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[OM] Just some opinions ... Longish Post

Subject: [OM] Just some opinions ... Longish Post
From: "Reuben Acciano" <rubydoomsday@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sun, 13 Oct 2002 20:23:57 -0500
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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