Photography is as popular now as it has ever been, with many households in the west owning at least one reasonable SLR (or so it would seem).  The instant viability of the image means that if you miss the first shot you can adjust your settings and have another go (in many cases).  We take many more photographs than we used to and probably as a result this has actually devalued the image.  We can simply take another shot, means that getting it right first time is not important…

The number of people I speak to who tell me that photography is actually not that easy, they went out and bought a really great camera that has all these buttons and hey, “why can’t I get the background to blur?”, or “my photo’s were too dark”, to name a couple.

Whilst it is true that the newer cameras are technologically advanced and will continue to be so, there is a skill, a skill that is totally reliant on knowing the principals and more importantly being able to and understanding how to manipulate them.

I have been toying with the idea of dabbling with film for some time now, and have recently bought an old large format ‘Speed Graphic’ or press camera from the 40’s and 50’s.  It is a big beast (not the biggest), and I have yet to find the memory card slot, let alone the playback screen.

 

The fact of the matter I plan to work on some portraiture and possibly the odd landscape, and the exposure needs to be spot on.  So I decided to play around with some exposure techniques.  The first I tried was a rather clunky and simple method, where I take a spot meter reading from the lightest part of the face and then for my daughter I over exposed the whole image by 1.3 stops.  The exposure alteration will vary depending on the lightness of the skin.  The reason for this is the light meter will try to make your selected area mid grey, but for my daughter that would make her look too dark.  There is an element of trial and error to start with but as you look at your subject you will get to know what adjustment to make.

Any way back to the subject, I had decided not to view any of the images until I was finished and my daughter was eating her promised ice cream.  Although not the same as film I wanted to add that little bit of pressure to the process as it was not that easy to re shoot if they had not come out.  It’s all part of the mind set needed for film.

The images in this entry are those from the walk and as you can see I did not get too many.  But the exposures were exactly what I wanted and apart from a little split toning or desaturating in Lightroom, they are as they came out of the camera.

These images were taken on a D800 with a prime 105mm f2 lens and manual focus.

SLOW DOWN AND GET IT RIGHT FIRST TIME!