Tag Archives: film

Please Keep the Passage Clear

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Photography is like a puzzle.  Images can be taken days, weeks, months, years apart yet fit together.  The first image was taken from the Old Bank of China building with City Hall (the short modernist structure) in the foreground on the right.  Second image was taken from the waterfront side of City Hall with a glimpse of the bamboo-like New Bank of China building in the top left hand corner.

The two images contrast the new with the old, openness with closure.  It’s about the interplay between space and memory and how one can change the other through time.  Hope to add more photos to this series in future posts.

Bessa III Review Part 3

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This final installment of the Bessa III review will focus on its unique bellows and Heliar lens. Some sample images from the camera will also be included as requested.

Perhaps the most distinguishing feature of the camera is its collapsible bellows. But unlike a large format camera, the Bessa III bellows only allow the camera to be more compact and does not enable any tilt shift effects. (An interesting experiment would be to unhinge and shoot the lens in a non-perpendicular position to the film plane.) With the bellows collapsed the camera can fit in any large coat pocket or side pocket of your bag for easy access. It is very secure so no worries about it opening or closing accidentally.

Both the aperture dial and focus ring on the lens turn smoothly. The focus tab is comfortable to use even for large sized thumbs. The aperture ring is notched so that it’s easy to locate and turn. The numbers on the aperture dial are large enough to be seen through the viewfinder. This enables the shooter to keep their eye on the subject without removing it from the viewfinder to check aperture and shutter settings. And with a viewfinder magnification of only 0.7x it is close enough to 1:1 to keep both eyes open without much disorientation.

As for the lens, I must admit I have some mixed feelings about it. In optimal lighting conditions the optics yield wonderful results. With the correct focus setting the images are very sharp and crisp. However, in poor lighting conditions the contrast is quite low but nothing that can’t be fixed with some post processing. From this table you can see that the Bessa III’s 80mm Heliar lens is equivalent to a lens somewhere between 35 and 50mm on a 35mm camera. As mentioned previously it does feel a lot wider compared to its 35mm format counterpart. Overall the performance of the lens will allow you to take a wide variety of shots day and night, handheld and with a tripod.

Sample Images from the Bessa III with Heliar 80mm F3.5 Lens

High contrast handheld outdoor day shot with Bessa III

Low contrast handheld indoor shot with Bessa III

For all the Bessa III related post including photos taken with the camera please click here.

PJ Harvey “Let England Shake” – 12 Short Films By Seamus Murphy

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For the 100th post of this blog I’d like to share my review of the DVD version of “Let England Shake”.

PJ Harvey “Let England Shake” – 12 Short Films By Seamus Murphy is a collaboration that started when PJ saw Seamus’ exhibition and book of photographs ‘A Darkness Visible: Afghanistan’ and decided to make a couple of films for her new CD.  It is a powerful tour-de-force that combines poetry, rock music, video and still images to weave a multi-textured narrative of Seamus’ road trip across England, and PJ Harvey’s haunting performances of her songs. It’s also the debute of Seamus as a film maker who has covered war torn countries around the world for decades in his photographs.

Each of the twelve films starts with seemingly random strangers reading the first verse of the songs.  These performances are at times serious and at times tongue in cheek outtake-like clips. This adds to the sense of joy in the production found throughout the film which was made entirely in-camera. After the brief reading the film than cuts to PJ’s singing or the footage of Seamus’ road trip which run the gamut from idyllic sea and countrysides to hectic city streets.

The video and stills are edited together so that they reinforce each other: moving when you expect stillness and stillness when you expect movement. All the while working in near perfect unison with the music. Sometimes, the materials match up too nicely for my taste – like crashing ships and crashing waves in Track One – but that’s just being picky. In general it works beautifully like when cutting from the human skeleton to PJ or from the old woman to PJ – the ephemeralness of human life.

One of the more memorable scenes is the old folks in a dance hall swaying their hips (unbeknownst to them) to PJ’s song titled “The Words That Maketh Murder” – the video and audio incongruence is perfectly surreal. Then there’s the slightly out of focus projected images of people being pointed to by a disjointed hand from inside a camera obscura. All the while with the lyrics “I’m going to take my problem to the United Nations” playing over top.

There are a few recurring images that symbolize death such as the sea, fog and snow. One particularly potent image is a line of roses along an iron chain by the docks on a grey snowy day. Roses are repeated again when soldiers lay them on top of a hearse at a memorial service for a fallen comrade.  Lots of beautiful flowers in the snow images makes one wonder what flowers in the winter?  Then there are the images of death portrayed in Seamus’ war photography interspersed throughout the DVD.  For the majority of the piece the adventures overseas are subtly alluded to by shots like the Afghan rug hanging on a roadside railing in the snow.

The film is not so much a contrast of war abroad and peace at home but rather the signs of death brought back and remembered through the everyday living.  If all the images of actual war were removed from the film this message would still come through effectively.  After watching the DVD I went to Seamus’ site to look at his still photos and found much sensitivity and poetry in his war photography.  Which is a striking contrast when compared to his shots of regular life in the film which are at times tinged with violence and sadness.

Bessa III Review Part 1

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Several years ago my wife and I travelled to Prague and picked up an old fold up camera. We brought it as a kind of joke and took a few rolls of film with it.  Little did we know that when we developed and printed out the photos they were absolutely stunning giving much greater detail on an 8 x 10 print then 35 mm film.  Although in working condition the camera had its quirks and was very cumbersome to operate.  So I picked up a second-hand Hasselblad 500 CM which was easier to operate but challenging nonetheless due to the upside down viewfinder (I haven’t given up yet).  At the time the Bessa III which combines medium format negative + rangefinder composition + compact folding body seemed like the ideal solution.

Chemical Sensor

The Bessa III takes 120 roll film which can be set either to 6 x 7 or 6 x 6 frame ratio.  The adjustment can be made simply by turning the clearly marked dial on the right.  On my sample this dial is a bit loose and I find myself compulsively checking to make sure it is firmly set before closing the back.  The two arrows across the top simply indicate where you should place the starting strip indicator on the 120 film leader.  Just line the arrow up with the either the 6 x 7 or 6 x 6 indicator on the leader and you are good to go.

I prefer the 6 x 7 ratio on the Bessa III as it gives a wider field of view.  This is good for street shooting because you never know what interesting things can be found on the periphery.  To get some composition inspiration you can search for 6 x 7 either on google or flickr to see some good samples.

Other things of note

The two red buttons on the back do nothing more than pop the film reels off the camera. There’s a circular screw-on viewfinder protector that needs to be fastened carefully.  If you manage to lose it like I did, you can pick up a Nikon branded replacement quite easily.

Bessa III Review Part 2

Bessa III Review Part 3

Hyperfocal Focusing

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Hyperfocal focusing is a must learn technique for those interested in street photography. It’s not as hard as it sounds and is actually quite intuitive once you understand the concept.  To get started all you have to do is to determine the range at which your subject will most likely appear.  The trick is to anticipate the action before you execute the shot.

Let’s say your subject is walking towards you and you want to take a photo of them when they are at least 3 meters away.  To make sure that everything is in focus from 3 meters to infinity you place the 3 meters marker on the focus dial to the center dot.  Then read off the aperture setting at the infinity mark and set the aperture to that setting.  Press the shutter button and as long as the subject is within this range they will be in focus.

This opens up all sorts of possibilities as you can then have the camera away from your eye or even body.  No longer worried about focusing on the subject new angles and perspectives can be experimented with.  And because the camera is not held up to your eye you can also take pictures very discretely.  Sometimes this enables you to move right up to the subject and take the shot.