emmajanefalconer

I cross-processed mine and got lovely pastel blue and beige tones (I was taking photos of a beach). I found it best to rate it at about 25 ASA. It's not going to give you a natural colour rendition, but you can get some great effects out of it. I think it's good for water particularly, because of the strong blue colours you get from cross-processing it.

 

Here's the flickr sets of the photos I took using it:

I've been selling prints for about a year online, the best packaging I've found are stiff-backed card envelopes like these-

http://www.staples.co.uk/ENG/Catalog/cat_sku.asp?Description=UK_CL_Special+Envelopes&CatIds=21412,21636,21643&webid=9746RBE04&affixedcode=WW (flexocare are the company that make them, in loads of different sizes)

 

I've sent prints both mounted and unmounted around the world in these with no problem. The one time I did have a problem was with a tube for an a1 print, which Canada Post seemed to decide to use as a football.

A lot of the stuff the lomo society sells is Russian deadstock, and that stuff is built like a tank! The rest of the stuff is plastic novelty cameras. They really do overcharge (and almost all the stuff I have of theirs I got elsewhere for half the price), but they do make nice sets, with nice colour art books with some cameras. I'm a member of a lomo group, and whilst there are loads of boring beige fisheye pictures of someone's cat, there are also loads of brilliant eyecatching photos on there, particularly from the members from Russia and Singapore.

 

The lomo lca is pretty nice. It does low light shots very well, is very difficult to damage, and the designers went a bit overboard with the lens coating, giving quite a nice effect. I got mine in Tallinn for £30, the shop had a whole shelf of the things. I've got my eye one one of their panoramic cameras, the lens swings round with each shot. I've seen some amazing pictures taken with them.<div></div>

I have 10 mega digits- how about you? Have you upgraded to 11 yet? How was the process?

I saw an advert once for a wedding photographer's assistant that said "Must have EOS 1D + about 8 top of the range lenses, particular ones specified + full set of a certain lighting system (a really expensive brand, but I can't remember which) + station wagon car. Position is unpaid for the first six months, rising to £6.50 per hour after that (ie the legal minimum wage here in the UK!).

 

I think the person who took that job would have to be both very rich, and insane.

Seagulls have such beady evil eyes! I saw one eat a sparrow alive once, it stalked the sparrow, grabbed it round the neck, shook it roughly and started eating the sparrow whilst it was still trying to escape. Nice!

I'm the other way round, autofocus drives me mad, my first camera was a rangefinder, and I always seem to accidentally focus the autofocus on something other than the intended target first go, I guess I don't have the knack, or maybe I pick compositions that confuse the cameras.

I have perfect vision in my left eye, and dodgy short-sighted vision in the right. I can't seem to wink with the right eye though, so if I'm not wearing my glasses I focus with the left eye and then switch to the right to compose. Awkward, but I don't like to wear my glasses if I'm out drinking, because I have a bad tendency to take them off and lose them.

I have the Canon 8600F too. It took a bit of fiddling to get it scanning how I want (had the same grain problems as the previous poster) but I hit on scanning colour as a black and white negative but colour scan with all the auto improvements turned off. That seems to work better than the actual colour setting. It's a good scanner.

As a kid I was usually given a disposable camera each holiday, but when I was 14

or so (mid to late 90s) my dad saw that photography interested me, and dug out

an Agfa Super Solinette rangefinder he had bought in the late 50s, a Weston

light meter that tended to sulk, explained the basics of exposure to me, and let

me get on with it. I think it was good for me! The camera was totally manual,

built like a tank, and because the light meter sometimes refused to work, I got

pretty good at estimating exposure.

I am young (23) and mainly use film. I have a pocket digicam for convenience (Canon Ixus 75) that takes very nice pictures, but I'm holding out on the DSLR front. They don't really appeal to me. I use vintage film equipment and scan the negatives. I colour correct the scans on photoshop and email the files to the lab for printing, so I have a kind of hybrid process. Any decent photolab will also scan negatives to a cd for you.

 

Even if you buy some new digital equipment, it doesn't mean that you have to give up on the film. Why not use both?

Perhaps you could find out if Nikon will gold plate the cameras and set diamonds into the buttons? That will certainly impress people, but sadly increase your mugging chances 200%. You should spend some of the leftover money on a camera bodyguard.

 

In seriousness, I would go for some really nice lenses, it will open up more new photographic options than some tiny little upgrade on the body that will be replaced by the next one in 6 months.

Nearly all the marketing photos the Lomography Society use are cross-processed. They don't make it clear, so a lot of people buy the cameras, use normal c41 , and then are disappointed that they don't get the same bright colours as the adverts.

 

Expired slide film is great for x-pro, and also very cheap. You can put it in the fridge to preserve it, or even the freezer if you want it to keep forever. If I used expired film, I usually over-expose it one stop.

 

Warm up filters give a nice vintage effect to x-pro as well, I find.

 

Here's all my flickr photos tagged with xpro, if you want some ideas http://www.flickr.com/photos/emmafalconer/tags/xpro/

Jenny I like the camera, and it has a good lens, it's just very unergonomically designed, it's not like I use it as my main camera, just something I get out now and then with the tripod.

Also the yellow filter slides away, there's a little switch on the lens to whisk it away

It takes nice pictures, I have one I bought in a junk shop in Reykjavik mainly because I liked the styling. I was pleasantly surprised at the photos that came out of it.

 

Here's one of Brighton Pier

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<a href=" title="prizes.jpg by emmajanefalconer, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/231/473763174_22979aef24_o.jpg" width="431" height="440" alt="prizes.jpg" /></a>

I *AM* lefthanded, and I find it irritating! I have a little 120mm German box camera (Vredeborch Felica) that is totally left-handed, and that is really nice to use, but somehow the left-handed bits on the Moskva are just irritating ..

The button on my Moskva is also stiff, and sometimes you can't push it down with your hand. If you use a cable release it works great, but sometimes I don't want to faff about with the cable release!

What makes the Zeiss awkward to use?

I have one I bought in Estonia in lovely condition, for a great price, but wow

is it badly designed! It seems like they started designing it for left-handers

and then changed their mind halfway through, so half the controls are in the

same place you find them on most rangfinders, but others (such as the aperture,

and shutter button) are round the other side, so you need both hands just to

cock the shutter and take a photo unless you fancy doing lots of awkward

reaching around the lens.

 

Does anyone else find the same thing with theirs, or have I somehow got hold of

an odd one intended for left-handers?

I have the Canon 8600F, it cost me ﾣ120 in the UK, and I'm very happy with it. I scan a lot of cross-processed stuff, and the scanning software handles it well. It also comes with Silverfast, which sets up film channels for the scanner, but I never use it. I usually just use the Canon software and turn all the "auto-tone" "auto colour" etc stuff off. I find that you get better results choosing "b&w negative" "colour scan" than using the colour negative mode for some reason. Good results overall though, and the scanner is reliable.

Actually I think you will find that the REAL professionals prefer tintypes. The more toxic the processing chemicals, the more professional the photographer. Them's the rules.

yep, that's Fuji film cross-processed, unmistakeably. Fuji films give a green tinge, kodak a blue and yellow one usually. Out of the Fuji films Velvia comes out the greenest in my experience. I have found Astia is brilliant for x-pro, but not so convenient to get hold of. Kodak Royal slide films are also good I find.

I have one, but I never use it, I was given it. It came with loads of Adaptall lenses, so I got a Pentax adaptor to use them with my ME Super, which I much prefer the feel of. I think the AE-1 is well made and reliable, but it's not to my personal preference, I don't like the clunk when you wind the film.

JDM- I just checked, and mine is the version before Office 2004. I guess they fixed the problems since. I got mine practically free in 2005/06, so I guess they were trying to offload loads of old versions to university students. My version of excel is fine, does the job, but word is just weird.