Pictures taken with a...

For keeping track of which lens and camera is used - I "waste" a couple of frames at the beginning of the roll. An erasable white board is used to note down camera/lens/ asa if different from "standard.
When the negs are filed away, this information + developer/times is written on the neg file page . I use Printfile pages that take 6x7 (42 frames) strips and that leaves a couple of empty inches at the bottom. Advantage is that if and when I do contacts - the informatin is on the contact print too. At least used to be when you still could get 8.5X11 inch paper.
Rollfilm and larger I kept a note book for. Just numbering the rolls or the holders in order of shooting. Usually just a numerical sequence and occasional points on who,what,when and why if appropriate.
Most of my 35mm cameras have notches filed in the filmgate as a reference system. When printed or scanned I can see which camera (and which lens as I rarely switch lenses on a body). This also adds the feature that you can identify which camera is acting up. Otherwise that is tricky when yo have 4-5 bodies on the go at the same time and one has decided to ignore shutterspeeds set or cap the shutter.
 
Remembering or finding shooting info

Remembering or finding shooting info

Thinking about this thread's original question I wonder if it isn't wrapped up in the sort of things different people tend to remember and also in the sheer volume of pictures taken.

I've been taking pictures for 17 years with interchangeable lens cameras, mainly Nikon and Leica with a brief venture into Contax. Before that another 10 years that were easy to account for as my only camera was an Olympus Trip 35 with a undetachable 40mm f/2.8 that I rather liked.

If presented with a contact sheet from my last 17 years' shooting I could in most cases say what type of camera was used (e.g. Nikon AF, MF or Leica M) and in many cases know what exact body and lens were used - except for those early days when I changed the lens too often mid-roll because I hadn't settled down to a more considered way of working. Probably the same with digital, but there it doesn't really matter because a spotlight search in the Mac OS (10.4 in my case) will bring up anything in a matter of a few seconds. Uncoded Leica lenses confound that but I suppose I could write that info into the metadata on Photomechanic or a similar application.

Personally I tend to remember this sort of thing quite well but am not very interested in it after the event. Additionally I should add that the pictures that interest me most are often taken with special purpose lenses (e.g. Perspective Correction, ultra-fast, Defocus Control) and these are not easy to forget anyway because they are so distinctive.
 
Hm.

Taking photos = fun.
Noting camera/lens/film/exposure = faff.

I have a naming convention that is location/subject/body/lens. But I am not anal about it. I don't make notes as I go along, but I develop and scan soon enough after the event to tag while it is still fresh in my mind.

I also tend to standardise. These days if I have a colour shot it will be on Reala. Black and white will be 400CN. On a trip, I load the same cameras with the same film; therefore all my Seville colour shots were with the M7, and most of the b&w with the M2 (on the last day I ran out of colour so put b&w in the M7. Because I don't chop and change lenses, it is again relatively easy to remember what was used for what. There are other clues too. Night shots = Canon 50mm 1.2. Extreme wideangles = VC 15mm. Tele shots = Canon 135, etc. Don't ask me exposure. 99.9% of the time I can't remember. The only time I do is if I am on the limits, one way or the other.

Does it matter? Not one jot or iota, in the great scheme of things.

Oh, and I am in the camp that holds the view that the magazine market is massive, diverse and robust. Have you ever tried to roll up a laptop and stick it in your pocket?

Regards,

Bill
 
Getting back to the topic at hand. I like to read what people use. I can't tell a J-8 shot from a sumulux from looking in the gallery, but for me this is what really excells about digital. It's a great way to share, learn, & meet & see what like minded photographers are doing all around the world. The quality is certainly good enough that when I see a photo that blows me away I can admire it & say WoW!! thats awsome.🙂
 
Dear Bill,
What you say sounds right to me. The faff element seems to go all too easily in hand with our hobby. A non-photographer friend of mine once said, after watching his father going through his camera bag: "The thing about photography is it has tremendous faff value."

The real reason I'm posting is that I caught sight of your comment about the camera phone! Back in October I was out on a coastal walk from Whitstable to Ramsgate and deliberately left my camera at home, thinking that over 25 miles would take a long time and that I would be better off not stopping to take shots or carry even one body and one lens. The lighting turned out to be so distinctive I immediately regretted the decision. But... I had my phone. It took a while to get used to but the change was as good as a rest and I found it quite exciting taking pictures in this very informal way - like jotting in a notebook. Too small to hold steady the phone could sometimes do with a tripod! Anyway, the shots that weren't zoomed - and hence digitally mutilated - were nice. They even came up quite well on a 20 inch computer screen. Not Leica, not withstanding careful technical scrutiny, but effective and interesting. A bit too contrasty when the sun was strong, a bit hard to get the horizons level, but successful all the same with just a touch of cropping and levelling in Photoshop.

What I like about the phone pictures is that you can concentrate on the picture if fairly static and just take it like blinking. The added bonus is you can turn the phone part off while keeping the camera turned on. But when the shutter goes off is anybody's guess - the noise is just a simulation! Anyway - something different for a change...

Best wishes,
Tom
 
I agree that it does not really matter which camera/lens/film is used as lolong as the pitucre works.
The only reason for taking notes and noting combinations is a/if you do a lot of experimenting and b/if you are getting paid for shots. Trust me on this-if you caption the wrong name to the wrong guy/woman and/or screw up location and occasion, you are in deep dodoo with the editor as well as the subjects! This is one of the reason that most shooters hate "grip and grin" situations, particularly when the subjects are from another language culture than you and you have to get every name right! After a while it becomes a habit to do this and thus extends into my private shooting even after 2 decades of avoiding paid assignments.
One thing that has always impressed me is that people remember exposure data! Either they have far better memories than me - or they are lying through there teeth! Sometimes I can deduce a rough estimate by looking at the shot and go" It was bright, probably f11 @ 1/250" - but exact figures - no way.
 
Bracelet laptop frees pocket space

Bracelet laptop frees pocket space

Dear Roger and Bill,
They should make flexible phone-sized laptops as small as those flick bracelets the schoolchildren love. To put to sleep and put away you simply flick it against your wrist and - hey presto - it curls up round it. It could even include a pulsating glow to tell you when the latest reply from RFF has come in.

Naturally its built-in phone / camera would be able to simulate every lens ever made with speeds up to f/0.5. And a meta-data search would involve cataloguing capability by any lens or shooting category.

And that would leave our pockets free for something actually worth having, whether a magazine ... or a prawn sandwich with garlic.

Cheers,
Tom
 
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Dear Roger,
Yes, I live in the area. If you tell me which your house was I might take a picture of it to show off my mobile phone's prowess! I won't set up a tripod and use the PC Nikkor as I remember a vague allusion of yours to trouble you had taking some pictures in the locality. Not sure what happened.

I like walking that stretch of coast, though between Margate and Ramsgate it is not such fun, especially with the wind coming straight at you from Norway or suchlike.

Funny thing is: my parents live close to Bristol, and I believe you lived there as well, judging from your black and white photography book from the 80s.

Are you ever back in Kent?

Best wishes,
Tom
 
F456 said:
Dear Roger,
Yes, I live in the area. If you tell me which your house was I might take a picture of it to show off my mobile phone's prowess! . . . Funny thing is: my parents live close to Bristol, and I believe you lived there as well, judging from your black and white photography book from the 80s.
Click to expand...
Dear Tom,

5, Alfred Road -- that short row of huge Victorian houses opposite the ugly flats, just at the other end of the promenade from the Minnis pub. I understand that since I sold it in '02 it has gone up another £50,000 or more... They were apparently among the first houses built in the Bay. One of the weird features was the curved wall in the loo, visible here in a piece on temporary darkrooms:

http://www.rogerandfrances.com/photoschool/ps how loo.html

Yes, I lived in Bristol from '74 or '75 to '88.

I get back to Kent (and stay with friends in Minnis Bay) about once a year on average.

I'm just starting a new thread based on your question about unusual combinations. Thanks for the idea.

Cheers,

R.
 
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Taken with.

Taken with.

Having been in photography since the " Graphics " days, i have often been encountered with the " what¨s best question.
In time I have come up with a standard reply: Think like an indusrialist, use the stuff that can deliver the required results for the task at hand.
FOR THE LEAST AMOUNT OF MONEY!
As for impressing clients with gear: TV repair people used to drag a couple of big instruments into the clients living room. In private they were called "impometers"
 
Taken with.

Taken with.

Having been in photography since the " Graphics " days, i have often been encountered with the " what¨s best question.
In time I have come up with a standard reply: Think like an indusrialist, use the stuff that can deliver the required results for the task at hand.
FOR THE LEAST AMOUNT OF MONEY!
As for impressing clients with gear: TV repair people used to drag a couple of big instruments into the clients living room. In private they were called "impometers"
 
I think the more information about a photo the better. In the old days almost all the bigger photography books had pics containing info on equipment, aperture and shutter speed. Of course in those days the prints on books were better, that is, much closer to the originals. Standards dropped with the advent of digital. It was easier for us learners to appreciate more the prospectives of different focal length lenses and why the Leicas and Zeisses stood out of the rest.
 
Windscale said:
In the old days almost all the bigger photography books had pics containing info on equipment, aperture and shutter speed.
Click to expand...

Yes, but alas, this information was often invented or (at best) an uncertain recollection. Sometimes it was even a flat lie. Many photographers I know have said the same thing: "I don't remember, or care. Why would anyone else care?"

Once you know that, you start wondering how much use it all is...

Cheers,

Roger
 
Dear Erik,

Much as I hate to play the greybeard, after 40 years of photography, having lost count of the the number of cameras I own 20+ years ago, I remember FAR less about kit than I did at 30, when I could remember almost all of it.

Partly, this is just age. Partly, it's the range of kit I own/use. And partly, it's that I care less and less which camera and lens I used for a particular pic. I've taken great pics with junk, and rotten pics with top-flight kit.

Cheers,

R.
 
I only have about 7-8 years worth of negatives & slides to deal with, so have been able to use computer technology to deal (relatively) efficiently w/your hypothetical.

As to the how, I scan all of my film (except for truly bad/unusable frames) & keep the files in folders on hard drives. When shooting, I've always taken notes recording my exposures, subject matter, & equipment using a very basic utility called FotoLog (no longer sold) on what was originally called a Palm Pilot (an early "personal digital assistant"), now replaced by a Treo "smartphone" using an updated version of the same operating system; this is not an additional burden, since I've always carried such a device w/me. When I finish a roll, the program generates (or rather I make it generate) a plain text file & I simply copy that file to the folder containing the scanned roll (the original stays on my Treo). Since I also upload many of my photos to flickr, along w/equipment & subject tags, I can easily search photos by technical data or subject @ home on my computer or online. When I use a digital body, I no longer record the exposure information, just aperture, subject matter, & equipment.

As to why, I started keeping notes to learn from mistakes when I was a beginner & to track results for experiments. Now it's more of a habit & serves as a memory aid for subject matter details, as Brian has alluded, though it's also nice to be able to look up the technical data for gear comparisons, etc., & still useful for experimentation.

Roger Hicks said:
Yes, but if you then want to dig out (say) a choice of Canon f/1.2 shots shot over the last 30 years, you have to go through huge stacks of neg sleeves to find them. And if you're shooting trannies, surely you don't write the lens info on each mount?

Besides, I can't see why people do this. It doesn't strike me as having much to do with literacy. I rather pride myself on my literacy; literacy and my camera together have fed me for most of my working life. I tend to reserve my literacy, though, for what I see as more useful ends than notes of this kind.

If I remember/if I can be arsed, I note the equipment used for a roll, either on the sleeve itself or in the lab notebook to which each roll is keyed by accession number. But I regard it as so unimportant that I normally only bother for formal tests.

Again, I stress that there are two separate questions here. One is equipment and allied data: I'm not really debating the worth of these, because I know that many people are interested in such facts (or fictions, as discussed in an earlier post.

The second question, and the one I really meant to ask in this thread, is how people manage to respond to the common request on this forum, "Show us pictures taken with your..." As I say, it would take me ages to track down all my Canon f/1.2 shots, and I can't see much advantage in it anyway.

Cheers,

R.
Click to expand...
 
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ErikFive said:
I seriously hope I dont remember which kit I used now in thirty years. I suspect there would be something wrong with me if I did 😀
Click to expand...

Dear Erik,

That's about it!

But given the range of kit I use, I sometimes have difficulty across even a year or two. Which of the Summarits was this, 35-50-75-90? (I can normally narrow it down to two adjacent focal lengths, but that's all). Was this a Sonnar 50/1.5 or a Noctilux 50/1? Which of the then-new ZI lenses was this? Was this a WATE or an 18/4 Distagon?

And that's looking at transparencies, B+W prints or M8 enlargements. On the monitor -- forget it! Of course there are lenses with a strong enough 'signature' that I can almost always tell: 50/1.2 Canon, 75/2 Summicron, 90/2,2 Thambar, 90/2 early Summicron. But even then, at f/5.6 to f/8, it's only 'almost always'.

Sure, I keep notes for reviews, so captions there are 99% accurate and I often compare different lenses -- but once I've written the review, and am using the pictures for something else on www.rogerandfrances.com, who cares anyway?

Cheers,

R.
 
furcafe said:
I only have about 7-8 years worth of negatives & slides to deal with, so have been able to use computer technology to deal (relatively) efficiently . . . .
Click to expand...

Whew! Sounds like hard work! My memory is not yet so bad that I commonly forget the important bit, viz., how I decided to meter and then interpret the meter reading, between the time I take the pic and the time I see it (especially with the M8). That's what I've found useful for learning over the years.

It may well be that your approach would work faster for some people. For others (including me) I'd give up photography before relying on a Palm Pilot or its descendants. This is not to say that I'm right and you're wrong, or vice versa. It's very much a question of personality but I can feel my heart sink as I contemplate your approach.

Then again, when I start in the 1960s I didn't have the option of a Palm Pilot and maybe I'd have taken that route if I had. Probably I wouldn't though: I did have a loose-leaf notebook (an even earlier version of a Palm Pilot, with fewer software incompatibilities). As I say: personality, age, environment...

Cheers,

Roger
 
gb hill said:
Getting back to the topic at hand. I like to read what people use. I can't tell a J-8 shot from a sumulux from looking in the gallery, but for me this is what really excells about digital. It's a great way to share, learn, & meet & see what like minded photographers are doing all around the world. The quality is certainly good enough that when I see a photo that blows me away I can admire it & say WoW!! thats awsome.🙂
Click to expand...
My thoughts exactly. And the fact of the matter is, I think everyone here is gear oriented, a large portion of the discussions are related to gear and performance.

Now does the fact that we post the equipment information along with the picture diminish the impact of the picture or content ? My opinion, no it doesn't, not on this site considering who the target audience is.
 
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