Revisiting The Beginning / 2018 Goals

 
Not sure what camera, probably a Nikon FA with a 50/1.8 AF, definitely a B&W Conversion from Kodak E100VS slide film.

This is currently the oldest image posted on my Flickr, and may actually have been my first post (after 13 years, I don't remember). It's not a great image, but it is a decent street candid.

I joined Flickr in May 2005, a few months before I started shooting digital seriously with a Pentax *istD, the camera that started me on that near-endless hunt for the Right System.

That brings me around to my photographic goals for 2018. I've tried setting goals and it's rarely worked. I'm doing something a little different this time.

For 2018 my goals are:

1. Produce 365 high quality images for posting on Flickr. That's 1 a day for a 1 year period.
2. Raise my average daily views on Flickr to 1500. Right now I'm averaging around 1000.
3. Photograph 6 completely new locations.

Goals 1 & 3 are intended to refocus me from gear considerations towards shooting. #2 is largely about getting more engaged on Flickr.

My stretch goal is to post at least once a week here for the duration of the year. I've neglected this blog too much over the years.

New Beginnings

 D300, 35mm f1.8 G DX

It's no secret that I've been struggling with shooting motivation over the last 5 years. I've been pretty open about how that's affected my film shooting, but less so about how that's affected my digital. Largely because I'd always assumed that film was my 'real' shooting and blamed a lot of my motivation issues on equipment struggles on the digital side. To be blunt, I love the promise of mirrorless, but the reality has never quite worked out and I was over

To elaborate, I shot the following number of digital images in each year since 2012 (my last year of full-time school, I finished school in June 2012, but didn't officially graduate until 2013)

2012 - 10233 images
2013 - 7220 images
2014 - 5224 images
2015 - 1789 images
2016 - 1640 images
2017 - 2653 images
2018 - 617 images (to date)

As a rule, I usually have a bump in production in around March, then things taper off until June, with July/August/September as my main shooting season. It's pretty clear that whatever was affecting my motivation, it bottomed out in 2015-2016 and things started looking up in 2017. I suspect the numbers are a bit off the actual trend as 2014 was the year I made a kick at the can shooting Nikon again, and that bumped the numbers up for the fall by a large amount. Never should have traded that stuff away.

Chasing the Dragon has been a big deal for me, and a major negative impact on my work. It's no surprise that my shooting started to recover when I quit fooling around and just bought an older Nikon that I knew worked for me (D300), although the decision to get rid of the mirrorless stuff and swap it for a D90 in mid-2016 was a solid idea. I think if I'd ended up with a D300 then, I would have seen my numbers recover then, rather than a year later, but that really was a matter of what I could get from trading in my m43 stuff (it's been a long time since I've actually invested real money in camera gear, it's always always been swapping plus beer money since I left Verizon in 2011, the one real exception was getting the EM-1 in 2015). It's now been nearly 2 years since I quit chasing the perfect system and I think I might just have got things finally sorted on that front.

The reality is that I'm quite comfortable shooting older Nikon kit, it's cheap, I like the results and I'm motivated to shoot. That has other benefits (especially health related, if I'm shooting, I'm walking and health & exercise is another area I've struggled with for the last few years.). And well, if my D300 dies, I'm $200 away from a replacement (amazing considering it was a $2200 camera when new and is still very capable)

As to mirrorless, I think there will long be a place in my kit for a small body with a 28mm equivalent. But nothing beyond that. As much as these systems appeal to me, what I've got works, and I shoot more when I'm using it.

DoF Games

 
D800, Zeiss Planar T* 1,4/85 ZF.2

Shallow DoF shots are in my opinion one of the most abused photo techniques in existence. Far too often I'll see shots that are quite frankly ruined due to the use of too little DoF, especially portraits where only the eyeball(s) are actually in focus.

That said, there's a time and place for shallow DoF and shooting wide open with fast glass in good light. It comes when you're isolating a subject from its surroundings, such as the woman in the above shot. That was in broad daylight at f1.4 and the lack of DoF pulls the woman and  the bust stop pole out of a very busy shot.

I personally have long tended to shooting with lots of DoF, and of late have been looking at a lot of environmental portraiture and short-DoF landscape/cityscape work and have been enjoying it a lot more. While some fast glass aficionados do need to remember their lenses include a diaphragm, I need to remember that there are apertures other than f8 and my shutter can safely go above 1/1000

Still Shooting

 
D300, 35/1.8 G DX


While there hasn't been much posting, I did keep shooting regularly through the end of October, before a combination of weather and minor health issues stopped me for the winter. Ended up with about 2500 shots for the year on the D300, which is the most I've shot with one camera for quite a long time.

This year I intend to concentrate on getting out more and shooting more nature & landscape work. I do love it and haven't done nearly enough of it of late. City photography is somewhat boring me, but even then it's interesting when I get to see some new sights. Expect more from smaller-town Southern Ontario and less Toronto-centric work for the year. Also likely some more low-light work, another area I enjoy and haven't done enough of lately.

The Road Not taken

Minolta Maxxum 7, Pentax SMC Takumar 28/3.5, Kodak Tri-X


I've been doing some organization of the images in my Flickr Photostream and was quite surprised to discover that the largest group of 35mm film images was actually from my three periods shooting Minolta film gear, and largely the period I spent actively shooting Maxxum 7's.

This is somewhat surprising as I've shot roughly twice as much film on Nikon bodies as on Minolta bodies, although the later work is mostly newer, a lot of my Nikon dates back to a period where I was developing my skills rather than producing a solid body of work.

This did remind me how much I liked working with my Maxxum 7's, the 7 remains my favourite AF film body by a fair margin, I had a really solid setup and produced a lot of work with them that I'm proud of. Quite frankly, if I was starting from scratch and wanted to build a single, consistent film & digital system I'd have to take a look at shooting A mount. The combination of the Maxxum 7 & A900 would work very well for me in the long run, and another Maxxum 5 would make a killer little carry body when paired with a A 24/2.8, A 35/2 and an 85/2.8 SAM. I could use the KM 17-35 2.8-4 for wides, a 24-105 as a general zoom and a 70-300G SSM as a Telephoto. In the long term, rounding out the system with ZA glass would give me everything I could want.

The downside is that I'd be hard-pressed to justify dumping my Nikon kit, which works very well. The A900 is more appealing than any Nikon FX body, but the flip side is that what I have now works quite well for me. I'm not going to change, but if I should ever find myself with the need to rebuild a kit from near-scratch, I might well go Sony/Minolta instead of Nikon.

A Few Thoughts on Nikon Film Bodies

Nikon FE, Micro-Nikkor 55/3.5 AI, Superia 400

Nikon's 100th Anniversary was on July 25th and frankly, was underwhelming. A teaser of the upcoming D850 (which has been rumoured for months) and some mediocre special edition products with cosmetic-only changes.

Nikon missed a great chance for 2-3 special products.

First off, an F7. This could have been a regular, low-production item. Nikon's had a new F in every decade except the 60's (the F was 1959, the F2 1972). With all the new E lenses, Nikon no longer has a film body for Pro's to use with their modern glass. Nikon should leverage the D810 or D850 electronics to produce an F7. It doesn't need anything fancy, just the new metering, AF and lens control systems from the D8x0 bodies and updates to use the modern batteries instead of Lithium or EN-EL4's. This would sell in moderate quantities to serious amateurs and working pro's who still use film for some of their work and have been purchasing the new E lenses (especially now that the 24-79/2.8 and 70-200/2.8 are E lenses)

Secondly, an FM4. The FM3a was a real missed opportunity for Nikon and its poor sales no doubt made them gunshy about producing a manual, mechanical camera. But the lack of success of the FM3a was entirely predictable, there's a good reason why the FE2 lasted for 6 years of production, but the FM2(n) lasted for 21, and it's because the core market for old manual cameras are the people who want simple, uber-reliable, manual cameras, not AE cameras. The FM3a was an updated FE2 with a battery-free mode, rather than the FM2n update that people actually were interested in. For the FM4, take an FM2n, add selectable spot metering and maybe TTL flash and that's it. Use the excellent B/E/K3 screens and include a flippy AI tab. It'll sell, and sell much better than the FM3a did, because that's what users were actually asking for in the FM3. It helps that today we aren't flooded with used, low-mileage FM2n's like we were in 2004.

The third possibility was to do another S special run. They did one in 2000 and this is a good time to do another one. The RF market is small, but very solid and still heavily film-oriented.


On the subject of my film bodies, here's where I'm at.

FE - My normal body for colour film. This is an heirloom body for me, given to me by my Aunt who bought it new and shot it for years. The FE bodies aren't my favourites, but I do get along with them and it'll stay in my bag for a long time.

FG - My normal body for B&W film. It's a solid little camera that I like a fair bit, but at some point it'll get replaced by an FM2n. It's good enough that I'll wait for the right (black) FM2n rather than snap up the first I find. In the mean time, I enjoy it.

EM - This was a freebie, acquired as a rear cap on a 50/1.8 Series E. I usually have one of these floating around, and have owned half a dozen of them over the years since my I got my first SLR (which was indeed an EM). It's my beater body and will continue in that role.

N6000 - Aka the F601m. A manual camera based on the F601 AF camera, but with a couple minor updates. Another Nikon oddity that I like. I'll keep it around because it's odd & fun. Supports G lenses, unlike its AF elder brother. May get another cheap F801s to go alongside it. Not a regular shooter, but I bust it out for the occasional roll.

F80 - Lightweight but good body, but my only body without AI support. Right now it's my film body in the digital bag, since it supports VR and AF-S, but at some point it'll get replaced by an F100 to get AI support and compatibility with AI lenses (as well as handling more like my D300). When that happens it'll either get disposed of, or I'll pickup a cheap 28-105 and use it as a desk/car camera.

While this does look like a lot of bodies, film bodies outside the desirable FM series, FE2, and F2/F3 are so cheap these days that I quite literally have about $100 total in the 5 bodies I own (and two were freebies).

Flickr Oddities

Nikon D700, Nikkor 50mm f1.8D

Flickr can be a little odd at times, I was looking through some old images from my D700 yesterday to remind myself what sort of results I was getting from it. And suddenly I start getting notifications that people are favouriting this D700 shot. It was already one of my few D700 shots to hit explore, but after months of nothing happening it's added 350+ views and 20+ favourites in a few hours. No idea why, but clearly it's showing up somewhere on Flickr that's driving views.


That said, I do rather like the shot, it's a good example of why I liked the D700 as a low-light camera. Great colour, good detail and a fairly ridiculous ISO. I'd love to see what results I could get from a D700 and my Zeiss Planar 1.4/85