Take better photographs

I picked up the Holga photos yesterday. What a neat camera! Some of the shots were throwaways, but others I liked. I put them up on my Flickr site. I plan to add to the photoset over time.

I received the Holga camera about a week ago and today I finished shooting my first roll of film. It felt so quaint, loading and unloading film!

Thursday I went to a camera store, ostensibly to find out where I can get 120 film processed, but actually to talk to someone about different cameras and whatnot. I began by explaining to the owner, Tim or Tom, I forget, that I like to take a lot of indoor pictures with the DSLR, which often come out underexposed, but I hate using the camera’s built-in flash, and what could I do? Before he could answer, I asked if a f/1.8 lens would help, or if I was just being a wimp about the f/3.5 lens (but f/5.6 if you zoom!) that I have now. You see, I said, to get a brighter exposure without a flash, I seem to have to drop the shutter speed to something like 1/15, which makes a lot of blur, or else bump the ISO up to 1600 or, worse, 3200, but that makes the pictures grainy, which looks stupid when there’s clearly plenty of light in the room, and besides, I often forget that I left the ISO at 1600 and next thing you know my outdoor shots are ridiculously bright and ugly. But would the aperture on a f/1.8 lens be enough to save me from this headache, or would the difference be negligible?

Yup, I was babbling.

Anyway, he said yes, f/1.8 was definitely the way to go, and he sounded confident about this, and made some analogies about the camera’s lens and my own eye, but like my wife when I start talking camera, he looked sort of bored—polite, but bored, as if this were kind of basic.

Then I told him I had a Holga, and Tim/Tom’s face lit up, and he started gushing about light leaks and vignetting and whatnot. He and another employee and I got into this debate about whether it’s better to tape up your Holga so the pictures are cleaner, or whether the art is in the imperfection. Tim/Tom thinks the imperfections are what make the Holga enterprise so interesting, but his assistant couldn’t reconcile herself to the untidy element of surprise.

Anyway, I think I’m with Tim/Tom, who made me promise to show him the Holga pictures when I get them developed, whether his store develops them or not. I don’t know how the photographs will come out, but I’ll say this: the hardest thing, technology-wise, about shooting a Holga camera is remembering to take the lens cap off, and I really, really like that.

My sister-in-law Kim came over today for her photo shoot. She was terrific about it, and Nicole was invaluable—she thought of a lot of ideas for the shots, and set them up, and talked Kim through them. In two hours I took over 300 pictures; some of them are even pretty good, I think. It’ll be fun, processing them in Photoshop. Hopefully I’ll get permission to put some of them up on my Flickr site.

I just ordered a Holga camera. I hadn’t heard of these until yesterday, and they sound like a lot of fun. Basically, you put in the film and shoot—the camera leaks light and exposes the film inconsistently, which sounds like a pain, but actually liberates you from most of the technical chores of photography.

I think it’ll be fun to shoot in a medium format film, which I’ve never done, and just try to make interesting pictures without agonizing about shutter speed, aperture, focus, ISO, and white balance. And it’ll be easier to get outside and run around with the kids than it is with the heavy DSLR, that’s for sure.

My sister-in-law, who’s pregnant, said she’ll let me take some portrait shots of her. She’s due in six weeks and, aside from some really good shots my wife took, hasn’t had many pictures taken of the pregnancy. I’m nervous about the shoot, actually, but will try to keep it low-key and informal and fun. Hopefully I’m proficient enough with the DSLR and can make something happen.