Messages

16

Creativity / i am drunk

« on: September 07, 2014, 02:01:26 AM »

i will field any questions about art for the next as long as I remain awake.

what do y'all question

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Creativity / Re: ■ The Photography Megathread ■

« on: August 24, 2014, 11:07:14 AM »

ewwwwwwwww artificial blur

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Creativity / Re: ■ The Photography Megathread ■

« on: August 03, 2014, 09:31:21 AM »

yeah kind of. i like the simplicity of just being able to upload pictures right away. my mom and dad both have a bunch of old film cameras already though, my mom collects them.

Fair enough. If you want good price/performance ratio, though, film is definitely going to be your best bet. You can get the performance out of some practice, good film, and $300 worth of brown townog equipment that a $2000+ camera would give you.

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Creativity / Re: ■ The Photography Megathread ■

« on: August 01, 2014, 06:11:36 PM »

see the text at the bottom of my cat pictures post. i'm not really looking for anything professional at all because i don't do a lot of photography, but i'd like something decent for when i do take some pictures.

Are you opposed to film?

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Creativity / Re: Nature Painting

« on: July 31, 2014, 08:00:54 PM »

Why?

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Creativity / Re: ■ The Photography Megathread ■

« on: July 31, 2014, 07:59:32 PM »

Alright guys well I pretty much hate every picture I take and every video I make because I constantly criticize whatever I do so I'd like some outside opinions. What do you guys think of my car photography.

Also these pictures looked so much better on my computer. Not sure if Tinypic kills quality or not but it sure seems like it.

Couple notes:
Good car photography often includes either shooting in a studio or just shooting with a gnarly amount of strobes. One thing that seems to kill these pictures is that besides the fact that these are obviously pictures taken of the cars, there's really nothing setting them out against the environment. If you look at car photography online, everything else in the picture serves only as a backdrop to the car: with your photos I find myself looking at almost everything but the car.

This can be avoided by more intentional composition. Study photographs you really like and think about why you like them: not only what they are of, but how they're made and what they look like. Think about how you can dig out every single bit of crisp sharpness that your camera can offer. Buy some 500w halogen worklights and an extension cord and throw some artificial light on your subject to get it to pop against the background. Try clean and crisp B&W approach.

Also minor gripe but if you're going for an off-level horizon, you have to -really- go for it. Right now it just looks like a mistake.

and also me asking for suggestions for a new camera :(

What do you want to do, and how much are you willing to spend?

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Creativity / Re: ■ The Catography Megathread ■

« on: July 30, 2014, 09:13:33 PM »

itt: cat pictures

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Creativity / Re: ■ The Photography Megathread ■

« on: July 17, 2014, 06:14:37 PM »

bumping with shameless link to my blog: thoughts on art, photography, and life

nickseitz.wordpress.com

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Creativity / Re: ■ The Photography Megathread ■

« on: July 06, 2014, 06:42:09 PM »

what causes the optical warping in the background?

No idea! Haha, lens construction and its effect on images is something that I occasionally try to wrap my head around, but it's something that's ultimately best understood by a physicist or optician. I mean it's reasonable to know general rules (smaller apertures widen DoF, longer focal lengths provide tighter shots, etc.) but as far as knowing why these things happen, down to understanding how light passes through a lens, that's a lot harder. Especially considering older lenses were built far, far differently and less precisely than modern lenses.

25

Creativity / Re: ■ The Photography Megathread ■

« on: July 05, 2014, 04:52:59 PM »

Are those still practical at all or is this just a really specific interest of yours?

I mean, old cameras are such beautiful things. I really appreciate the mechanical craftsmanship and the entire brown townog process, but it's definitely still practical and I had a few reasons for buying this specific camera (I previously owned a Argoflex E).

First and foremost, I want to transition into doing most of my creative work with film, even if I scan and edit it in Photoshop. It's more in line with my interest, where I want a shutter release to be a culmination of a carefully considered and constructed image, and each photograph to be a finely crafted object. Digital photography is a much more "photograph/respond to what you just did" and stream of consciousness, since you don't have to give each shutter release as much reverence.

The reason that I want to use this format specifically is that 35mm film is too low resolution (I mean, it's good resolution, but not if you're printing decently large or want incredibly sharp pictures which I'm looking for) and large format film is too expensive. For example, each roll of color film for this camera costs about $6 and $5 to develop, so about a dollar per picture. 4x5 sheets cost $3.30 and $3 to develop, so $6 per picture. I mean, the photos produced are remarkably beautiful, but again, it gets to be cost prohibitive very quickly.

And finally, I specifically bought the C220 because my previous medium format camera (which I bought because I used that camera at school and wanted my own, not wanting to go outside my experience to buy a camera) only took an archaic spool size so I had to respool film to shoot with it, the lenses were nasty and cloudy and I wasn't getting good sharpness out of it, and the viewfinder was almost impossible to focus with. The C220, which I borrowed from a friend for a while, has a vivid viewfinder, interchangeable lenses, and takes normal 120 medium format film.

For reference, here are some photos:


Scanned photo from my old medium format. As you can see it has a pleasing archaic aesthetic to it (the camera was made in the 1940s) but it's lacking in sharpness and good detail resolution.


This is a scanned 4x5 sheet, unedited. When you look at the full size scan at 100%, you can see individual branches on the trees on the opposite side of the lake with decent clarity.

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Creativity / Re: ■ The Photography Megathread ■

« on: July 03, 2014, 11:49:44 PM »

Ordered a new medium format c:

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Creativity / Re: ■ The Photography Megathread ■

« on: July 01, 2014, 08:27:20 PM »

That's one struggle I have with doing commercial or event type stuff that basically forces me to shoot at low aperture: I'm so not used to the vignetting, radial loss of sharpness, and sometimes (especially if the lens isn't clean) I get a sort of halo loss of sharpness. Eww.

>f/8 4lyfe

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Creativity / Re: ■ The Photography Megathread ■

« on: July 01, 2014, 08:12:31 PM »

Yeaaah. I mean at this point in my personal work I really try to avoid having anything out of focus in my pictures except for very few instances. I'm really looking for sharpness and clarity across the entire frame.

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Creativity / Re: ■ The Photography Megathread ■

« on: July 01, 2014, 07:50:53 PM »

The D is fine, but I'm tired of using screw AF, and I want something a little sturdier.

See I used my friend's 50 1.4 G and was not impressed (focusing wise; the bokeh is incredible). D700 driving the 50 1.8 D gives ridiculously fast and accurate focusing: anything with an AF-S motor feels slow in comparison now :/

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Creativity / Re: ■ The Photography Megathread ■

« on: July 01, 2014, 07:46:31 PM »

I shoot almost everything with a half broken Nikkor 50 1.8 D

Also I've posted a few pieces of writing and a series of photos I don't think I posted here on my blog: http://nickseitz.wordpress.com/