Showing posts with label film. Show all posts
Showing posts with label film. Show all posts

Friday, March 25, 2011

Spring break


This past week has been a nice break from the norm. I spent it all with my son as his daycare was closed for spring break. This meant not really getting any work done but it also meant a lot of quality time that I will hopefully never forget. I did take some time for myself on Sunday to sneak out for a ride and play with my camera a bit - trying some motion blur shots (see above and below). And I really needed the exercise!


It is a bit unnerving riding and trying to take pictures at the same time. The risk of crashing is high as you're not really looking where your going so much as your trying to take a picture. The risk of dropping the camera is high. I was sure to have the strap around my neck to prevent this. But I stayed upright and kept the camera and myself safe from harm.


I did bring my Olympus OM-PC film camera out for some fun too (see above shot and below). It was needing some love and I thought why not. I was dying to play with it some more. It really gives some character to the shots with it's warm tones. And the 50mm, f1.8 lens allows some really nice shallow depth of focus (see above shot). Kole and I had so many little adventures together over the span of the week I could do a huge, mega-blog on that alone. But I won't. :)


Today was the last day of the spring break in my eyes. I'll be busy the rest of the weekend and then life goes back to normal next week. So today we had a family outing and since I'm fighting a cold, Nina drove us up to Nanaimo. I used the opportunity to relax and play with my camera. Why not play around and have fun?


For the shot above, I just manually set the focus by guessing, put the camera on timer and placed it on the dash. Fun. I think I was having more fun than Nina...


A shot of the cockpit.


A shot focused on the windshield with shallow depth of focus to give a more interesting look.
I was so tempted to give some tech info on these shots but I digress. Maybe one day. For now this blog is for entertainment purposes...


Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Going old school (film)

Today was my lucky day. I was having coffee with an old friend of mine and he mentioned his late father had an old SLR camera and he didn't know what to do with it. Just the past couple of days I've been looking at and considering a film camera to experiment with and now this comes up! Pete (my friend with the camera) offered the camera to me and I gratefully accepted. I really feel honored to receive what was surely a treasured camera to Pete's father. It is a beautiful circa 1985 Olympus OM-PC with 50mm, 1.8 and 70-210mm zoom lenses with filters.
I hadn't used a proper film camera since the Pentax K1000 back in 1988 school art class so there is once again a learning curve. Funny thing is, my last DSLR was an Olympus which had a unique way of displaying the light metering and this camera is no different. In truly quirky Olympus fashion the actual light metering is not shown but instead you get the suggested shutter speed. It works - just different from anything else.
This afternoon I went for a little stroll downtown and snapped a few test shots with some very old film that was provided with the camera so we'll see what happens. All I know is the camera sure feels nice! It is so small compared to my Canon 7D. It also takes me forever to set the camera up for a shot. I'll get faster but there is no way I'll be as fast as I am with the Canon. Also, it is strange not getting the instant gratification of seeing your photo on the camera display. I have to go get the film processed to see if anything worked. How archaic, yet it makes me look forward to seeing the results, somewhat like looking forward to see what is in your Christmas stocking.
I'm sure this camera will enjoy it's new home. And thank you Pete!