rossb

Thanks for the tips Fred. If i go to Union Square again i was going to ride the train from Gilroy. Actually my son is home currently and i asked him if he wanted to go. He is a Leica guy and he knows how to get around in the city since he went to SF state. However he said he did not want to go. On the Museum thing my wife wanted to see an exhibition of quilts but i just looked up the current exhibitions and did not see that exhibit. I will need to ask my wife about it. I must have misunderstood or something.

I went to San Francisco a few months back and my plan was to go the Leica store in Union Square as i was considering purchasing a Leica M6. I took a camera and figured i would take photos if i saw something of interest. However once I got there i could not find parking and the traffic was pretty crazy so I drove home. Wasted a full day and decided to forget the Leica. I eventually bought a Mamiya 645 and am having fun with that and no longer want to shoot 35mm. I am going to the DeYoung Museum next week as they have a quilt show going on and my wife wants to see it. I dont think i want to carry my MF around the museum but i always have my phone. In general I am more comfortable riding my bicycle or hiking then in crowded places. Most of my photos are family oriented and a few landscapes in the National parks that i visit on a regular basis.

I would have no use for a photo of a stanger myself. I never go to a city and walk around anyway. Its just something to avoid.

Thinking back to the chopper photos they were really just sunny 16 shots. I metered it with the incident meter to be 5 shots over. Two problems happened and one is the meter was not correct. The second problem is more serious as I was dumb enough to believe it. This morning I realized that when you push the button the meter gives you a bizarre reading and with a second push it reads probably true. I do not want to double tap the device so I just returned it to BHPhoto. I will just use my in camera meter as I have been doing for decades.

I suppose Ansel would ask a child how to make it work like most of us old guys did when digital stuff became part of our lives.

I was able to take some photos of the Cal Fire Hoist Training that I went to today. That's the good part but the bad part is I am not very good at Helicopter photos. I overexposed everything and the flat grey color is dreadful. Anyway this is the best shot of 3 on this roll. The next roll will have Firefighters on the Hoist being let down and lifted up. The exposure is going to be poor on those also. I guess that is photography however and you try something new and take your lumps and do a better job later on. I thought a shutter speed of 1/125th would be a good choice and I think that probably was good. I was just at least 2 stops overexposed and fixed it up in post the best I can. Not sure if a contrast filter would have helped or not. I was using a #8 yellow.

It's just up to you to decide what would fit your needs.

There was a guy in the neighborhood that owned a 57 Chevy Nomad and I used to drool from afar when I would see it in his driveway. I have not seen one for years at this point. I would probably go for a Model A Pick Up if I could have a hobby car however.

Something about gears attracks me. Things that are mechanical like a watch or a camera is just cool. Pinklather those are great shots.

My photos are mostly family oriented shots and I do not want to post them on the net. I do post some general photography shots in a thread from time to time. Nobody comments on them so it is probably something I will move away from in the future. I have no photos in PN albums.

Hi AgBr, I did have a great hike at Yosemite. It was 19miles round trip from the parking lot with a slight detour coming back to avoid getting soaked again on the Mist Trail as it was getting late and a bit cold to be wet. I picked up 3 pretty big blisters on the hike and the next morning my feet were quite painful so I did not go back for pictures and just headed back home. Today my feet feel ok again and just in time as tomorrow I am going to do Helicopter Hoist Training with Cal Fire. I am a volunteer at Pinnacles National Park on the Search and Rescue team. I am taking a camera but I am not sure if I will have an opportunity to take photos or if it's even ok to do so. I will have it with me if I get a chance. Vernal Falls and Nevada Falls are ok to hike to without a permit. Vernal Falls is 3 miles round trip and Nevada Falls is 7 miles round trip from the trailhead. Add 1 mile each way to the parking lot or add nothing if you use the Park shuttle. . Both of the falls are very steep to hike. Pretty much like climbing a wall so excellent fitness is a good idea. The valley floor has Bridalveil Falls, Yosemite Falls, the Merced River, Views of Half Dome, El Capitan and more. All of that without any serious hiking. Glacier point is up from the valley floor on Hwy 41. You can also hike to Glacier point from several different viewpoints. I am going back next month to do the Glacier point hike from the trailhead near swinging bridge. No permit required. It's an 8 mile round trip hike and very steep but I can carry my medium format for an 8 mile hike with tripod. I am excited about the hike and the photos. The view from Glacier Point of Half Dome is amazing. If you make it there imagine the couple hundred hikers that made the trek to the top of Half Dome. It would be impossible for a photographer to not take some shots of Half Dome at Glacier point. Good luck on your trip when you can make it.

I am not angry about anything myself. The site seems fine to me. There may be many members but in reality there are only a few people that are posting. I guess my problem with it all is I shoot film and the interest in film is so low these days there is little reason to be on-line about it.

Henry Coe 5K/10K run last Sunday. I bought a Twinmate Sekonic light meter and metered this scene before the start with the incident mode. . I am pretty happy with the entire roll for metering and it looks like the meter is going to tighten up my exposures in the future. The meter is analog and I thought the style fit my medium format. Super easy to use. Arista 400. Shutter speed 125th of a second. My daughter was in the run but she was in the middle of the pack. The first runners you see here are the runners going for a win in their respective categories.

I think the video that Phil posted explains it pretty good. It's what I had come to in my thoughts on it. However I do not really get Adams and the F64 club's aversion to cropping. I do not see how cropping would render the print similar to another art form. I suppose without cropping they could only produce print sizes in the format they were shooting. That would not work for me at all. I shoot 120 film in a 645 and I do not ever print in the 6 x 4.5 (4/3rds) shape. I crop to 4x6 or 8x10 usually. However I am not trying to change the Art world or live within some system of rules. I just do what I feel like doing.

I think it's been a good thread. I did not know what Straight photography was actually and now I have an idea. Even though it has changed nothing in what I do it's nice to pick up a little information. I like a thread like this which is conducted more like a group of friends talking about photography at a coffee shop rather then head butting. I enjoyed the thread. Good luck.

Turns out I still had 3 frames from my Pinecrest Lake hike so I thought I would post one. Also we are going Olallieberry Picking today and I will take some photos. This shot is Pinecrest Lake. I was standing on a bridge over looking a big creek that flows into the lake. This is a lot of water this year as we had a large rainfall. Arista 400 1/15th second at f22. Orange filter.

Here is a definition of "Straight Photography from Wikipedia. Like I said before it's not my goal to be a straight photographer. I am a family photographer and all I want is nice B/W prints of the family and our lives. I shoot color with my cell phone. "Pure photography or straight photography refers to photography that attempts to depict a scene or subject in sharp focus and detail, in accordance with the qualities that distinguish photography from other visual media, particularly painting. Originating as early as 1904, the term was used by critic Sadakichi Hartmann in the magazine Camera Work, and later promoted by its editor, Alfred Stieglitz, as a more pure form of photography than Pictorialism. Once popularized by Stieglitz and other notable photographers, such as Paul Strand, it later became a hallmark of Western photographers, such as Edward Weston, Ansel Adams and others. Although taken by some to mean lack of manipulation, straight photographers in fact applied many common darkroom techniques to enhance the appearance of their prints. Rather than factual accuracy, the term came to imply a specific aesthetic typified by higher contrast and rich tonality, sharp focus, aversion to cropping, and a Modernism-inspired emphasis on the underlying abstract geometric structure of subjects. This aesthetic caught on in the early 1930s and found its most notable use in what came to be known as The West Coast Photographic Movement. Well known photographers, including Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, his son Brett Weston, Imogen Cunningham, Dody Weston Thompson and Berenice Abbott are considered innovators and practitioners of this style. Many other photographic artists of the time considered themselves practitioners of this West Coast counterculture and even formed a group known as Group f/64 to highlight their efforts and set themselves apart from the East Coast pictorialism movement. This emphasis on the sharp and detailed silver prints dominated modernist photographic aesthetics into the 1970s".

I was going to take photos at Yosemite yesterday but after hiking Half Dome which turned out to be 19 miles I found myself with some blisters on both feet and decided i did not want to go back and walk around. I just went home. I did have a great time on the hike and it is the most amazing hike. My cell photos were not great for sure. I am going back next month and photograph around Vernal and Nevada falls. This week i am out however as i have no photos.

After a little internet surfing i would say i would be wise not to make a precise statment. However my photos are straight photographs sort of. However its not my goal. I do make crisp B/W family oriented photos printed on high quality glossy Canon paper. I am not clear if hybrid photography can be straight photography or not but I do not care anyway. I just do what i do.

I was just reading my book "The Eloquent Light" and discovered that Ansel Adams had an opinion about straight photography. I looked it up on wiki and apparently my idea about it meaning free from manipulation is not correct. Since I am not clear about what it is I have no opinion at this time. I will look into Adams and try to find put what he and the other members of the f64 club were talking about.

I guess there is not much I do with B/W film. Lacking color it's not realistic to the scene at all. Processing is minimal but I would say the manipulation runs deep if you look at it long enough. Film choice is manipulation, contrast filters are manipulation, developer and the development time making adjustments for the zone system. Then there is manipulation during scanning and finally manipulation in LR including white and black adjustments, contrast, clarity, cropping,, sharpening, dust and scratch removal if needed and even the ink jet printer has to be set up which is manipulation. However I do not remove phone lines or litter in a photos. Instead I just do not take the picture as Medium Format has a cost for every frame so I try to choose my subjects carefully. Basically I try to make 15 decent photos each week. Most of them are family photos as I do not care much for any other type. I do shoot landscapes because I hike a lot. I hiked Half Dome on the 8th and it was a great 19 mile hike. I just carried my cell phone however as my pack was very heavy with water already. I am going back with my medium format this summer however for photos around Vernal and Nevada falls. Anyway I do not care about the Straight Photography thing as I do not think it exists anyway. I think a photograph is either realistic to the scene or it's not. Either way it could be very nice or not so nice.

My cell phone makes realistic to the scene photos. No reason to edit them as they are fine the way they are.

I live in both worlds. In one world I shoot medium format film, process and print at home. The other world is my phone with many photos on my card and the photos never leave the phone except for posting on Facebook and Strava. In general I do not think having prints made is that popular especially with the cell phone photographer. I think printing will continue to loose favor as time moves on.

Alan the $30.00 number represented film cost,plus shipping charges, packaging to ship to Dwaynes and processing costs. Roughly $30.00. I bought the film at BHPhoto and paid the usual cost they charge.. Yosemite is a grand place for photos for sure. I am going there on Thursday but was not planning on Inspiration point.. Nice picture by the way. Here is a shot I took the other day at Pinecrest Lake while out hiking. It's on the back side of the lake and it's a 5 mile hike round trip to this spot. Arista 400, orange filter using my Mamiya 645e. A roll of Arista and chemicals to develop it cost me about $5.00 a roll.

A little off topic but in todays news some young guy fell into the Merced River while on the Mist Trail at Yosemite. They cannot find his body. As I mentioned earlier I am hiking Half Dome this Thursday and I am hiking the Mist trail as it's the route. I am not one to dangle over an edge and risk falling but my wife is having a Cow over the whole thing. Anyway I am not taking a camera because of the weight but I will be taking photos after the hike and the next day. The type of pictures will depend on my legs but on Friday I would like to hike back up to Nevada Falls for photos with my MF camera. I bought a roll of Velvia also to try that out along with my usual B/W.