Session 2: Cameras!

Session 2. Cameras!

So many cameras, so very little money! C's talk on the different camera types took me back to my childhood where enticing toy shop windows encouraged nascent  feelings of avarice. But what would I do with so many cameras and how would I ever decide on which one to use? Nevertheless,  it would be interesting to try them out!

The wooden pin hole camera looked very collectible!

While at the other end of the spectrum ... the full frame cameras. These are expensive and heavy bit of kit but they  do provide amazing detail.

These provide between 24 and 36 megapixels and cost from £2,000+. I think I may wait a while before buying one of these! These are the more expensive SLRs. Both use a mirror in the body of the camera allowing the user to look directly through the lens.

Medium format

As used by wedding photographers, fashion shooting. Another high quality, high cost camera. Bulky and slow to use. I suppose it would be handy to have a camera with a back end where you can interchange a number of different films (black and white, Colour, High ISO, low ISO etc), but I don't think I'd ever take one hiking with me! The bellows type allow you to change the focusing plane which can be used to avoid "tomb stoning" when taking pictures of high buildings. There is a "bolt on" lens adapter for "normal" cameras that allow you to do something similar .. the lensbaby. I may have to buy one of these when I next have the odd £100 to spare! These can be used to create the tilt-shift effect.

Here's a picture I took of the market place in Pilzn, taken with a tilt-shift setting. This gives a "toy town" effect

Folk eventually became fed up with carrying  heavy cameras around, so someone eventually came up with a lighter alternative. The "Rangefinders". These have no internal mirror and can be more compact.

This type of camera has been used extensively by documentary photographers such as Robert capa.

This is one of the few frames to survive from the reels of film he took during the Normandy D-Day landings. All the other negatives were lost in a fire.

The "Lomo" camera was the Eastern Blocs' answer to the Leica (and its Canon, Nikon, Olympus etc variants) Rangefinder. These were mass produced and have gained something of a cult following. These have cheap lenses and none too solid bodies and result in pictures with odd colour casts and other unusual elements.

 I must admit to being a fan of lomography and have been known to convert some of my pure and pristine digital images to the grunge like lomo style. Instagram is basically lomography for smart phones.

This perhaps needs more vignetting to be true lomo!

The "Holga" camera does for medium format cameras what the "Lomo" did for the "Rangefinder"

This develops the whole width of a 35mm strip including the gaps between the sprocket holes!

The micro four thirds cameras are the latest "Rangefinder" cameras. These are slimmer and lighter than SLRs as they are mirrorless, but they still have an SLR equivalent sensor and interchangeable lenses. What a marvelous camera type this is! But then I might be biased!