Mind Your Own Business

Why is one photographic  process more valid than another? 

Digital photography may have many benefits but for whom? 

Undoubtedly the commercial photographer can reduce costs and overheads and get images to market quickly by using digital cameras and computers. 

Most of us are not commercial photographers.

How I shoot is, ultimately,  my business.  I earn my money honestly and no one has the right to tell me how to spend it.

If I want to use a cheap plastic cameras from Hong Kong, that's my business. No one else's.

If I share my work and others enjoy my work,  and they do, who is to say my photography is invalid in some way?

Anyone who has views like those suggested are usually trying to validate their own decisions for spending lots of money on Digital equipment. 

Ultimately its the final image that counts not how it was made.

For the hobbyist photographer, more involvement in the photography process gives more personal satisfaction than simply pressing a button will ever do.

If your digital camera takes superb photographs (and they do),  then why worry about what others do?

That you have a process that works for you, does not give you the right to criticise the process others might use. Mind your own business and create work that you are happy with.

The problem with digital cameras is that people often confuse "technically excellent" photographs with the lack of personal satisfaction of having made that image. Digital photos that are boring or dont engage the audience can be blamed on equipment rather than a lack of personal skill or artistry.

So often this situation results in more equipment being purchased without a resulting improvement in the ratio of keepers to those which can be binned. Cheap storage just means that terrabytes of crap are being stored. 

Think about this, AI is being trained on that crap...

The Polaroid I-2 - Multiple Exposures

 I will caveat this post by saying that I am by no means a Polaroid Multiple Exposure expert, but I dabble.  There are others on the 'net that are much more into Polaroid cameras and all the good and interesting things that the cameras do. There is a chap called Will Malone who has made multiple exposures a real art form and tried, with some success, to formalise this with some science. It is this kind of geekery that really interests me.

I am not going to reproduce the formalisation here, but, as we all stand on the shoulders of giants, I shall, and have been, be using his work as inspiration for my own.

A multiple exposure is, as I'm sure you will know, the practice of making two or more exposures within one frame and the result will be two pictures (if you take two exposures), somehow mixed together by the universe in a way that is not entirely predictable. The result is random, chaotic even, but wholly unpredictable.

This photo, for example, shows two pictures that have blended in a way that relies on the unpredictability of the film, the camera and the scenery.

Now it is possible to reduce chaos, impose some structure or form and end up with something reasonably intentional.

This was created (Ha Ha!) by taking the first exposure normally then turning the camera through 180 degrees and taking the second image of the same subject as the first.  This technique introduces symmetry, while retaining a level of randomness that is pleasing to the eye. Or at least my eye.

This picture was created  using a technique of taking an exposure of something in shadow (here the tree) and then the second exposure will appear to be bounded in the trees form.  It's weird and random but pleasing nonetheless.

On balance the multiple exposure offers much for the creative photographer. The ability to experiment, see the results "on site" and able to try again if needed really does make for an enjoyable experience.

And after all that is what it's all about, experience.

The Polaroid I-2, more discussion

In the last post about the Polaroid I-2, I discussed the frustrations that I had with the camera and the film. 

I suppose that I should say that the Polaroid I-2 is the flagship camera for Polaroid and is the most expensive and feature laden camera that is currently available. The camera alone is £500 and then there is film on top of that.  The Polaroid Now+ camera at the time I purchased the I-2 was the second most expensive Polaroid camera at £149. Other Polaroid cameras, for example the flip that came out this year, are £200. 

"This camera is the replacement for the SX-70!", they exclaimed.

The I-2 is more expensive by a huge margin and so expectations from this camera were high.

Initial use of the camera produced results that were not in line with expectations set by the high price and cornucopia of features. I shot a pack or three in the camera, each with increasing frustration until I discovered a forum for the I-2 that suggested the firmware might be out of date.  Now call me "Mr Old Fashioned" but surely a newly manufactured and shipped camera should be delivered with the latest firmware. But no! More to the point the camera hadn't been on the market for long so a major firmware update being available was a surprise to say the least.

I connected the Polaroid 'phone app to the I-2 and blow me if the app didn't say the firmware was out of date.  The app does the download of firmware from the 'net and pushes that firmware to the camera for installation.  Bit of a faff but now I had the latest firmware installed on the camera. Now I could be the best Instant photographer in the world!

But hold on, not so fast. This is where the inconsistent film (remember that from last time?) chucks a huge nut loosening tool into the mix. So another couple of packs of film later (at £17.99 this is getting expensive) and I'm beginning to suspect that someone at Polaroid is laughing at me. As Johnny Rotten asked the audience at the last Sex Pistols gig in America in 1978, "Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?". Well yes Polaroid, I do.

I am not a new photographer where either normal negative film or Instant film, in the form of Instax Wide, are concerned. My Chroma Snapshot, Instant Edition with LomoGraflok back is a completely manual camera. This requires me to take a meter reading after entering the ISO of the film into the meter, transfer the aperture and shutter speed to the camera and take the photo.  And Instax Wide is consistent and the ISO is the ISO!

See what I mean? Nothing wrong with my ability.  

It is absolutely infuriating to have an expensive camera, and even more expensive film, not behaving itself. You question yourself "Is it me?". Your confidence slips. It's not nice at all!

So having watched every YouTube video about the I-2 and it's, alleged, capabilities, I decided to have a break from worrying and being frustrated and decided to try some double exposures.  When you put the I-2 into multi exposure mode the camera does everything automatically, so if auto doesn't work then I'm writing a stiff letter to Polaroid in the land of the Dyke.

Well, left to it's own devices the camera did a sterling job of being an automatic camera.  At this juncture in proceedings, strong oaths were sworn, Anglo Saxon phrases used in public and the parentage of the designer of the camera firmware was brought into question in no uncertain terms! Still I had a working camera, so lets consider this turn of events a win!

The Polaroid I-2 and my ups and downs.

 Last Christmas, I bought a Polaroid I-2 camera. There was an offer on, drink was involved and the big boys made me do it (you know who you are!).  I started the year, 2025, with my new I-2 and resolve to become the best instant photographer in the world. A plan with no downsides, I thought.  And it would have gone like that too, if talent and the small matter of temperature hadn't got in the way.

The astute reader may remember that I have a LomoGraflok, Instax Wide back for my Chroma cameras and have had some success with that. In fact, I have never given temperature a second thought while using Instax Wide film. Middle of winter, no problem! Mojave desert in summer, also no issue. No color shifts or delays in developing happened.

There is a reason that Polaroid discounts it's cameras in the middle of winter, because while the cameras work just fine, the film packs do not. Polaroid film packs work over a narrower range of temperatures than Instax Wide. Too cold and the results show a green/blue color cast, too hot and you'll get a red/orange cast.  Cold temperatures mean really long development times with polaroid too.

Let me also tell you that the ISO of polaroid film is a moveable feast, depending on temperature, prevailing winds and the shipping forecast for Dogger. It's written on the film packaging. "ASA 640. Film speed may vary, allow for (plus or minus) 1/3 stops"

Using the first half dozen packs of film with my Polaroid I-2, I fell foul of the less than consistent results from the Polaroid film.  Given that you only get 8 photo's from a pack of Polaroid film, if you get a couple of frames that don't work, it's an issue.  For me also the Black and White film is less consistent than the color film. So my start with my brand new and shiny, flagship, Polaroid I-2 was marred by the experience and made the camera seem like a bit of a white elephant.

Film speed, ISO or ASA, is the element,  that as photographers, we require to be a constant. If you are going to use a manual camera and need to use a meter, you need to input the film speed so that the meter can give you a reading.  Generally speaking, the meter reading will give you a set of parameters (shutter speed and aperture size) that when transferred to the camera, will produce an acceptable result in the negative. This is even more important when using positive (slide) film.  Spot on metering is required to get decent results, but the ISO or ASA is the constant. Yes you can experiment with the settings to optimize the result but the point at which you start is the film speed being consistent from roll to roll.

The I-2 has a manual mode where you can set aperture and shutter speed. This is touted by Polaroid as being a Pro feature but my experience with the inconsistent film meant that the confidence, that comes with trusting your film and equipment, evaporated.  If the ASA of Polaroid film is not consistent the manual mode is pointless in my opinion. I am not alone in thinking this either. More illustrious Polaroid users than I have agreed with my findings and even made a YouTube video or two about the issue.  The camera is fine, it's the film that is inconsistent.

So the Polaroid I-2 was returned to it's packaging for a few months while I waited for warmer weather. Winter turned to Spring and Spring turned to Summer. And the weather went from baltic to sweltering in the blink of an eye.

The Polaroid I-2 was given a run out during the late Spring but the results from using the camera in manual mode were less than encouraging.

And then I discovered multiple exposures using the I-2 and that's where things started to look up.

The Holga gods are displeased.

 The Holga is a cheap camera, some might say it is manufactured like a toy, that is made in Hong Kong and has become something of minor obsession for me over the last 20 years. The Holga is made of the kind of plastic that is normally reserved for scale models of aircraft such as Spitfires or Hurricanes. People will tell you that they are terrible cameras, not worth your time and don't produce good results.  Those people are tweaking the ear of the Holga gods and no good will come of it.

Recently, I have neglected my Holga and it has sat on a shelf and gathered dust.  That was until Dave Whenham decided to take his Holga, affectionately known as the "AndyCam" as I gifted it to him, for a walk and he produced a roll of nice negatives.  Spurred on by this effort,  I loaded my own Holga and sallied forth to expose the film.  The results were encouraging and so a second film was loaded and on a warm February afternoon, I went out again with the Holga.

The problem was that I had caused consternation in the Holga heavens by my long lay up of my Holga and so the Holga gods plotted to teach me a lesson.

The Holga gods did their worst

Now the thing is that it would be easy to work with the Holga, with it's single shutter speed and aperture to produce some artistic, if not good, images.  It would be further exciting to understand how to use development to give control to the photographer.  Even better would be to use filters  to modify how light is captured.  At this point it would be only to easy to proclaim oneself a "Master" of the Holga.

To do so would be folly of the highest degree.

You see every film that one shoots in a Holga is subject to the agreement of the Holga gods and it is they who decide if a frame is going to be good or not.  Moreover it is they who will decide if the whole roll is to be a right off or whether you will have a couple or more of good exposures.  It really has nothing to do with the photographer and it would be good to bear that in mind.

The Holga gods are also able to interfere in the film processing department to either allow or foil any attempt at compensating for the shortcomings of the camera.  In short they get into your mind and interfere with your thought processes in the same way as they invisibly guided the photographers hand during the taking of a shot.

How many times have Holga users looked at the film and couldn't remember a frame or two being shot?  This is because the Holga gods have taken over and are using the photographer as a puppet.

Blurred and Overexposed, Ye gods!

So displeasing the Holga gods isn't a clever thing to do if you'd like some reasonable photographs from the little plastic camera.

Now to my tale...

Last Saturday I needed to collect a relative from the coach station in Swansea at 12:30. As coach arrival times are something of an elastic concept, the waiting time for collecting people is only 10 minutes and enforced by cameras, I decided to arrive early and park at Swansea Marina.  As the coach arrived I would receive a text message and drive over to the collection point.  Excellent a plan was made!

But the Holga gods had not forgotten my, almost two years, neglect of the Holga and they had nearly missed seeing me pick the camera back up and start using it again.  Worse, I started dishing out tips and advice to others and setting myself up as something of a Holga guru. The Holga gods decided this would not do, it would not do at all.

Before leaving home, I loaded a roll of FP4 Plus into my Holga and in doing so checked the camera over. Getting in the car, I nonchalantly threw the Holga onto the passenger seat along with my hat, a neck warmer and a magnifying glass. My causal handling of the camera did not go unnoticed by the Holga gods and so incensed were they that they decided something had to be done immediately.

As I drove towards Swansea Marina, the traffic got really bad and I inexplicably found myself constantly in the wrong lane.  Eventually I arrived at the car park and had to try every ticket machine until I found one that worked.

Then, after I put the parking ticket on the dashboard, I set off on foot to shoot 12 exposures before collecting the relative.  It was a lovely, bright and warm sunny day and I was pointing my camera here and there, using the magnifying glass as a close up lens when the shot called for it.  The familiar snick of the shutter operating was comforting and it was not long before I has just one more frame to expose.

There was a private charter embarking and the gang plank offered a unique view of the front of an old rusting ship.  I enquired if I could go down and make my exposure? Permission granted I went down the gang plank and it was the work of a moment to raise the Holga to my eye and operate the shutter.  Job done.

A normally inaccessible shot.

I wound on the film and packed the camera away as my phone was buzzing and my collection was ready to be picked up.

And so it was.

When I got home, and following luncheon of sausage and chips from the chip shop, I set about processing the film. I used semi stand development for an hour so I had some time to spare.  It was then that, to my horror, I noticed that the button on the bottom of the camera had been set to bulb. All those lovely shots would now be ruined. Oh my, the Holga gods had struck again!

As I pulled the processed film from the developing tank, my worst fears were confirmed, really dense negatives and evidence of blur due to the long exposure cause by camera shake.

I hung the negatives to dry and tried to forget the experience.

It wasn't until yesterday, Sunday, that I looked at the negatives, by now dry, hanging sadly.  I took them down and decided to scan them for the laughs, as they say.

While many of the pictures were in fact dreadful and unusable, some were not that bad and a deal better than I had any right to expect.

The Holga gods had done it again!  They had taught me a lesson that I'd thought I'd learned long ago.

Better than I could have expected!

The lesson is this; The photographs that you get from your Holga is subject to the good graces of the Holga gods and don't forget it!

You have been warned!

2024 and answering the age old conundrum?

It'll soon be the end of 2023 and the new year, 2024, will start. As is customary at this time of the year we look at the outgoing year and look forward to what the new year will bring.

I'm going to do something different and I'm going to answer the perennial question of which camera is the best?

2023 has been the year in which artificial intelligence or AI has become mainstream and has entered everyone's consciousness. Of course AI isn't new and the creators of AI software have been working for years on training their programs on big data provided by yourselves for free on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

All these social media platforms allow the posting of images or photographs as us oldies call them.  These images have been used to train the AI software so that if you want a photo of American GIs entering Berlin on a Segway, AI can produce a very convincing one.

For me the AI software remains just that, software.  It doesn't provide me with a mechanism for creativity where I can feel involved in the process.  After all AI photos could be created by using another AI program to come up with ideas for photos that don't exist yet and program the AI software that produces the photos.  No human intervention involved or required.

To return to the question posed above, the camera that is best for me in 2024 will be the camera that allows me full access to a number of tools that allow me to create photographs with full creative control.  

No AI involved. No Automation, no digital processing at the capture stage.

I recently took a holiday to Arizona in the USA. For that holiday I took my Chroma Camera Snapshot kitted out with a Topcon Super Topcor 90mm lens and a Lomography LomoGraflok Instax back.

This camera is a 4x5 sheet film camera that has an International  Graflok back to allow any accessories to be used with the camera like a rollfilm back or in my case a LomoGraflok  back.

The LomoGraflok back allows the use of Fujifilm Instax wide film.

Back in the early 1970s polaroid were busy bringing out cameras that were low cost and introduced instant photography to regular people.  My maternal Grandmother bought a Polaroid swinger camera that used peel apart pack film.  Back then it was like star trek and when my own daughter was old enough to want and use a camera I bought her a spice Girls badged Polaroid 600 camera, which she loved.

My instant photography genes run deep.

Using the Snapshot is fully manual and requires me to work out the exposure myself.

The camera only produces good results if I am involved. No auto focus, the camera is zone focussed, no auto exposure.

I took 10 packs of 10 exposures for the two weeks.  Not all were great but the ones that were really hit home.

Visit to Chroma Camera

 Yesterday, 23rd Feb 2022, I made a visit to Chroma Camera HQ in Liverpool. I happened to be in the area for work and so it seemed an opportune moment to visit. 

For transparency, I am a big fan of Chroma Camera and the work that Steve Lloyd has done. I own a Snapshot that is a 4x5 camera primarily for handheld use. 

I also own a 679, modular medium format camera.

Steve and his assistant, Dave,  made me feel welcome and I felt privileged to be allowed into the secret world of R&D and production of these beautiful cameras.

I first became aware of Chroma when I was interested in buying a TravelWide camera, but discovering that the company producing the TravelWide wasn't trading anymore.  However Chroma Camera, a UK business, did have a similar though much more flexible product in the Snapshot.

The great thing about the Snapshot is that it has a bellows and set of spacer bars rather than a rigid plastic nose cone.  This means that it's fairy easy to swap to lenses of different focal lengths.

My Snapshot sports a Schneider Kreuznach 180mm Symmar and a Schneider Kreuznach 90mm Angulon. Also as the Snapshot has a Graflok or International back I can choose between 4x5 and 6x9 roll film as I have a Wista 4x5 roll film back that shoots 8 exposures per roll of film. I also have a LomoGraflok Instax back from lomography.  I can make beautifully sharp Instax Wide photos

When I bought my Snapshot, Chroma Camera also had two variants of Field Camera for 4x5 in the Advanced 4x5 and Carbon Adventurer. I was able to have a look and feel of the Carbon Adventurer camera yesterday.  Very light and beautifully engineered. Thats definitely on the wish list.

Given the initial focus on 4x5 large format cameras, I was surprised to see Chroma Camera embrace the pinhole fraternity.  The Chroma Cube is a beautiful little pinhole camera that allows 52 square photos on a single roll of 35mm film.  However the pinhole community have responded and bought the camera in significant numbers. It's very competitively priced and quite unique. It's been fun to see the results on social media that the users are getting from this tiny camera.

I'm at my core a medium format man and I have my 679. I have a Mamiya RB 67 SPro 220 back and a Topcon Topcor 90mm lens and shutter.  My results have been superb and equally on a par with an actual Mamiya camera.

The highlight of my visit to Chroma was seeing the Six9 and Six12 medium format cameras. These have been designed and produced following feedback from users trying to source 6x9 and 6x12 medium format backs in good working order.  Steve has designed the cameras to only need a Mamiya Press Lens or a large format lens, LF especially for the Six12 as coverage of the 12cm width of film by the lens is close to 5 inches). These are beautiful cameras.  

Steve and Dave showed me some Kosmo Foto Mono shots, created using the Six9 and developed in 510 Pyro.  The detail is absolutely amazing.

I shall be getting some 510 Pyro and more Kosmo Foto Mono in 120 to try this combo with my 679.

A wonderful visit to a company that is innovative and responsive to their customers, who they refer to as the "Chroma family". Great company, nice people and wonderful products.

Says it all really.