Question: any advice on shooting street with a TLR ?

[raytoei@gmail.com]

hi,

i checked DOF master, focus at 8m and at f16, anything from 4m to inf is in focus. i challenged myself to a 48 hour film shooting spree next week and I decided to shoot with my f3.5 planar and hp5+ @ iso 800. mainly street, morning and afternoons.

Any other advice for me ?

thanks

raytoei

 

[02Pilot]

Focus closer. Obviously style dependent, but I'd focus around 3m for street shooting.

 

[sinisaostojic]

How accurate is your shutter? You might find that your 1/500 is in fact 1/250. I generally do not go below 1/250 to freeze pedestrian movement.

Pushing hp5 for 1 stop is a good idea.

Also, I would stay away from shaded area. If you happen to have an overcast day, you might have to push 2 stops.

I like to use the same camera with Fuji Acros for nature/outdoor portraits/architecture and the results are just amazing.

 

[raytoei@gmail.com]

thanks for the comments.

at iso 800, this gives me an extra stop on a bright day, @f16 and 1/500.
at f16, if i focus at 3m (10 feet), this gives me a range of 2 -5 m in focus.


i suspect that the light will be somewhere at f5.6 to f8, so that means that at iso 800 and f16, i will have to shoot at 1/125 and 1/250 respectively if i shoot at sunny 16.

 

[Scapevision]

You don't actually have to do all that, you can just use the focusing screen and actually focus. That's how I do it. Unless you like random people walking in my face shots, of course. They bore the hell out of me.
Also people are more likely to come to you for a chat, so you can use that to shoot portraits.

 

[Colin Corneau]

Don't over-think it. Your gear should allow you to work without thinking - TLR's can do that quite capably (see: Vivian Maier) and the rest of that is up to you getting to know your kit well enough to use it without looking or thinking.

Past that, it's just getting out there and seeing what feels right for you - what kind of places, what kind of situations, what kind of compositions. All of it....just go, walk, shoot, and observe.

 

[Ko.Fe.]

Forget the lope to focus and GG for framing. Use viewfinder for framing and scale focusing.
Put plastic tie on focusing wheel with its head on top for 4m, notice tie head position at 8 and 2 meters. Stay at 4m, it is close push tie head on wheel forward, it is far push it back. Without looking at focus scale.

Go where crowd is, take the street side where light is, walk with sun behind you, light on people faces. This will allows you to use same aperture, same shutter speed. Advance film in advance.
Don't be afraid to miss the focus, don't miss the moment.

F8 1/250. ISO100.


Make sure you are quick to find shutter release, if not add the cable.

 

[raytoei@gmail.com]

Ko.Fe,

thanks. i will put a marker a bit higher than 12feet for 4m(the rolleiflex is in feet, but i think in meters haha). and i take note of the following:
(all in f16)

focus 4m = 2.5m to 8m
focus 2m = 1.6m to 2.5m
focus 8m = 4m to infinity

tks!

 

[BillBingham2]

Use incident rather than reflected light metering. Zone focus, zone focus, zone focus, makes life a lot easier.

While I prefer to fill frames, I had better luck when using the extra size of the negative and crop. Enlargers were my friends.

B2 (;->

 

[Sarcophilus Harrisii]

Why DOF master? Why would you think you cannot rely on the depth of field scale by the focus knob? Given the overall improvement in granularity and sharpness of modern films in the 50-odd years since your F was manufactured, you ought not run into too much difficulty setting the focus zone or hyperfocally with the scale, as the manufacturer intended.

If you are shooting moving subjects, after having pre-focused using your preferred method, don't forget you have a direct vision finder that sidesteps the reversed view from the ground glass.

 

[mfogiel]

There's another thing you can do: when you want to get closer, place yourself to the right of the subject, and start fiddling with the camera looking in front of you, then turn quickly the camera to the left in your hand, focus and shoot, without changing the body position. I feel this is the way in which Maier has taken lots of close shots.

MF20110508 by marek fogiel, on Flickr

 

[raytoei@gmail.com]

marek: excellent tip! i forgot, the tlr is a very right angle shooter as well.

 

[NY_Dan]

I walk around with my camera set to 10ft, f/8 125th in general shade, f/11.5 1/250 plus 1.5 yellow in sun, Tri X or Tmax 400, lens hood. With practice you learn when to increase or decrease exposure, and by how much. With practice you learn when to go from 10ft to 7 or 12. I find most shots are made from 10ft away.

It's all about shooting everyday, and practicing. Check out my book of street photos with Rolleiflex -- just click on Never Seeing Nothing in my signature. Good luck!

 

[raytoei@gmail.com]

Dan, excellent photos!

 

[nikon_sam]

If you can park yourself somewhere for a few minutes, cafe chair, street corner or doorway, focus on an area you think will produce decent pictures...set your camera for proper exposure...once you've been in one place for a bit the people passing by now will just see you as one of the local fixtures...also people these days don't know what a TLR camera is and since your not striking a pose they're familiar with most will not notice you're taking pictures...
Try to not bring attention to yourself and most people will not notice you...hiding in plain sight...

 

[raytoei@gmail.com]

Thanks to all comments & suggestions.

This afternoon, i took the rolleiflex for a spin at the busy junction
outside H&M. i set the iso at 800, set aperture at f16, it was a f5.6 day
(cloudy, overcast day) and i set the shutter speed at 1/125 according
to Sunny 16.

I discovered several things to watch out for the next time:
a. even at 1/125, people movement tend to create motion blur.
this was my greatest issue with unsharp images, more so than focusing.

b. i forgot that the dof was 2m to 5m, at f16 focused to 3m.
Have to remember to compensate automatically.

c. the actual iso was probably > 800 as I used a yellow filter as well.
i may have to lose the yellow filter to make up for more shutter speed.

thanks!

raytoei