mal austin photographer

photography&publishing

PHOTOGRAPHIC NOTES

In The Beginning... Mal writes

I well remember the first photograph I ever took. It was on old 35mm GAF 50ASA “slide” film loaded in my sister’s borrowed camera which was an old Voigtlander rangefinder. I was on my first trip to the NSW Lake MacQuarie town of Fassifern which in the 1960s and early 1970s was a ‘mecca’ for fans of the working steam engine because it was a great place to see the very last of that state’s big noisy locomotives. (very ‘un-pc’ today).

I wound the film on for a second click and the camera broke with a rather clockwork kind of sound that spelt disaster for my first image-making effort! I tried to find that first slide whilst writing this, just for fun, but found my slide collection as it remains, begins at number 7! I must have angrily tossed it away years ago.

After 10 anxious days of a 12 day holiday, a local camera store managed to get the repaired unit back and I spent a mad 2 days trying to make up for the last 10! Most of the images, due to such horrible film, crude light-meter design and an ignorant operator all seem to come out the same horrible underexposed grey with little colour saturation Below are 3 of the better ones - I have deliberately scanned as close to the original quality.

I have scanned the surrounds of these slides as well because, with some amount of shock, I realise there will now be a whole generation of you who have never actually seen such a thing as a “slide”, which is the name for a mounted frame of ‘transparency’ or ‘positive’ film; and soon there will be many who have never seen any kind of film either!

I cannot remember all the cameras I have had but as my formative years and income level kept me to 35mm film types, I do remember an old Canon Q7 gave way quickly to a used Pentax Spotmatic which like many amateurs at the time, became my first entry into the ‘SLR world’. SLRs (Single Lens Reflex) seemed amazing because they allowed you to look right through the lens rather than a little window at the side of the camera body in ‘Rangefinder’ types. This beloved camera was built into a ‘system’ of 3 lenses - something also amazing, the ability to use different lens types - consisting of a f1.8 50mm ‘standard’ and a f3.5 135mm small telephoto. I remember not many Pentax wide-angle lenses were around so my 28mm lenses were always cheap brands such as Elinca, Sun or Tamron, none of them up to the Pentax standards.

After some Canon AE1s and cheap Chinons came and went, I finally settled on Contax as my preferred quality 35mm brand. Below is my old “paperweight” which stopped functioning - annoyingly - after being left out under a bush in the garden for eight weeks!

Along Comes 120 Film...

A little old favourite in the form of a used “Twin Lens Rollieflex”

began as a cheap trial of what was called ‘medium format film’.

Once I looked at my first B&W negative and its resultant print,

I was hooked forever more and 35mm was hardly ever used

again. I cannot remember any professional job I did with 35mm

by choice because of the x3 superior quality of the larger film.

My experiments with quality went all the way to the occasional use

of a 5x4 inch sheet film camera known as a ‘5x4 monorail view camera’

which I still have. Whilst the quality was astounding, the cost of running

it and its slow cumbersome controls meant it was rarely used especially

as film improved.

Eventually I settled on 120 film camera systems. The ‘Pentax 67’ was so named because it gave a frame size of 6x7cm with huge quality benefits in a camera that was essentially just like a 35mm SLR except 3 times larger and heavier. This was used for commercial jobs because it was a “focal plane shutter” camera and the highest flash speed sync was only 1/60th of a second, no good for the movement of wedding subjects. Its 1000th of a second shutter speed however, was great when hanging from a small plane’s window above a subject.

Because I did so many weddings, my greatest investment and constant companion was the Bronica system. This was a common camera - a “poor man’s Hasselblad” but had a more useable image area of a rectangle 6x4.5cm rather than a square 6x6cm on 120 film. The quality was roughly 3 times that of 35mm which put the pro well above pesky amateurs who tried to steal work from us! Each lens had its own shutter within - a “leaf” shutter - rather than just in the camera body. This meant that fill-in flash could be used right through the shutter speed range, even 1/500th of a second. But it also meant the lenses were much more expensive and prone to regular servicing. They remain beautiful quality. I would say the image of the Nikon D300 is now about equal to a frame from this camera. It has taken a long time for digital to catch up with film but it has now left it behind.

My battered old Contax was

considered a normally sized

35mm camera at the time, but placed against the Nikon D300 digital now, it is about 40% smaller

All I have left of the Pentax 67 system is 2 lenses which still would hold up on quality today.

This 300mm f4 was a big hunk of heavy glass and required an 80mm filter for the front if you could find and afford one!

The Bronica camera with a 150mm f4 mild telephoto and 40mm f4 strong wide angle lens. The standard lens on the camera was 75mm f2.8. Note the camera was made up of components that one could mix and match. Pictured here is the body, the lens, a film magazine at the rear, an electronic metered viewfinder on top (very expensive and prone to failure!) and a handle called a ‘speedgrip’ on the side. This handle had a 35mm camera-type wind-on lever to advance the film. I mostly used a powered motor-drive and this was a back-up. The new price of the above in the days it was king would be equal to about $15,000 today - now you can’t give them away!

This image shows an old, unused roll of 35mm “Kodakchrome” slide film, the only film ever invented that never faded. There is only one place in the world where this may still be processed.

A 120 sized roll of “Velvia” sits beside a box of 5 known as a “pro-pack”. This is the film I still use in the panoramic camera today. There are only about 3 labs left in the whole of Melbourne still able to process it. When I buy it, I get 100 rolls at a time in case Fuji stops making it. I have so much left I doubt if I will ever need to buy film again!

And Today... Film

Whilst I have a cupboard littered with the remains of other days’ cameras, today is much simpler; one digital, one film.

The film camera remains the “Art Panorama” 6x17 panoramic camera. This camera takes the 120 film stock I use - I only use Fuji Velvia - and produces 4 frames per film. It costs about $8 every time I press the shutter! A true, purpose-built panoramic camera differs substantially from a normal camera with a wide-angle lens. It is most similar to a 5x4 view camera except it uses 120 roll film but the lens is exactly that used on a view camera so the quality is good. The panoramic camera is just a lens on a box. The box is so designed that it cuts off the top and bottom thirds of the image. Thus a frame shape that has a 1 to 3 ratio, ie. it is 3 times in length to its height. This film is placed in the centre area of the lens, thus achieving the best quality area of the glass.

The design of the box in relation to the lens is such that most of the lens distortion found in a normal wide-angle lens on a normal camera - ie. the pulling forward of the foreground and the pushing back of the background - is overcome. Although vertical objects on the side of the image are still distorted, the image is a much more natural and useable one but also has a wonderful quality of perspective and large “depth of field” ie most things are in focus.

The Art Panoramic camera, in common with all such cameras, is totally manual. There are no electronics and no meters or even a through the lens viewfinder. Shutter speed and aperture are set manually on the lens and focus is done via numbers painted - inaccurately -on a side wheel. Most images are taken either on infinity or set at 10 metres for trees in the forest and the like. I have discovered that the best lens performance of the Nikon f8 90mm lens is at f22 and the film is exposed at - wait for it... - 25ASA(ISO)! Thus, my most common exposure would be f22 at anything from 1/8th to 30 seconds. Windy days are not appreciated!

To a professional, using this camera is like stepping back to basic roots. As such, I make it even harder for myself by trying only ever to take one single shot of any subject. Occasionally I miss the shot but not often. It is my belief that photographers who have grown up in film usage - having to pay for it - are most likely to be able to produce better shots, more consistently with fewer frames. It amazes me how often “digital photographers” of todays generation will take ridiculous numbers of images because they can with no cost, in the belief that at least some will be good!

The old Art Panorama has done a few kms! I have modified the special view finder on top to allow it to be separated from the camera allowing me to leave the heavy camera in the car or the backpack as I contemplate the validity of a scene. The lens has a 77mm “centre spot graduated filter” which helps to even light distribution from edge to edge and is worth half the camera! The round knob with “3” on it is the focus dial.

And Today... Digital

In 2005 whilst in the USA I purchased a Nikon D70 and began my first serious play with digital. I had deliberately waited that long, despite pressure from tech-head colleagues, because I twas watching the digital camera area growing to something closer to reasonable prices and useable image quality.

The 6 megapixel D70 represented the first quality camera that came near this in my opinion and was/is a delight to use ergonomically. I quickly moved on to the 10 megapixel D80 which did its best to convince me that digital’s convenience and new image quality had finally grown out of the expensive toy stage and was here to stay. The biggest annoyance in the world of digital is just how quickly obsolescence arrives. Obviously the manufacturers want us to waste money updating every year. We just have to put the foot down and decide to go with a particular system and stick with it for as long as possible.

The D300 represents this for me and only after owning and loving the feel and quality of this unit, did I begin to buy suitable and expensive professional lenses. Most of the images and “digital panoramics” found in the “Galleries” section of this site are from this wonderful camera which I am now happy to say beats any film camera I have used to date!