Today I shot mostly on film again. Oh, I did take some digital photos with the Pen, but produced mostly crap. I find that I’m using those digicams too much in a snapshooting style, not really caring about the result – and I have to change that, I know.
What I did with the 35mm camera was to use it at the hyperfocal distance of its 50mm lens, which I had to explain to both my colleagues Udo and Arno.
In case you don’t know that term: it’s explained in the Wikipedia article to which I linked above, but the short “executive summary” is: each lens, and each film (or sensor) format has – for a given aperture (f-stop) – a distance which gives you everything in focus from about half of that distance to infinity. You can simply calculate that distance for your lens and for your intended f-stop with the Online Depth of Field Calculator, or check what I write here with it.
For my 50mm lens on my 35mm film camera set to an aperture of f=8, that distance is about 10 and a half meters – which means that if you use these settings, you’ll have everything from just over 5m to infinity in acceptable focus. If you use an aperture of f=5.6, that hyperfocal distance would be almost 15 meters. And so on.
This is the way many street photographers work, because with a shorter focal length of – say – 35 instead of 50mm, that depth of field becomes even larger. Which means: you don’t have to focus at all. Just take the camera up and: click. And maybe that is why Weegee said: “f8 and be there“, when asked for his secret.
So I shot fast today, which I had to explain to both Udo and Arno. Can hardly wait to see the results, but like I mentioned already: waiting for a film to get filled, and developed, is a Zen-like thing in itself. So refreshing.
Ok; here’s one from this evening – and no, this was at f=4.5 and 1/160s, using my studio flash bounced over the ceiling. The E-520 was on autofocus, and the white balance was set to a reference (gray card) in camera. The alarm clock in our dining area shows some 17.5 degrees inside – while it’s still 20 degrees outside. A thunderstorm is approaching, according to the forecast:
Thanks for viewing and reading.
