I am afraid I have this picture in my mind of a Japanese monk raking a stone garden. The garden has one small altar and a very carefully placed bamboo plant. The monk's face is peaceful and composed and he is evidently deeply engrossed in the careful movement of the rake. He is wearing a GoPro Hero 9 camera on a helmet mount...
I've gone through a number of photo eras here and in North America and can look back to compare and contrast them. So, very likely, have you. If you've not experienced them so far, here's hoping you'll get a chance to in the future. The great thing is if you could keep your eyes and ears open to what is being shown and said - you'll find this changes as new tech appears. And it also changes as new advertising agencies get hold of the trade. Way, way back ( dinosaurs, Elvis ) it was the era of the film SLR . They started small and got bigger, rising in price and bloating in size as new features like TTL metering were added. They got bulkier and blockier - I recommend you to some of the Topcon bodies if you fancy yourself something of a weight lifter. Then the size war turned to another front and the compact SLR came in - see the Pentax MX as prime example of small thinking - the Olympus OM series as well. Then the automatic...
Watching the popular photography market in the late film era was rather like watching the bubbles in a bottle of fizzy drink - one that had been left on a warm window sill. What started out as lively effervescence slowed down, bubbles became fewer, and smaller, and eventually were no more - the lemonade was finally flat. The fact that the Russians try to sell flat lemonade from the Leningradskoye Optiko-Mekhanicheskoye Obyedinene for the next two decades is neither here nor there. Digital won when Kodak and Agfa packed their carpet bags and ran for the train. This saddened me for a long time until I finally accepted that I do much more and do it much more happily with my choice of digital equipment. Like a lot of older photographers I had grown up with the film cameras and learned to love them. In the end I decided I could still love them but with fond memory rather than creaking passion. Thus I can look at the examples we see on the CE shelves - or in Michael's camera museum in...
That's odd - a strange number of exposures for a film camera...
I met a professional photographer in the shop one week doing a very sensible thing - renting a piece of equipment that was needed for a paying shoot. He didn't own it and would have no need of it the rest of the year - but this one occasion it would let him exercise his considerable lighting and shooting skills. And he didn't need to whack out a bundle to get it and then look at it on the shelf for another year - he could return it to CE and pocket the savings. Wise. Well, we chewed the rag a while and I asked him to explain something I had seen some years ago associated with his studio. I had come across a startling sight - wheelie garbage bins full of negatives and transparencies that were apparently from his studio. Wheelie as in ready for the council to take them away...
And not the ones in Alberta or Kent, either - the one in New York that George Eastman owned. Well, not actually owned, as such...
Or Kharkov, if you wish...
Where should you choose to do your Analog photography? Where indeed - this is also a question that the digital shooter has to face each time they head out. If they don't head out at all, wherever they are is a defacto studio...
And for those who follow Game Of Darkrooms, you'll know what this means; cold bathrooms, cold laundries, and cold darkrooms. Harder to keep processing solutions to recommended temperatures - slower processing times. Cold, stiff fingers. Family members banging on the bathroom/darkroom door demanding to use the facilities for something other than photography. Well, you'll have to sort out your family yourself - a Port-A-Loo in the back yard is a possibility - but Adox has a solution that will help in the darkroom; Neutol ECO paper developer. Adox has turned the corner of the analog revival and are making new premises for themselves while pumping out their versions of classic films and solutions. They make the Adonol that replaces the old Agfa Rodinol and now there is Neutool ECO back on the Camera Electronic shelf. Neutol and Neutol WA were always very good matches for many varied monochrome papers when they came out of Leverkusen. Now the Neutol ECO promises to be even more useful due to several factors: a. It is hydroquinone-free. It has no HAZMAT label problems and can be used by...
How you do anything has a great deal to do with the supplies you have available. Analog photography is no exception - and these days unfortunately the machinery and raw materials are getting scarcer. At this point I'd like to point out that at one time there was no such thing as analog photography - prior to 1826. Between that and 1975 there was only photography. Subsequently there has been digital as well. Which gives you pause...