creative motivation for photographers

First impressions with a Nikon ZF

The amazing folk at Beau Photos (https://www.beauphoto.com) rented me a Nikon ZF to try out with the large but stellar Nikon 35mm 1.8s lens. I’ve got it for the weekend and had a chance to shoot a few frames whiles out doing some chores. The world is filled with great reviews so won’t waste time here but it’s “almost” like shooting the old Nikon FM style camera’s which is great! Lens and sensor are amazing and anyone would be lucky to have this!

However so far I’m not in love with it but it is making me love my X100 vi more! Firstly the weight and size is massive (compared. to what I currently shoot with) and it felt pretty intrusive on the street. But my biggest beef with pretty much all modern camera’s is the exposure triangle (aperture, exposure, ISO) is not on the camera in physical dials. On the ZF the ISO and exposure are, but the aperture isn’t on the lens. For me access to the 3 major components that impact the photo seem like a non-negotiable.

As with many modern camera’s I also find the autofocus (although blazingly fast) unintuitive and I couldn’t guess how to make the camera track what I wanted it to. I am sure it’s in the manual, but I’ve made a practice of never reading manuals, and I’m not going to start now. User interfaces are like jokes; if you have to explain them, they aren’t very good.

It’s a beast of a camera though and the quality of the photos is beyond a doubt better than the X100vi.

But for me (so far!) I’m not tempted to switch them out. The Nikon XF is a better camera with more flexibility, but I don’t need the flexibility at the moment and experience is king. However, here’s some photos I took over the past 24 hrs.

Intentional Composition

In my hours of YouTube browsing I can across the videos of Gil Kreslavsky (https://www.kreslavsky.com) (https://www.youtube.com/@GilKreslavsky) who I cannot recommend enough. If you shoot street, watch his videos, you’ll learn more in an hour than you’ve in a year. I know I did.

Nice and early this morning I was out with my camera waiting for the cafe to open so spent some time playing with composition techniques. Some days I think I’ll rename my blog “sometimes almost” since that’s how I feel about most of my work, but I can see how practicing the techniques he suggested will elevate my work massively. Then I can rename my blog “always almost”!

The compositional techniques I was playing with were; leading lines, frame within a frame, and asymmetry:

August 29th

in

Not that it’s specifically interesting but got out and took photos in the early morning and the PNE. Playing more with darkness.

Vespa + Camera. Nice.

Is a scooter the best invention for a photographer? It just might be!

For an urban (and maybe suburban) photographer it’s great to be able to bounce around the city, looking for opportunities to photograph.

My Simple Photography Workflow: One Camera, One Phone, One Keyboard

My current obsession is how to simplify my kit down to as little as possible. After years of wanting “the perfect setup” and lusting after $10,000 cameras to take the same photos i could get with an iPhone (i know, it hurts, but we know its true) I lost pretty much all interest in photography due to life in general and the explosion of over processed stock-like photography.

I got a box and put everything in it and put it away. And dreamt of being a master painter instead (how’s that going Simon? Anything in the National Gallery yet?). But the thing is I do like photography and I like to believe I could quit the corporate life and magically become a Vietnam War era photographer. So I picked up a Fujifilm X100 and decided if I could get my interest back then I would eventually go get one of those $10,000 cameras. But the honest truth is I haven’t got anywhere close to the limits of what the X100 can do, and the workflow is insanely simple.

So I’ve been playing around with the simplest travel package (traveling the world on a 49 cc Vespa - my other realistic plan) with the smallest footprint that makes sense. Plus with “cheap” gear that is easily replaceable.

So current package is:

Camera: Fujifilm X100 with black and white film-like recipe set to output both jpeg and raw files. Plus a tabletop $15 tripod. Plus screw in filters, couple of batteries and a pocket full of cards

Post-production: iPhone 15 with a foldable keyboard. JPEG photos transferred via USB-C for on-the-go publishing

Headphones: Meza Audio in-ear monitor

So I’m sitting in JJ Bean typing this out on the keyboard which folds down to the size of my phone. Photos are transferred to Photos, and then the whole thing is uploaded via Squarespace iOS app to my site. Bish bash bosh. 40 minutes from going out, taking a couple of photos, writing some random stream of consciousness, and publishing the whole thing to fill up some small corner of the internet where nobody ever goes.

Magic.