Tag Archives: 50mm

Revitalised

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A new year, lots of new resolutions that last mere days. I didn’t bother with any as I don’t see an arbitrary point in time as the catalyst to start afresh.

Having trudged through January,

always the darkest and dankest month, and fought off bronchitis during February, now is the time to get back into my photography in a big way.

Whilst idle with bronchitis I did muster the energy to have a look through my camera kit and give some of the more used bodies a bit of a clean. Nothing major, just a few cotton buds to lift the dust buried in the cracks and grooves. My black FM2n bodies look clean and sleek whilst the FE is bright and shiny. The FE is still missing a screw, but then aren’t we all?

So what’s next? Well I’m going up to Nottingham in a couple of weeks so will no doubt take my FE and possibly an FM2n as well, so I can use two lenses without having to swap. The 50mm f/1.8 on the FE and the 24mm f/2 on the FM2n ought to do it. I shall probably stick with Ilford XP2 400 black and white film as it’s what I’ve got the most of.

I said I’d be getting back into it in a big way, didn’t I? Well maybe not that big, using just two SLRs and a few rolls of film, but it’s been so long since I did any proper shoots that this will feel big by comparison.

I also need to get back into street photography. The Olympus Trip 35 I have is perfect for that. It’s small, easy to use, discreet and super fast to shoot with. I’m thinking Trafalgar Square, the South Bank and the intermediary areas for some reasonably good shots to get me back in to the swing of things.

Normally this is a time where I would be pining for new kit, but who wants a Nikon D800 with hundreds of annoying menu items, buttons and far too many megapixels when an FE, a 50mm and a roll of film will more than suffice?

Why can’t I shoot in the middle of the day?

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I can, but it’s often seen as wrong in the ‘professional’ world and in critique sections of most photography magazines.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with shooting Southwold Pier at noon, with a high sun and harsh shadows if that’s the look you want and it works well.

All you ever see in photography publications is ‘If you’d taken it just a couple of hours later then you would have caught the evening light and it would have looked much better.’

So are they saying it’s a rubbish photo or are they just telling us what THEY would prefer? There is a difference.

You may think that my dislike of these comments is the result of criticism received from a magazine. I’ve never submitted a photo to a magazine simply because photography is very personal to me and don’t feel a need to share it.

The only explanation I can think of for oft-undue criticism is that taking a picture in the middle of the day is easy – thousands of tourists will do it day in, day out – but shooting outside the ‘norm’ somehow elitiscises those that say dawn/dusk is best.

I recently took a series of shots on and around Brighton beach during the day in glorious weather. The sun was high in the sky and shadows were fairly harsh. That didn’t stop me. I opened the aperture up to f/2.8, 2.2 and even 1.6 and got some unusual beach scenes. You might think I’m crazy shooting at ISO 100, f/1.6, 1/8000s but it made for great photos that you couldn’t get
without using such a wide aperture.

If I submitted these to a magazine I suspect I’d get criticism for shooting the wrong subject at the wrong time of day and with the wrong aperture.

Maybe it’d be worth doing anyway…