aperture priority | little home by hand

A little impromptu shoot at the barn yesterday, mainly for me to practise some camera settings I wanted to try out without pressure.

Shooting in the bright sun at 2pm in backlighting… tough lighting situation but not always avoidable, so something I really needed to learn.

Spot metering…another function I had real trouble with and therefore never used during ‘important’ shoots. I finally got the hang of it yesterday.

And the last thing I needed to work on, especially in that light: shooting full manual. I used to shoot manual a lot with my Fuji S5600 before I got my DSLR. Then I happily settled for Aperture Priority and never gave full manual a second thought.

What inspired me to try all of this out were the presentations from Jessica Claire and Jerry Ghionis at Escalate Live , which I was lucky enough to be able to view online. Jerry’s examples made it clear that you really have to know your camera inside out to be able to get creative with it and Jessica stressed how important it is to try new things out all the time, even though they mightn’t always work (I’m sure she wasn’t talking about camera settings, but this is my starting point for now, before moving on to ‘higher’ things).

Bottom line: if you want to know how your camera really works, grab a willing friend and try, try, try. I learned valuable things about shooting in tough lighting, while using spot metering, while shooting in full manual mode yesterday.
If you need to start somewhere before that (for example moving away from auto mode to maybe aperture priority), try it!

This one is going to be an all time favourite, I am so in love with that picture!

Next on my things-to-do-to-become-a-better-photographer list: Learn to see more, become less hectic, learn to give instructions.
Oh, and I have already shot enough 120 film in my Holga to outdo the camera price…cool, eh? Look forward to lots of Holga pics 🙂

Having discovered serious photography only a couple of years ago I really only know digital. I did have a much-used analog point and shoot since age 14 though and have always loved shooting black and white film.
I knew my dad had some analog SLRs somewhere and on my begging got them out for me. So here’s my newest toy:

It’s the Olympus OM-2N, an analog SLR from the late 1970’s and I am in love with it. Now don’t be fooled by its relatively small size and vintage look…this baby was the height of technology in its day and is still a serious and professional camera. But oooh, isn’t it cute, too?
And the even better news: there’s more where that came from! My dad not only has two more models of the OM-series but also a set of lenses in every size imaginable, most of them prime lenses! He was planning to be a professional photographer in his youth (guess it kind of runs in the family).
I chose the OM-2N because it comes with aperture priority as opposed to only full manual, which I thought would be easier as I am still figuring out the various knobs and manual focus. For starters I also took along a 50mm 1.4 and a 180mm 2.8 lens (sigh).
I shot the first test roll of film today and will be taking it to be developed tomorrow (provided I figure out how to rewind the film and get it out of the camera first). If the photos turn out anything close to how awesome it felt to shoot them I predict this Olympus and I are going to be very fast friends!

It’s funny how automated you become when you shoot a lot…the first couple of photos I found myself quickly looking at the black back of the camera and wondering immediately after why I was doing so. Then I understood I was looking for the (nonexistent) preview picture to see if I’d gotten it right first try.
I will be shooting mainly black and white film I think and I am so excited to get to know film in general and this camera in particular better. That said, I am still loving the digital world…I googled the camera just for fun and the first thing that came up was the complete manual as a free pdf – thank you internet!