Today’s post continues what has become an informal series about shooting with older digital cameras, many of which are available for affordable prices on the used camera marketplace. Today it’s the Canon EOS Digital Rebel.
Today’s Post by Joe Farace
I photograph to find out what something will look like photographed.—Garry Winogrand
Garry Winogrand (1928-1984) was probably the preeminent practitioner of street photography and someone whose work resonates with viewers today as much as when he was still making art. When I look at his photographs, I see images that the BBC once described as “”For those of us interested in street photography there are a few names that stand out and one of those is Garry Winogrand, whose pictures of New York in the 1960s are a photographic lesson in every frame.” Me? I’m no Garry Winogrand and photographing people that I don’t know is challenging for me, as I explained in this post. And yet…
Genres to Be Explored
There are many genres of photography that I am, by nature, not emotionally suited or intellectually inclined to even try. There are also genres that I would like to try but lack or can’t afford the specialized equipment to be able attempt to tackle them. When it comes to street photography, I can make photographs on the street and, as you can see in this post, I seem to be more comfortable when there are no people in the frame.
Believe it or not, part of my difficulty in making the classic style of street photography images is that I’m basically an introvert and don’t want me photographing them to impose or interfere with anybody’s privacy. When attempting to shoot street photography in Colorado I’m also concerned about the possibility of offending people, getting punched in the face or having a run-in with police. Yet I seem to loosen up when I travel as was the case in the featured photograph.
How I Made this photograph: OK, I admits this is not street photography per se, yet it was made on a street—in Tokyo. And these charming young ladies are posing, hamming it up, if you will, for the camera. This is not an image of people who don’t know or care if they’re being photographed but people who are reveling in the photographic process. I love this image mostly because it always makes me smile, especially the eyes of that young woman peeking out of the upper-right corner
This image was made using a Canon Digital Rebel aka Canon Kiss Digital—I love that name!—aka Canon EOS 300D. The lens was my beloved EF 100-300mm f/4.5-5.6 USM (at 165mm) that just a few days after capturing this image was destroyed after being deluged by rain, along with my own wet self, during a thunderstorm in Tokyo. The camera survived just great. Unlike the EF 135mm f/2.8 that I destroyed, I never got around t replacing this lens and always, in the back of my head, I still miss it. (It was a Bargain grade lens I bought inexpensively from KEH.) The exposure was 1/250 sec at f/6.3 and ISO 200 with, for some reason, a minus one-third stop exposure compensation. The histogram, looks normal at that exposure, so I guess I knew what I was doing.
About the camera: The Digital Rebel was a DSLR that was introduced in 2003 and has a 6.3-megapixel (22.7 x 15.1mm) CMOS sensor giving it a multiplication factor of 1.6. At the time, it was the smallest, lightest body in the EOS Digital series, measuring just 5.5-inches (142mm) x 3.8-inches (99mm) x 2.85-inches (72.4mm) and weighing only 19.75-ounces (560g.) The back display had a 1.8-inch LCD with 118,000 pixels.The camera is said to have been the “first affordable DSLR,” or at least the first one under $1,000. The Digital Rebel was based on the framework of the EOS 10D and while clearly aimed at the amateur photographer, I had one on loan for an extended period and photographed many different kinds of subjects including motorsports
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