Funny thing was I forgot to focus. So all things considered…

I’m slightly fascinated by it and haven’t yet got round to developing a couple of rolls of 120 6×9 film I took last year with the x100′s proper grown up sister camera, the GW690III. I didn’t get hassled then either so perhaps nobody cares.

It is the incongruity of the location that is interesting, though thinking about it, some of these nuclear power stations are in drop dead lovely locations like Dungeness. Another oddness is its size. Really small. The others I have seen have been huge fuck-off installations that look like what they are. You can hear them humming and buzzing from several kilometres away. Not this one.

Nice sky too.

Voluntary work

In a crumbling Victorian church hall this volunteer is packing food parcels. It is tempting to process the photo in a faux-Dickensian way but it would be wrong to do so. Despite ticking all the boxes, this is not the 1870′s. It is the reality for many people in May 2012, the year the UK is spending billions of pounds on the Olympics and The Queen’s jubilee.

Raw data

The year on year increase is obvious from this whiteboard.

The full story can be found at katebelgrave.com

There are lots of trees around here. And water.

After blue water, red water, now we have green water. The water would be green if you could see in colour… Trust me, I’m a photographer.

Nice sense of the primordial soup here.

It is strange walking through dark woods to the top of the hill (Woodhouse Hill?) and suddenly being filled with this view.

100% crop from above

I think it was worth lugging the tripod up there. Despite it looking like I was armed with a Kalashnikov in the dusk.

Or hunting rabbits with The Dog.

Blue water

Couldn’t resist this. Taken wide open (f/2)

Red Water

TBH I took several hundred photos of forest and water just to get the feel. I won’t inflict them.

Didn’t quite get the zone focussing right in the first photo here but it all adds to the ‘impression’. My excuse…

The environments have been difficult, all indoors, limited light and with space often at a premium. And a video camera has been running and recording… so quietly quietly. Controlled portraits these are not.

The D300 makes too much noise, period. The mirror slap sounds like a klaxon on the video. Coupled with a 24-70 f/2.8 the rig militates against intimacy and is frankly distracting. Anything above ISO 800 is pretty crap too and obviously I can’t use a flash.

The Fuji X100 is great, high ISO is fine, near silent shutter but we are stuck with the 35mm lens. Too wide for this kind of work unless I’m a metre or less away and that isn’t going to happen. So that is no use.

Which leaves the Ricoh GXR. I’ve been using it with with the A12 M Module with a Leica Summicron 90/2 attached (135mm equivalent) or the A12 50/2.5 autofocus lensor. Both used with the EVF. I have been surprised. I thought the Summicron 90/2 would be too long for portraits but it allows me to keep out of the way. The shutter is almost silent. High ISOs (up to 1600) have relatively little noise. And best of all the GXR doesn’t intimidate. In fact I melt into the background.

What has surprised me even more is the effectiveness of the ‘mode 2′ focussing method in live situations, plus the fact that I can get sharp results with the Summicron at 1/30th second handheld (with auto ISO) wide open.

Once used to it, the ‘mode 2′ focus method is swift and intuitive even if it is a pig to describe in words. Not exactly rangefinder loveliness but with the surprise benefit of disambiguating focussing, with a natural/visual check on the half press of the shutter button.

The Summicron 90/2 is comparitively long on the GXR body but very well balanced cradled in the left hand for focussing (naturally), it’s weight helping to complete the tripod with elbows against the body. This helps with the low shutter speed.

The biggest hurdle I have to overcome is one of confidence and perception. Letting go of the professional security blanket that is the DSLR in favour of the physically tiny GXR (the sensor sizes are similar, the raw DNGs are actually bigger files than the Nikon’s NEFs) . Despite the fact that in the circumstances outlined above the DSLR is a completely inappropriate tool, using the small mirrorless body of the GXR (even with Leica glass) for mission critical work has been a step into the unknown. A successful and liberating one I think.

* I know, I know, I  should have a D3 or a D4 or at least have a D800 on order. I haven’t. Hardly very professional is it?

That may be a raindrop over the apex of the roof of this barn/store. I can’t believe it is sunlight flare.

There was little light in here. High ISO and 1/5 sec exposure handheld (but braced). I’m surprised the shots were in any way usable.

Continuing the initials carved into rocks in high places meme, here are some more:

I got all excited over the date – 1707 until I realised it was 1.7.07…

This one is a bit older

Must have been seismic. The guy renting the cottage rembembers it as if it was yesterday. Perhaps I shouldn’t joke.

I think these were from Embsay Crag, but I can’t be sure of the name.

This was at St Mary The Virgin Embsay With Easby. We used the car park which was reserved for patrons of the church. So I became a patron for forms sake.

It is a bit hard judging the colours on this laptop so what I see may not be what you see (WISMNBWYS)…

There will now be a short interlude while I test the GXR on some already well tested subjects with some already well tested lenses just so I can get a baseline feel for the camera. Today I was using the A12 M Mount with the Voigtlander Super Wide Heliar 15/4.5. Of course, it isn’t super wide when attached to the A12 Mount because of the 1.5x APS-C crop. It becomes a very usable 22.5mm – still wide though. Fully open, the Heliar is f/4.5 but with usable ISO speeds of 3200 this isn’t too limiting. Depth of field/bokeh on such a wide lens isn’t a consideration since it barely needs focussing. Everything is in focus from 0.5m to infinity at f/8 which I used for most of the photos I took today.

Ricoh’s approach to manual focus aid is interesting. There are two modes, focus-peaking (like in the Sony NEX) and ‘mode 2′. I have no idea how to describe ‘mode 2′ and on first using it I thought WTF? However, having used it I love it – almost foolproof and curiously, for me anyway, the monochrome image is a big help to composition. Obviously I didn’t need a focus aid with the Heliar but I have done some test shots on the dog with the Summicron 90/2 (135mm equiv) and it was spot on focussing on The Dog’s eye, even wide open at f/2 (the aperture, not The Dog’s eye, though that was open too, he’s such a tart…)

And joy! Proper zone focussing with proper manual focus lenses with proper marks on the barrel to just line up and just shoot. Something I have really missed.

So what are the downsides so far? Because we are using rangefinder lenses with a TTL camera, as you stop down the lens, less light is available in the viewfinder (obviously) so it becomes harder to focus. SLRs keep the lens wide open until the shot but they have electrical/mechanical coupling. Rangefinders use a separate viewfinder so this isn’t a problem on those cameras. The GXR is a bastard hybrid so when focussing is critical you need to focus wide open and then stop down. Not exactly a show stopper but something to bear in mind.

The CV Nokton 35/1.2 is deeply disappointing wide open at 1.2 and 1.4 – very soft, but sharp as hell from then on. This may have been the subjects I was testing it with so I’ll investigate further. I’ve read elsewhere about the 35/1.2 being soft with some digis. It is monster glass & only worth carrying in the bag for the wide aperture. I’ll probably stick with the Summicron 35/2 though I’m pretty happy with the A12 50/2.5, especially with the 7cms 1:2 macro (don’t forget, the 35mm is 52mm equivalent with the Ricoh A12 M Mount sensor).

Other than that, I’m having fun!