The beginners guide to analogue photography. 2 --- Aperture.

 

 

Part one here!

Now you know what kind of camera, and what film to use. So on to part 2 of the beginners guide to analogue photography. Making beautiful pictures on an analogue camera is a bit harder than with a digital camera. You really have to think what you are going to take a picture of before shooting. If you failed to take a good picture, it is a waste of your film, and development. So a waste of your money! Before making a picture, think about the composition of your photo.

The aperture is one of the tree most important things to make a good picture.  The other two most important things to make a good picture are light sensitivity, which I already explained, and shutter speed, which will be explained in the next post.

The aperture controls how much light your film will get. The amount of light that hits the sensor determines how much depth there is in the picture. Depth of field is the distance within which the subject in the picture appears sharp. By playing with the aperture value you get a completely blurred background or a completely sharp background and everything in between. So the aperture offers you possibilities for creative photography.

 

 

The Diaphragm (= aperture) is located in your lens, the settings are on the side of the lens indicated with an F/number. The numbers vary from F/1.4 to F/32. Some lenses have even more, but those would be really special professional lenses.

Let me show you the difference between a high and a low aperture:

Low aperture: +/- F/2.8

 

High aperture: +/- F/3

There is one other thing that is important to know about the aperture. A low aperture can cause over exposure of your film! I found this picture on the internet, It shows what happens with picture when you shoot with a high and low aperture. (So the pictures are from high to low)

 

I think that was it for explaining the aperture. If you think I’ve missed something, please comment what. I will include it if its important.

Thanks!

Part 1 – 12/18/12

Part 3 – 12/22/12

Part 4 - 

Analogue #3 The Olympus OM-10

As promised, the next blog post on my analogue camera’s. Already the 3rd one, but no worries, I still got a lot of cameras to go! This time it’s the beautiful SLR-camera Olympus OM-10.

I had bought it at a giant thrift shop in Hilversum. I absolutely love this one, I had brought it with me to Turkey (vacation) and used it for a school project. It is Ideal for a lot of reasons. For example the lenses. Olympus has a whole OM-system which includes lenses! you can buy them on eBay for a low price.  Here are some pictures I made with my Olympus OM-10:





The Olympus OM-10 is a 35mm film camera. This camera is part of the OM system which Olympus launched in 1972. The Olympus OM bodies were divided in a high range and a middle range. The Olympus OM 1,2,3 and 4 where the high range category, the two middle where the middle range cameras, and the cameras above that where the lowest range. This way, Olympus was able to built a lot of camera parts that where the same and later put in the expensive equipment for the Olympus 1,2,3 and 4. So you where able to have a good quality camera for a lower price.
The Olympus OM-10 was launched in 1979. The early productions of the OM-10 have had malfunction issues with electronics, metering, and shutter magnets. So If you want to buy one at the thrift shop, make sure to check if the metering and shutter works. If you don’t know how to check your metering and shutter, you can read my other blog on how to buy the right vintage camera.  
If you’re looking for a good quality camera, you should take a look at this one. Its beautiful and it has this lovely “click’’ sound when you take a picture.
For the fun, here is the commercial of the Olympus OM-10 back in 1979:

If you have any questions, or think there is something missing in the information that MUST be included, please comment! If you’re looking for 35mm film, just click here.

Analogue #1 The Olympus Trip 35

So, as promised, I’m going to write a little something about my camera’s every week. I know I promised I would do that earlier, I didn’t have the time. That’s why I will post one camera today, and then one tomorrow. After that, there will be one analogue-post every week. So enjoy!
My first camera was the Olympus trip 35. It looks like this:

I bought it last summer at the thrift shop. Just wanted to try out an old camera and this one looked awesome! So I bought a 35 mm film for it and started shooting, hoping it would work. After getting the pictures back from development I was instantly addicted to analogue photography. Here is one of my first analogue pictures. (from the first 35mm film I bought)

I was kinda curious about how old the camera would be, so I started Google-ing. I found out that the olympus trip was manufactured between 1967 and 1984. I also found out that the serial number gives you an indication on how old your camera is. You have to open your Olympus and take out the little pressure plate on the back.

If you take the plate out, it will show a serial number like this:

You can read how you can get the age of your camera by following this:
1st Japanese character or letter (in later models) signifying the assembly plant.
2nd number representing the last digit of the year of assembly
(e.g. 5 = 1975, 0 = 1980).
3rd number or letter representing the month of assembly,
1-9 for Jan-Sep, X, Y, Z for Oct-Dec.
for example; N1Y = November 1971
So the picture above shows the camera is from March 1973.
While searching for more information I found out you can customize your Oly by buying skins!
Look at how awesome that is!

you can pick any color you want!

My Olympus trip still has the original skin, I like it that way, but if you have an Olympus trip, just Google on ‘‘Olympus trip 35 skin” and you find a lot of sites selling them!
If you don’t have an Olympus trip, but thinking about buying one, thrift shops and flea markets are the best places to look for them. There are literally millions of Olympus trips made in almost every country. The chance that you find one is pretty big if you look at the right places. If you don’t find one, you can always try eBay. If you want to buy film for you camera I recommend “Lomography”. They sell almost every film you want!
If you have an Olympus trip, or have a question about this camera, feel free to comment! I will answer every comment!
If you are interested in what the photo’s  I make look like, click HERE.
Have a nice day!


Follow me on twitter! @lenland

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Analogue picture time!

Today I got the pictures back from development! These pictures where the first ones from my Olympus OM-10. I;’m so happy with the outcome!

My Olympus!

I have had a school assignment for my art class. I made a series of pictures that all had to have some kind of emotion in them. THANKS Ruben, for letting me put water in your eyes and make you cry! haha!

I actually asked Ruben to shout as loud as possible in the picture above!

The other pictures are just some random pictures I took to get the 25 pictures I needed before I could take out the roll. For the analogue people out there: I used a Lomography ladygrey 35mm 100ISO roll, and had my diaphragm on 5.6!

I took one of those random pictures for you guys to see!

Have a nice week! I’ll be learning the whole time :(

Oh ok, I will sleep and eat too, don’t worry….

 

 

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Exams coming up!

Today I officially, seriously started learning for my exams. My first exam’s are in two weeks! I just finished learning about 29 pages of social sciences, which is a lot of work! But I hope It’s all in my head now! Still got about 120 pages to go in two weeks.. And art history, which I like a lot more since it’s about pop art! But still, a lot. Between those two subjects I just had to go outside and get some fresh air. The weather is really good right now. I picked up the dog at my grandmas house, took the camera and my music with me, and went for a little walk. It’s so pretty outside!

Different subject:

About yesterday, my family was here for my birthday! Had a lot of fun! Got a few pretty awesome presents too!

I got this old camera from my grandparents! LOVE THEM!

 

And these I got from my aunt and uncle.

Even my niece had made me a little arty present! (she is nine)

My other aunt an uncle had gave me this awesome old book. It is a register of the art that was in the museum of Amsterdam in 1892 (the book is from 1892!!!!) It has 120 heliogravures.

And my boyfriend gave me something too! SO SWEET!

Thrift shop Tuesday.

So I finally had a chance to go to the thrift shop today. This time in one I’ve never been before. I was in “Weesp” today with my friend Koen. Koen bought me an awesome analogue camera, which I’m definitely going to use sometime. This camera is a 135 mm camera from 1959.  So here it is!


And of course, I couldn’t resist the temptation to buy myself another one. This one was only 3,50 euros! It’s SO little and cute! This one is a 127mm camera from 1953. If you know how to get 127mm film, PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT!

So that was a real quick update for today.
BYE

My summer in analogue pictures

I was thinking about making my blog post about my vacation and show some pictures of my trip to Turkey.  But since I got all my analogue pictures at once on my mail I decided to make one big story covering my whole summer. All the pictures on this blog post (except for the first two) where made with my analogue camera’s. Two Olympus trip 35’s and one Kodak ektralite 600.

The Kodak:

The Olympus:
So what did I actually do this summer? Lets start at the beginning of it. The last few weeks of school. The weather as getting warmer and nicer. the vacation was so close nobody could concentrate on learning and going to school. For me, the first real summer day was when we made a trip to “De Strook”. The teachers had all decided we could get free from school and all hang out together and have some fun. We had a nice barbecue and went swimming together.


So for me this was my first summer day. It was also the first day of warm weather (about 25 degrees centigrade). 
Then the actual vacation begun and it started good. We – my mother brother and boyfriend and I- had a few trips to the beach in “Zandvoort”. I had a really good time there. We normally don’t make any trips to the beach, and I hadn’t seen de beach for over a few years then. This summer we made quite some more beach trips to Zandvoort.   We had a lot of fun!

The last highlight of my summer was my vacation to Turkey. I had never been to Turkey before. I went together with my boyfriend. Who came with the fantastic idea to go somewhere for a week. We had found this amazing hotel in the old center of Antalya. If you ever plan on going to Antalya. The Alp Pasa Botique Hotel is really beautiful and affordable too!














So that was, in a short story, what my summer was like.

I hope You have had A great summer too! Lets hope the winter is going to be as much fun as the summer!

Moving to NYC in 1951

Today, I thought it would be nice to do some DIY-ing! Which I did! I had brought an old film from the thrift shop with me. I get them for free because you can’t know if the film has been out of its casing. Nobody wants to buy film that could be damaged. I wanted to make a cover for my photo album out of the damaged film by cutting them in strips and glue them on the cover of the album.

I had to go to my grandma to get some things I needed to make the cover. I came to her home, finding her almost hidden in her closet. She was looking at her old postcards from the 1950’s. She had actually kept a lot of them in a box in her closet. We sat there for a while, going true all those cards. Reading some of them. Then she gave me a few of them! Which is AWESOME! I got a bunch of cards from – I think – her aunt.

For what I could get out of the cards was that a friend of my grandmas’ aunt had moved from Holland to NYC in 1951. She writes how she loves it there. How all her bags where opened at the airport, and how she would love to hear from her (the aunt) soon. Gosh, sometimes I think by myself: “ wouldn’t it be nice to have lived as a young person growing up in the 50’s?” In the 1950’s the Dutch economy grew very fast. The Dutch people where getting richer and richer. Which made them able to move to NYC(!!!).

The imprint says APR. 25 1951

I’ve got a few postcards from in the war. From around the 40’s. I wasn’t able to figure out what the cards say because of the handwriting. But they look pretty awesome don’t they?

OK. Back to my cover. This is what I did with my album!

Enjoy the rest of the week!