Wallace Koopmans Artlog

There is no doubt that digital photography has killed film for the majority of people, making it really a niche for those wanting to do something different from the pack or create a certain look.  There are areas that digital technology needs to improve though.  Many people right now seem to be focused on the ability to capture images without noise in low light and manufacturers are obliging us by placing a lot of their engineering towards that.  For me personally I wish they would more directly address dynamic range instead of as a side effect of this noiseless pursuit.  What I mean is that with the chemical process of film it behaves differently around highlights and shadows.  Specifically film allows you to expose a scene with dark shadows and highlights without clipping the highlights into just pure white. This happens because of films non linear response to exposure.

The image here is a comparison of a film capture with Ektar 100 and my Pentax K-7.  What you can’t see is the fact that I needed to under expose the digital capture to preserve the highlights and then adjust the image post capture to try and brighten it overall, none of this was necessary with the film.   While I recognize that the sensor on my K-7 has a dynamic range of around 11 stops and newer models have improved on this they still behave in a linear way and clip highlights while the film trails off it’s response still recording detail far furthur into over exposure.

Here are some of the recent  images taken with the Yashica Electro 35 GT and Kodak Ektar 100.  For more information about the camera you can see these posts October 2010 and the more detailed April 2012 Yashica Electro 35GT

Even if you have nothing more than 10 minutes to spare, there is no reason not to pop in to the Reach Gallery Museum in Abbotsford and take in this exhibition.  The exhibit is comprised of works from the permanent collection of the Vancouver Art Gallery and is a mix of works on paper and photographs.  Specific to photographs and the reason that I think any photographer in the area with a moment to spare should stop by is the inclusion of works by historically important photographers, such as Robert Frank, Margaret Bourke-White, Robert Capa and others.  It covers documentary to conceptual photography but for me the one image that I’m drawn to most is the monumental Edward Burtynsky  Three Gorges Dam Project, Wan Zhou #6, Yangtze River, China 2002 .  It depicts life literally on the edge as the people recover the building materials around them. There is just so much going on in that image. You know it’s real despite it’s depiction of a separate existence so different from our own sense of  how life is lived. 

While it is a small exhibition it does provide an opportunity to look at images from some photographic masters,  The exhibit runs until June 10, 2012 and is free as always at the Reach.

When you take a photograph, unless you arrive blind folded and close your eyes, you can’t help but be influenced by what you’ve seen before.  That is the nature of photography, we try to recreate what we like whether it’s preserving an instant for the future or duplicating the now.  I can say this because I do it too. 

Case in point this image, I took this picture while out on a bike ride with my daughter.  The moment I saw this long building I knew the way it ran horizontally would mimic the look of the Rhine river in Andreas Gursky’s  “Rhine II“ Do I wish that I could say I just saw this building and took an interesting picture, yes, but to deny that in a sense this is an attempt to capture my own piece of someone else’s vision would be wrong. 

So in a world so full of imagery how do you create a personal style and is that absolutely necessary.  Is there anything wrong with being a “collector” of images or refining a type of image?  I don’t think so if it serves the purpose of the photographer.  Knowing that you’ve created something good and then wanting to share it is rewarding.  An image like “Rhine II” isn’t valued at millions of dollars because it is such a good photograph but because of everything else surrounding the world of contemporary art.

So take another picture of blossoms or a bird or whatever interests you and enjoy the doing, and the knowledge that it’s yours.

Every once and a while with film cameras I seem to inadvertently cause the back to open no matter what ingenious locking mechanism they had devised.  The results are completely unpredictable but also completely of film.  You can imagine that if exposing a piece of film at 1/250 of a second through a lens creates an image that it doesn’t take much inadvertent light to completely over-expose it.  Here are some examples of light striking film, some of them come from the fact that I sometimes start shooting the first frame knowing that it will likely have been exposed during film loading.

Who wants to be in front of a Computer monitor on a nice spring day? Not I said I, so I’m posting this from the field

I’m not a corporation so I think I can make a claim like that without the need to back it up, this is the Internet right?

Introducing the Wallalux 55mm (Mark I) pannenkoek lens in K-mount

Your awestruck right?  Recently Pentax announced the smc PENTAX-DA 40mm F2.8 XS, which may be the worlds thinnest interchangable lens, so I decided to see if I could beat that.  Granted my lens has a fixed aperature of about f8.0 and can’t actually be focused and it’s 55mmish focal length works out to about 82mm on an APSc camera.  So let me just recap here it’s an 82mm equivelent f8.0 fixed focus lens, but it is really thin.

Yes that’s 0.14 inches or 3.55mm thick, this is the amount of the lens that protrudes outside the camera, which is less than the 9.2mm of the Pentax lens

But your probably wondering “Yes it’s thinner than a cracker but does it take better pictures?”  Well I’m here to tell you that taking pictures with a cracker is ridiculous (I will have to try that though) and that it does indeed work.  Keep in mind this is the Mark I version and by the time I get to the Mark IV it will be amazing with all the latest technology (we’re still on the Internet right?)   That or I will just build something else entirely which seems more likely.

Here are a couple sample images taken with the Wallalux 55mm (Mark I) pannenkoek lens, enjoy.

Any aberrations you see are likely caused by the rear element I am using to make the lens work with the K-mount registration distance, I’m hoping to replace that element in the Mark Ib.

As I’ve posted before I like the Leica Mini finding it does a great job as a point and shoot.  I unfortunately used some pretty poor film in it this last time and didn’t really end up with too many keepers.  These four shots are my favorites and stand out from the rest mostly because they turned out.  Note to self outdated  Kodak 400 is to be avoided.

Here are some more images that I processed in camera with my Pentax K-7.  Yes I am well aware that you can do all of this on a computer but no one says that when you use your smart phone to do a similar thing.

There’s so much silk screening on this camera I can hardly determine what to call it. “Fuji DL-500 WIDE Panorama” “Fuji mini wide” It is however the DL-500.  The most unique feature of this camera is that it has two focal lengths 28mm and 45mm, not something in between.  This arrangement is made by swinging an additional lens element internally into the light path and repositioning the lens at the same time.   A button on the top of the camera toggles between the two focal lengths.  Additionally the viewfinder magnification changes to give an equivalent view for the selected focal length. 

With the camera set to 28mm the secondary lens element can be seen hidden away in the bottom left corner just beneath the shutter.

Here you can see the camera now set to 45mm with the additional lens element swung into place.

Samples of the two focal lengths. 

I was initially pretty excited by the prospect of this camera because of the wide 28mm focal length, there are very few 35mm film point and shoots that have lenses this wide. But the image quality of the lens in either focal length is not particularly good.  The images are quite soft and there is a great amount of vignetting especially with the 28mm setting.  That said though it is compact, light weight and 28mm.

Two more quick notes about this camera.  It requires two batteries to operate.  A CR123A  3V lithium battery but also a CR2025 that is located inside the back of the camera.  Both are required unlike some cameras that use the smaller battery just for date imprint functions.  Also in order to set the mask for panorama images you need to open the back and make that change inside the camera, for obvious reasons you can only do this before you start shooting.  I may give this camera another try in the future but if I do I will try closer distances and see if that makes a difference in the images, street photography perhaps.