I normally hate it when photographers get too wordy about their photography, especially a single photo, so please sit back and enjoy my descent into Hypocrisy.

This is Chris. I work in a suburb of Melbourne called Kew. Kew used to be home to the Kew Lunatic Asylum and Kew Cottages so the area has a lot of “characters”, sorry I can’t think of a better way to put this. Chris is one of those characters. I have worked in Kew for over 10 years and Chris has been in at least twice a week for a chat. In the beginning those chats were just him yelling something unintelligible at me from the door. Then something happened, about 6 or 7 years ago he went for an operation and after he recovered instead of yelling at me from the door he came into the shop and said “How are you?”. Have you seen the 1990 Robert De Niro and Robin Williams movie “Awakenings”? It was like that. I think someone assessed him and I don’t know if they changed his meds or his dosage but Chris seemed to be a lot more vivid, alive.

Last week I had my new Fuji GA645W at work and Chris came in so I asked him if I could take his photo, he said yes and I took it. Unfortunately it was too dark in the shop and the flash didn’t fire despite being up. A couple of days later Chris asked me about the photo I took and I said it didn’t come out, he seemed disappointed so I suggested we take another one. We went outside and I took a couple just to be sure, he told me the flash went off this time. I told him I would have a photo for him on Friday. Sure enough Friday rolls around and Chris comes in after work (I’m still not 100% sure what he does for work) asking about the photo. I show it to him, no reaction, but he wants me to put it in a photo envelope for him. He’s out the door.

He did this once before one Xmas when I took a photo of him in the morning and in the afternoon I presented him with a Xmas mug with his photo on it. I think he was just a bit overwhelmed in both cases.

So that’s Chris.

Ambré and I went to Ballarat on Sunday with the Youngs to check out the BIFB17 on it’s last day. I didn’t want to take a big camera with me so Ambré suggested that I take the Olympus mju-ii with me. I had forgotten how good of a camera it is! I was thinking about selling it to pay for some drone stuff but not now, I’m keeping it!

Recently I received some fan mail.

Thank you and fuck you “Kate”.

I recently found out that soon Voigtlander will be releasing a 10mm Hyper Wide Heliar lens. I’ll admit, when I first found out about it I was quite excited but when I saw what price it was going to be I became a little less excited. As you probably already know #ilikeitwide, so can I justify spending another $1k on another ultra wide lens? Yes, so I’d better start talking myself out of it, quick. Firstly: I work in retail so I’m not exactly rolling in money. Secondly: I generally don’t buy new, the last new thing I bought was 10 years ago, so maybe I’ll wait until someone else buys it and decides that it’s way too wide for them. Thirdly: Exactly how much wider is the 10mm than the 12mm? And this is the bit that convinced me. The 12mm has an angle of view of 121º, the 10mm has an angle of view of 130º which means the 10mm is only 7.5% wider than the 12mm. Now let’s compare that to my previous wide upgrades: from 24mm to 15mm was a 31% increase in wideness, and from 15mm to 12mm was a 10% increase in wideness. Now for the motherload: from the Xpan 45mm to the 30mm was a whopping 84% increase in wideness! But that was one hell of an investment! Fourthly: I have been enjoying using the far, far less wide 40mm recently and the 21mm equivalent 43mm on the Mamiya 7 is beautiful. Fifthly. Is that even a world? I was sceptical about fourthly, no red squiggle, I’m going with it. Fifthly: I have always thought it was strange when people upgrade their digital camera just because there is a new one out, I don’t want to be one of those people. So for the immediate future I’m sticking with the 12mm.

I have been slowly working on my own Xpan Photographer profile for weeks, a bit at a time, waiting for the right gap to post it in. You will have to excuse all of the commas. Here it is.

Some of you might have seen on Facebook or Twitter that I finally got around to making a book of my photos that I took in Japan in 2006. 9 years in the making! It is 8×8″ & perfect bound, it has 88 pages and contains 76 colour and black & white Xpan images. If you’re in Australia or New Zealand and want to buy a copy, please contact me first.

Japan06 on MagCloud

Because I got my images out of the “archive” I am slowly replacing my low res photos on Flickr from Japan in 2006 with higher resolution versions. Some of them still look good even after 9 years. Click here to see more from Japan in 2006, there are a few to replace so this might take a while.

A double-decker post! zOMG!

It’s a double post because I’m nearly 2 months into owning the Sony A7 and a couple of weeks ago Ambré and I went to rAdelaide for the weekend.

The Sony A7, like I mentioned I have had it for nearly 2 months and as much as I don’t want to admit it, I don’t hate it. I have been wanting this camera since it was announced but due to the amount of money I have spent on digital cameras in the past and watched depreciate into nothing, I refused to buy new. I was waiting for a used one to drop below AU$1000 and it finally happened. I only really use it for the Voigtlander 12mm, I have had a go at less wide with it (35mm) and that was a epic failure and we won’t talk of that ever again. It’s nice to have a camera that I can comfortably and confidently use at night without the worry of shitty high speed film and slow lenses. It just works.

But there are things that annoy me, like forgetting to check if the memory card is in it or my computer before I go out and the digital level indicator that just isn’t level. Also what I really like is the ability to wirelessly send a photo to my phone or iPad, edit it and then upload it to Flickr. I did this a couple of times in rAdelaide and it was fun. I was just using Snapseed and I think I might have went a bit over the top on a couple but oh well, fuck it, decide for yourself.

This doesn’t mean I have abandoned film!

Animated GIFs —>

Like I mentioned Ambré and I went to rAdelaide for the weekend a couple of weeks ago, it was my first time in rAdelaide and it didn’t disappoint. There were some interesting sights. We mainly went over for to have a look at Trent Parke’s exhibition “The Black Rose”. To be honest I was a bit disappointed. But rAdelaide’s photography and street photography gods were shining down (or is it up?) on me while I was there and I took a few winners on the Xpan. We also went for a few nice long walks, even on the beach and saw many wonders that rAdelaide and Glenelg had to offer. I’d go back.

So the final scores are:

Sony A7: 8/10
The Black Rose: 5/10
Deli in the rAdelaide Market: 10/10
Xpan: 10/10
Street photography in Adelaide: 9/10
Glenelg: 8/10
The stupid fucking tram in rAdelaide: 2/10
rAdelaide: 8/10
Not being able to eat the fucking desserts at the hotel buffet: 0/10

I went less wide for a couple of hours and failed miserably, unfortunately this was the best photo I took yesterday. A mate of mine wanted to borrow my 12mm lens for a day, he says he’s into teles but I think he’s a closet wide lover. So I borrowed one of his 35mm lenses to play with and to me it may as well have been a 50mm. I learned that I can’t manual focus for shit with a 35mm lens on the A7, I don’t think I’ve ever taken that many blurry photos in a row. This one was soft like butter, I sharpened the shit out it. Damian had more luck with my 12mm than I did with his 35mm.