Wallace Koopmans Artlog

Polaroid and faux-laroid, posted from my Android phona…… Too much?

Having done so much cell phone photography ( “cellphography” it could catch on!)  and processing those images on the phone I was inspired to play around a bit with some images I had captured with my Pentax K-7.  All these images were processed and cropped in camera. It’s surprising what you can achieve by combining multiple effects together.  Of course there is a limit and some of what could be good filters are held back because of the lack of user control.  The water colour filter for instance produces one unconvincing result no matter what you try, the toy filter is on the right track but has no option to turn off the blurring of the image. 

This morning Pentax has released a new camera the K-01 which is the first “mirrorless” camera that takes full size DSLR lenses without an adapter.  One thing about this camera that is sure to draw controversy is the fact that it has no viewfinder.  It relys solely on its 3″ rear LCD for image composition, this is a foreign concept for many people. Essentially the camera will be held with two hands out in front of your face, very much like a point and shoot.  Having used both types of cameras for at least the last 8 years I can say that the usage is so different that many current DSLR users will not be willing to use this camera because of it’s lack of a viewfinder.  That said when you are comfortable with that method of shooting it seems quite natural.

On the what’s different side Pentax has added the ability to shoot in multiple aspect ratios at the time of capture rather than needing to compose with a future crop in mind.  The available ratios are (4:3, 3:2, 16:9 and 1:1) .  I like this idea very much as I do like to compose mainly on the spot.

Here is the link to Pentax Canada’s information for the K-01 http://pentaxcanada.ca/en/digital_slr/K-01/

Did I mention it comes in yellow! 

and now for the rest of the original post……

While the Pentax MV is an SLR with a mirror and the ability to change lenses it really performs like a manual focus point and shoot.  What I mean by this is that there is little user control.  Yes you set the aperture and it selects the shutter speed but beyond that you must rely on the camera to get the exposure correct.  For most of this roll of film I mounted the Pentax SMC A 40mm pancake lens which together with the body makes a very compact camera all things considered.

I used outdated film and got what I deserved but converting it to B&W gave me some results that I’m happy with.

All of these shots except the apple were done with the Pentax SMC A 28mm lens on the Pentax K10D.  For the apple I used the SMC A 70-210 F4.  The 28mm on my APSC cameras gives an equivalent field of view as a 42mm lens would on 35mm film, which lies somewhere between the 35mm of many film point and shoots and the 50mm “normal” prime that came with many film SLR’s.   Once in lightroom I played around with the images trying to get a film like look based on other shots I took that day with the Pentax MV and 400 ISO film.  Between using the older glass and the processing I think I created images that look like they could have come from a film point and shoot camera which was my intent.  The preset can be downloaded by right clicking on the link and selecting save as.  Wkoopmans Colour Film P&S template  One of the problems with creating this preset is adding the grain.  Lightroom added the ability to introduce grain to an image with Lightroom 3 but it is a simple solution that works best with black and white film.  The grain of colour film is more complex with different amounts of colour mottling that Lightroom has no answer for.

Somehow a mundane sky can be lifted to a higher place just be shooting it in infrared.

Well Polaroid a  week has slipped to something closer to Polaroid a month but as long as I still have some left I will press on.  The scarcity of original Polaroids compels me to post the images no matter how they turn out.  So here is my latest one with it’s mysterious defocusness (it’s my blog I can make up words if I want).

And this is what I saw with my Cell phone.

It’s Autumn here right now and the leaves are changing colour so I though I would post a few images with that in mind.

It’s Autum now and I thought that I would have a little celebration of the colour orange that wasn’t leaves.  Sort of a pre leaf changing colour contemplation.