Step back in time

Lou's getting a haircut this morning so I thought I'd do the same and take the camera along to kill the other 2 hours until she has finished.

The Pentax MZ-M: Small but mighty.

But I'm not just taking any camera; I've got the Pentax MZ-M. Film camera. Fasten your seatbelts.

I dug it out a while ago when I gave the case it was in to a friend while he borrowed the old 10D and I always threaten to shoot off a few frames for old times' sake.

The first problem was that the battery indicator was flashing - having sat for a few years with no action, the CR2s had slowly died. First stop - WHSmith or somewhere similar to buy some new ones.

More easily said than done, evidently: AA, AAA, square 9v, CR123 and CR2032 but no CR2 in the Wickford branch. In Rayleigh, Martin's only had 'normal' batteries but thankfully there is a Boots nearby with a photographic section. £9.99 later, the MZ-M was alive.

I went to get my hair cut first then ventured into the woodland area of Rayleigh Mount, just off the high street. With a ISO400 film loaded, I knew I didn't need direct, bright sunshine for fast enough shutter speeds.

There were a number of things which struck me as I was shooting off a few (9) shots: the lack of control over ISO (fixed at 400 like I say), manual focus, which takes a bit of getting used to, and no screen on the back. Yes, after just about every photo I looked in vain at the blank back of the MZ-M, muttering "idiot" to myself each time.

A good exercise. Photos? Yeh, I'll get them developed eventually...

Photo project

I've always been impressed by people who put together really well thought-out photo projects. For example, Rick Nunn, a photographer from Lincolnshire, recently completed Fifty of Fifty, a project which saw him take 50 photos over 50 consecutive days using a 50mm lens.

I'd like to do something similar, but don't want to plagiarise the idea (much). I also cannot stick to things too easily, especially when the nights are starting to get darker, so by the time I get home, it'll soon be dark and taking a photo is mainly restricted to indoors, flash photography or long exposures under street lights.

I'm thinking of doing a black and white project, as I've always loved shooting in mono. Perhaps I'll give that a go.

Any suggestions/ideas?

Something I see every day

Iron, originally uploaded by Dave Romanis.

A while ago, the Chaffstoke group had a weekly challenge called "Something you see every day."

I have a bit of a morning routine, where I iron the shirt for the day as I'm watching breakfast TV and before I have a bowl of cereal. It's something I've done for years and although I love the idea of ironing 5 (or even 10, if you're REALLY enthusiastic) shirts on a Sunday to avoid having to rush around each morning. In fact, I think I may have talked myself into ironing 4 shirts this evening (I'm not in the office on Wednesday).

There's another photo in my photostream which I'd LOVE to blog here, but I know my wife will probably kill me. The link is here. I love the sentiment of the photo and the concentration on her face as she does her hair - not something she can do 5 times on a Sunday and avoid having to do for the rest of the week, of course...

The technical bit

I set the camera to monochrome for the shot above and the one of Lou drying her hair - I've recently discovered the amazing C-settings on the 5D2 and have set up C1 to be my black and white configuration. It also uses ISO 800 and f/4 as default.

When I loaded the CR2 (RAW) files onto the computer, I went through the usual steps and converted the CR2s to DNG before then importing them into Photoshop and exporting as JPGs.

This is where I came across a little problem; the 5D2 obviously records the picture in colour and applies the B&W setting separately, because when I converted the shots to JPG, they were all in colour! I had to go through Digital Photo Professional to get the B&W versions.

And some say that you can't convert black and white shots into colour, eh?