Wednesday, September 21, 2016

Ogden's Not Gone Flake

Morning folks - this is a brief one, rather like those undies you used to wear when you were young . .. sigh, oh so different to the rubber-lined buckets that are required with old age . . . not wearing those?

Oh lucky person.

I was actually a fan of 'commando' for most of my early life . . . yes I can hear the titters around the world; initially it was a comfort thing, but come the big world of work, you try working with a shrink-wrap machine in a stockroom with no windows and no ventilation in 95° Farenheit of dry, plastic-debris filled heat. It was no fun (as well as being exceptionally detrimental to my health - thank you Virgin Records) and add to the mix tight stretch jeans (now commonplace on the UK High Street, but in my day, special order jobs from the States no less) and you have a recipe for some of the worst heat-rash known to man . . . so . . . 'commando' it was.

Anyway, you'll be pleased to hear I am still alive after another Summer of DIY and (sadly) very little printing.
Some photographic things have changed.
The Canon EOS has gone. It was a nice camera and all that, but to be honest, was little used and I just couldn't get on with the lens - no character.
So what did I do with my £260? (A little aside, that was a loss of around £90 in under a year . . . good old technology)
More didge I am afraid - this time the little Sony A6000. Steve and I had a conversation in which he said that even though it hadn't arrived (at the time) I'd end up hating it . . . by the end of the convo I had sold it to him in advance for a fiver . . oh how we larfed!
And the reason for this madness? well as you're no doubt aware, there's a plethora of adapters available for the Sony E mount, so I got a Metabones one for my most numerous of lenses, the Nikon F mount. Why Metabones when I could have bought a £10 one from ebay? Build and binding. The Metabones is brass and stainless steel, it won't bind to lens or camera - if you've ever had a brown-trouser moment from trying to get an aluminium filter off the front of an expensive lens and failing, then you'll realise how important brass is to camera screwy things.

You'll know my feelings about Nikons of course - ever reliable and useable.
I had the choice in my armoury of the 28mm f3.5 Nikkor, or one of my 35mm's (a f2 'O' and a f2.8 'K' Series). In a few brief trials, the 35mm 'O' won out and that is what is now mounted to it (with its front protected by a 1960's Nikon Skylight filter).
It's approximately equivalent to 46mm in old money, in other words slightly short of yer trad 'standard' lens.
Having only ever used these pre-Ai Nikkors in monochrome and with film I have to say it has been a total joy to see their character revealed in living Technicolor.
I am rather pleased actually, and whilst this line-up will never replace any film camera, you know what (whisper it) as modern cameras go, the Sony is surprisingly well thought out and more of a photographer's camera than a thing you stare at, look at the offending menu and say to yourself "What the feck did I just do?" (as was the case with the Canon).
In other words, whilst the options are there in spades, they can quickly be smashed out of the way to allow you to use the camera more like an film SLR from the 1990's.
Everything just works(ish).
So, here's some examples of ancient glass at work in a modern environment  - they won't win photographer of the year, but I like them.






































See what I mean - yes there's flare and all the wonderful messy shite people seem to spend half their life trying to eliminate these days, but they have character and are not at all tardy for a lens from about 1971.

If only my pants from that time still delivered these results . . . sadly they've gone to the great skidmark in the sky . . . farewell my famous old Jockey yellow and brown (trimmed, not stained) Y-fronts.

And that's it folks - just a quickie. I've got lots of other traditionally-themed stuff lined up, but I just need to get my act together.
I am sure I will - Scotland is now quickly adopting an Autumnal hue - it's dark when I get up . . where did the Summer go?
TTFN and remember, mony a mickle maks a muckle.











6 comments:

  1. Nice to see you back, Phil.

    I didn't say anything back then, but when I saw you first write about the EOS I did wonder how long it would last. Not that there is anything wrong with it ;)

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  2. Hi Omar - hope all is well with you!

    Really hope you aren't going to be saying the same thing in a years time . . . . the thing I found with the Canon was that it got in the way the whole time - no simplicity, just endless adjusting which I hated. I can say with the Sony, I can plonk the Nikkor on there and either through the simple use of the wheel on the top of the camera use it as Aperture Priority or totally Manual. And I can focus . . through a viewfinder using a weird thing called Focus Peaking which actually works very very well for portraits.
    Worryeth not, haven't totally gone over to the dark side - got a shed-load of printing to get on with!

    Been up to much yourself?

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  3. Yes, quite busy photographically for the last year. With four photog friends we've been publishing a small fanzine. What we do is, we shoot on a topic for six months and then publish a selection of the photographs. We've published two issues so far and are working on the 3rd. It's all self-financed, and we also distribute it on our own. What's more, it's free!

    We have this instagram page:
    https://www.instagram.com/gozaltifanzine/

    Also, you can see the cover of our first two issues in the second photo on my blog here:
    http://geldurkal.blogspot.com.tr/2016/09/poset.html
    Together with one of my photos from the 1st issue, which is about dogs.

    If you are interested, I can send you a copy from each. PM me your address and I'll take care of the rest.

    Cheers

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  4. That's very good Omar - thus are great things born!
    I'll PM you.

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  5. Tanks for the bog, Sheepy. The more I read of your works the more I wonder if you are by any chance related to the Eighth Baron von Schiephaus of Bavaria? The Schiephaussen are a wide and varied clan, examples of whom are to be found on every continents of the known world and a few other places.

    I like the colour images. I borrowed a few years back a Canon EOS something, and was heartily disappointed by it - bland and uninteresting I found the pictures I made with it. Looking back, they were no better, in fact they were worse than the results I was getting from my little Sony Cybershot with its 5.1 Mega Pixies. But that does have a Zeiss lens on it.

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  6. Hi Julian - third cousin twice removed the Baron, and descended from the Schiephaussen migrants who made it across in the 17th Century in search of bogle-picking work . . strangely they settled in Lincolnshire and changed their name to Rogers . . .and that's not even touching my Mother's side, which is Hendon and descended from Malta and Italy via somewhere else in the South of England . . .

    You've hit the EOS thing on the head - its' character or lack of it - and that is what I like about the Sony - you can mount anything of character on it, well nearly . . . and see what comes out. Very tempted to save for a Leitz adapter and see what the old 1930's Elmar can come up with!

    You've got to watch out for those Mega-Pixies . . and remember, Goblin yer food is bad for yer Elf . . .

    ReplyDelete

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