Polaroids!

Monday, January 21st, 2008

My D70 is still waiting for repairs, and they called today saying that it won’t be another 7 days until they can even take a look to find out what’s wrong. Oh well, I sort of understand, with the repair centre being closed for Christmas and all.

What does that mean to me? I have to find other ways to take photos. I’ve finished two rolls of film on the F90X and they should be ready tomorrow, although I won’t have a way to put them online as of yet. I’m too impatient and like my photos immediately as I do with a digital camera, so over Christmas, I’ve been getting myself busy with my vintage Polaroid camera.

The black and white, type 667 film is brilliant, and that’s what I’ll be showing you in today’s post. Be warned, I don’t have a proper scanner and these are just photos of the prints taken when my D70 still worked. They look heaps better in real life, nice contrasty blacks and brilliant sharpness.

My very first photo, I was pleasantly surprised.

I really liked this one, shows something you don’t usually find in Melbourne.

And this one is just cool.

Parliament House:

Trying some infrared photography…

Monday, November 5th, 2007

A few weeks ago, I ordered an infrared filter over ebay, after having seen various pictures of scenes photographed in infrared. It’s very bizarre when you’re doing this with a digital SLR - the filter blocks out (almost) all visible light so it’s impossible to compose, and you need long exposures because DSLRs have a built in filter that cuts out most IR light.

I tried it out on the way to work shortly after I got the filter - it’s very difficult without a tripod because ’s impossible to compose with a blacked out viewfinder, and you need really steady hands to handle the shutter speed, which I don’t have.

The end result was this poorly composed shot. With a tripod, it’s easy to just compose and then put the filter on after but I didn’t have that luxury.

Flagstaff Gardens, infrared
Click on it to see it full size without the browser messing the image up.

But infrared is still so cool in how it makes leaves and grass come out bright white. If I were to take this shot again, I’d have gone to the northern side of the gardens so that the city skyline could provide a contrasting backdrop and bring a tripod so I wouldn’t have to rely on guesswork for composition and maybe actually allow all the trees to fit in frame.

Technical stuff:
Camera: Nikon D70
Lens: Nikon AF-S VR 18-200mm
Time taken: 11 October 2007, 2:34:23pm
Exposure mode: Aperture priority
Shutter Speed: 1/25s
Aperture: f/3.5
ISO: 1000
Focal length: 18mm (27mm on 35mm film)
Image #14257

Post processing: Converted to grayscale, brightness and contrast adjustment, added colour tone, removed dust spot, border.

About Me

This is the personal blog of Vincent Quach. I'm currently a student part way through a Bachelor of Business Information Systems degree and from time to time will engage in activities such as web development, photography, piano playing, writing pointless rants or anything else that I can use as an excuse to avoid doing something more productive. More

Want to subscribe?

 Subscribe in a reader   Or, subscribe via email:
Enter your email address:  
Find entries :