Finally Figured It Out

WARNING: Shitty photos below...

I have finally figured it out. For the longest time (ok, for about 2months), I have been wondering why there was this undesirable green tint on my subway and bus photos taken with my film camera. For all this time, I blamed it all on my faulty manual exposure using my eyes as my light meter. I thought that I had it all wrong because, well, after all, the brightness of florescent lighting can be damn difficult to judge, after all it seems damn bright but it's ever so cool to the touch. So I thought that I had underexposed all my shots and the poor lab technician was trying to resurrect the photos by push processing them, causing the colours to fade into oblivion.

Well, it turns out that it was all because I had daylight balanced film loaded into the camera, and the whiteness of daylight is different to the whiteness of florescent lights. When the eye sees the two different whites, the brain automatically makes an adjustment to give a human interpretation that they are similar in colour.

Similarly, when a digital camera also makes the same adjustment, although sometimes incorrectly. In the world of film, the camera cannot adjust for the different colour temperatures, which is the cause of the green tint.
Very rookie mistake to make.

This leaves me in a bit of a dilemma. After preaching about the wonderful world of film, I suddenly find myself in a position where I can no longer use colour film in my daily commute, which in most cases represent the only time during which I can take photos. There are solutions around this, of course:

• use a warming filter to remove the tint, but this little camera has a very unique lens diameter that they no longer manufacture filters for
• use black and white film - these cost an arm and a leg to buy and a few more toes and fingers to process, even though the processing process is actually easier than colour film (but is a manual process instead of done by machines, hence the cost). Of course, I can try to process the film myself and save, but then I get funny smells in the house and I will need a dark room - the real estate may just prove to be even my costly.

So I guess I am stuck between a dark room wall and a flureacent light. What is a man to do when he can have neither? I guess he goes back to a place from whence he came. Digital.So after all my preaching in the previous couple of weeks, I came to the conclusion that I should go back to the interior but more flexible option. Make no mistake though, the little Canonet will not be packed away. It will not be banished to a closet somewhere and left to gather dust. It will be used whenever the liking takes me and the conditions
are right.

I am a sucker for punishments. I know.

PS: It turns out that I was indeed underexposing my fluorescent shots, but that's not the point... :)

Niagara

The scenic shots of Niagara, as promised…

On the streets of Niagara, ON

Personally, I think that as much as the denialists argue that there is in fact no global warming, no one can argue that the winter (northern hemisphere) of 2009/2010 was a screwed up one. Just last week, weather.ca published an article entitled "The Winter that escaped Canada" (or something to that effect -- work is crazy busy and I am starting to suffer from memory loss due to Alzheimers in my old age). Elsewhere, in UK and continental Europe, they had the winter that Canada should have had. Not complaining that they stole our winter from us -- and long may it stay that way.

And guess what the crap part of all this is? I think the weather gods are just a bunch of pricks. They teased us with record temperatures of 14 degrees Celcius (for this time of year) on average over the past 2 weeks and then the bastards decided to make it snow on Spring Day. Screwed up sense of humour if you ask me.

Anyways, so I was bored out of my mind last weekend and decided to take advantage of the good weather and took a drive down to the Niagara Falls. So from my own make-it-up-as-I-go-along guide to streetphotography on shooting strangers (in a photographic sense) doing normal day-to-day things in a candid and unposed and natural sort of way without getting my nose beaten in, I went to a touristy place where everyone else had a camera in their hands. Some examples of streetphotography here. Captured the candidness but I must admit that I haven't really captured "the decisive moment". Oh well, it's all part of the learning curve I guess.

So here they are. All pics taken on Olympus E-510 with 14-54mm zoom lens set at 20mm f11. Manual exposure setting: Shutterspeed at 1000th second ISO 400.

The scenic pics will follow later during the week.

Peace out.

Was Sick but now just tired

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSyQDBzzbe4

Here is some video that my dear friend Angela sent me. Thought provoking stuff. I've always been the geekist dude around class, but even I am now saying to hell with all the technology. Technology is moving too fast and is taking our lives for a fast ride. Just wishing that my life (hmm, my job) can slow down a bit. Not much, just slow enough for me to breath...

Enough ranting for now. Here is more magic on film.





Take care for now.