Fishing Trip to Marysville

Ok enough talk, let's put up some photos! I took my brother inlaw, Jack and my son, Jordan, fishing at the Marysville Trout & Salmon Ponds. After paying $5 you can fish and catch as many fish as you like. What's the catch (pardon the pun) and then per kilo on what you catch. Well at least your guaranteed a fish and they are fresh.  Jack caught 2 trout in the first 5 minutes. So i decided to walked around to take some shots to save money.

Here are some of the shots I took with my Leica M6 with a Voigtlander 35mm Nokton f/1.4 and Kodak Ektar 100. I also took an Olympus OM-20 witha 50mm f/1.4 with me, but that's another post. For more information about the farm go to http://www.marysvilletrout.com.au/. I'm not crazy about Kodak Ektar 100. I find it hard to get a great exposure. I think I need to shoot it more often to learn it's limits.

Film Is Not Dead

People often ask why film? Isn't film dead? Can you still get film processed? Well film is not dead and it can be processed cheaply if you only want the negatives. but why film? Well I have to go back in time again. After my using my first personal digital point and shoot camera I wanted to do more. so I began to read the manual and try and do more with this little camera. I began to shoot in tiff's because of the higher quality image. I began to play with aperture and shutter speed all with the goal of getting better photos. But after digging through so many menus, being frustrated with blurry shots taken in darker places or indoors and having peoples faces blasted with a flash I began to do some research.

I accidentally stumbled on some photos of the Computer History Museum. Searching through the information I found they were taken by a Canon 5D. looks like I needed an SLR Camera. But weren't they expensive and out of reach?  No apparently not. So I was given a Nikon DSLR for my birthday. It was bliss. This camera had buttons for many of it's functions. I was now hooked on photography. But where were all the great looking photos like the ones I saw taken by the 5D? My SLR photos were sharper, nicer and had more detail than my point and shoot, but something was missing. I then found out that I needed to process these photos in a program like Photoshop, Lightroom or aperture to get them looking alive and not so sterile. So now I needed to spend hours in front of a computer tweaking my photos so they wouldn't look so flat and sterile. Welcome to digital photography.

I was now spending so much time in front of my computer trying to make my digital shots look like they were alive, vibrant and well.... looking like film. So i applied film actions in Aperture, Lomo actions, Diana actions, Velvia actions and more all in the name of making my photos come alive. Why film? Well for one, why not cut out the middle man and save hours in front of a computer and start off with film?

I have added a couple of shots in this thread, one processed digital and one film with some minor touch ups. Which is film?

Why film? More reasons to come.

First Post

Well this is my first post. So what's the motivation for starting this blog? Well let's go back to the start. I have have been shooting film since a youngster. Mostly cheap point and shoot cameras.  The first SLR I saw was my Grandfather's. He also had a Polaroid One Step. All I remember was visiting our grandparents and grandmother whipping out the cameras and making us all stand straight and pose and smile. It became a ritual whenever we visited. It drove me crazy and put off photography. I only took out my point and shoot on special occasions and only to document special events. That was the extent of my use of a camera.

The first digital camera I used was for work. It was a VGA resolution Kodak point and shoot, which in those days cost a fortune. It became my job to take all the photos. But with me being shy and with absolutely no zoom on the camera all my shots were from distances. Horrible! The next camera bought by the company was a 1 megapixel Kodak with a 3x zoom. A little easier to use. But I was again put off by of the technology or lack thereof. I really disliked taking photos because it forced me to be confrontational and get up close and personal with people which challenged me greatly.

So lets fast forward to 2007. I wanted a digital camera begin to document our trips to Malaysia and my son's growing up. I thought film was dead and digital was the way of the future and at this stage technology advanced. So what would I get? After much research I chose an Olympus Camedia 6mp with 10x Zoom. No more getting into people's faces. Well that was it. I took the camera with me to Malaysia and had it every where we went. I shot everything possible even in car shots. I was hooked. You couldn't tear the camera from my hands much to the sadness of all my family.  After much use I found it's many limitations. So what was next? Well that's for another post. let's keep this short and see where it goes 8) My goal here is to document my film photography as well digital experience. I also want to put up some historical family photos for my family to follow.

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