Ooh, baby, baby! The joy of Lensbaby.

I paced back and forth, listening closely to the door - expectantly waiting for the latest addition to my Nikon family.  Nervously, I ran to the door when the doorbell rang.  When I saw the Amazon.com box sitting on the porch, I knew it had to be the delivery of my baby - Lensbaby, that is.
The Lensbaby Composer is a neat little bundle-of-joy that looks like a lens on a ball joint - which is exactly what it is.  What is cool about the contraption is that it is modular and has a wide range of accessories to achieve different effects from this interesting tool.  The Lensbaby Composer comes with a double-glass lens insert for sharp focus, but this can easily be exchanged for the single-glass, plastic, or pinhole lens modules.  The 'baby' also comes with an assortment of aperture rings for various degrees of soft-focus effects.

The purpose of this funny looking design is to put more control into the photographer's hands to achieve stunning images by shifting the focal plane to manipulate what appears to be in or out of focus in the image.  Of course you could do the same thing in Photoshop, but it that would be a considerable amount of extra labor.
All puns aside, I took the photos below within minutes of opening the packaging- using it was intuitive although I admit I did pick up a few finer details when I went back and checked out the manufacturer's website.  
Adding this baby to your brood is sure to stimulate your creativity to conceive new images. (Sorry- couldn't help myself!)

Focal "sweet spot" at center of image

The "sweet spot" is toward the top of the image

The unforeseen effects of the transition from 35mm film to digital photography.

God, I'm feeling old today!  I decided to dig into a stash of expired film to do some experimental photography.  I pulled out a Nikon N90s (a sophisticated camera not so many years ago) and loaded it with a roll of 135 color slide film and took off for a walk around Jamaica Plain to look for film-worthy subjects.  Upon returning home, I realized that I would have to research labs with the ability to process the film since you can't just go to CVS anymore.  I praised the Internet and Google for the ability to quickly search for such things, and then I stopped.  What I saw made me feel my own expiration date wasn't so far away either.  I'd shot a roll of Kodachrome 64, which of course I knew was not even made anymore, but I hadn't considered that the processing (K-14) had also become obsolete.  There it was: The death of Kodachrome in 2009 and following shortly thereafter, the last roll had been processed on December 30, 2010 at a lone-wolf lab- the last K-14 processor in the world - in Kansas.  My hopes had been dashed as I searched for an alternative to the Kodachrome processing technology when I read blog after blog lamenting the disappearance of Kodachrome and the proprietary chemistry that produced the rich colors photographers had come to expect from Kodachrome 64.  You can process it for black and white images, but what's the point?  That's not what the film was designed for, nor what it was considered to be the best at.
Feeling tired, creaky, and kind of cranky, I reloaded the camera with T-MAX 400- the standard for black and white film.   At least THAT I can process myself it's necessary.

Perhaps it's fitting that one of the last photographs I took with Kodachrome 64 is of a sunset.  This photo was taken on Captiva Island in Florida sometime around 1993.  I think it was taken with an N8008 but my memory, like the camera, was stolen from me some time ago.

High-tech, Low-fi Part 2

Did I happen to mention that you don't HAVE to switch your camera to the black and white color space to get the cool-funky pin-hole effect?  I didn't?  Well, from my last post you can prepare your DSLR camera for pin-hole photography, so let's get right to it- this is what a color digital pin-hole looks like:

 

This photo was taken at the now-closed Agassiz school in Jamaica Plain.

The prism-like streaks are from shooting towards the sun without protecting the aperture.  I started shooting again while holding up my notebook to shield the camera, but I kind of like the effect of this "happy accident".

Hi-Tech, Low-Fi

Pinhole photography is easily done without a lot of high tech equipment.  All you really need is an oatmeal box, a thin piece of tin or brass, a nail or pin, tape, film or photosensitive paper, and a watch with a second hand.  It's a lot of fun, and great for teaching kids about the fundamentals of photography.  The results are often very cool looking, kind of moody.  But this method is pretty imprecise.  Obviously, without a viewfinder it is pretty hard to frame your subject; without a shutter, exposures are counted in seconds instead of fractions thereof.  So you tend to get off-kilter, under to overexposed, blurry photos after hours or even weeks of anticipation, waiting to get your film (or paper) developed.  If you are as impatient as I am, this is the worst part- waiting for the results.

Well, thank goodness that we live in the Digital Age!

You can get great pinhole images with your digital SLR camera AND you don't need to wait to see the results, so you can adjust your next shot after instant review from your camera.  Here's how I did it:

Get the body dust cap that came with your camera when you first purchased it.  I know, if you're like me, you threw it away the moment you attached a lens- you can pick them up on ebay for a couple of bucks.  Drill a 1/2" to 3/4" hole in the center of the cap  Make your pinhole aperture in a thin piece of metal and glue it over the hole you drilled in the cap so that light cannot leak around the edges.  Connect the cap to the SLR body and Bob's yer uncle!  If you are not a do-it-yourself-er, you can find these caps ready made for sale on ebay and other on-line camera retailers. This is what your camera will look like:

There are much more detailed instructions on making pin-hole cameras on the web.  My favorites are here:
How to make a pin-hole camera
Making a pin-hole camera
http://anttila.ca/michael/pinholelens/

And here you can purchase a pre-made cap for your DSLR:
Lenox Laser

This is how I set my D200 to take the photo below; today was a bright, sunny day in Boston, so I set the ISO sensitivity at 100, the camera mode into Manual, manual focus, Black and White color-space.  My camera has Through-the-lens viewing, and because there is no lens I couldn't see anything through the eyepiece to set up the shot.  So, camera mounted on a tripod, I started taking set-up shots at different exposures between 2s and 15s, adjusting the aim of the camera until I got the framing I was happy with.  Then I shot with the most successful exposure time from previous practice shots.  The result is the shot below of the Loring-Greenough house in Jamaica Plain.

Picture-a-day project

Okay. This is my first OFFICIAL blog post. I'm not sure what it is that I want to blog about or even if I'll ever be able to categorize it. I was thinking about some summer projects to keep me occupied and active this year and maybe stir up those creative juices. I chose to start with a picture-a-day, because it may help to discipline myself to keep my blog active. So, from today through the month of June, I'll be posting (read taking) a photograph each day. Hopefully I will get some interesting shots using different techniques and cameras.

My Business Buddha

This little guy grants me serenity during those tough days at the office, and makes me smile during the not-so-tough days. The happy Buddha reminds me of a happy childhood because of the large soapstone Buddha my father brought into our home from his travels in Japan.