rj__

"Did you consider the 210mm lens for the Mamiya 7-II?"

 

Yes, I think that the fact that it is not coupled to the rangefinder and requires a separate viewfinder makes it a non-starter for what I want to do. I've never quite figured out who the market is for this lens.

Peter,

 

Your nature photos are encouraging. The photograph of the dolphin is quite something.

 

Thanks.

"Can I presume that on a cost level of 120/220 film and printing will be much less than 4x5?"

 

I shoot 120 and 4x5. The former is not cheaper, it's more expensive, but that is because I shoot more of it. With 4x5, one tends to take much fewer shots. But of course, this would not be true of someone who is as selective with 120 as people tend to be with 4x5.

Correction - the 6x7 and 35mm whale photos were done with Kodak Portra 160NC.

Thanks, more camera options to consider.

 

If you click on my name, I've uploaded three photos that show what I'm talking about. The first two were shot with a Mamiya 7II, 150mm lens, ASA 400 film at 1/500. The third was shot with a Leica M3, 135mm lens, ASA 400 film at 1/1000. It's the extra reach of the 135mm lens, plus a bit, that I'm looking for. A faster shutter speed than 1/500 would help too.

 

As you can see, the place that I'm talking about is a bay that is sometimes quite calm.

 

I'd like to get out in the bay in better lighting conditions (these were done midday under harsh sun) and get to the point where I can predict the behaviour and photograph accordingly. I'll be in this bay, with a boat, for most of the summer.

David,

 

That is certainly how this kind of photography is normally done.

 

I was really surprised at how well the Mamiya 7II worked with this subject matter, and the results, when I was in range, were outstanding.

 

It's easier than I thought it would be. For example, when a humpback puts on a show, tail slapping, it doesn't move very much and the display can go on for a couple of minutes. It's also pretty easy to keep pace with a whale that is cruising. We were alongside finnback whales, maybe 20 feet away, for two or three minutes at a time.

 

I'm in a situation where I can go out repeatedly over the entire two month period when the whales are in the area. I think that I just need a little more reach with the lens. Something around 300mm would do it. They are expensive lenses, but once I've figured out a routine with the Mamiya, I can rent a camera body and long lens and see how it goes.

Thanks for these replies.

 

The Salgado photographs help reinforce the sense that I got from using the Mamiya last summer that this is doable if you are in a whale rich area, which I will be for three months straight.

I have a Mamiya 7II. It is my only medium format camera and I know very little

about other brands.

 

Last summer, because it was what I had with me, I used it, with the 150mm lens,

to photograph some whales. The results turned out to be encouraging, and I want

to use a medium format camera for the same subject when I return to the same

place this summer.

 

The one problem is that the 150mm lens limited me. In a number of cases, I was

actually close enough for it, but I lost some shots that I could have achieved

with a longer lens.

 

So here is my question...

 

What medium format camera would be manageable in a moving boat and take a lens

in the 300mm range?

 

Thanks.

I'm a member too and I want to see the Courbet show anyway. I've seen some of Geoffrey James's photographs from this commission, which I like very much, but I haven't seen Friedlander's.

I'm going to be in New York this week and I'm thinking of attending this

exhibit at the Met: http://www.metmuseum.org/special/

se_event.asp?OccurrenceId=%7B88122A34-3B95-412D-BDF4-225C798C62A9%7D

 

Apparently the photographs arise from a commission that the Canadian Cenre for

Architecture gave to Friedlander and Toronto photographers Geoffrey James and

Robert Burley.

 

The Friedlander photographs were done with a Leica, Noblex Panoramic and

Hasselblad Superwide.

 

Has anyone seen this show? Comments?

Frank Bruni did what I think is an honest review of Peter Luger's in the New York Times last September: http://events.nytimes.com/2007/09/19/dining/reviews/19rest.html

 

The place does have a certain kind of charm about it.

If you do walk down Broadway, and you find, around about 47th Street, that you're in the mood for a good bakery, take a right and walk three and a half blocks to the Sullivan Street Bakery in Hell's Kitchen. It's at 533 W. 47th, at 10th Avenue. Good bakery.

Also, any restaurant in New York of the "change my life" variety requires reservations three months in advance and will cost, all in, about $500 per person and up. In any event, the restaurants in New York aren't any better than what you have in Toronto.

If you are at Broadway and 77th, there is plenty to see and do out your front door.

 

As for food, the Grom Gelato Bar is one block south of you. Run by a couple of guys from Italy, it is gelato heaven.

 

Zabar's, a New York institution, is three blocks north. Check out the cheese counter.

 

Barney Greengrass, also an institution, is 9 blocks north and one block east on Amsterdam. It's a deli, but not as they are normally thought of. Try the salmon and eggs.

 

Just walk around, you'll find lots to do and lots to see.

I should add that I don't mean to overstate Leica's public status. It is closely held and there is very little trading volume. Nevertheless, it is a public company.

 

My main point is that when a company and a CEO have a parting of the ways, there is normally at least a semblance of civility and a plan to manage communications with employees, dealers and customers. That hasn't happened here.

Who knows what happened, but I suspect that the German financial press are going to be all over this in the next few days.

 

Mr. Lee, the CEO of a publicly traded company for a total of about 15 months, has been summarily fired. The company seems to have done this without having any communications plan in place to explain what is going on to shareholders, dealers and customers. Hence all sorts of speculation. This is not normal, in fact it's just plain bizarre.

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Keith Harris wrote:

 

"I was waiting for mr. mitchell to post an awe-inspiring leica shot he took this week, but i guess not."

 

Surely his point is that there are people using expensive cameras to make what he considers ordinary snapshots, and that to the point in this thread that he made the statement, he was not exactly awestruck by what he had seen. I don't have any problem with that view. As I said earlier, if he doesn't think much of my own stuff, I'd like to know, and if he'd like to explain why he doesn't think much of it, all the better.

 

Cheers.

A small correction. When I said that there used to be 600 houses on Isle aux marins, I meant to say 600 people. Quite a difference, especially in the days before birth control.

 

The house in my posts is in what would have been a favoured spot, being on the leeward side of the island. If nobody lives there today, except a few people during the summer, it is partly because there is no electricity, and partly because the island is rather flat and the remaining buildings are quite exposed to the North Atlantic in the winter.

Peter,

 

Yup. Picking up on your suggestion, I'm going to play around with cropping the second shot. These were done with a Mamiya 7, so there's a fair bit of negative real estate to play with.

Peter,

 

No painter...

 

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Tom,

 

The island in the background is St. Pierre. The one in the foreground is Isle aux marins, which used to have 600-700 homes on it, but now has only a few, all of them maintained by the French government as a sort of museum. The square sections of stone rubble are the foundations of homes that were demolished when the museum was being planned. The pretty fishing nets out drying are an installation that is taken up in the winter. On the other hand, the oil storage tanks - the ones that the artist is leaving out of his painting - are quite real. The artist is popular, prolific and widely collected, paintings in that particular impressionist style being more popular today than when impressionism was a radical movement.

 

Cheers

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Personally, if Mr. Mitchell or anyone else thinks that the picture that I posted is trash, I'd like to know it. Much better than conducting this like a mutual admiration society :)

 

In the case of my own photo, I'm not sure whether it stands on its own - maybe one needs to know the location, and perhaps who the painter is. Even then, it may just be junk.