Holga Shots

I took my Canon 30D with the Holga lens with me this morning and took a few shots.

I’m really starting to like this lens, even though getting the exposure right is a little weird. The camera is set to manual and the aperture on the Holga lens is pretty much fixed, so you have to fiddle around with shutter speed for control.

I find that, at least on the 30D the shots tend to be overexposed and have to bring it down in Lightroom. I’m planning a new photoessay on everyday urban blight. Here’s a sample of the types of photographs the study contains:

There’s a hidden aesthetic in the commonplace and that’s what I hope to capture.

I’ll have a lot more on this in future posts.

Holga 60mm Lens for Canon DSLRs

I’ve been on a Holga kick lately with acquiring two Holga pinholes cameras. Holgas shoot 120 film and I’m getting set up to develop negatives and make prints, but that’s a ways off. I wanted the Holga look now, so I bought a Holga lens for my Canon DSLRs.

 

The lens, made completely of plastic, goes for $24.99 at B&H. You can get one here: http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/762095-REG/Holga_775120_Holga_Lens_for_Canon.html or you can get one on Amazon, Adorama, etc.

The lens has a focal length of 60mm and is fixed at f8. There are four focus settings from portrait to landscape. Here’s the first shot taken with the lens using a Canon 30D.

The Holga charm comes through using this lens with its soft focus and natural vignetting.

To effective use the Holga lens your DSLR needs to be in manual. It takes some work dialing in this lens along with getting used to the four focus settings. Be prepared to tinker.

We went for a short drive so I could check out the lens. Here’s the intersection of Main Street and 14 Mile Road in Clawson.

This was shot through the car windshield directly into the setting sun. I was hoping for lens flare and I got it.

This was shot in a park in Royal Oak at dusk.

For twenty five bucks the Holga lens is a great investment. You get the Holga look with little effort. I’m going to spend some serious time with this lens.

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Sand Dunes Setup

Here’s my simple setup for the Silver Lake sand dunes shoot.

I used a Canon T2i, a meFoto (made by Benro) backpack tripod, a Tokina 11-16mm zoom lens and a Canon 70-250mm zoom. The lens in the setup photos is the Tokina.

I also used a nine stop ND filter and a polarizer on some of the shots, mostly on the Tokina. Why did I use these filters? I was at the dunes in the middle of the day and not during one of the golden hours (the hour after sunrise and the hour before sunset). The day was completely clear and the light intense. Without using these filters the photographs would have been merely snapshots.

I intentionally left the lens hood off the Tokina. Why? The Tokina 11-16mm is prone to lens flare, which I mostly like, especially with long ND filter exposures.

I also like using my iPhone for test shots. In the days of film photography, a lot of photographers (especially fashion photographers) used Polaroid cameras for test shots before they committed to a composition/exposure combination.

An iPhone (or any other smartphone) is the new Polaroid.

The test shots above looked interesting to the naked eye but lacked spark in an actual shot, so I looked elsewhere.

Another dud. Whipping out a few quick snaps will give you great compositional feedback. Fast.

The sand dunes setup was simple, but it still took a lot physically to lug around a heavy camera backpack and tripod up the steep sand hills and the miles within the vast dunes, but you know what? It was worth every minute.

Minimum Cost DSLR Photography

You don’t need to spend a ton of money to venture into the world of DSLR (Digital Single Lens Reflex) photography. A while ago I bought a refurbished Canon 10D for around s hundred dollars.

It still has a few fine grains of sand on it from the sand dunes near Lake Michigan.

So what did I get for for less than the cost of a low-end point and shoot? A solid magnesium body with the exposure modes I need (apeture priority, shutter priority and manual), among other useful features. Plus, it’s compatible with E-TTL Canon speedlights which I use a lot. It also sports 17 custom functions that allow you to mix and match controls and features for 61 possible combinations. It also supports RAW mode.

The downside? The LCD screen is small and image rendering is slow. It’s not full frame and it has a 6.3 megapixel sensor. Is this a problem? Not really, unless the intent is to produce massive prints. For that I’d use a different camera with a higher resolution sensor.

Along with the camera body I bought a new Canon 50mm 1.8 lens for 110 dollars. For approximately 210 dollars I have a solid, respectable and durable DSLR outfit that I’m really growing to love.

The three shots below are of a restored locomotive in Grand Haven, Michigan. All were taken with the Canon 10D. The first shot was converted from color to black and white using GIMP, the open source Photoshop alternative.

I wanted a shiny, high contrast look on the reflecting surface of the locomotive and coal car. I could not have achieved this effect using GIMP’s Desaturation tool. I used the Decompose tool and will have a blog post on how to use this in the near future.

The next two images are in color that I enhanced by only using the Curves tool.

I wanted to bring out the richness of the dull silver paint, deepen the shadows and expose the subtle hints of rust around the bolts. A few simple adjustments using the Curves tool accomplished this. Like the Decompose tool, I’ll also have a blog post on this in the near future.

GIMP (Gnu Image Manipulation Program) is freely available on the Web and is a first rate application.

The bottom line is you can enter the world of DSLR photography and produce high quality images for very little money.

Grand Haven

We were lucky with the weather this week in Grand Haven, Michigan.  Spent a lot of time shooting, especially at the Silver Lake sand dunes. These dunes are much smaller than Sleeping Bear, but far less touristy and traveled.

As with most photographers, it’s a labor of love lugging camera bags and tripods up these steep sand hills that seem like mountains.

I decided to process the dunes shoot primarily in black and white. There’s an isolated, otherworldly feel to these dunes, and for me the only way to capture that was in black and white.

The shot above and below were taken with a nine stop neutral density filter. I really like these filters and long exposures. To me, they expose a hidden world of latent light that would otherwise be invisible. All of the photos were taken with a T2i.

I post-processed the images in GIMP. The original RAW files were in color. I usually shoot black and white in-camera but I wanted to keep the color option open. I shot everything at the dunes using a Tokina 11-16mm wide angle lens (one of my favorites) and a 75-255mm Canon zoom. I used a polarizer on the Tokina and the ND filter on the Canon.

This is an HDR image processes with Luminance HDR, taken with the Tokina and the polarizer.

 

Here’s another straight shot with the Tokina 11-16 processed with GIMP.

On the way back from the dunes to Grand Haven we saw an apple orchard with these boxes stacked.

This was taken with a Canon 50mm fixed focal length, which is one of my other favorite lenses. I have a lot shots of the boxes to process.

 

I just used my iPhone around town. Here’s one taken on the Grand Haven pier.

 

 

I have a lot of images to process and will post an update soon.

 

 

Canon EF 85mm f/1.8 USM Lens

We picked up a Canon EF 85mm lens this morning to use strictly for portraits. We’re pretty happy with it. It’s fast at f/1.8. Here are a couple of test shots.

This was taken with a Canon T2i at ISO 100, 1/320 with one 430EX2 speedlite set at 1/16 power through a softbox as the keylight on the upper right and a sliver reflector on the left.

 

Setting the f-stop to 1.8 soaks up a lot of light, but the focus is selective. We focused on the eyes, but notice how rest of the face is somewhat out of focus. Stopping down will of course fix this but it’s good to have the option to focus on the eyes on your back pocket. Here’s another shot with the same settings:

I didn’t do any post-processing or cropping on either photo- that wouldn’t give a true representation of what the lens can do.

Using a doll can be a little creepy but is a great tool to experiment with lighting.

We’re very happy with this lens, but again, its primary use is for portraits. If you’re looking for a high quality, reasonably priced portrait lens (and you have a Canon DSLR) its hard to go wrong with the EF 85mm USM lens.