B/W scans 2012 Italy, and Munich

After not scanning photos for quite a while, I have been busy going over my back catalogue, and although the scans are rough sketches for the web or small book, I am quite happy with the results.  Here are some B/W scans of some shots I have been doing over this year.  Most are from Italy.  All shot with Agfapan 100 (silverprint uk) and Leica M6 50mm lens.  Please check out my Picassa site for more photos.  I have enjoyed viewing several You-tube videos of photographers at work such as Steve McCurry and Steven Shore.  The website American suburb x is full of good information too.

City Centre

The shots above were developed and scanned by Asda:

To be  honest I am not impressed with this e-blogger as it has taken me quite a while to try add posts to my blog, mainly due to getting access to the correctly assigned username and password.  I suppose in the end it is probably my human error but the site is not user friendly...  anyways back to the photography.  The following photos are from another visit to Glasgow city centre with the last of my grainy Fujicolor 200.  I have just ordered 60 rolls of Fuji Superia, which will make the images clearer.  The one issue I forgot to mention with film is that you have to change rolls after 24 or 36 shots.  This can be annoying mid creative flow, which happened to me during my street shots.  If you haven't seen the great Garry Winogrand  German video on You tube there is the lovely moment when three classic 'beautiful' people approach the camera and start posing for the film crew, the camera then pans to Winogrand, who is laughing but embarrassed that he has stopped shooting, because he has run out of film.  The Imagine programme on the BBC this week on William Kline was good to see too.  Great vision and still sticking to the Leica R6 with 35mm lens. Thought the modern day studio fashion shoot was funny to see with all the mod cons  at his disposal, and there he is sitting with his old R6

Film vs Digital

Just a short note on using Film or digital.  The following shots were using the Leica X1 and the M6.
The M6 was used using the cheap Fuji colour 200 and processed in Asda for bargain price of £2 and £1 for up to 200 images.  The images are all low resolution, but good enough for the screen and A4 prints.  The big question is why use it in the first place?  Photographers  and film makers  such as Ralph Gibson, Quentin Tarentino and David Lynch talk about the look of film compared to digital.  With Photography, digital has certainly caught up with the look and Photoshop does allow the photographer to simulate film.  My reasons lie with the camera.   Coupled Rangefinder cameras do allow the photographer to focus in a different way that I personally find more effective (accept when photographing brick walls!).  When I started photography, I hated rangefinders, but a friend got me into using the Leica camera and you do get hooked on them, even though they are flawed.  Here is a link of what it is all about: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ykuy4qYip1U

You don't have to spend loads of money on a Leica.  The great film and alternative store Silverprint sells reburbished Olympus Trips cameras for £65 (and they have great lenses).  Yashica, Minolta, and Canon did coupled rangefinders in the 60's. My main concerns with Autofocus is that doesn't work in low light or for reflections.  Manual focus SLR is pretty good though if you can trust your eyes.  The first two shots were made with the Leica X1 and as you can see it did not focus well through the glass in the second shot. It is a shame that these compacts including the new Fuji Pro struggle with low light etc...
Anyway the first two shots show the shortcomings of autofocus.  The other images are film shots and tweaked using basic Mac Preview corrections:

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eric judlin

 Oct 22, 2012 (edited)  -  PublicBefore uploading some recent photos, here are some examples of work during my trip to Italy last summer.  As you can tell, I have been experimenting using Lightroom in converting photos to b/w.  It will probably be sometime before scanning my b/w shots which were around another 20 rolls. Going to try some of the Fuji 200 film which, I know is grainy but for three rolls for £2 I just could not resist.  These shots are with the X1 which I am fairly happy with , except for the known poor auto focus in low light.  Hopefully Leica can soon produce another firmware upgrade.  These are a small selection of a pre-edited non sequential shots.  When I was there, I tried a few mini projects, which can be hopefully be sequenced in some type of narrative.