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Monday, April 24, 2017

Square Format Photography, No Reason Not To Like It

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Digital Moments - Five frames on the simplicity of square format photography.
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The square format is historically a product associated with the medium and large format cameras, used mainly for landscape and portrait photography, the two subjects which have shown to be quite difficult to compose on a 35mm rectangle.

The format has been with us since the days of the Rolleiflex, a medium format twin lens reflex (TLR) camera introduced in 1929, and was followed by Hasselblad, Holga, Polaroid, Kodak, and other makes, all using the 6x6cm negative film format on 120 or 220 film rolls. Its resurgence in digital photography is made possible with image aspect ratio options that you can set your camera to, or by having images cropped to the ratio in post-processing.

The format is easy on the eyes as the composition of the image is very much simplified and you are left with only the object itself as the focus of the composition, sans all the superfluous surrounding bits. You can also do away with the theory of thirds as it does not really apply to square format images.

1:1 Image Aspect Ratio
Square Format Photography

Instead of placing the object right in the middle of the composition, use leading lines, and shapes that will become the dominant part of the image. While you might notice that the composition of square format photography is always in balance, the use of a dominant color in color photographs may also add to the centrality or the dominance of the composition.

While many photographers recommend the square format be in black and white, images in color or other post-process creatives can equally stand out.



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Monday, April 17, 2017

Olympus Pen EF, The Landscape

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Half Frame Photography, film photography favorites, image making with an Olympus Pen EF, looking at the landscape in the 3:4 image aspect ratio.
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Learning to compose and capture landscape images in portrait format is fairly straightforward, and you will be adept at it soon enough. One of the things you can do is practice composing your image with the inclusion of negative spaces.

This technique will also create a break in the composition, giving your vision a moment of rest before taking in the rest of the composition. Using a wide or ultra-wide-angle lens in portrait framing is another added advantage.

Olympus Pen EF
Olympus Pen EF

Though not wide enough for really spectacular wide-angle landscape shots, the Olympus Pen EF, for example, with its 28mm f/3.5 lens can be a good learning camera to start with. The f/3.5 lens, which focuses from 1.4 meters to infinity, is equally capable of getting the foreground, mid, and background elements in focus throughout the depth of field. The camera needs only to be held in its normal horizontal position for these shots.



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Monday, April 10, 2017

Canon AE-1 Program + Canon nFD 50mm 1:1.8, A Sampling of Images

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Analog Diary, film photography favorites, image making with a Canon nFD 50mm 1:1.8, first impression random shots.
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Happy thoughts, that's how I felt as I was going through the just uploaded scanned images taken with the Canon AE-1 Program fitted with a Canon FDn 50mm 1:1.8. Images from this roll of film, my first with the AE-1 Program, are purely random,  taken in and around the house, done with no specifics in mind.

The AE-1 Program turned out to be a joy to use actually. The very compact body came with a huge and bright finder, one of the largest ever made, I had no problem holding the camera up with one, hand, and focusing was effortless with the left hand (I was with a bit of luck here as the focusing ring on the 50mm f/1.8 is still silky smooth).

Canon AE-1 Program, FDn 50mm 1:1.8
Canon AE-1 Program, Canon nFD 50mm 1:1.8

Introduced as a successor to the Canon AE-1 which was first introduced in 1976, the Canon AE-1 Program (1981) is acknowledged as one of the most popular cameras of all time. The 35mm SLR saw the introduction of the Program AE mode, which enables both the shutter speed and aperture automatically by the camera. The metering is slightly biased towards the shutter speed setting.

Canon AE-1 Program, FDn 50mm 1:1.8
Canon AE-1 Program, Canon nFD 50mm 1:1.8

The Canon FDn 50mm f/1.8, performance-wise, is no slouch either. It was the lightest, and the cheapest, of all Canon FD interchangeable lenses, and the only lens in the Canon FDn series that came with only the S.C. (Spectra Coating) coating as opposed to the S.S.C. which all the others had. Handling, however, was superb and its solid reputation for stable picture quality and sharp, crisp pictures really shows in the images here. Couldn't really ask for more here, enjoy the show, folks.



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Monday, April 3, 2017

Olympus LT Zoom 105, Colors of R&R Rest Stops

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Analog Diary, film photography favorites, image making with an Olympus LT Zoom 105, on a couple of breaks on a long-distance drive.
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The images here were shot at a couple of R&R Rest Stops on the East Coast Highway, which were only recently completed (the R&Rs) and opened to the public. With a highway that has very little traffic, the R&Rs are neither populated nor crowded.

The two that I stopped at have all the rest and recuperate facilities to cater to the public but neither have all their food and refreshment outlets occupied and operating. Being fairly new means that the facilities and paintwork are still looking fresh and clean.

Olympus LT Zoom 105
Olympus LT Zoom 105 Panorama QD

The Olympus LT Zoom 105 Panorama QD is the final version of the LT (Leather Tech) series cameras introduced with the launch of the LT-1 (1995), LT-1 QD (1996), and the LT Zoom 105 (1997), and is fitted with a 38-105mm, f/4.5-8.9 zoom lens which focuses from 0.6m (2 feet) to infinity. How I wish that the camera was digital because then it would come with at least a 2.7-inch LCD instead of the minuscule diopter-corrected viewfinder which is really a squint to use.



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