Picture of the Week

This week's photo was taken on July 22nd, the final day of my stay in Brora and the day before I traveled back down to Edinburgh for the rest of my holiday.

 

The photo was taken whilst walking along the beach opposite to our family owned cottage in Brora. It was late on Friday night when I decided for the first time in the week to venture down to the beach to snap some shots, I had deliberated waited for a clearer night to attempt to catch a more attractive sunset. 

I think I must have got lucky; the sun was setting, the tide had just started to make its way back in so I must have been in the right place at the right time. There was an amazing reflection of the salmon pink sky in the freshly dampened sand which I hope you can see above.

I chose to shoot in Manual; Aperture Priority is rarely going to choose the correct area to expose in these kind of conditions. I used my trusty kit lens because before-hand I hadn't decided whether to shoot wide-angle or tight, my 50mm prime would have proven equally good in the circumstances. The aperture was set 'wide open' (f5.6) though it may have been more sensible to have a smaller aperture to retain sharpness, I had plenty of room to move with a 1/100 set as my shutter speed so it would have been viable.

Post processing was minimal. As ever I used Lightroom 3 where I added contrast, sharpness, blacks and a touch of clarity. Vibrancy was boosted very slightly to appear more inline with reality.

Overall I am very pleased with the image, I captured the moment just as it appeared. I hope you enjoy it too.

My Return

I have returned from my holiday, of course with plenty of photos, so will again start to post on a regular basis.

All of my photos can be viewed on my photostream so feel free to go and have a look.

Holiday

I'll be taking a weeks break from posting due to a forthcoming holiday to Scotland. I'll be bringing with me a Canon 20D, AE-1 and my QL17 so I'll hope to bring back some exciting and new shots of Edinburgh and Sutherland.

Don't forget to browse my photostream for updates.

Light Seal Repairs - Canonet QL17

It's a problem that most of us will face at some point in our photography careers, at least if you're into old film cameras, and that's the deterioration of the under appreciated foam light seals.

Many cameras between the '60s and '90s were fitted with a foam on the camera back that helped to prevent light leaking onto the film. This caused clouding and sometimes red streaks, effectively ruining the film. Unfortunately this foam is prone to deteriorating and will eventually start to leak light, a problem that I have experienced with my Canon AE-1, it can also stick to your film and hamper the developing process.

The only solution to fix the sticky black mess that the foam leaves behind is to give the camera a thorough clean and replace the light seals. You can either do this yourself in under an hour or you could take it to your local camera shop and overpay someone else to do it.

I started by cleaning out the old seals with ear buds dipped in nail varnish remover, I then wiped out the remaining slime with some kitchen roll. To replace the old foam I bought a sheet of 2mm self-adhesive foam from eBay for under £4, I cut this to size, stuck it in and Voila! Fixed in forty minutes.

Thrift Store Find - Praktica PLC2

 Like many photography enthusiasts I am always on the lookout for new hardware to add to my collection, you never know when you might get lucky and get an amazing find. Quite recently on a trip to one of the many thrift and charity shops in the area I came across a '70s SLR all in black, my favourite camera colour scheme. I had to have it. After some haggling I got myself a Praktica PLC2 with Pentacon 50mm 1.8 and a Paterson developing tank, all for £5.

Not soon after getting the East German camera home I gave it a good clean, everything appeared to be working fine just as was tested for in the shop. Some of the leather covering was loose, as would be expected from a camera produced in 1975, but a smear of glue fixed that quickly. Unfortunately the paint has also chipped away leaving no traces of the once white PLC2 logo, this seems to be a common problem with Praktica cameras.

The main selling point of this camera back in the day was that the camera could actually read the maximum aperture setting of the M42 mount lenses, this made 'Through The Lens' metering possible for any aperture at any aperture setting. 63,957 of these cameras were produced, I'm happy to have just one sitting at home.

Picture of the Week

Welcome to the first 'Picture of the Week' installment. Every week I will select a picture from my Flickr Photostream that may be a particular favourite of mine or have some other kind of significance.

This week's picture was taken on July 3rd 2011 in the village of Little Urswick.

 The picture shows the dashboard of a car, an abandoned car. It was actually a Volkswagen Beetle, most likely from the '60s, that had been left in a barn for at least a decade by the looks of it. I came across the car whilst walking home from some open gardens which I had been photographing, I was shocked to see such an iconic car left to rot.

The camera accompanying me at the time was my Canon 20D with 50mm 1.8, though I'm sure the affect from a film camera with black and white film would be just as pleasing. I edited the image in Lightroom, firstly converting the image into black and white and then adjusting the black levels and contrast. The end result is the image you see above.

I hope you like the picture as much as I do, please don't hesitate to comment.

Batteries, batteries, batteries.

I did a lot of reading about batteries before I purchased my camera and despite establishing which battery I had to buy for my QL17 there remained a lot of confusion about how Today's Alkaline batteries effect meter readings.


Back in the '60s when the Canonet was first launched the standard battery was a mercuric oxide cell, a battery containing Mercury. In recent years these Mercury batteries have been banned in much of Europe and North America, the result was confusion over what to replace the outlawed batteries with. The answer was an Alkaline cell.

However, the new Alkaline cells have a changed voltage compared to their Mercury counterpart, in the QL17's case 1.5V compared to 1.35V. So how does this affect the meter readings? In my own experience I have seen little change. I have done numerous tests to compare the readings of my 20D, AE-1 and QL17, the first two of which produce excellent exposures. While the meter readings of each camera didn't always match they were all within 1 stop, enough for me to trust the QL17's judgement.

I can't guarantee that everyone will experience the same results but I can say that if you want a new battery for your QL17 then you'll need a 1.5V L1560.

My New Arrival! - Canonet QL17

Today, only 2 days after I made the winning bid on eBay, I took arrival of a new addition to my camera family. The Canonet QL17 was first introduced in 1965 as the flagship to Canon's 'Quick Load' range, in the 17 years that it was produced they released 3 iterations of the compact rangefinder. My version is the second of the three.


The first job was to clean off the 40 years of dirt that had accumulated on the camera body and strap. I can only say that I was shocked and appalled at the seller for not cleaning this amount of dirt off the camera. During this process the viewfinder and film counter windows fell off revealing deteriorated glue, after chipping this away the windows are again glued firmly in place.

As I removed the Canon branded lens cap it was a pleasant surprise to see the 40mm 1.7 lens protected with a 48mm Toshiba SL-C filter, almost as pleasant as the bright and clear viewfinder.

Now to test the focusing and shutter. The focus lever is smooth with a relatively short swing, the green tinted focus window is clear and easy to use in bright light though slightly more challenging in dimmer conditions. The film advance lever feels mechanical, not smooth at all, but does the job perfectly well. And now for the shutter release, the reason I needed a rangefinder, a firm press of the release triggers a leaf shutter that is incredibly quiet; perfect for candid shooting. A pleasingly underwhelming experience.

All that's left now is to replace the light seals, a job common across most cameras of this era, and then to finally run a roll of black and white film through it! Keep updated.

Welcome to The Flash Bulb

Yes, welcome to The Flashbulb. Here you will be able to follow as I journey through the world of photography, old and new. Be sure to read about my latest purchases, ideas and photo based adventures as they happen.

Thanks for reading.