My Rangefinder Experience…So Far

dazedgonebye

dazedgonebye

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Last night I scanned the third roll of film in a row that did not yield a single image I’d care to share. Not for the first time, I’m having doubts about my choice to go back to film and to try rangefinder cameras.
Part of the problem, I think, is that I’m not finding that the subjects/situations that I see so well shot here on RFF available to me. I have little access to street shooting environments and I’m not exposed to many people beyond my family.
I leave my garage in the morning and travel a freeway to work. I work at a computer job where, if I didn’t get up for coffee, I might not actually be face to face with another human being all day. My evenings are about making diner and doing homework with my boys, or taking them to activities.
I guess overall, I’ve got a very suburban life and it’s a million miles away from the shots that turned me on to wanting a rangefinder and film.
To make matters worse, I just haven’t mastered this camera yet. I’m missing shots because it takes me too long to focus. I read here all the time how rangefinders are faster to focus, but I find I’m faster with my DSLR, even with manual focus lenses and a poor viewfinder.
Now I’m whining….
If someone were to come to me with these same complaints I’d tell them to go out and shoot more, so that’s what I’ll do. When I first bought my Bessa, It told myself I’d have a go till Spring or Summer and that if I could not prove to myself that I had a shot at producing good stuff with it, I’d sell it all and buy a better DSLR. The jury is still out.
 
Sorry to hear that. Since I discovered RFs I wouldn't willingly use anything else for most of my photography, but no doubt not everyone feels the same. I wouldn't fret about it too much though, if you prefer SLRs that isn't a crime (well, it probably is to some people here 🙂 )

Ian
 
Try planning some daytrips on your weekends. Take your kids & in between family snapshots - and those are fun too, just look at what magic Raid makes out of them - you can probably find things more to your tastes. Which part of Arizona are you in? I'd bet some fun things can be found in the tourist traps of Bisbee or Tombstone. Or if you like landscapes, go up into the Coronado National Forest up into the mountains.

Just some thoughts from my too short time stationed at Ft. Huachuca.

William
 
I am relatively new to RFs as well and I happen to live in Scottsdale, AZ - so we have a lot in common. I don't try to force myself to use the RF as most people would - I love landscapes and I always carry my RF with me, even when I am out with the DSLR or even the 4x5. What's working for me is the 15mm CV lens - it allows me to shoot a different view of the landscape that I otherwise would not have - like crazy views of Saguaros or Chollas. It is just plain fun to use that lens on a Bessa R2A. Where do you live? I'd be happy to take you on a day of RF shooting and you can try out the 15mm or any other CV lens for that matter (the only other lenses I currently have are the 50mm Nokton and the 35 Ultron). I am sure it would be fun - so let me know.

Juergen
 
Take a walk during lunch hour and shoot then. Is it possible that you are being too critical of your photographs? Look at your photos. but don't analyze them too soon. Wait. The rangefinder/street photography is a completely different format than an auto-focus slr or tlr. You are capturing movement and often the images are blurry or not perfectly framed.
 
you seem to have rather high expectations. You aren't going to turn into some photography god by summer no matter what you do.

Don't worry about how fast everything takes place. Take your time to focus. Learn to use hyperfocal settings so you don't have to spend time focusing all the time. Use your bessa for family snapshots instead of trying to take pictures like someone else in some other situation.

A little realism goes a long way. No-one masters an art in a matter of months. Take pictures of your house. Photograph your work. Take a picture of your car after washing it. Take a picture out the window next time it rains/snows/whatever. Take a picture of the sunset or sunrise from your yard. Don't worry if you are taking a fantastic artsy image that will impress people. Show people what your life looks like. That's what we want to see anyway.

Don't worry if you don't touch the camera for a month or more. Just keep a roll of film in it so you can take a picture of your kid with a report card or art project. Use the camera to document YOUR life. Having those prints and negatives 20 years from now will mean far more than random shots of "street/documentary."

A whole slew of meaningless shots won't gain meaning just because they were shot with a digital SLR. And remember that what you see here in the galleries is not representative of all the photos that actually get taken. I have a whole binder full of negatives, and maybe a handful that I have actually shared here. On the other hand, I have a nice stack of family photos and shots that mean something to me. Most likely, some of them would interest other people as well, but they were taken because they are of my family and friends, not out of a burning desire to take photos. And I am always surprised when my friends express a desire to have a print of shots I viewed as discards. We are not always the best judge of our own output.

You've got a great camera. Having some other great camera won't change anything. Replacing it with a digital will just mean you will be taking even more crappy photos, yet have a very expensive disposable camera on your hands. At least with the Bessa, it won't be worthless five years from now - it will still be taking pictures every bit as good as any other camera.
 
If I may suggest...

Take on a photojournalism assignment. Suburban domestic life. Challenge yourself. Ask yourself "How can I document suburban domestic life through photos?" Photograph the kids toiling (or slumping) over their homework assignments. Shoot for some different "out of the ordinary" angles. Capture their expressions (or lack of) while they're engulfed. What else are they doing around the house? Helping with the cooking? (Pots boiling over. Cookie dough and frosting covering their hands and faces. Dirty dishes piling up in the sink) Watching television? (Expressions that show their oblivious the rest of the world around them.) All this can be told in a photojournalistic way. Document their lives (and yours). If you're allowed, take the camera into work and get the many expressions of your coworkers within their day to day work. Try to capture their character with your photography. Try to make it gritty. The gritty stress of the suburbs and domestic life. Or, the relaxed leisure of a stress free weekend.

Lastly, try not to compare your photos with others who may telling different stories. Tell your own and tell it the best you can tell it.
 
Hello.
The main thing to remember is that it's a little magic box (a camera) and it's a great machine for recording some of the things you see in your life. The idea of using a rangefinder is to make it easy to have a camera about your person (small camera) but if it doesn't work for you at least you appreciate the approach behind it.

PETE.
 
dazedgonebye said:
I have little access to street shooting environments ...
Click to expand...

Oh, this problem I know!
But I'm pretty new to rangefinders and hope to gather enough experience to shoot good photos.
 
I don't expect to become expert with RF cameras in a few short months. I do want to see more from myself than I am currently.
Juergen,
I briefly owned the 15mm, but sold it when I realized I was just shooting the same stuff I'd been happily shooting with my DSLR. What I've missed in my photography are people. Not that I'm the master of landscapes, but I know what I'm about in that genre and I could go on as I am, improving along the way, and be happy.
BTW, I work in N. Scottsdale and shoot on lunch breaks out in the surrounding desert. http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=393385722&size=o

Eric,
This sounds like very good advice:
Lastly, try not to compare your photos with others who may telling different stories. Tell your own and tell it the best you can tell it.
Click to expand...
I'm not sure how to go about that at this point. My family will only tollerate so much of me with a camera and work is off limits.

I appreciate the good advice guys. I hate being the person that finds nothing but problems in the solutions, so I'm just going to stew in this for awhile and get over myself.
 
Steve, how about asking to take portraits of family and friends? If they don't have people in them, many of my photos are of nothing special - steps, fence, just things that catch my eye because of composition or light.
 
Steve, don't give up, you've got talent and I have a gut feeling that sooner or later you and your rangefinder will become good friends. I too have some AF gear and it's great to have but, surprisingly, the most emotionally gripping pics I ever took were made with an old Kiev + 50/1.5 Sonnar kit, which was btw a pain to handle. Like I said on another thread, I think with your outgoing personality and skills you have everything one needs to be a great street shooter. And they are filling up with people, slowly, but surely. Maybe our upcoming trip to Florence will provide some inspiration too..
 
I've been through a similar transition recently, and going from a DSLR kit to a rangefinder has certainly been an adjustment. I wouldn't say I've found my "style" again yet -- with the SLR, it was all about wide-open tele portraits, and the occasional wide-angle street walkabout. Almost all of it was color, mostly at ISO 1600 (I'm a night owl), and I just help down the shutter release any time it looked like something might happen.

Obviously, going back to manual film shooting is different. My usual tactic for getting used to new glass or a new shooting style -- namely, just firing off a few hundred shots at home -- really isn't exciting when I'm paying by the roll. So, I've had to find new places and ways to shoot.

Since I'm still at the cheap fixed-lens stage of my rangefinder addiction, I also can't just slap a super-wide or tele lens on the camera to get interesting perspective, so getting out in the world has been an absolute must. I've found urban infrastructure (freeways, HVAC equipment, fences/gates, etc.) to be some of the most fruitful places for basic composition, and they all have the advantage of being just about everywhere.

Also, concurrent with picking up rangefinders, I've started doing my own B/W developing at home, which has given me a lot of new expressive possibilities in terms of film/developer combinations, push processing, etc.

All in all, I can't say with certainty that I'll keep shooting with manual RF gear, but if nothing else, it's reminded me of some of what I've been missing in the last couple of years since I went digital.
 
FrankS said:
Steve, how about asking to take portraits of family and friends? If they don't have people in them, many of my photos are of nothing special - steps, fence, just things that catch my eye because of composition or light.
Click to expand...

Frank,
I have shockingly few friends. The two RFF get togethers I've had recently were my first exposures to new people in years.
My life is absorbed by work and family. I have a "special needs" kid that keeps me fully occupied and a normally able child that I have to work hard not to neglect for the sake of his older brother.
I should be grateful that I do photography at all really. It's the line I drew in the sand that said "I have to have something in this life that is for me." For the longest time, I was just falling in to this hell of everything being about a losing battle to give my troubled kid a "normal" life.
Sorry...I'll have to be paying the board $150 and hour for therapy if I keep that line of conversation going.
 
I find that having no film in the camera and just practicing focusing and composing shots around the house is a good way to become familiar with your camera. The more you practice focusing and shooting it the faster you'll get at it. Play with your camera as much as possible.

I hope that helps.
 
Not having opportunities for good street photos and not making good work with your RF camera have nothing to do with one another. Cameras and shooting styles are not married to each other, so don't fret about that.

You have my sympathy with your frustrations about your regimented life, but this isn't really the issue with your RF camera. It takes time to get good and fast with RF focusing. It doesn't work like an SLR. Most folks who don't get along wiith RF focusing are trying to use them like SLR's; they try to follow action, lining up the images in motion. This is a slow and frustrating experience for most. Remember the RF is just a tool for measuring distance, so use it like that. An SLR prism is better at following focus, but an RF is fastest when set at a given distance, and you move with a moving subject, or stay still with a still one. Set your focus distance, and by all means, change it when you need to. But work knowing your distance, (because you have measured it) rather than neccesarily seeing it in the camera. Use your D.O.F. scale to help you, and follow at the same distance from your moving subject, and/or shoot when it gets to the right distance. It takes practice, but it will become more fluid and faster, especially when you "get" it. I spend a lot more time looking directly at the subject, and less time looking through the camera, since the camera only gives me so much inofrmation. I find this freeing. Once you internalize the way this different tool works, and use it's abilities and work around it's limitations, you will be happier with it.

Most experienced RF shooters say RF's are faster because they are using this method, or some personal variation on this theme. So often, we're basically pre-focused when the shot happens, rather than focusing through the moment as with an SLR. My hand is very often not on the focusing ring when I shoot. Besides this, there's the fact that the camera is faster to open once you hit the shutter button, so you will get closer to shooting the instant you observe, rather than the one after it while waiting for the mirror to move.

Finally, RF's are not for eveyone; you may decide to go back to your SLR- but give yourself a chance to really learn what this camera does, and how to use it to it's best advantage. A camera is a camera- use it for every kind of task- don't limit your thinking to RF must equal street shooting only. Shoot the same pictures you would with any other camera with your RF, and see if you can get along with the style of the tool. If you can, you will be rewarded with the benefits of RF's that many or us love; and if you find in the end you prefer to use an SLR, you will enjoy the benefits of that kind of camera. Either way, I wish you the best of luck finding more joy and more keeper shots with your photography.
 
Steve some of your problems sound like those that many people on here seem to have.

I've only recently used rangefinders and am still finding it incredibly hard to focus/compose and all the other things that come so naturally with the SLR's/DLSR's I use for work and have used since I was a kid. I have always tended to shoot 'street' and documentary work with my SLR's but am having to look at new types of photography that give me the time to check my focus, take the camera back away from my eye to ensure I have the right shutter speed etc. Rather than get very frustrated and annoyed that something I'm normally pretty good at ( and certainly very quick at ) is now seemingly impossible, I'm trying to accept that that 'workflow' (???) won't work for me until I get to know my camera inside out.

Have you seen Bud Green's gallery - he shoots some wonderful images and many of them seem to be in his own home. Of his own children and his route into work.

Swann's gallery is also a must. I had a PM 'conversation' with him a couple of months back about how I felt I shot better images in other towns and cities as my eye had been dulled by my home town - we both knew this was just an excuse, he told me that he is agoraphobic and finds his images within a very short distance of his home.

I suppose once we have eventually mastered our cameras as the tools that they are we must also excercise our eyes to see the details that are worthy of capture.
I'm so often amazed by the work of people on this site who seem to find beauty in the smallest and most everyday of things.

Hopefully I will get to grips with my M6 sometime soon andI sincerely hope that you master your rangefinder too, whilst also managing to find time for both your family and 'Hungry Eye.'
 
Steve, when times are tough/stressful, I use my camera to record small frames of simplicity and/or beauty in the daily/ordinary world around me. It can be as mundane but beautiful as the way afternoon sun streams into the kitchen window and plays on the stacks of dirty dishes! Or morning light sidelighting the bedsheets. These little frames help me stay above the fray of daily life - helps me live a more conscious life, looking out for the beauty in the ordinary. Photography is my therapist. It helps me find a quiet, centered spot.

Hope this helps!
 
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