Variation On The Same
Thursday, August 15, 2013
In this space I have written a few times on
the ramifications of taking several photographs of the same subject with
similar but different cameras.
It was a couple of years ago where I found
myself one late afternoon on the Grand Canyon’s
North Rim with my wife and two granddaughters. The light was fading fast. Next
to me was a young man with an expensive, zoom-lens-equipped Canon Digital
Single Lens Reflex Camera.
I had several bags and I had with me:
1. Three Nikon FM-2 cameras.
2. One Pentax MX with a wonderfully
corrected 20mm lens.
3. One Mamiya RB-67 Pro SD with three backs
for three different films.
4. One 2¼ inch by 7 inch negative/slide Noblex swivel lens panoramic.
The young man glanced
in my direction and must have thought I was completely crazy.
The idea probably
going in his head is that any one image he shot with his Canon in the RAW
format could be converted to b+w and could then be manipulated to resemble and
old photograph, a high contrast one, a low contrast one, one with
super-saturated colours and so on.
For me to replicate
that I had to choose a camera and select film for the purpose. I had to use
whatever lens I thought I needed while the young man could simply zoom.
I am a few days from
getting my Fuji X-E1 with an 18 to 55 mm zoom (equivalent to 27 to 84mm in the
35mm film format). I am wondering how this camera might destroy or modify my idea that several
images taken with different cameras in which a pause might happen as you pick
up a different camera and or insert a different lens. Since I mostly photograph
people, they might move and if my camera is not on a tripod (and this is the
case when I use my 35mm cameras) the angle of view will be different. Is this
good? Something in me tells me this is a good idea but I cannot prove it.
Illustrating this blog
are four pictures of Lauren taken a month ago on my living room psychiatric couch.
I used and RB-67 Pro SD and a 90 mm lens. One strip (two side by side
transparencies scanned together) was with Fuji Provia 100 ISO slide film. The other
strip was with Ilford FP-4 100 ISO black and white film. What might you think?
