Today being Wednesday, neither my wife or I work, so we went to Mote Park in Maidstone, Kent. It has been a beautiful spring day and we walked round the lake taking photos as we walked. In my 'Landscape' gallery, there are four images from the day. As well as using my D2XS, I took my Hasselblad and ran a roll of film through that to test out a 150mm lens I recently acquired - it will be interesting to see the results! I have discovered that the Hasselblad is quite slow to focus - my eyes not being what they were! I like medium format, but I think I probably need to change my 503CW for a camera with autofocus!! I'm thinking of perhaps a Mamiya 645 AFDII, or AFDIII. These cameras are more realistically priced that a Hasselblad H series and will take a digital back.... Time will tell!
Wednesday, 29 April 2009
Saturday, 25 April 2009
It's bluebell time again!
It's that time of year again and the bluebells are out once more!
We went to Hole Park again and were not disappointed with the sight of thousands and thousands of bluebells! We spent a couple of hours wandering around the gardens, taking photos and enjoying the glorious weather....
I have added half a dozen images from the gardens in my 'Nature' Gallery - enjoy!
Sunday, 12 April 2009
Update and camera designs
Long time no blog! I've not been taking that many photos recently. Due to a lack of funds, interest and extended holiday, we decided to give up the studio and that has meant that I haven't had anywhere to take portraits during the cold winter months. Now that the lighter evenings are with us and the temperature is climbing, I hope to start taking more portraits, but using different outdoor locations....
I have spent the winter designing a couple of cameras, one of which is partially made and the other mostly drawn up. I have just started on the design of a third camera too.
The one I have partially built is a 5 x 4 monorail camera which I am building specifically for photographing Canterbury Cathedral. Anyone who has been there will appreciate that one has to get quite close before one has an uninterrupted view of the entire building. This requires a very wide angle lens which causes severe distortion of the image. A monorail view camera will allow a wide angle lens to be used, but with all it's movements should remove the distortion....
The second camera is a 617. I like panoramic images and like the idea of taking them in the right format, rather than having to crop 'normal ratio' images to form them! I hope I am being clever as the intention is that the 617 body will fit onto the 5 x 4 body - using a special adapter plate - so I can use the view camera in 2 different formats.
You will probably have realised that both these cameras will use film! My intention is to scan the negatives and then use my computer to process the images. I have no intention of getting back into a darkroom!
The third camera which I am just starting to design in my head, is a pancake type which will use a 645 film back initially, though ultimately my aim is to get a digital back to use with it.
As the design and build of these cameras progress, I'll get more info posted on the blog, but for now, that's it!
