London calling

   

Soho street shot

A couple of street shots from my last visit to London (Sept, 2022) I decided to take my Lumix LX100 compact just for the convenience of travelling light. It’s a very capable camera (though just a tool, the photographer is the real instrument) as long as you don’t start cropping. I’ve gone right off cropping, I love the discipline of getting it right at the moment of taking, which is in itself a form of cropping, you can only take a small frame of the complete scene with a camera. The cropping and creativity starts the moment you frame the image via the camera.

I only have one complaint about the LX100, the flash that comes with the camera seems flimsy, not built to last and they often don’t mine stopped working soon after I got it. After doing some research online I discovered it’s a common problem and people are using an Olympus flash unit as a replacement, the FL-LM3. But it needs modifying to fit and work on the camera, the part of the flash unit that slides onto the hot shoe is too long for the contacts to match up. There are some Utube vids of people using sandpaper to take it down a bit, I thought there must be a cleaner, simpler way of doing it. I used a sharp craft knife and simply scraped off layers until it was a good fit, using the original flash unit as a template.

It’s a lot better than the original flash, it also has tilt and swivel capability which the original one doesn’t. I often like a bit of flash for outdoor street portraits, as fill in light or just to make the colours pop. 

Oxford Street Reflections, taken with the Lumix LX100

                                                           

         Lumix LX100 with the Olympus FL-LM3 mounted on it, works a treat.

Images from pridefestival 2022

 

A few images I took at the recent pride festival in Hull, East Yorkshire, UK. 2022.

Documentary photography

 

Knee deep in shoes, you just need to find a matching pair. A recent street shot I took in Leeds City market, one of my favourite places for street photography outside of London and NY City. You dont need to travel far to find poverty and people struggling in 2022, more and more will be looking for a bargain. Check out my Instagram for more, old and new @ Streetshootertim

Street photography/portrait

  

A recent street portrait I made. I thought he must be a jet fighter pilot but it turned out he’s a Malaya and Borneo veteran. I saw this guy from a distance…his fate was sealed. I liken my street photography to being a hunter in the urban jungle, I stealthily moved in, while adjusting the settings on my weapon of choice (In this instance a Canon 7D) and like the prey of a tiger, they don’t know what’s happened until its too late. But the people and animals I shoot live to tell the tale, and these images are my trophies.

Millennium Bridge

 

One I made recently with my Canon 40D and Canon EF-S 10-18mm f4.5/5.6 IS lens, at the wide end, (16mm in 35mm film terms) I spent a few days on the streets of London, images can be seen on my Instagram account @ streetshootertim I uploaded this one to IG but decided to delete it, thanks to IG degrading the image quality in the process! I’ve noticed this happens with some images I post there? 

I’m not really into landscape photography, I much prefer Cityscapes like this one, (though this could be classed as a landscape too) I can and do appreciate great landscape photography…Ansel Adams comes to mind, Don McCullin makes some cracking landscape shots too, he mostly does it as therapy after witnessing and photographing war. 

But I mean... how hard can it be to get good landscape images in a beautiful landscape? It can get a bit boring, you could probably give a monkey a camera and it would get good landscape photos in a great landscape, maybe even better as it could climb up trees etc 😀 I much prefer the challenge of street photography, social documentary.

 

The original Canon 7D

Just bought a Canon 7D, the original mk1 in excellent condition for £235…and it is in excellent condition!, in fact it’s like a new camera! Can’t even see any dust in the button recesses! With less than 2k shutter actuations! I have been after one for a while but the ones I have seen thus far have been quite battered, it puzzles me how they get so, unless its been used in a war zone? Its rare I buy camera gear new, I did buy a new lens one time, oh and a battery grip, that’s about it.

The main thing that attracted me to the 7D is the 100% viewfinder, I often find I get more than I wanted when using the 40D, at one time I was well into cropping images but I have done a complete U turn, and now prefer to get it how I want it at the point of taking. The 7D has a few more pixels which is of no consequence to me, the rear LCD screen is a lot better, though I turn the review off and use it like a film camera, If I have been out of town I will start going through my images on the way back while sat on the train, that’s when my editing begins, deleting some, sorting out the wheat from the chaff, less is the new more. Also I don’t want to waste time working on images I won’t use.

I think the focus system is a bit overkill, though I can appreciate how sports photographers will like it, it has a great movie mode too, though I am more into still photography. I have disabled the live view mode, an optical viewfinder is all the live view I need. Not had chance to use it properly yet, but I’m already loving the feel of it, and that larger viewfinder, reminds me of the Canon EOS 1N film camera. Its substantial like a real camera should be, feels good in the hands. The pop up flash is impressive... for a pop up flash! I sometimes like a bit of flash for street portraits to make the colours pop.  

I have handled/used a few mirrorless full frame cameras (mostly Sony) I just don’t like them, don’t like the look and feel of them. It’s neither a compact nor an SLR, but somewhere in-between. I do have a mirrorless compact, a Lumix LX100, which I like and is a very capable camera, but it’s a compact, and I know it’s a compact, it will go in my jacket pocket. I considered getting one of the Fuji X100 series, I like the retro, rangefinder style but I heard even the latest V model can have focusing issues! How did they mess up the most basic thing on a camera, the focusing? 

Digital rev put a 7D through some challenges click here

Yes… full frame may have the "edge" on IQ over the crop sensor, but I refer you to my previous points, and it may be better on low light performance but the 7D is no slouch in that respect, and there is always those things called tripods. Also I have some great lenses designed for the crop sensor which I like. All this obsession with resolution and pixel count, full frame etc bores me to death! Especially when most hardly ever make any prints, but just share online, also when it comes to printing we are limited by the printers ability itself. Even my 4/3rds sensor LX100 compact is capable of printing great looking LARGE prints! If I do get a full frame DSLR It will be a Canon 5D mk3 or the 6D, the 6D is like a cheaper incarnation of the 5D mk3. 

"The photographer is the instrument not the camera" - Eve Arnold