michael_darnton2

Research shutter capping. Happens more at higher speeds, which you may be using more with the faster lens? This involves shutter tension on the two curtains being out of synch with each other from slowly degrading springs, and is a relatively simple adjustment, but probably not one you should do yourself. Basically the first curtain is slightly slow and the second catches up with it before they move off the film, closing the shutter early.

For most of the time I've had a camera I've only taken photos with people in them and have never really sure when I could call something a portrait. That said, when I started, and sometimes still, I carried my camera everywhere. Eventually the people I was with got used to it and to me taking pictures, and there was no challenge on that front, and I still use this strategy a lot, even though I've mostly moved to more formal portraiture. In this type of hit-and-run work, you can afford to shoot a lot and your victims have no expectations. This makes it a lot easier to relax because people don't expect to see results except when something is special. It was a long time I felt that I could control a situation well enough to ask people to sit for me, and I was very nervous about that until I could predictably get something good a high percentage of the time. I've never tried the carry-it-everywhere situation with my 500C/M, though. One thing that has been very important to me all along was to look at the work of other photographers who were doing things I wished I'd done, imagining how those pictures had come to be. HCB's wide range of portraiture was a huge influence to me at the start. It was only much later that I learned that most of the informal portraits he took of famous people were contract work for books and magazines, not personal. I still spend a lot of time looking at fashion photography when I'm in the doctor's office, etc.to get lighting and posing ideas. As others have said, the equipment has to be transparent--set it once and forget it from there on. I have always made it a practice to set exposure and some approximate likely focus range as soon as I walked into a room so that I didn't need to fuss if an opportunity came up, and I don't ever use a meter, so I can do this with minimal fuss. Tap my avatar on the left to flickr links of some of my work....

With such a wide lens, even the drying out of lubricant can allow it to droop forward so that you can't reach infinity. The solution might be a lube job, and have the tech make sure the focus is right afterwards. This is an easy adjustment, but you have to be both clever and gentle with a screwdriver.

I think the suggestions of a stabilized lens are just weird. Virtually all I do in 35mm is shoot available darkeness, and the problem has never been my ability to hold the camera still--it's that the subjects insist on not being stabilized, themselves. A stabilizing lens won't do a thing to cure that and with a slower stabilized lens you'll be locked into those shutter speeds that don't freeze subject movement that you are trying to get away from.

I recently had Dave Oddess overhaul one of my lenses. He takes forever, and it costs an arm and a leg, but it came back like new. He has a stash of parts that no longer are available, which can be an issue with things like mainsprings. Well worth the money and the wait!

After looking at your website, I have two comments: first, I like your own lighting better than the style I think that you are trying to emulate. Second, I believe the difference between your work and what I see in magazines is that most fashion today seems to be shot with very large light sources--much larger than yours.

You're good for now. You won't need adapter to use Leica thread lenses that are made for Leicas (and Russian lenses aren't reliably calibrated to Leicas!) The lens you have will be fine. You might like to add an external finder, but maybe not right away. I like Leitz Imarect finders, myself--cheap, easy to find, and cover a lot of lenses.You probably need a neck strap of some kind, and film. Lots of people have gone for years with just what you have. The meter idea is not a bad one. One that's matched for size, and adequate, is the Gossen Pilot.

Lots of self-righteous judgmentalism going on here about how other people should act! With something like this if you are interested, you try it. If it works for you, it is good.

I have two old 055s that I have had for more than 20 years, using them on everything up to my 8x10 Intrepid, and all sizes down from there--4x5, 5x7, Hasselblad, 35mm. I have a good wood tripod, and a much larger Manfrotto, with the crutch-style legs, and they're just too heavy to drag around outside. The weak spot of this tripod (and all tripods, probably) is the column. If you keep it low and extend the legs first, it will hold a lot of weight comfortably and steadily. I have a bunch of Manfrotto heads, and IMO they all suffer from having relatively thin cross-sections in the adjustment pivots. Though I don't like ball heads, I've been considering a low, big one, with a thick neck for the larger cameras. I'm not wild about the new plastic Manfrotto heads, but don't have any actual experience. Most of mine are heads for the ancient hex plate, which works great, IF you pay attention. I have been using Arca-style QR lately for large format, though, with long mounting plates so I can set the balance point where I want, and they appear adequate. I mount a separate QR right on the Manfrotto hex plate, and still use the hex plates for 35mm, etc. I don't like the more recent Manfrotto QR styles. If you like the Tiltall, you will find the 055 sufficient (I switched to the 055 from Tiltall), but do think a lot about the head you choose. I have an 8x10 Ansco view in my studio. Twelve pounds of wood. I put it on the 055, just to see, since it's within the 055 weight specs. I could see it working, but it was a bit scary, and I don't think I would do it. Nine pounds of 5x7 is fine. I think what scares me is not the weight, but getting too much weight out away from the center of the setup.

I went on a cheap meter binge lately, myself. It turns out that the LightMeter app for my Android phone is as accurate as any, and reads lower light than some. My particular Gossen Super Pilot CdS is working with modern batteries, so far; whether it will track correctly as the batteries drop in voltage is yet undetermined. The Super Pilot SBC was the one I should have bought in the first place, and works perfectly. I have bought several old Westons over the years as have yet to get one that worked, so I'm not big on that brand. The last one was a nice meter, but getting it fixed is another $80 or so, and that's not going to happen. I have a Polaris flash meter that is light and has survived a decade without fuss; they're under $100 used. A tiny Gossen Pilot works fine but not for low light; I keep it with my 5x7, which usually gets used outside. The LunaPro F was a smart buy as a cheaper flash/ambient meter, taking 9V batteries, but it's relatively large. To tell the truth, though, I usually stick my finger up in the air and that's within a half stop. Nearly 60 years of experience does that. I never found those charts very accurate; their full sun recommendation doesn't worry about the shadows at all, for a start. Like most one-size-fits-all ideas, it doesn't actually work if you care at all about exposure.

Wouldn't it be funny if Fuji, knowing what they were doing, had put that pin in to drop a resistor in line when you used an AA battery pack, to lower the voltage to the right level, and you, being cleverer than the people who designed the camera, by putting a dummy battery in, dropped the voltage below acceptable for an AA pack, triggering failure. Or, to put it another way, why make a AA pack that would kill the camera when loaded with AA batteries?

Though I hate they way they handle, for me it's the Nikon S3, S4 or SP, in black. Second place goes to something like a black Leica of any vintage. Third to the Ansco view in brass and wood. The last two are what I actually have and enjoy using, too.

I notice in the ads for the Flashpoint that you're looking at that GN56 and GN60, the traditional way to flag guide numbers, are discretely displayed in the descriptions of the two heads. I can't imagine what those would mean except guide numbers, which don't look that impressive. If they are not guide numbers, then it's a pretty bad marketing strategy to just dump them in there with no explanation! So what else could they be than that? That anonymous [idiots] people buying the product are impressed by the power doesn't mean a thing to me when I see those numbers displayed up front from the manufacturer.

Yes, sand bags on everything. I got a cheap set on Ebay after I lost a monolight just by moving a chair and not watching my back. They're cheap insurance, for sure!

People who don't want their pictures taken in public should stay home. She can control you, but how will she control the 5000 other people who were there? If the picture of her were one obvious one, I'd remove it to be polite. If she's complaining she's in a crowd shot. . . . she should have stayed home. Everyone here should feel pretty strongly about this: our right to photograph in public are under assault from all sorts of directions. Give in, and you lose that right.