A little help from my friends...

... friends meaning my digital photo enhancing programs. I know, I know! First a digital camera and now photoshop?! (Well photofiltre actually, it's free and it's all I really need). What is this blog coming to?
Well the truth of the matter is, as I learn more about photography, the more my photos have become precious to me. When they don't work out, I have a hard time just letting them go... especially when they are so close to being good. This is where photofiltre comes in. Every once in awhile, some shots just need a little help... a simple "enhance colour" here or "increase contrast" there. Nothing major, just a touch-up. My friend Mandy once reckoned it to being "my digital darkroom". And since (for the time being anyway) I have to leave my developing up to the sometimes-not-so-professionals at the local Drugstore, this gives me back a little bit of control over my creations. And to me, they are just that... my mini pieces of art. I always wished I was better at painting or drawing, well, this has become that outlet for me, and I need that extra creative license sometimes.
These pictures were taken with my Canonet 28, using expired Fuji 200ISO film. I have been experimenting taking indoor shots with the Canonet because it has an attachable flash that syncs properly with the shutter. My lack of luck with being able to properly focus my Canonet gave these shots a sort of eerie feeling, and the expired film left the colour extremely washed out. But with a simple convert to greyscale with photofiltre -voila! Eerie, yet interesting photos - who probably never would have seen the light of the internet had it not been for photo software. Maybe some consider it cheating, I don't care... I consider it another tool in my art belt (and I am determined to stop feeling guilty or like a fraud for it!).
I am most certainly not saying that these are great shots... I just really like them for some reason.

Shiver me timbers!

Can't you just feel the cold in these winter park shots? My family and I spent a lot of times lounging indoors over the holidays and decided one day to get the kids and the dogs out to the park for some fresh air and exercise. Well, by the time we all got bundled up, the various strollers, leashes and what-not figured out, the sun had gone away and small flurries had started to blow. But, since we had already put so much effort into getting ready, we persevered.
We did have a good time and laughed about it all when we came home frozen to the bones and covered in snow, but I also got a chance to take some shots in a not-so-favourable lighting... dim and grey. I often shy away from taking photos in this lighting as I find they sometimes come out looking flat. But as with the other challenges I have faced in this photo-adventure, I think I am finally figuring things out!
These shots were taken with my Pentax K1000 and with my Canonet. I was pleasantly surprised to find that several of the shots turned out really great! I am still partial to the Pentax shots over the Canonet, but I figured I would post both anyways. Enjoy :)

Pentax Shots

Canonet Shots 

(I got pretty frustrated out in the cold trying to focus the Canonet - it's not an easy feat, so there are only a few of these)

P.S. I am trying out a new photo size on this post. What do you think? Better size or too big? It's so hard for me to tell on my tiny laptop.

Throwing caution to the proverbial wind...

So I was about to give up on my Canonet 28 because of it's lack of manual controls, difficulty in focusing, limited lens, and general unpredictability, until... I got back this roll of film that changed my mind. The ironic thing is that actually by today's photography standards not a single shot in the roll would be considered a "good photograph". But thanks to two of my favourite, inspiring film photography blogs - Dream Camera and Black Eyed Angel, as well as my new found addiction to flickr (with such amazing groups as Grainy, Blurry, Yet Good), I have come to appreciate and love the glitches that come with shooting film; not in spite of the "faults", but rather because of them. This roll from my Canonet 28 is case in point.
Sometime ago, my mother unloaded a whole bag full of film from the fridge at her work because it was simply not going to get used up. It was a mish-mash of film that I am sure had been sitting there for at least 10 years. A few of them were in boxes with expiry dates (averaging around 2007), but others were just rolls in their canisters with no expiration dates to be found. Well, I figured... one of the reasons I love shooting film is because of the element of surprise, expired film is like walking on the wild side, throwing caution to the wind, dancing with the devil! ... ok, maybe I have gone too far there, none the less, I figured... why the hell not.
These are a few of my favourites from that fateful roll. I think the expired film gives them such an "old" feeling. Like I had found a box of long lost photos in the attic that didn't quite make the cut to be put in the family photo albums.

And I am actually kinda proud of my little Canonet 28, she did alright in the end. More from this roll and the holidays to come soon enough...

The new addition to the family...

... my camera family that is. This summer on one of our usual garage sale ventures I came across a Canonet 28. I carried it around with me for a while, checking out the focus, etc. but decided not to get it when I realized that it used a viewfinder format instead of SLR, though I was intrigued by the light meter (which I don't have on either of my other cameras). The woman watched  me walk around with it, then put it down and so she came over to talk to me about it. Well the long of the short of it is that I managed to get her down from $20 to $10 for the camera (case included!). And I figured $10 for a new toy that might teach me a bit more about film photography, and if nothing else will look great on my shelf, was a pretty good deal.
I didn't get to try it out until a few weeks later on vacation at our family cabin for a week. I only dared to take one roll of film before I got a chance to have it developed and check out if the camera even worked. Well it works, but with very unpredictable results.
The interesting (and also frustrating) thing about this camera is that it is primarily meant as an automatic camera, in which the light meter determines whether the light is too high or too low and will not take the picture if it is not happy. However, it seems that the light meter requires extremely bright light to register sufficient light (though this may be a result of an old battery, something that I will need to look into).
You can however take it off of automatic which will turn off the light meter control and allow you to adjust the aperture, but not the shutter speed! The shutter speed is always set at 1/30 sec, which means that I have to use the aperture setting to adjust for light. On my other cameras, in changing the shutter speed to account for light, it allows me to use the aperture to vary depth and focus in my pictures. This limitation of the Canonet 28 means that I have less control over my pictures.
One benefit of the Canonet 28 is that the leaf-shutter format allows for flash synchronization whic I do not have on either of my other cameras. Currently the flash I am using doesn't allow me to use the automatic setting, but I can use it on the manual setting which means that I now need to learn to adjust the aperture for a flash. I am not usually a fan of using a flash, but I think that I might have some fun exploring with it in indoor or night/dark settings (where I am normally very limited with my other cameras).
As with my other cameras, this one has it's pros and cons and although I don't think it will become a camera that I depend on on a regular basis, I do think it will be fun to play with and to learn from.
Variety is the spice of life after all.

Both pictures had exact same lighting, yet turned out quite different

Focusing is unpredictable. Sometimes it focuses on the foreground, other times the background

Both of these were taken on the manual setting with the same aperture. Notice the difference in focus.

Having a flash will open up a whole new world (and learning curve) for me!

I actually kind of like the "studio portrait" look the flash gives