Tourist in MSN

The school reimbursed on reciepts for film, chemicals, paper. And they would always ask why I need to buy 50 foot rolls of film when a paper issue typically had only a dozen to a dozen and a half photos in print. But most of my shots did not get put on paper, I usually printed up about twice as many as were actually published, I could see from the enlarger image if it was worth printing or not. Usually shot out three or four rolls of film per issue. And had a pass that got me into any high school game in the city for free.

My parents were artists, met in art school, my dad had a photography background, an older sister had bought things like the tank and spools for developing film, the box you put the 50 foot roll of film in to put the film into canisters, trays for the chemicals for the prints, etc. Initially borrowed an enlarger from an artist friend of my mothers, later got an enlarger as a birthday present or something like that. And after a couple issues with a range finder camera, my dad bought me a Sears (Ricoh) SLR that had no meter, used a hand held meter. But the school paid none of the equipment cost, paid no gas for going to the games, etc. I got a print dryer for my second year on the paper for a birthday present from my parents.

djb

I'm telling ya T, reading all these terms really makes me feel like it was all a lifetime ago. In some ways it was.
So strange to think of the changes, but still, shooting is shooting and one still has to have a good eye and people skills. The box with a lens is still a box with a lens, no matter the changes.

TiHabanero

Djb, the art and skill is not in the camera, software or lab. It is the eye in the viewfinder. You are correct, a box with a lens is a box with a lens. No question manually developing and printing images was a lifetime ago. Sometimes I long for those days as they were days of discovery. Photography was very simple and since there was no software to wildly adjust lighting, colors, etc. composition and camera settings were vitally important. My sister in law does a ton of post processing in the digital format and performs miracles with garbage shots. Simply amazing what she can do with my flubs. Can't compensate for poor composition, though, which I know all too well!

Tourist in MSN

Fully agree. There were a few big changes, back then when using black and white, color did not matter and now it does. When I say that, I never experimented with filters, so you won't find any Ansel Adams landscapes in my photos. And back then I only owned fixed focal length (some people call them prime) lenses, so if you wanted to crop a photo you did that in the dark room, now you can do that with a zoom lens. I occasionally use a fixed focal length lens, but mostly use zooms. I occasionally will electronically crop a photo, all photos I post on this forum were resized to much smaller for memory size, but otherwise I almost never touch any post-processing for color or contrast or anything like that.

No color post-processing in the photos below, they are only reduced in size. First one was taken well after dark, exposure 4 seconds. The rest during daytime lighting.









The above were all taken with my waterproof point and shoot camera, a Pentax WG-3 that I bought in 2013 and am still using.

And sometimes a cute opportunity shows up, the one below was with an older Pentax X90 camera that has a lot of zoom.



The above were all taken on canoe trips in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area in Northern Minnesota.

TiHabanero

Very nice shots. I only have one zoom, the rest are fixed manuals from my film days, however I am losing the ability to manually focus so will be giving them up in the future for auto focus lenses. Don't like it because auto focus makes controlling where the focus is pinpointed more difficult, probably because I don't fully understand it in digital.

I went through a filter phase when shooting B&W film for landscapes. I have forgotten the results, but the image could be manipulated with reds and blues. With digital those lens filters can be mimic in the camera settings. During my many moves in the early years all the negatives I had kept of my travels and before were lost, gone forever. Guess it took the wind out of my sail and lost the itch to shoot until a few years ago when I picked up a K5. Then I got busy with work and life and stopped shooting, and now just getting reacquainted with the K5 again. Thinking about reactivating the film machine, but I am so darned cheap that it goes against my innermost cheapskate.

djb

yes, but as with all things, the devil was in the details. As a professional developer and printer, the factors that made the differences were (oh, Im talking b+w here) exposure, actual shooting factors like lens quality, lack of body shake, critical focus etc, but then when we got to the darkroom side of things, properly developed film (choice of developer, developing time for the conditions shot, having temps right on, amount of agitation) and then of course the whole printing side--when printing we had a whole slew of darkroom tricks, and finesse that came from experience. Proper choice of contrast grade, the type of paper, the paper developer itself, all the techniques of dodging and burning which were very much an art and personal, burning in with different contrasts on overexposed areas if needed, darkening corners slightly (vignetting) by burning in. All of this stuff done by hand, using wires with bits of cardboard stuck on them, cardboard with holes in them, your own hand--printing was a very involved thing and two people could print the same image and the difference would be remarkable.
I know I improved over the decades, which is normal, but hey.....all this stuff if like talking dinosaur teeth brushing techniques, its all gone pretty much, for me anyway.

re filters, I had the yellow, red, green b+w filters, but as I shot people, I really didnt use them.

re colour--heck, shooting was waaaaay more finicky. We shot slides a lot, so had to have everything spot on, and for colour temperature differences we had to gel light sources, even had magenta long tubes of filters to put on flourescent lights in ceilings to colour balance those darn things at times....so it was a complicated affair, and why pros were pros. It took a lot of work and expertise. At some point, colour negative film improved greatly, especially in the colour balancing area, that made life a lot easier shooting in places with multiple light colour temps etc, but then digital came along and it was a real pain in the arse colour wise, and had all sorts of challenges to work through. Thankfully sensors improved greatly, and even though I dont do much anymore, at least sensors improved greatly when I was still working. (and ediiting software too thankfully)

Tourist in MSN

I had (still have but no longer use) a couple Pentax K100D bodies, not many pixels so they now languish. Five or six years ago bought three K-30 bodies, someone on Ebay had a mountain of Pentax gear that was "factory refurbished" and they offered a good enough warranty that I was not worried about them not being "new". At that time bought (all used) 55 to 300mm zoom, the kit lens 18 to 55 zoom, the 18-250 zoom. A non-Pentax 1.5 tele-extende lives between the 55 - 300 and the body.

Quite happy with those zooms. Previously used some Tamron zooms, like 28 to 200 on the K100D body. And I think I had a wide angle zoom by Vivitar on the other K100D body. The K-30 has the electronics built in to remove pincushion and barrel distortion with some Pentax lenses, I have no clue if the K-5 can do that or not, maybe not.

I think when Tamron and some of the other lens makers stopped making Pentax mount lenses, that pretty much meant that Pentax was no longer a player in the game. I have no clue what the future of Pentax is, but as long as my gear keeps working, I will be happy with it.

And the K-30 offers so many bells and whistles that when I pick it up, I often struggle to figure out what to do. Not like the old days when you used your light meter to get a reading, then you had to decide did you want a fast shutter or did you want a wide depth of field, and that was about all you had to decide. I miss not having an aperture setting on the newer lenses, but that along with roll up windows in cars apparently did not sell anymore.

TiHabanero

A lab worker is way deeper into it than a hobbyist such as myself. My dad made a meager living from photography in the 40's and early 50's. Worked assignments for magazines while he studied EE, and was the one that introduced me to the hobby and developing/printing. My sister is still hanging on to his lab equipment, albeit sitting in boxes in her basement. I found myself playing around in Gimp the other day and realized I need instructions to be able to navigate the software. Could be fun should I find the time to learn it.

A lot of topic drift here, so on with the show. I have decided that I really dislike the wind steering my bike for me and am going to plunk down the cash for larger rear panniers and just use the Eclipse hbar bag for the camera and maps, ditch the front rack and rack trunk on it. It was a fun experiment, and I learned something.

Happy Feet

Interesting discussion re filters and post processing. I have a couple of photographer pals and they tell me about the different guidelines people operate under.
In UW photography a certain amount of post production work is accepted as there is usually particulate in the water and the white balance gets wonky. Above water, I can take the same shot with my P&S and my phone and am amazed at how much more detail and colour the phone produces. In some ways it has replaced the Olympus except that it (the Olympus) is a Tough series and much more suited to rough/water based activities. I would not risk my phone taking shots SUP or kayaking or cycling in the rain. Some photogs are ditching their cameras in favour of I phones these days I am told.

I also like B&W Ansel Adams thing and want to develop my capacity within that niche so I convert a lot of my images. I've got a setting on my Olympus for it but it's far easier to work with images in software. I've learned a lot about different aspects of lighting that way as I see what effect manipulating settings has on an image. To progress from there I would probably need a larger, more dedicated camera (wide angle/fuller format) but then problems like weight, portability and delicacy come into play, so for now I compromise. I took these while trail running with a camera in my hand and mtbing with the camera in my jersey pocket, respectively.

djb

neat about your dad and his photo past. And yes, I can get not wanting to get rid of the stuff, for various reasons.
I'm surprised by how much art students and whatnot still shoot film.
re your issue with steering. maybe because my front panniers are low down on a lowrider rack, I have never felt the way you describe, and I'm really really picky and sensitive to front end feel. I suspect the difference is the weight being much higher up for you. As you say though, a good experiment to find out what you don't like.

Indigo82

Nice to meet some more Pentaxians here I own Pentax K-5 mark 2 and K-1. I use various lenses with them, most being manual focus lenses. But since most of my photos are landscapes and portraits, I am fine. I have 20, 24, 28, 50, 58, 85, 135 and 200mm prime lenses and 18-55, 55-300, 10-20 and 28-105 zoom lenses. I usually make short bike trips around my place when I carry some of this gear on my back. I mainly use my bike to travel to spots to take photos. Many times I wanted to take gear on longer trips but I hesitated due to camera's fragility. The last time I carried my tablet on mountaineering trip, the cable inside of it got disconnected but I was able to open it and fix it. However, I didn't have such luck with my laptop where something happened to its motherboard and it could't be fixed. Luckily it was under warranty.

One of the photos in the vicinity of my place taken with Pentax K-1 and 20mm manual focusing prime lens.

Tourist in MSN

I am just getting lazy on focus, usually using the auto focus zooms. But occasionally use some old M42 lenses, a Takumar 50mm that is f1.4, a Russian Jupiter 9 that is 85mm and f2, and a Russian 3M5A 500mm f8 mirror lens. I have a box of old M42 lenses, most have not been touched for a decade or more.

Doug64

The top photo looks like it could be the Arches NP area near Moab.

Happy Feet

Yes, and the second was on Slickrock mtb trail.
I had planned to return there earlier this month before covid hit.
A beautiful area to explore and very friendly people

Doug64

I agree! We were fortunate enough to spend a couple of days in that area last summer. I was glad to be working with GBs and not rolls of film. I'd still be paying the bill

Indigo82

I love M42 lenses because I like old russian Helios lenses. I have 44-2 and 44m-4 both 58mm f2. My favourite M42 and most used lens is Carl Zeiss Jenna Flektogon MC 20mm f2.8. Btw, here are some of my lenses.

LuckySailor

Hi. Perhaps I am way late on responding to your question. I rode across Canada with a Nikon 35mm DSLR in a handlebar bag with a hand towel for cushion. Never had any issues. Its a $1000 camera and I carried 2 lenses as well in the bag, along with fruit and sandwiches or maybe sometimes a light jacket, sardines, or whatever else would fit in the bag. I found the camera more of a pain in the ass to carry and only did so on one tour. It was 3 pounds to lug. I tried carrying on body, and found that was not for me either. Got great pictures with it, but in the end, iPhone pics were pretty damn good and it was so much more convenient. Not trying to change your mind just my 2cents.

TiHabanero

LuckySailor, it is never too late to arrive at the party! Thanks for the input as I have been playing around with the carry options and really like the set up I have with one exception, crosswinds with gear on the front rack. Someone suggested lowriders, which I have, but never liked, so I am going to give carrying the camera in a fanny pack a try, as suggested by other posts as well as yourself (carry on body). When I was into centuries and double centuries I used a fanny pack to carry some heavy stuff with me such as tools, water and food. The fanny pack is a Rhode Gear and quite large with an expandable top and straps on the bottom I uses to hold a pair of sandals. For the most part it was OK, but not sure if it will be OK on day 30! Going to find out with a test of 3 days and see what it is like.

saddlesores

i imagine 3-5 pounds of hard, clunky camera gear in a fanny pack would
become excruciating after a short time. and it would suck if the belt
buckle popped loose as they occasionally do.

if on the body, carried higher might be more comfortable and more secure.
how 'bout a camelbak or similar with the bladder removed and some
extra foam padding added?

they're designed to carry about the same amount of weight. numerous
posters on this board tour with them.

https://www.norsegear.com/images/det...2201000_V1.jpg

djb

Re fanny packs, I can't imagine riding with them because I used a camera fanny pack and lens pouches on the belt for ages working. They work great compared to a camera bag but do get tiresome after many hours. I regularly shifted positron of it during long assignments, but sure wouldn't want to ride with even a lightish one.

but only way to know is to try.

saddlesores

RE: shifting positrons

"The positron or antielectron is the antiparticle or the antimatter counterpart of the electron. The positron has an electric charge of +1 e, a spin of 1/2, and has the same mass as an electron. When a positron collides with an electron, annihilation occurs."


NEVER shift positrons in a fanny pack when riding a crabon bike! this is when assplosion occurs!

https://3.bp.blogspot.com/_V54WWNeyy...s400/museu.jpg

djb

I gots me a fine arts degree so don't understand anything of that, but I'll take your word for it.

TiHabanero

Headed out for 4 hours in about 30. Camera and extra lens plus charger in the pack. For sure it is bulky! Will need to create something to keep the bits separated.

Tourist in MSN

I have seen several roadies and randonneurs use fanny packs instead of a large saddle bag or a rack top bag with a rack. If it works for them, maybe it will work for you.

For touring you would want to have a way to keep the camera and lenses dry on rainy days, a dry bag in the fanny pack should work.