Today’s Post by Joe Farace
If I’m outside, I’m really happy. I don’t care whether it’s blowing a gale, I just love being outdoors.–Caroline Quentin
While today’s post isn’t strictly about film photography, it does provide some background on my evolution from film photography to digital and maybe a peek at the claim that cameras with CCD sensors provide a “film look.”
Choosing the Right Camera
A little while ago, I wrote a post about shooting glamour photographs with entry level cameras explaining that the camera you use for glamour or portraiture is not as important as the attitude, vision and talent that a photographer brings to the session.
As a point of information, the cameras I currently own and use for glamour photography are mostly Olympus and Panasonic mirrorless camera and occasionally some Canon EOS DSLRs. You can see the specific models and details on all of the digital cameras that I currently use on the Gear page and whenever I post an images, as in today’s featured portrait, I always mention the camera and the exposure data too. Yet, only one of these camera brands were part of the group of SLRs that I used when starting my photographic career, including my first foray into photographing people .
The first film-based SLR that I owned was a used Minolta SR-1, not the SRT-101 that came later and had through-the-lens metering, which was considered a big deal at the time. The SR-1 had an external light meter that was perched atop the shutter speed dial. It worked most of the time. Next, I used Nikon SLRs throughout most of my early career, later switching to Contax because I wanted to be able to shoot with the same kind of Carl Zeiss lenses I used with my medium format Hasselblads. Somewhere along the line and because of the influence of my friend Rick Sammon, I began shooting Canon SLRs as well.
How I made this portrait: The camera used to make this portrait was an Olympus EVOLT E-300 that was part of the company’s original Four-Thirds series of DSLRs. The lens used was the Zuiko Digital ED 150mm f/2 with an available light exposure of 1/800 sec at f/6.3 and ISO 200. The original JPEG image file was lightly tweaked in Photoshop and includes a thin layer of Glamour Glow from Color Efex.
Looking at images made with the E-300 got me excited me about trying to shoot a camera with a CCD sensor again. My original plan was to look for an affordable Leica M8 or M9 since both cameras have Kodak CCD sensors, but because of financial realities that’s not going to happen any time soon. Maybe more do-able is picking up an EVOLT 300, 330, 500 or 510 and do a side-by-side comparison between one of them and a CMOS sensor DSLR.
When DSLRs came along I waited for a short before settling on Canon DSLRs and currently own a couple of EOS bodies along with a bunch of lenses. Later and thanks to my friend Mark Toal I realized the advantages of using mirrorless cameras and most of the time that’s what I shoot. Lately I have been shooting some video with Canon’s mirrorless EOS M6 Mark II and you can see the results on my YouTube channel, especially in my movie reviews. Along the way, I’ve managed to acquire a sextet of Canon A-series 35mm film-based SLRs, although for reasons that Ive written about before, I have yet to do any model shoots using film during my recent interest in film photography.
I’m mentioning all of this just as a point of information. If you’re a happy Nikon, Pentax, Sony or Fuji user it’s not my intention to convince you to switch systems. If it works for you and you’re happy, keep on truckin’. Because I have often said, it’s not the camera, it’s the photographer.
for a long time, my wife shot with Olympus Four-thirds system DSLRs before later switching to Nikon (it’s a long story) and over the years I borrowed some of her cameras to make glamour photographs like the above portrait of Tia Stoneman. The Olympus E-300 aka Olympus Evolt E-300 in North America was an eight-megapixel DSLR that was announced at photokina 2004. It was the second camera, after Oly’s flagship E-1, to use the now defunct Four-Thirds System sensor, now living on in the Micro Four-Thirds system. Recently, I saw a nice one on eBay with a 14-45mm lens with a Buy it Now price of $169. I’m thinking…
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Joe Farace’s Glamour Photography is full of tips, tools and techniques for glamour and boudoir photography with new copies available from Amazon for $27.90. Used copies start at around twelve bucks, as I write this and the Kindle version is $19.99 for those who prefer a digital format.