Photography General - Sperging about taking pictures and shit

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There's definitely something special about film. I shoot digital sometimes but it almost feels like easymode because you can just rapid-fire at different settings to minmax everything and get the 'best' picture. With film you just hope for the best and usually what gets developed is flawed in some way. But because of the flaws has a distinct character and feels more 'real'. It's hard to put into words but capturing a good film shot feels so much more like actual art to me than picking the best out of 50 digital shots of the same subject.
And I don't say that to disparage the digital shooters here. I've seen a lot of beautiful pictures taken on digital. I just have my preferences when it comes to my own creative process, as wanky as that sounds.
 
Speaking of film I very recently bought one of those cheap dispo lenses. Basically just a lens cap with a disposable camera lens glued in it. Makes some interesting results DSC_4731_DxO.jpg
 
Film is a lot of fun, especially if you're the type to speedrun the autism spectrum on every hobby. I started out snapshitting with a 35mm SLR and sending my rolls in to be developed and scanned, and now I mainly shoot 4x5 and 120 out of ancient press cameras, develop all my film in my kitchen, and have converted my spare bedroom into a darkroom to make prints. Most of my shots don't even touch a computer these days.
Yep. My half measure was purely convenience, my amassed autism hobbies so far have already taken up all the available room I've got right now and the savings weren't as drastic as with developing the negatives yourself.

Personally, the only downsides of skipping enlargement I've noticed was the temptation to tweak and that I really want to have a darkroom. I do lose the Analog only cred, but it's probably a net positive to my finances that I can't dig deep into doing it properly.

I ended up stopping the tweaking by just making a preset for the film I'm running in Darktable, if needed just adjusting contrast/exposure, (mostly to fix my shit scans) so I'll only do it to recover otherwise wasted shots.

One cool upshot is that expired film suddenly becomes pretty easy to salvage when you can just fix the fading/colour balance in post. You still get the dynamics of film (muted, but I can generally recover everything) just trading off the 10 minutes juggling levels for cost of good stock. I could also make usually wasted shots interesting by increasing luminance to get the expired film fade without losing image detail.


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Expired Ultramax 400 edited
(Just noticed the 2nd image has the halo from the lamp used when scanning)


But all that nerd shit doesn't matter.
All the cheating in post means i can basically fake the 'Portra Fuji chroma ektaslide Leica deluxe' film that's in vogue current year.

I might have to gatekeep Gold 200, don't want people stealing my aesthetic.
 
Annoyingly underexposed shot on Rolleiflex 3.5 with Porta 400. It was a test roll to see if the camera worked so, came out well, I guess
 

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I have been shooting with the Canon RP for the past 5 years, and have been getting great shots despite it being the cheapest full frame camera available back then. I decided since I have had some paid gigs, and like the hobby enough I'd upgrade to the recently release Canon R6 III since there have been times where I wished I could do good video too, and also the battery life on the Canon RP was lacking at times.

To test the Canon R6 III I've been doing casual street photography, and one event so far. It is much more responsive, focus is faster, the time between pressing your shutter and the picture actually being taken is noticeably less (lower input delay, for the gamers out there). I am still using my same old lenses, so image quality isn't noticeably better, except in low light, I feel whatever software they're using for ISO is better or perhaps it's the higher MP count. In continuous fire mode, it also shoots at 40FPS (Photos!, not video!)so I had to get used to holding the shutter down less, so I don't take so many photos.

To put it in gamer terms, the canon RP is like playing an FPS with a lever action rifle, the canon r6 III is like shooting with a m4 carbine. In the hands of a good player, both are going to get your frags, but the M4 makes it easier.

Was it worth it in the end? Unless you do sports, or wild life photography, i think it may be overkill. For me personally the biggest benefit is increased battery life. But now that I have the option... maybe I should get into wild life photography...? Man those telephoto lenses get pretty expensive.

The older and cheaper Canon R5 may have actually be better since I am purely a photographer with it's higher MP count, and because I tend to use 24mm lens the most often, which results in more cropping at times. However I do like to mess around, so the R6's more versatile featureset is more suitable for me. Either way it's an upgrade from the old Canon RP.

People often ask me about my gear when they see my photos, fellow photographers are often surprised I've gone on for so long with "crappy" or "budget" gear, but I feel ultimately, if you have purchased camera gear in the past 10 years, the quality and aesthetics of your photos are completely on you. If your pics are bad, that's entirely skill issue. You simply cannot blame your gear. It's all good enough these days.
 
Well, it shows that DJI made the right choice by buying up Hasselblad all those years ago, even their cheapest drone options have spectacular out of the box image quality.
Can we add drones to this thread?
I have a DJI Spark myself, even though its almost 10 years old now I still think its a pretty great drone, especially since I got a good deal buying it used on ebay. Probably should use it more often
DJI Spark (1).JPG DJI Spark (2).JPG DJI Spark (3).JPG
 
Nov 2nd, somewhere in eastern Europe...

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Samsung Galaxy S21U + tripod, RAW with manual adjustments (mostly shadows turned way up). EXIF included.
Next time I'll increase exposure because at the time it wasn't obvious to me that it lowers noise even when ISO is set manually.
 
Next time I'll increase exposure because at the time it wasn't obvious to me that it lowers noise even when ISO is set manually.
ISO doesn't really mean anything on digital cameras, it's just a brightness slider applied to the photo. Shutter speed and aperture are what ultimately effect how much light gets to the sensor - without enough light you get noise.
 
Went outside, I decided to try the Joe pesci weegee truism of "F/8 and be there" with my 18-55 Sony kit lens and my cheap but good enough viltrox 24mm f/1.4 lens and do some street photography of the old town center:
DSC02388.JPGDSC02382.JPGDSC02398.JPGDSC02357.JPGDSC02355.JPGDSC02348.JPGDSC02347.JPGDSC02346.JPGDSC02340.JPG


I also did some drone photography:
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