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.

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. 

Nikon F4s with MB-21 drive/battery pack

Nikon F4s with MB-21 drive/battery pack, originally uploaded by I_Take_Pitchers.

Here is the last camera I'll buy in 2009. I swear it. I really mean it this time, although I'd love to try out a Leica CL.
I literally stole this off eBay, paying roughly $80 for an all-time classic camera that really deserves it's reputation as one of the best 35mm bodies ever.
After shooting 3-4 rolls on this thing, I can unabashedly state that I love this camera! It's an absolute dream to handle, it weighs a ton (a good thing when compared to today's plastic SLRs).

Nikon FG

This camera was acquired through the online auction house. You know, that one. The included Series E 50mm 1.8 was the only reason I bought it, the auction listing actually said that the body was non-working and was for parts/repair only. But, $35 isn't terribly bad for a Series E lens so I went ahead and got it. It turns out the light meter does NOT activate on the Bulb (B) or Manual (1/90s) settings. This is what the previous owner had the shutter set to. Once I loaded some batteries it was working perfectly. In fact, except for the light seals the body is in fabulous condition.

Some quick thoughts:

-this is the first manual focus Nikon I've owned. The Type K focussing screen (with split image rangefinder) absolutely blew me away. This is head and shoulders better compared with other focussing screens I've used (mostly on M42 Pentax screw mounts). Really stellar, it's a snap to get perfectly crisp focused shots.

- Program mode seems to work pretty well. You just set your F-stop to the smallest value (highest F number) , focus, and shoot. The onboard computer calculates the best aperture and shutter for you. From an amateur's perspective it seems to underexpose ever so slightly, but what the hell do I know? I try not to use this feature a lot, if I wanted automatic operation I would just take out my Canon DSLR.

- This was one of Nikon's quote-unquote budget line SLRs, meaning they were using plastic for some components. While this has some drawbacks, one big plus is that it's really light and is perfect for carrying around all day. Especially if you've got the 1.8 Series E lens, you could carry this for hours and forget you had it on you.

- even though there is some plastic here, the build quality still feels really superb. I'm guessing it could take a fair amount of abuse and still come out fine. I recently took it on a week long trip to Costa Rica, see pics here:

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.