I recently picked up a FED4b 35mm film, rangefinder camera (see inset image). It is built like a Russian shot-putter, and you don’t half know its weight when you must carry it around for a couple of hours. My very first SLR was a Russian built Zenit E, so this is not my first experience with such chunky beasts. The FED4b models were made from 1969-76. ---- All rights reserved. nd.com Read on...

Yesterday was the first chance to fire a few frames using this camera entirely manual camera. Having used digital almost exclusively for several years now, this was a strange experience.

Doing everything

Sure, the camera has a built-in light-meter, but all it does is indicate light levels and help you decide the most appropriate exposure for the scene. You must still set aperture and shutter speed. Oddly, with the FED’s (as well as several other models of similar Russian cameras), shutter speed cannot be set until you have wound on the film. Forgetting this, apparently, can damage the shutter release mechanism beyond repair!

Long gone are the days when I was able to make a close approximation of the required exposure purely by eye. But yesterday’s light remained fairly stable, so there was not too much fiddling with the controls.

Did it take the shot?

The instant gratification of a digital camera’s screen preview is, of course, missing. It was the oddest experience hearing the click (or, rather, clonk) of the shutter, then… silence. The clonk itself is less gratifying than an SLR because a rangefinder camera needs not to move a mirror out of the way in order to expose the film. “Now what?” I found myself thinking. Then remembered those past days of agony and tightly crossed fingers for the film to return from the processor. With the luxury of instant digital preview, I like this aspect of film even less than before.

The joy of depth of field

This is the one element I loathe about modern digital and DSLR cameras (or at least their lenses): they tend not to sport depth of field indicators.

If you are not learned in the basics of depth of field, here’s a quick explanation (feel free to skip it if you know all about it)…
When you focus your lens on an object, other objects both before and behind that focus point will also be in focus. The distance between the closest in-focus object and the farthest, depends on the focal length of your lens (i.e. 50mm, 200mm, etc), and the aperture setting for the exposure. The larger the lens focal length, the shorter the depth of field it is able to provide. The higher the aperture value, the wider the depth of field. The effect is simply the nature of lens optics, but is a powerful tool for a photographer.

Street and landscape photographers have for many years used a specific depth of field technique called Hyper-focal Distance. Every lens has a hyper-focal point, where everything from a specific distance, all the way to infinity, will be within focus.

The image on the right is the FED4′s lens, and demonstrates the usefulness of depth of field indicators to find hyper-focal distance. The topmost numbers are the aperture stops, currently set to f8. Below that are the depth of field indicators for the lens, which are an identical range of numbers to the aperture stops. Below those are the focus distance indicators, marked in metres.

In this shot, the lens is focused at around 8 feet. At F8 aperture, the depth of field indicators show that everything between 4 metres and infinity. (As you can see, if I switched to f5.6, only objects between around 5 metres and just over 20 metres will be in focus.)

This means that as I wander around snapping images, so long as I ensure I am at least 4 metres from my subject, I will not need to worry about focusing! You can likely understand the benefits of this, particularly for rapid-fire, candid and street photography, where the time taken to focus exactly could easily mean a missed opportunity.

Interestingly, if I set the standard 50mm lens on my Canon 350D to f8, its hyper-focal distance is 16.5m. This translates as only objects from 8.24m (double the near-focus point of the FED4′s lens) to infinity will be in focus. Much less flexible than the FED4′s lens. If I try to replicate the aperture and focus of the FED4′s lens as in the image above, I get a paltry total depth of field of 0.72m, which translates to only objects between 2.13m and 2.85m will be in focus. Zoom lenses tend to be even less flexible with depth of field. (I should mention that the standard 50mm Canon lens is not an expensive model – better lenses generally provide better performance and flexibility – but that lens is far more expensive to buy on its own, than the FED4.)

Film or Digital?

My frustration with depth of field of consumer DSLR lenses (I have not had experience of expensive DSLR lenses so cannot comment), will remain for now and I doubt I will use film as anything more than an enjoyable curiosity. Not being able to post the FED4′s images with this post is a typical reason for sticking mainly with digital.

But there remains an appeal for film, and particularly the pleasure of using an older camera. We have a new (to us) Yashica 635 Twin Lens Reflex (TLR) camera to play with, too (TLR cameras as a particular favourite of mine). Plus older, far more basic, box cameras, such as an excellent, original Ensign Ful-Vue (the older, box design), which has a fixed shutter and aperture – an original point-and-click!

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Our typical exploratory excursions, sans GPS, consist of defining a destination or three, making a wrong turn or two, and at least once impulsively detouring to explore something that whispers of old stuff to look around.  ---- All rights reserved. nd.com Read on...

On the way to — some place or other, I cannot quite remember now — we spotted a sign easily translated even with our muy poco Español as: Castle of Castles. Both enthusiastic about historic fortifications and ancient sites, we made a rapid u-turn and headed for Castell de Castells.

The village of Castell de Castells, like so many Spanish mountain communities, clings to a steep hillside. A major road passes by its feet, and the promise of the “castle of castles” — with no immediate visible battlements, towers, or walls upon approach — taunts passers-by to head in amongst the jumbled buildings. 

Town planning

If there was ever any strategic planning in the layout of a rural Spanish town, then it was surely made over far too many bottles of suspiciously cheap wine, with no further attempt to settle the plans under the assumption they were appropriately laid down the first time. 

The streets of Castell de Castells appear to lead you perpetually uphill, taking you deeper and deeper into the clutches of the town with each neck-straining twist and turn. They rapidly transform from ‘quite narrow streets’ to ‘nothing more than gaps between rows of houses’. They become so narrow, that a pedestrian navigating the same ‘gap’ must dive into a doorway recess to allow a car’s passage (I am convinced one woman we saw on two occasions had to breathe-in, too).

You might expect such a constricted passages to have a one-way system to avoid vehicles meeting when travelling in opposite directions. You would be wrong. These were officially two-way roads, as highlighted by a sprinkle of other cars here and there, tucked into corners and recesses, facing in different directions. Thankfully, we were spared the opportunity to negotiate (in Spanish and Bad-Spanish) as to who should reverse and give way. (A negotiation made doubly tricky by the roads being too narrow to exit the car and attempt the exchange in the first place!)

You find yourself on the same stretch of road more than once, but no matter how you try, you are ever facing in the wrong direction to attempt to back-track to your point of entry. Perhaps the other vehicles collected in nooks are simply the abandoned transport of previously entrapped tourists who had similarly never discovered a way out.

There are corners, too

Dead-ends are commonplace. Tangled streets taunt the weary with the promise of escape, only to terminate with an un-drivable incline, or someone’s garage.

After several twists and turns, enough at least to have us make the decision to forget the castle and simply get the heck out of the town, we spotted a street notably wider than the rest. Along it were several parked cars, and some building work in progress. There appeared to be a left turn at the far end. “Hey!” we exclaimed, “This looks like a road people use more regularly.” We turned and found ourselves being forced to turn left into the narrowest street of all.

I suspect you think I am exaggerating, but the 90 degree turn into this street — which after perhaps two car lengths then turned 90 degrees to the right — was barely wide enough to accept our little Ford Fiesta hire car. We sat for a moment considering the options and decided reversing to be the better choice (the other roads were still narrow, but nowhere near as narrow as which lay that ahead). 

Decision made, I crunched into reverse, looked in my mirror and saw a van rapidly approaching from behind. Hemmed in! “This is how they get you,” I thought, “trap you in a corner then close-off each opportunity to escape until your hopes of freedom dwindle into mere hopes of survival.” Perhaps the entire village had become infertile and the only way for them to avoid extinction was to trap unwary travellers and gradually transform them into locals. At least I would more quickly become fluent in Spanish.

Our hesitation in negotiating the gap ahead prompted the van driver to emerge. “We are lost!” we admitted in our best phrase-book Spanish, expecting the patient local to suggest how we should reverse and be on our way.

Instead, he reeled off a series of directions that, with no hesitation or concern for vehicle size relative to street width, clearly indicated we should just pop on ahead to the left, make a right, then another right, and finally sweep left. We asked that he repeat, slower, after we informed him of our poor Spanish, and he did so, gesticulating more dramatically to assure us our path lay ahead. I simply stared, eyes front, predicting how our hire deposit was about to be scraped off the sides of the car as we attempted to make our way along what were, to our guide at least, perfectly adequate streets.

I am not sure how we did it

But we did. With wing mirrors adjusted for maximum view of the extremities of the car’s rear, we made out clutch-grinding way around the first corner — I estimate with around a centimetre to spare on the driver’s side — then the almost immediate right turn with a similar margin for error. The final right turn, again a full 90 degrees, posed the additional challenge of being briefly but sharply up hill. Hastily patched house wall corners suggested not everyone had survived the manoeuvre unscathed. 

The roads then almost immediately widened. Still not ample space for even the most careful two-way traffic, but compared to our recent experience a veritably motorway. 

I realised we were still heading up. Other than a brief descent into the street with the parked cars, we had been nose-up all the while. 

Unsure of exactly where this hopeful, wider road might take us, we drove slowly past a group of workmen, waiting for them to begin shouting and gesticulating that we were about to drive into another dead end. But all was well. A sharp, low-gear drop and we found ourselves on a major road once more.

I have driven around many narrow paths in both Spain and Malta, but never have I had to negotiate such ridiculous slivers of wing-mirror scuffing streets. I believe we might have been the talk of the town for the next few days as the tourists that got away.

Castell de Castells

Apparently, the area is a regular focus for walkers and mountain bikers. The castle does indeed exist, and, according to Wikipedia, consists of remains of an old Arabic fortification – I guess that should be more accurately termed Moorish fortification. There are also some nearby rock formations forming a natural arch, and remnants of 5000 year old cave paintings.

There is certainly enough reason there to revisit Castell de Castells one day and look around properly. I hope by the time we return, they have Park-and-Ride.

jEN’s post on Castell de Castells

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Unlike my last trip back in July, I am staying down town in a pretty decent – and very comfortable – hotel which is gratefully within good walking distance of the office (I cannot bear to use cabs for transport unless absolutely necessary). ---- All rights reserved. nd.com Read on...

Walking the streets

I learned the value of spending time walking around, even if it was merely to and from work, in my first trip to the city over a year ago. Always with my small, trusty Sanyo HD2 camera to hand, I grabbed a thoroughly satisfying photograph of the Palace Hotel one morning. I’m doing the same this time, though more deliberately on the hunt for candid street shots as I make my way around.

Rather than be conspicuous, I’m keep the small camera almost hidden within my hand at my side. It means capturing a something specific is a little hit and miss, but that’s the beauty of this kind of candid photography, Through the vast majority of shots are out of focus, blurred due to motion, or just plain completely off-target, some do turn out and they are always a pleasant surprise. Carrying the camera at around waist level creates a very different view on the scene which I find pretty interesting.

Results

Two of the four successful images can be seen here, above, with others in the flickr pages. I hope you like them as much as I do.

The four images as of the writing of this blog post came out of around 70 photographs shot over two days on the morning route between hotel and office – the light being far too low in the evening for a small lens camera such as the HD2.

More to come, I hope, and more varied shots, too, as I should have a little exploration time over the weekend. Finally, on my third trip to this city, the chance for a little sight-seeing!

I am just starting out with this, but you’re looking for superb examples, I recommend Water Molotov for some thoroughly stunning San Francisco street photography.

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