess work, but a big part is being able to step back and look at where you want to photograph and knowing what your exposure should be. One of my hidden talents is that I’m pretty good at guessing exposures at ISO 400 [even going again the advice of a light meter at times]. So when you’re on ISO 1600 it’s just a case of maths.

I had been thinking the other day that it had been some time since I had taken any gig photos and a little while later my younger brother told me about a gig that he and his friend Dave were doing on Friday the 13^th of May.

I had first started doing gig photography by contacting bands that enjoyed the sound of if they wanted any photos taken at an upcoming gig. This was usually done through Myspace, back when I had one. And then there were my friends that were musicians and I would attend their gigs and take photos accordingly, always loving the challenge of manual photography in such a hectic lighting set-up. This isn’t the first set of gig photos that I am placing on this blog. Click the photo links below to be taken through to my other music related posts on this blog.

Although the shots of Jason were taken with an Olympus OM-10 film SLR, the photos taken at the Adventure Starts Tomorrow gig and in today’s post and all were taken on the Canon EOS 50D using a combination of lenses. This camera was used at the request of my younger brother. This was mainly because he wanted to learn more about RAW photography with the shots.

The gig itself went really well, even though it was on Friday the 13^th. The boys went through some brilliant covers, clips of which can be found in the video embedded above. I suggest giving it a view, also at the very end of it my younger brother and I do a recital of the PokeRap. Which I’m sure has swayed all of you. Hope you enjoy the video and the photos and I hope you have enjoyed reading this post.

One more thing, one of the hardest things to do in gig photography in my opinion is taking photos of the drummer, they are usually in the back with little to no lighting and they generally move around the most.