Welcome to our P52! This project is designed to get you out with your camera once a week in a meaningful way. Each week I will post a prompt for you to consider. The prompts are merely suggestions, and you are free to shoot off topic if you wish. All images posted must be taken by you, be safe for work, and be taken with this project in mind. Please do not post archive photos. For a further discussion of the guidelines, please refer to this thread, and you can find the previous weeks linked there if you missed them. Feel free to join in at any time of the year, and you may go back to missed weeks if you still wish to participate.
Week 44: Alternate Camera
Okay, I had way more fun prepping for this week than just about any other week this year! I was also probably way more frustrated this week too, but as always, the goal of these challenges is to help us think in new ways.
This week I want you to use a camera that you don’t normally use. For some, this might mean using an iPhone all week (more on this in a bit if that is already your primary camera), for others it might mean pulling out a backup camera and relearning it. You can use whatever camera (or cameras) you can find, whether a point and shoot, a phone, or even a film camera.
I opted to use my old D700. For various reasons I have a lot of nostalgia wrapped up in this camera. I would say that it was my most used camera of my kids’ childhood, but when I checked the shutter count for it, I was surprised the number was just over 23,000. At any rate, the point of this week isn’t inherently to get you wrapped up into your own nostalgia, but to remind you that at the end of the day, a camera body really is just a tool to capture images, and that older bodies, phones, or even film cameras if you are inclined, are all just a means to picture taking.
All that said…if you happen to shoot mirrorless now and also happen to have a dSLR lying around, I’d love to see you go back to it. I had to do a complete mind reset using a dSLR and I realized just how much I have come to rely on the EVF and other modern conveniences of mirrorless cameras. Going back to a dSLR, I had to really watch my technical and metering skills. Of course, I could (and did) still chimp after the photo was taken, and my first bit using this camera was quite frustrating initially. For one, the LCD back kept showing skies and other lighter areas as blown, which I later discovered when reviewing on the computer the first day out with it, were not actually blown. I was extra annoyed because I am pretty good at metering film, and wondered if it was just because film handles highlights better. I suspect the jpeg rendering algorithms are much better in modern cameras and these newer algorithms recognize that raw detail is still there. I stopped relying as much on the jpeg preview on the LCD back and more on my instinctive metering skills, which ended up being more reliable.
I ended up going out three separate times with the D700 and used three different lenses. The first is an older 85mm f/1.8 lens. Adding to my metering frustration, I think this lens wasn’t seated quite properly on my camera because sometimes it wouldn’t focus properly and also my camera kept changing random settings that were only accessible by menu which I couldn’t have just knocked a button on (like somehow for a few images I ended up with TIFF files vs raw files. Kind of random. It’s also likely the battery was kind of hinky from disuse/age). Next I decided to up the ante with a manual focus Lensbaby lens, the Edge 80. I was never very good with this lens on a dSLR and it was only after moving to mirrorless that I really learned how to use it well. The hard part with a manual lens on an SLR style camera is that of course there is no zoom function, which I use a lot with manual lenses (I’d say nearly every image I take with a manual lens I zoom in to check focus). Lastly, this morning I took out my 105mm macro lens. The limiting factor with this lens wasn’t the focus so much as I use the flip screen a lot now when composing images; I use it much like a waist finder on a film camera, but it’s super handy for getting low to the ground. I wasn’t going to lie down in the middle of the park today (after it rained last night!), so I wasn’t able to get as interesting angles as I might with a mirrorless camera and a macro lens.
If you opt for an older camera, here are a couple of things to consider. One, as I mentioned above, be aware of your battery. They degrade with age, and they also drain much faster, so if you take the camera out, be sure to have a spare battery if possible (or plan a short outing). Two, make sure you have the proper memory card for your camera. I would assume if you still have an old camera that you still have cards to go with it, but things get lost or misplaced over time. My card is only 8GB which is comically small these days, but the file sizes for old cameras are also comically small (my D700 is only 12 mp). Three, make sure you still have a way of getting the images off the cards. The card reader for my D700 has a firewire connection, and I have two separate adapters to get it to USB-C that I can plug into my computer.
For those of you who use a phone camera, if you don’t have any other cameras lying around, then you can just switch to one of the lenses you don’t typically use. Or, scrounge around your house, pester your neighbor, and see if they have a camera you can borrow! Use a point and shoot, get a disposable film camera, unearth a vintage film camera! (You can come back in a week or two once you get scans.)
This week should be a lighthearted week about rediscovering old gear or thinking in a new way with a camera you aren’t familiar with. For me, it was fun to use an old solid, clunky thing with a spectacular shutter clap and rediscover the magic from 12 years ago. My camera still makes amazing images, they still hold up to modern cameras, and since I’m not printing anything at billboard size or cropping heavily, few people will notice a difference between any of these photos vs photos taken by my newer Nikon bodies or even my medium format digital camera.
Week 44: Alternate Camera
Okay, I had way more fun prepping for this week than just about any other week this year! I was also probably way more frustrated this week too, but as always, the goal of these challenges is to help us think in new ways.
This week I want you to use a camera that you don’t normally use. For some, this might mean using an iPhone all week (more on this in a bit if that is already your primary camera), for others it might mean pulling out a backup camera and relearning it. You can use whatever camera (or cameras) you can find, whether a point and shoot, a phone, or even a film camera.
I opted to use my old D700. For various reasons I have a lot of nostalgia wrapped up in this camera. I would say that it was my most used camera of my kids’ childhood, but when I checked the shutter count for it, I was surprised the number was just over 23,000. At any rate, the point of this week isn’t inherently to get you wrapped up into your own nostalgia, but to remind you that at the end of the day, a camera body really is just a tool to capture images, and that older bodies, phones, or even film cameras if you are inclined, are all just a means to picture taking.
All that said…if you happen to shoot mirrorless now and also happen to have a dSLR lying around, I’d love to see you go back to it. I had to do a complete mind reset using a dSLR and I realized just how much I have come to rely on the EVF and other modern conveniences of mirrorless cameras. Going back to a dSLR, I had to really watch my technical and metering skills. Of course, I could (and did) still chimp after the photo was taken, and my first bit using this camera was quite frustrating initially. For one, the LCD back kept showing skies and other lighter areas as blown, which I later discovered when reviewing on the computer the first day out with it, were not actually blown. I was extra annoyed because I am pretty good at metering film, and wondered if it was just because film handles highlights better. I suspect the jpeg rendering algorithms are much better in modern cameras and these newer algorithms recognize that raw detail is still there. I stopped relying as much on the jpeg preview on the LCD back and more on my instinctive metering skills, which ended up being more reliable.
I ended up going out three separate times with the D700 and used three different lenses. The first is an older 85mm f/1.8 lens. Adding to my metering frustration, I think this lens wasn’t seated quite properly on my camera because sometimes it wouldn’t focus properly and also my camera kept changing random settings that were only accessible by menu which I couldn’t have just knocked a button on (like somehow for a few images I ended up with TIFF files vs raw files. Kind of random. It’s also likely the battery was kind of hinky from disuse/age). Next I decided to up the ante with a manual focus Lensbaby lens, the Edge 80. I was never very good with this lens on a dSLR and it was only after moving to mirrorless that I really learned how to use it well. The hard part with a manual lens on an SLR style camera is that of course there is no zoom function, which I use a lot with manual lenses (I’d say nearly every image I take with a manual lens I zoom in to check focus). Lastly, this morning I took out my 105mm macro lens. The limiting factor with this lens wasn’t the focus so much as I use the flip screen a lot now when composing images; I use it much like a waist finder on a film camera, but it’s super handy for getting low to the ground. I wasn’t going to lie down in the middle of the park today (after it rained last night!), so I wasn’t able to get as interesting angles as I might with a mirrorless camera and a macro lens.
If you opt for an older camera, here are a couple of things to consider. One, as I mentioned above, be aware of your battery. They degrade with age, and they also drain much faster, so if you take the camera out, be sure to have a spare battery if possible (or plan a short outing). Two, make sure you have the proper memory card for your camera. I would assume if you still have an old camera that you still have cards to go with it, but things get lost or misplaced over time. My card is only 8GB which is comically small these days, but the file sizes for old cameras are also comically small (my D700 is only 12 mp). Three, make sure you still have a way of getting the images off the cards. The card reader for my D700 has a firewire connection, and I have two separate adapters to get it to USB-C that I can plug into my computer.
For those of you who use a phone camera, if you don’t have any other cameras lying around, then you can just switch to one of the lenses you don’t typically use. Or, scrounge around your house, pester your neighbor, and see if they have a camera you can borrow! Use a point and shoot, get a disposable film camera, unearth a vintage film camera! (You can come back in a week or two once you get scans.)
This week should be a lighthearted week about rediscovering old gear or thinking in a new way with a camera you aren’t familiar with. For me, it was fun to use an old solid, clunky thing with a spectacular shutter clap and rediscover the magic from 12 years ago. My camera still makes amazing images, they still hold up to modern cameras, and since I’m not printing anything at billboard size or cropping heavily, few people will notice a difference between any of these photos vs photos taken by my newer Nikon bodies or even my medium format digital camera.
