seeing ghosts

I took a few pictures during the music gig last Saturday, but have only just had a chance to upload them from the camera.

I hadn't really planned to take pictures and strangely enough, as we moved from further away to closer to the front I could sense my likelihood to get any sensible snaps diminish.

It was a combination of factors, I'd only brought a small camera and the density of people close to the stage (but not at the front) meant shooting through the gaps to get anything at all.

The singer above is Nerina Pallot, who played a good and quite joyfully delivered set, mixing her own piano and guitar based songs and accompanied by a small band comprising bass guitar and drums.

I know it's a rather impressionistic snap, which I took on automatic mode instead of the shutter priority I usually use at these type of events. I usually keep the shutter speed fast enough to prevent everything getting very blurry, which is a factor with a lot of stage lighting shots, even at pretty fast ISO ratings.

But here, using the camera's auto mode, I noticed something that I've also seen when I'm walking around galleries or sometimes in churchyards.

I call it 'ghosts'.

It's when, with a modern camera on its automatic setting, it thinks it has seen a face.

It puts up that little square display that locks on to the face to keep it in focus.

Some cameras (including mine), can also put up multiple little face squares.

It's sometimes quite touching to see an old portrait in a gallery or a stone carving in a churchyard get the squares appear. The camera is thinking it's seen person, and in a way it has.

Here, at the music gig, there was a different phenomenon. The camera would pick up the faces of other people in the audience. Weirdly, it would be the one's that were not so engaged, maybe just talking or looking around.

The reason was obvious. In automatic mode the camera was deciding what type of picture to take. Then suddenly it it would spot a nearby face )much closer than the artist on stage) and would flip into its portrait setting.

I think I'll go back to traditional shutter priority for music venues.

viewfinder for Lumix cameras

This is really a 'rashbre snapped' post, but I've added it to rashbre central as well.

Something I've wondered about for a while, but haven't wanted to spend lots of money on, was the effect of adding a small direct viewfinder to a compact camera.

Sometimes I'll use big SLR cameras with bulky lenses, but its also good to have something more portable. I typically use a little Lumix camera (LX3 or GF1), which can be unobtrusive, but both only have a rear screen for taking pictures. Its OK, but sometimes a 'to the eye' style seems more natural.

I've just received a little clip on viewfinder from an inexpensive eBay auction and added it to one of the cameras.

Its amazing.

It won't give me the exact view through the lens, but is a good way to frame a shot like a using a traditional film camera. It even has markings for three different lens lengths, 35mm, 85mm and 135mm.

It's a great match for the Lumix 20mm f1.7 (40mm equivalent lens) and surprisingly accurate for framing.

I'm hooked.

Light

As well as the main rashbre site, I write an occasional post across on 'rashbre snapped', which is about photography. So with some pleasure I received a parcel through the post upon my return to the UK, and within it a book about an aspect of photography. With all my evening and night shots at this time of year, perhaps its also a hint to me?

The topic is about Light.

The book is covering an aspect fundamental to photography, but as I read and thought about it I realised how much I didn't know. Quite often when I obtain reference books on varied topics, its a quick flick through to find some new points, or to help solve a particular problem. This was different because I could gain new information from most chapters.

As well as covering the theory of light and colour spaces, it moves into ways to manipulate or take advantage of light to handle different situations.

Its a heavy book to carry at some 500 pages, but its well divided into sections and has comprehensive areas around lighting, reflectors, tripods, stands, flash, post-production and indoor and outdoor work. Even the little section on light incidence at times of day and in different seasons is useful.

I guess a more experienced photographer may have most of this knowledge, but for a more casual snap-shotter like me its a strong reference by professional people who have obviously learned by experience.

The authors, Brian and Janet Stoppee have film camera heritage but work digitally now, and in addition to the sections on post-production with Adobe and similar, there's a strong emphasis on getting it right in the camera. SOOC as I call it (Straight Out Of Camera).

The second part of the book takes many topics across a simple two page spread format, which is a handy way to browse, whilst also keeping related topics together as a narrative.

If I have a criticism, its of some of the actual photographs that make it into the book. My guess is that the book was quite a long time in production and may have been two books pushed together or has had some sort of makeover. There's some signs of this with a few early pictures that suffer from heavily jagged edges - presumably from small originals. There's also sections that are quite polarized towards a particular product set around Nikon cameras and Matthews Stands and Lighting equipment. I happen to use Nikon so its no big deal and the points made are applicable to pretty much any dSLR combination. My guess is that perhaps the book was originally destined with a different title or similar.

For me, the sections around light placement, metering and colour temperature all had good 'Ahah' moments and thats just scratching the (shiny) surface of what for me is a good reference volume.

Photography and Light - Brian and Janet Stoppee - Focal Press 2009 - well worth a look.

convenience

During the London Bloggers' meetup our general chatter turned to the topic of 'marrying abroad for papers'.

So when I stopped by Peter's excellent site later, he had a click through from his recent time in Paris, which led me to Katarina Radovic.

Katarina, as a photo project, decided play a young woman from Eastern Europe in search of a 'convenient' husband in Paris.

She spotted possible partners asking them to pose for a snapshot as if a couple. Not every type of “marriageable material” would do; the selection of candidates was to create an aspirational intersect, whilst creating the look of being 'in the hurry' to get it done.

Worth a click through to the project.