SDN Photo-a-Day (Rules updates - read the OP)

[Simplicius]

My parents have an old Nikon they never use since they got a digital. I gather it's a nice camera, but I really have no idea. I'll be visiting them this weekend so I could take a look at it. My luddite side likes the idea of using real film, but film and development are non-trivial costs.

If you use it, you'll have a 'coasting' period where you are spending less on film that you would to buy even a basic point-and-shoot DSLR, so the Nikon will give you a cheaper learning period than any method that doesn't involve actual theft. I ran some rough numbers and it 'costs' about 1,000 frames of 35mm (buy, develop, & print) to buy (new) the cheapest Canon DSLR, and about 200 frames to buy a quality-but-affordable digital P&S, which I would not really recommend as a learner's camera anyway. Those 1,000 frames are an ample learning curve, considering that I have only shot a little over 1,500 total film frames in the past two years, and I would say I was settling into my camera well by Frame 100 or so - meaning that I could take a picture and be reasonably confident that it would come out as I expected, without using a meter or anything. Learning the 'art' takes longer, of course, but results that one can be happy with at the time in only 100 frames is a pretty cheap success.

Alright, so presuming I just load up the Nikon with film (it's been stored carefully; there shouldn't be any problem with that), what's a good resource for finding out the basics of composition, lighting, that kind of thing? Right now, I'm a total noob. I look at a good photo and I know it's good for some reason, but I can't put my finger on it and wouldn't know how to reproduce it.

To add to phongn's site, I think The Luminous Landscape and Cambridge in Colour are worth reading. Luminous Landscape in particular is good for reading about the craft of photography. Wikipedia is also good as a technical reference.

As far as getting started, there are three things that I would have liked to have known when I first took my old Pentax into the wild: 1.) the manufacturer-recommended exposures for whatever film I was using (data sheets easily available online), 2.) what f-stops actually were and how they related to shutter speeds, and 3.) how to use the depth-of-field scale on the lens. The first two will get you exposures good enough to work with; the third would have made all the figures scribed on the lens less intimidating, as well as being a handy compositional tool.

Artificial lighting isn't something you'll need to be too bothered by for now, I think; like phongn I am still content with available-light photography. Available light is just that, but there are some things that are useful to know: Oblique light looks good and warm light looks good, which is why sunrise and sunset are popular for photography. The 10 AM- 2 PM period has the whitest, most direct lighting, and its harshness makes it harder to work with and less appealing for many. Shooting smack into the sun generally gives crappy results unless you are deliberately backlighting something, and if you are careless you might get a hole burnt in your shutter. Overcast gives nice, even lighting over the whole scene; but the drawback of this is that it can make the scene look flat and boring, and it can be hard to expose with a bright overcast sky. In general, the most dramatic light occurs at transitions - between night and day, clear and stormy, etc.

Say the subject he'd probably like the best is architecture.

You'll use whatever equipment you can get, of course, and your personal style will be what it is, but if you find yourself an avid photographer you'll definitely want to borrow a large-format view camera, because they beat all for formal architectural portraits.

[phongn]

If you use it, you'll have a 'coasting' period where you are spending less on film that you would to buy even a basic point-and-shoot DSLR, so the Nikon will give you a cheaper learning period than any method that doesn't involve actual theft. ... Learning the 'art' takes longer, of course, but results that one can be happy with at the time in only 100 frames is a pretty cheap success.

Quite so - though, the advantage of digital is instant feedback. Whether one uses that is another question entirely (and, honestly, having that has made be a bit lazy as to considering things before hand). Film is nice in that it's fairly consistent and there's no worry about the Next Big Model.

Artificial lighting isn't something you'll need to be too bothered by for now, I think; like phongn I am still content with available-light photography. Available light is just that, but there are some things that are useful to know:

For when anyone wants to play with more lighting, Strobist is the go-to place.

Oblique light looks good and warm light looks good, which is why sunrise and sunset are popular for photography. The 10 AM- 2 PM period has the whitest, most direct lighting, and its harshness makes it harder to work with and less appealing for many. Shooting smack into the sun generally gives crappy results unless you are deliberately backlighting something, and if you are careless you might get a hole burnt in your shutter. Overcast gives nice, even lighting over the whole scene; but the drawback of this is that it can make the scene look flat and boring, and it can be hard to expose with a bright overcast sky. In general, the most dramatic light occurs at transitions - between night and day, clear and stormy, etc.

Or, another way to put it: contrast. That, and as much clear atmosphere between the sun and your subject Unfortunately, great light tends to have fairly short windows in which to shoot. And one site, which I hope won't get me shot: Ken Rockwell. He's a huge nut and take what he says with a mountain of salt. But - he does have some decent advice in his site.

You'll use whatever equipment you can get, of course, and your personal style will be what it is, but if you find yourself an avid photographer you'll definitely want to borrow a large-format view camera, because they beat all for formal architectural portraits.

Well, in the meanwhile he might be able to get a tilt-shift lens, though they tend to cost a small fortune. And a view camera beats all for a whole lot of portraits, not just architecture! I remember a National Geographic with an article about cowboys - and the portraits were all shot with view cameras lugged into the field.

[The Grim Squeaker]

RI, my recommendation to you as someone wanting to start taking photos is to go with a digital camera.

It's easier and faster to use, you can take as many photos as you want without worrying about printing costs (which really helps the learning curve).
Thinking "Oh, cool building, I might as well try to shoot it from the 11th floor" and "Nice building, but I don't know if it's worth 1-3$ just to try a picture of it, nah, never mind" are HUGE differences in terms of how much you'll find yourself practicing and improving. At least if you're a cheap skinflint like myself ).


As for what camera to use, A DSLR is awesome and if you have a budget and really are serious about loving architecture photos, nothing beats an ultra wide or a tilt shift (lens which changes the relative angle of view for a larger depth of field) on a DSLR. But that's expensive.
What's your budget, and how comfortable are you with technology/adjusting things? I really wouldn't knock out the option of a compact or a superzoom camera with a 24mm equilevent lens, especially if you're new to the thing, and for buildings the drawbacks of a compact are far smaller. (They're terrible in low light, and often lack manual controls, and have lower image quality which is most noticeable in clipped highlights/burned out white. Not much of a problem with buildings)

[Bounty]

[Simplicius]

RI, my recommendation to you as someone wanting to start taking photos is to go with a digital camera.

It's easier and faster to use, you can take as many photos as you want without worrying about printing costs (which really helps the learning curve).
Thinking "Oh, cool building, I might as well try to shoot it from the 11th floor" and "Nice building, but I don't know if it's worth 1-3$ just to try a picture of it, nah, never mind" are HUGE differences in terms of how much you'll find yourself practicing and improving. At least if you're a cheap skinflint like myself ).

Honestly, why should he spend hundreds of dollars on a camera to see if he's interested in the hobby when he can get a free film camera and drop $30 on a few rolls of film + processing? In the two years since I've been shooting with my free Pentax I've only just barely 'bought' your 40D. DSLRs are not trivial expenses for the penny-pincher.

Your per-frame costs are totally spurious, too. 35mm costs me about $0.55 per frame, buying generic Fujifilm or Kodak Gold and getting it developed at a dedicated photo lab instead of a drugstore processor (which would knock a few cents off of that cost, even.) To appeal even more to the cheapskate, film for an amateur photographer is a $13 outlay every couple of weeks versus a $600+ DSLR all at once - much easier to bear. Frankly, unless you spam out frames like there's no tomorrow - which isn't necessary unless you are photographing professionally - the cost of film is not a deal-breaker. It's considerably more expensive for medium- and large-format, of course, but then you are paying for image quality that can compete with or completely crush high-end digital.

Furthermore, while the zero-per-frame cost of digital photos (setting aside the cost of the camera) and the immediate feedback are helpful learning tools, someone who will grudge fifty cents for a frame of film is certainly going to think his shots through beforehand to make sure those two bits don't go to waste. That is the kind of mental process that any photographer really needs to cultivate, only there's no incentive to do it with a digital camera.

What's your budget, and how comfortable are you with technology/adjusting things? I really wouldn't knock out the option of a compact or a superzoom camera with a 24mm equilevent lens, especially if you're new to the thing, and for buildings the drawbacks of a compact are far smaller. (They're terrible in low light, and often lack manual controls, and have lower image quality which is most noticeable in clipped highlights/burned out white. Not much of a problem with buildings)

These things make compacts bad learner's cameras, which is really what is on the table here. The terrible user interfaces deserve special notice; one of the reasons why old film SLRs are good learner's cameras (besides that they are dirt-cheap) is that they are full-manual and all the controls are sensibly placed on the exterior of the camera. Everything is right there, and the learner has to use everything in order to make the camera work. Do DSLR lenses even have aperture rings?

My opinion of superzoom cameras is the same, because they are also geared toward a totally different market than Red is presently in, i.e. snapshooters who want their cameras to be MORE POWERFULLER but don't want to spend DSLR money. They might have an advantage over compacts, but that doesn't mean they aren't amped-up snapshot cameras anyway. Some of them are even expensive enough that someone might as well spend a little bit more to get the bigger sensor and greater flexibility of a DSLR and have a much more useful tool.

Also, I'd like to note that my experience with a compact in Washington, D.C. is enough to convince me that their drawbacks are insufficient for serious architectural photography (lol barrel distortion, lol massively blown skies, lol unsteady shooting posture.)

[The Grim Squeaker]

Bounty - The first shot is excellent!
The second shot is nice for something so "artsy", but the composition is lacking, (stone right of the balloon, and the bottom left corner).

[Simplicius]

Bounty, that second photo looks pretty good. Not just "oh it came out well," but it looks good in and of itself. First one came out well, but as a photograph it's kind of cluttered and doesn't really have a subject. There's some interesting geometry in those roof panels, though, and I think there's fodder for future photos at that station if it's in your area.

The whites look a little bright, but that could just be the laptop monitor. I'll give it another look later, but your histograms look all right to me.

[Bounty]

They're from the Zorki, I've started taking it along as my "snapshot" camera in case I see something interesting. The station is one I'm in every day, so I usually have some time to shoot the roof while I'm waiting for the 7.55 Unfortunately it's being renovated right now so it's usually cluttered with building materials and dust; those can be interesting to shoot too, but I haven't been able to make anything of them.

I'll give it another look later, but your histograms look all right to me.

I guess this is film latitude at work. Either that or my photographer has been helping the photos along in development and scanning, because these were taken with just a paper calculator. The second one wasn't even expected to come out right, I just shot that at the lowest F-stop and 1/50 because it was indoors.

[aerius]

Available light is just that, but there are some things that are useful to know: Oblique light looks good and warm light looks good, which is why sunrise and sunset are popular for photography. The 10 AM- 2 PM period has the whitest, most direct lighting, and its harshness makes it harder to work with and less appealing for many. Shooting smack into the sun generally gives crappy results unless you are deliberately backlighting something, and if you are careless you might get a hole burnt in your shutter. Overcast gives nice, even lighting over the whole scene; but the drawback of this is that it can make the scene look flat and boring, and it can be hard to expose with a bright overcast sky. In general, the most dramatic light occurs at transitions - between night and day, clear and stormy, etc.

To illustrate that here's a couple pictures I took in the evening. These are straight out of the camera except for a bit of cropping, I didn't touch the colour balance, saturation, or curves tools at all. I did have my camera set for extra saturation and a warmer colour balance, that's it.

[Bounty]

This is from the same last roll. I wasn't going to post it since it's boring and not quite focused right, but since I've got nothing else coming up...

[phongn]

Here I am with my fancy DSLR and selection of lenses ... and I've just bid on a Canonet

[Bounty]

Here I am with my fancy DSLR and selection of lenses ... and I've just bid on a Canonet

QL17 GIII? It's the one all the cool kids want.

[phongn]

QL17 GIII? It's the one all the cool kids want.

Yes. Also looking at the Yashica GSN.

[Bounty]

Ask Simplicius about the Yashica, he has one.

I believe it was Henri Cartier-Bresson who said, "ZOMG TEH BOKEHS!!!!11!!!". Building on that, I took an image I had which I liked but suffered from being a dark subject on a cluttered background (which is absolute murder on, well, actually making out what's in the picture), played with blurring a bit, and got this:



It has that weird "this is edited" look, which is probably in no small part due to my shoddy selection tool skills.

[RedImperator]

So the camera is a Nikon EM with a 50mm lens and a light meter. I can't peg the exact year, but judging by the disco-riffic outfits on display in the "How to use your new Nikon" booklet, I'd peg it as a late 70s, early 80s model. Everything still works (there's film still in it; probably a birthday party from fifteen years ago or something). I'll experiment with it tonight once the sun goes down a little (bright, hot, light outside today).

[Bounty]

Wiki says it's from around 1980 and was targeted at women picking up photography An entry-model, aimed at people who wanted more than a point-and-shoot but something less complicated than a pro camera.

Unfortunately it doesn't have a full-manual mode, only a battery-less backup mode with reduced functions. If it still works, there's of course nothing stopping you from using it, but if you really want to get the basics down you might want to keep looking for something else.

You'll want to check if it still gets power, if the light meter is still working and accurate, whether the lens has been damaged in any way, and if the mechanics (the film advance, the shutter, etc) are still in smooth working order. Just give all the controls a wiggle and see if they do what they're supposed to do without grinding or squeaking.

[Simplicius]

So the camera is a Nikon EM with a 50mm lens and a light meter. I can't peg the exact year, but judging by the disco-riffic outfits on display in the "How to use your new Nikon" booklet, I'd peg it as a late 70s, early 80s model. Everything still works (there's film still in it; probably a birthday party from fifteen years ago or something). I'll experiment with it tonight once the sun goes down a little (bright, hot, light outside today).

It sounds like a pretty okay camera from what I've read. No serious limitations save the lack of manual exposure, but the meter is accurate and the 50mm is a quality lens. It didn't sell very well back in the day, but that's more because it was less-than-full-featured rather than being a piece of junk. The 50 is a good lens to start learning composition on as well, because its perspective closely relates to that of your vision.

More good news: the battery is a 3V lithium (1/3N), so you can skip the hassle of making sure you can substitute a modern battery for an old mercury one. If it was well stored the only potential problems I can foresee would be some deterioration of the foam seals, or possibly a bit of corrosion in some contact somewhere. Good luck!

Yes. Also looking at the Yashica GSN.

I haven't used mine yet (G, not a GSN), so I can't tell you much that isn't hearsay. It's not a compact rangefinder by any means, being about the size of an SLR body. The viewfinder is parallax-corrected. It won't tell you what shutter speed it selects. The dogleg advance/cocking lever feels a bit strange under-thumb, but one could get used to it. I've read that it's a fine camera, though - sharp lens, accurate meter, and quiet shutter - without the cachet (and thus the price) of a Canonet. I got mine for $25 with case and a UV filter, which just goes to show that antique stores don't know anything about selling cameras.

[phongn]

Many of the pictures I take tend to have huge dynamic range so with digital I have to deliberately underexpose and then fix up the shadows, midtones, and colours while with film I just take the picture and let the response curve of the film do all the work for me.

I was on photo.net and stumbled on a big thread with all sorts of arguments about dynamic range, but one thing I took away was this paper proposing a CMOS sensor with 115 dB dynamic range. If its viable, that design should put pretty much everything else (including the human eye) to shame.

[DaveJB]

In the interests of experimentation, I ran a couple of rolls through my ancient EOS 650 (yep, the original EOS camera)... and I can safely say that it is in fact not a good idea to buy your film at the local pound shop, even if it is Kodak stuff. Still, some of them turned out okay, so I thought I might as well post a couple. Lens was the 70-200, and camera was set to Aperture Priority and f/5.6.

Kind of botched the composition on this one, but it shows the different ways in which film deals with light sources than digital does.



This was probably the best individual shot, although my 40D would likely have done a better job, comparatively speaking.

[Bounty]

Konica FP-1 automatic SLR in perfect working order: $50
Sigma Standard Zoom Lens: $100
Lens hood, lens cap, lens case, manual: let's say about $40 for the lot
---
Total price paid: $25... down from $30. I like flea markets.

[The Grim Squeaker]

Nice swan shot, but ack, T3 Gra1n! (I have a few identical ones to compare, and those are on the sigma, not a 70-200).

Bounty, what's your maximum F-stop?

[Bounty]

Nice swan shot, but ack, T3 Gra1n! (I have a few identical ones to compare, and those are on the sigma, not a 70-200).

Bounty, what's your maximum F-stop?

Front of the lens says 2.8. Mind you, this is 1982 vintage (I think... the camera's supposed to an '82, but the lens sn# is 64****. Did Konica use a year-based numbering system?).

The front of the lens is a bit dusty, but nothing that regular lens cleaner can't handle. The insides of the camera are spotless; it just needs a roll of film and a fresh set of batteries.

[DaveJB]

Nice swan shot, but ack, T3 Gra1n! (I have a few identical ones to compare, and those are on the sigma, not a 70-200).

What makes it even worse is the fact that the film was meant to be ISO 200 stuff - I've taken shots with the same lens and ISO 800 black-and-white film that has lower grain levels! Judging by some of the other shots I got, it seems that the specific film I was using does a really bad job of dealing with grain in defocused areas, irrespective of the exposure level (and don't even get me started on the plasticky neon look of the flower shots I did...)

[The Grim Squeaker]

Nice swan shot, but ack, T3 Gra1n! (I have a few identical ones to compare, and those are on the sigma, not a 70-200).

What makes it even worse is the fact that the film was meant to be ISO 200 stuff - I've taken shots with the same lens and ISO 800 black-and-white film that has lower grain levels! Judging by some of the other shots I got, it seems that the specific film I was using does a really bad job of dealing with grain in defocused areas, irrespective of the exposure level (and don't even get me started on the plasticky neon look of the flower shots I did...)

Yeah, it's definetly dodgy film if that's ISO 200. (Nevermind the fact that it's modern film, they have 1600 and even 3200 colour film these days).

[The Grim Squeaker]

3 Shots from my walk yesterday in Naveh Tzedek (old, very nice area in the south of Tel Aviv):

Best shot of the 3, though the composition could have benefited from not being on the other side of a busy street, under a cable in rush hour:

Another angle. The base didn't come out that well, alass.



Simplistic and full of negative space? Yeah, but I still like it being so clean.