Zuiks,
Reuben here. Been lurking without contributing to discussion other than FS
posts for far too
long here - depsite having been a listmember for about 3 years - so thought
I'd offer up
some 'pinions.
I basically shoot live/band pics and, more recently, travel stuff. I feel like
a bit of a fraud, as I'm
probably one of the (numerically) few listees here who actually shoots as
(part) the way of
making my living, and yet I have never submitted to TOPE's nor offered URL's to
show any of
my stuff. I basically work in publishing as writer/photographer, though have a
"9 to 5" as a
book dealer to feed those other, truer loves.
I started in photography using a R*coh SLR in 1994, quickly graduating to
C*non EOS gear,
first a 100, then a 5 plus an assortment of swish lenses. I was completely
smitten with - and
still miss in my Oly gear - second curtain/slow sync flash as a technique for
shooting live
bands. I was influenced heavily as a young shooter by a local legend called
Michael Wylie, a
dreadlocked loony who would always rock up to gigs drunk - or "off his tits"
as we like to say
down under, and pardon me ladies - waft around the stage for 2 minutes with his
N*kon
bricks and always get the most amazing shots. He used to wrap all his cameras
in gaffer
tape (duct tape to you northern hemispherites) and black out the logos because
he also shot
travel and never wanted his tools to be so obviously stealable. I thought he
was crazy, though
it's now a concern of mine; my champagne 4Ti is definitely a user, cosmetically
it looks no
more "special" than any of a million Japanese SLRs from the late 70s/early 80s.
I know
better, of course ... Anyway, he would set up a slow shutter plus some fill
and create these
surreal whirlpools of light (the long exposure) containing a perfectly frozen
performer (the
balanced flash) caught mid onstage frenzy, usually from a dramatic super-wide
angle
perpsective at VERY close (like, lens-smashingly close) range. He would "paint"
circles in the
air with his camera, or jerk his wrist in a sudden arc during the ambient part
of the exposure,
basically smearing trails and making clouds of the onstage lighting. Then the
sudden flash
would freeze the frenetically flailing, and usually grimacing performer. For
anyone who needs
a visual example of the kindof thing I'm talking about, look for any of Charles
Peterson's
seminal photos of Seattle grunge bands like Nirvana. Just stunning. The energy
of
performance is BURNT into every frame.
Anyway, for a while there, I had my EOS stuff, emulated Wylie's style, but had
also acquired
my first OM4. For a while I shot them side by side, and was consistently
frustrated by the
limitations of the OM Flash system for the type of images I wanted to get, yet
completely
addicted to the superior handling, robustness and compactness of the OM system
for pretty
much every other type of shot. It was love, and eventually I abandoned the
plastic stuff and
adapted my shooting style to the gear - ridiculous, huh?
But not really. Erwitt's photos are so typically Le*ca M, as are
Cartier-Bresson's. Limitations
of gear actually fire YOU to come up with something different, rather than
relying on what the
equipment can do. My "style" - if, indeed, I have one - has developed and
actually become
more distinctive for using the OM gear. I now tend to actually shoot without
flash at gigs,
preferring 800 or higher-speed film and one or two lenses, filterless if safety
permits. I am
now so comepetent/confident of my ability at shows that I too can turn up,
slightly toasted,
walk in for two minutes knowing I'm gonna get the shot, and leave - or stay and
party a little -
as taste permits. I have no slow-sync, but I often take a manual reading off a
skin tone or
piece of clothing, set that manually - adjusting ap and shutter to generate an
exposure of >
1/8 sec - and fire with the F280 on Super FP. Basically, once your exposures
become longer
than 1/8 or 1/4 or so, the direction of the ambient light trails doesn't matter
so much. It's
"faked" second-curtain sync. It's good enough, considering all the other
advantages.
Over the years, I've often reviewed my pics, and the ones shot on Oly using MF
are
UNIFORMLY sharper than any of my EOS shots. Sure, I may have been able to
respond
quicker/better with AF and get some shots I might have otherwise misssed, but
that is also a
factor of experience. I don't miss much these days.
To round up an overlong digression on the "do you use all the fruit on your
4Ti" theme - well, if
I didn't like Super FP on the F280 flash, it's true, I probably wouldn't own
one - a 4 or a 3 would
suffice. But for daylight fill (a necessity in people shots in Australia taken
anytime other than
dawn or dusk!) to even out contrast on bright days - in other words, all of
them - this
combination is INDISPENSABLE, especially once you are familiar with its
temperamental
fluctuations). And it is hard to live without a spotmeter once you're used to
it. Me and my 4Ti
are like John and Yoko, you know? Inseparable and a little unhealthy, but a
rewarding and
fulfilling combo ...
For everything else, sure, centre-weighted + intelligent comepensation would
probably
suffice, but I'm LAZY, so spot-metering and Aperture Pri AE rules. Once you've
been shooting
long enough, DOF at given apertures just becomes instinctive. My favourite
trick for parties
was/is XP2 Super or any 400 speed Mono, trad or chromogenic, with ISO dial @
~640, T20 or
T32 on Auto, OM4Ti on Auto, Aperture of f16 or f11 @ hyperfocal and ~ - 2 stops
comp, for
interiors w/dark walls, less compensation for lighter interiors. You can,
literally, walk around,
raising and firing at will without looking, focussing, even touching your
settings again all night,
yielding beautiful, contrasty and SHARP, eminently enlarge-able exposures. I
usually do this
with a 28 or 24 on.
IMHO, the T20 is the Oly system's best kept secret, as its compact size means
it is even
usable, perfectly balanced, on the older rangefinders (which I also love to
do), yielding
PERFECT flash exposures, because they are calculated by the inverse square law
(ie.
background illumination does NOT affect exposure calculation!!!!). I have only
recently
realised that, ironically enough, my 30 year old RC or SP-N Oly rangefinder, or
even my XA -
which all allow flash sync @ all speeds, due to their leaf shutters - could be
used for band
photography without any of the fiddling with compensation, with, probably, more
accurate
results than my Can*on stuff ever yielded.
I can't remember who he was, but some UK legend who specialises in
hand-building his
own large-format field cameras has openly praised the optical qualities of the
35mm lenses
(mostly based around the one timeless, excellent design) found in the Oly
compacts from the
70s. I just had my first travel pic published last week; it was shot with an
Oly MJUii (Stylus
Epic). That 35mm f2.8 - near identical to the one in my 20 year old XA - is
RAZOR sharp when
used thoughtfully.
I'll stop now. I feel expurgated.
Oh, and if anyone wants to sling me a spare "OM System Lens Handbook", I have
spare
copies of both the Mannheim and Shipman books, and can offer one of EACH as a
swap. I
also have both editions of Shipman, and can lay my hands on "The Pent*x Asahi"
way and
"The Le*ca Way" easily - one of the perks of being in the book game. Reply off
list if keen.
Reuben
--
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