OM-1 Results

Overall verdict: a great camera, I'm really needing a split image screen though (the matte screen is alright but I'm having problems adjusting).  I liked it so much that I found a 28mm f/3.5 OM lens to add to the collection.

Olympus OM-1

It's a new toy :) While shopping for a fresh bottle of fixer at Calumet (a hopeless quest btw), I noticed they had a couple of new shelves full of old 35mm gear.  The strange part - most of it was reasonably priced (especially for a big name old-school non-online store not named ebay, craigslist, or rangefinderforum.com).  There was the standard Nikon AI/AIS lenses and some old Canon FD stuff, but this little guy stood out from the pack. 

First Impressions

1. Very small.  I have pretty small hands and this thing just disappears into them.  It's comparable (and probably smaller than) the Nikon FM2n I used to carry around.  
2. Viewfinder is clean.  By clean I mean uncluttered - besides the analog meter in the lower left corner the viewfinder is completely free from shooting information.  To some this is a bad thing - I'll admit that seeing aperture/shutter info in the VF has its benefits - but sometimes you just want to see the scene without clutter of any kind. 
3. The On/Off switch is inconvenient at best, straight annoying at worst.  You can see the layout from the birds eye picture above, instead of following almost every other SLR company Olympus decided to put the meter On/Off as a rotating switch that's decoupled from the shutter mechanism.  This is annoying for a couple of reasons - the first is battery drain (inadvertently leaving the switch in the On position will drain the battery).  The second reason is ergonomics - if you're framing with the camera and notice that the meter is off it's almost impossible to reach up with your left hand and switch on the meter without taking your eye from the frame.  
4. The control layout is different from any other SLR I've used.  The standard configuration is to place the shutter speed on the top plate next to the shutter button and the aperture control on the lens. Olympus decided to buck this trend by putting the shutter speed around the base of the lens mount and the aperture control of the lens around the filter area of the lens.  
5. The film advance isn't quite as smooth as I'd like it to be.  I've handled damn near every 35mm Nikon, along with a couple of Leica's and the Oly isn't even close - the F3HP just absolutely destroys the OM-1 (and the M3 dual stroke just back from a CLA is just heavenly).    

That's it for first impressions, I'm working my way through a roll of Tri-X so I'll be able to write more on this camera later - hopefully the shutter speeds and meter are accurate (they seem pretty good so far).

The Faces of Occupy Chicago

I recently processed a roll of film from a trip to LaSalle Street in Chicago, which is where the Occupy Chicago folks have set up camp.  I've been shooting events like that with a wide angle (either a 17-35 zoom or a 21mm prime) - it gives me enough depth of field where I don't have to worry about shutter speed or focusing accuracy and allows me to focus more on the content of the shot rather than the mechanics behind it.  Shutter speed - constant. Aperture - constant. Focusing distance - constant at 5-6 ft.  Then it's all a matter of positioning yourself where you want to be and closing the shutter.

I'm out there and for some reason I decide to take out the 90mm Elmarit. It's a great portrait lens (low contrast, kind of flare-y if stray light hits, but a great looking "glow"), but not really your first choice for a cramped-quarters street lens.  It turns out that putting a 90mm lens on naturally turns you into a street portrait guy as opposed to a pure street photographer.  I was mostly setting up in a corner, waiting for someone to come into my field of view and notice me, then hitting the shutter the split second after the deer-in-the-headlights look went away (there's a microsecond where befuddlement turns to puzzlement turns to slight anger turns to acceptance turns to resigned acceptance - it's a great moment to hit).  And that's the moment I think I caught here.  And it planted the idea of a future project (hopefully something I can get done before the Big Cold One hits Chicago) - The Faces of Occupy Chicago.

One of the faces of Occupy Chicago.

Me And My Girl

Leica M3
Jupiter-12 35mm f/2.8 (LTM - Leica threadmount)
Fuji Neopan 400, shot at EI 800
Kodak HC-110 Dilution H (1:63) - 14:30 at 68 degrees

Sloping

This is from a recent photowalk with the Chi-togs Facebook group.  This is a group of individuals I met through the Eric Kim street photography workshop.  Eric was back in town for a day so a few of us decided to get together and walk the streets.  This is a great group of guys, I'm reserving some time to blog about them later when I get a chance.

I think we ended up doing more talking than shooting though, as I only ended up with 30-40 shots out of which only a few were good enough to post.  This is one of them, taken during the Halloween festivities in Daley Plaza.  I'm not going to pretend this is a great shot or anything, I do like the angles and slopes of the metal sculpture - I've noticed that I tend to gravitate towards triangles.  Purely unintentional as a matter of fact.

One other notable thing about the photowalk is that I finally shot with all film.  I've tried to balance my film shooting with digital by carrying a Leica along with my D700, this time I took an M3 (w/ Tri-X @ 800) along with an F6 (Acros 100).  The Acros 100 (this shot was taken with it) was a particularly bad choice on an afternoon that was partially cloudy day made worse by the shadows from the Chicago skyline.  Shutter speeds were pretty slow even with a 17-35 2.8, I ended up switching to a 50/1.2.

Leica M3 CLA

I recently had the pleasure of dealing with Youxin Ye, who quite simply is one of the most remarkable camera repairmen around.  When it comes to photography equipment, I tend to buy everything used.  You lose the possibility of warranty repair, but gain 30-40% in price reduction.  Unless you're talking Leica of course.  Then you're more likely to see a 30-40% increase in price (I'm exaggerating of course but prices are still pretty silly).  The only way to get affordable Leica gear is to buy used and to take a trip in the photo time machine.  I've bought a 60 year old 35/3.5 Summaron in absolutely horrible shape (hazy, scratches on the interior elements, stiff focus, the focusing cam was in backwards [!], and my 60 year old Summitar 50/2 had an incredibly stiff aperture ring - so stiff that I tended to set the aperture once per hour and vary my shutter in response to variations in exposure.  So, shutter-priority by necessity.  And finally my M3 - supposedly the crown jewel of rangefinders, I bought cheap and I bought in heavily used condition.  The vulcanite was starting to fall off and my primary concern was that the viewfinder seemed dimmer than it should - this was my first Leica so I didn't really have anything to compare to.  But most of the online cognoscenti seemed to agree that looking into an M3 viewfinder was like Staring Into The Eye of God.  I couldn't see the hype though - it was so-so bright and the 50 framelines are very big but I wasn't really entering a Nirvana state (didn't stop me from running more than 15 rolls of film through it in the first month).

For all of these repairs, the first person I contact is Youxin Ye.  He's extremely knowledge, priced very reasonable, and works incredibly fast.  I mean insanely fast.  As in he may finish your repair/CLA on the same day that the lens arrives.  And ship it the next day.

He took the Summaron and disassembled it, cleaned it.  The haze didn't go away fully (it's probably etched in the glass by now) but it did help matters.  The Summitar came back in fabulous shape, the aperture ring is Leica-smooth now, perfect.  And the M3 is now back in my greedy little hands in amazing shape.  The film advance (dual stroke) is just phenomenal - I dry-fired the shutter at least 10 times in a row just to feel how buttery it was.  The viewfinder is like night and day, the brightness was doubled (seemingly) - now I see why the M3 is regarded as the best camera ever.

So overall, I can highly recommend Youxin and his camera services.

Update [01/21/2015] : I thought I'd update this post with additional comments.  After shooting about 80 or 90 rolls of film with the M3, I noticed that the viewfinder was beginning to separate - it shows up as a light bar on each edge of the viewfinder glass (the inner element).  Eventually the separation gets worse and worse until the prism separates and the VF blacks out entirely.  My separation was getting pretty bad and the contrast in the finder was worsening so I sent it back to Youxin to recement the prism.  This work only took about 2 weeks and roughly $150 - way cheaper than I thought.  Now that I have it back it's even brighter and clearer than after the original CLA.  

http://www.yyecamera.com

Thoughts on Nikon 1

So Nikon announced the V1 / J1 mirrorless cameras yesterday - the internet is all atwitter with how these cameras are doomed to failure (small sensor! no fast prime lenses! huge DOF! small sensor!). It's funny how the Ricoh GRD/Canon S90/Panasonic Lumix cameras don't seem to merit those same complaints, even though they have smaller sensors and no interchangeable lenses.
Since street photography is what I'm trying to focus on lately, I naturally thought about the V1 (with viewfinder, the J1 is not even worth considering in my opinion) as a platform for street shooting.  So if I were building an ideal (real-world) street kit, what would I choose?

1. Customization - The Ricoh GRD III is an almost perfect example of a camera being customizable.  Almost every button could be re-mapped and you could store all settings into custom memory banks.  Perfect - the jury is still out on the new Nikon so I won't say anything more here.
2. Hyperfocal setting - an ideal street camera would be very easy to enable/disable hyperfocal shooting.  Again, the Ricoh was nearly perfect for this - Snap Focus was a breeze to setup, you could configure the hyperfocal distance, and it's small sensor naturally gave plenty of DOF to work with.  So the sensor size on the Nikon 1 isn't necessarily a bad thing here.  Pair the 1 with the 10mm f/2.8 (27mm FX equivalent) and you've got a recipe for lots of DOF.  The final test will come with the Nikon software and menu systems and whether they make this easy to setup and use.
3. Size & weight - for me, this seems to be one of the absolutely essential aspects of street photography.  You simply must pair your gear down to the absolute minimum.  the Nikon 1 is the smallest interchangeable lens camera with integrated EVF. I suspect that you'll eventually be able to take 2-3 small primes and probably carry less weight than if you were packing a rangefinder with lenses.  (And my dream kit with a 2.7x crop factor? How about an 7mm [~19mm], 13mm [35mm], and 35mm [~90mm]?  Sounds delicious.
4. Oh and what about the F-adapter? The 90mm equivalent described about would be filled in perfectly by the already released 35mm f/1.8 G - a spectacular lens in its own right.  The 50/1.8G would be about 130mm, an ideal portrait length.  The mind starts to shudder.
5. Fast Autofocus - along with hyperfocal settings, fast AF is a must.  From what I've read, on paper the Nikon 1 just blows away the competition - 135 single points, 41 area with phase and contrast detect modes.  This should be comparable to most DSLRs.

So personally, I think that the Nikon should be a beast for street photography provided that a true wide angle lens is released very soon. 

Obliviously

Obliviously, a photo by SL_Photos on Flickr.

There's a certain time of day in Chicago where the sun (either setting or rising) intersects with the building lines to bring together some amazing opportunities. I was primarily looking for shadows, following people as they hit the crosswalks. It's something that I've done before, with a little bit of success.




What I love about this shot is the homeless person on the right. There's a tension here, the couple is holding hands on a beautiful day and they're almost certainly not aware of the pain and destitution a foot away from them. To be honest, I wasn't looking at the homeless lady either. Stuff like that just doesn't get noticed when you're out shooting.

The picture of health

The picture of health, a photo by SL_Photos on Flickr.
I could have called this one "Chinese Ham" - the camera came up and this guy was instantly on a stage playing his part.  The "Health Source" sign in the background is a nice little touch.  This was taken during a photowalk in Chicago's Chinatown as part of the Eric Kim street photography workshop.  I'll be writing more about this fabulous experience later, once I free up from my busy (non-photography) work schedule. 

From this point forward I will no longer put my gear list for each shot on the blog. I'm done thinking about equipment, I need to focus on the shot & the vision.  I will say that I used a 35mm prime lens, this focal length (along with an ultra-wide) seems to be the ideal lens for street photography.  It's just wide enough to pull in more of the surrounding environment than a 50mm, but not so wide that you have to worry about extraneous elements poking their head into your frame. 

Big difference

Big difference, a photo by SL_Photos on Flickr.

Obviously. You would think an F5 would beat out a IIIa any day of the week. But it's not as clear cut as that. For instance, if I'm walking around all day I'd just as soon pick up a rangefinder since I can take 2 cameras and 3 lenses for less weight than an SLR and one lens. For fast action it's the F5 no questions asked. But all that speed and auto-everything comes with a price, namely a tendency to cede control of your photography to a CPU instead of your own head.

Vivian Maier

Taken at the Vivian Maier exhibit in Chicago. I had to get down pretty low on this one, using the 17-35mm 2.8 @ 17mm.