Insert Credit: Photo Mode

kory

Photography has been one of the more consistent of my semi-consistent hobbies outside of video games, though it’s been a bit dormant as of late. I wanted to establish a little nook for us to discuss the topic, and maybe even inspire me to get back into it! Topics to consider:

Your own work, approach, history, and preferred subjects
What gear you use, have used, or aspire to use (no shame for gearheads here! I am pretty unabashed about being at least as into the technology as the art, if not moreso…)
Photographs and photographers you like or who inspire you (please make every effort to attribute photos and/or provide appropriate links)
Online creators and personalities in the photography sphere, e.g. YouTube channels

and, finally

Photo modes in video games! They’re great! Post some of your coolest, strangest, or funniest stuff, or just discuss photo modes in general.

Personally, I had a pretty amateurish approach to photography until I finally got my hands on a DSLR as part of the yearbook staff in college. That Nikon D100 was a real beast, though I didn’t realize until several years later how little I actually knew what I was doing. During my post graduate training one of my mentors (a real outlandish guy…he would probably even be too out there as a Deadly Premonition character) took photography very seriously and inspired me to really figure out what the heck I’m doing.

Fast forward to now, I have a few cameras that I use, though my preferred body is a Canon 5D Mark IV and my absolute favorite lens is the 70-200 f2.8 IS L. These things aren’t cheap, but unlike many products I can really feel where that money is going in terms of build, durability, and customer service. I’m more of a landscape, nature, abstract photographer myself–I’ve always wanted to break into street photography, but I’m a bit too self conscious when it comes to human subjects.

If you want to learn about landscape photography, I highly recommend Thomas Heaton’s YouTube channel–he’s also just a pretty chill person.

I don’t want to just start spamming photos, but to get things started here’s one I took on July 4th (US independence day) a few years back. It’s from a fireworks display–I used a long exposure technique, varying the aperture during the explosion, to create this lovely abstract flower shape:

fridgeboy

kory love that photo! I love abstract art in general. Photography, for pretty obvious reasons, seems hard to do abstract with. You have to get creative with the medium which you’ve done here.

穴

I used to be pretty into photography a few years ago, heck for a brief time I thought that that’s what I wanted to do professionally lol

I was very lucky and privileged and through a partial scholarship I managed to study in a High School that offered specialisations in “3d animation and videogame development” and “artes audivisuales” ( i’m pretty sure theres a better english term than audivisual arts but I cant recall it right now).

I had to pick one and I was pretty unsure of which one to choose because both of them interested me a lot, but I ended up choosing audivisual arts because my friends were there and the videogame classroom was full of toxic weirdos.
That high school was a cool place (the owner/principal/teacher of some of the classes was a misogynistic pshychopath but that’s another story) and there I learned a lot and became interested in a lot of things including photography.

I managed to afford a Sony a6300 because in early 2017 I found like 30 copies of Gravity Rush Remastered for the PS4 in stock at Amazon Mexico and that game was out of stock in the US and the prices skyrocketed to around 130-ish dollars. I also was able to afford a Nintendo Switch at launch and a lot of Music Gear that way

I used mainly vintage lenses because they were pretty cheap for the quality and through high school I mainly used a Canon FD f 1.4 50 mm, a Canon FD f 2.8 28mm and a Nikon Nikkor 80-200mm f 4.5.

Oh, and also two years ago I found a sony rx10 mark 1 for 280 pesos (₁₅ dlls) at a flea market and that was wild, it was in perfect condition except the battery was missing but It used the same battery type than my 6300. Latelty when I need to casually shoot something I’ll just use the rx10 because of the autofocus and the zoom that I lack with my vintage lenses.

I had a lot of fun shooting a lot of short films and videos through high school and me and my friends who were usually my team-mates in most of the projects I was involved started to stand out a lot from the other classmates and that was nice I guess.

I’ll attach some decent photos that I have taken, maybe later i’ll share some video prjects as well

kory

穴 These are all fantastic! These capture a lot of what I aspire toward and, I think, are more about abstract mood and shape than the literal subjects. The b+w shot of the lamppost has to be my favorite…such an excellent use of black/negative space. Some of my favorite photographs are simple and, in an objective sense, mostly empty. I also love the silhouette of the fisherman–another case where no detail at all is necessary within the figure (and would probably detract from the photo if it were there).

穴 Canon FD f 1.4 50 mm

This is such a great lens, and also one I own and shoot with adapted! I used it on my micro 4/3 cameras for a long time and took some of my favorite photos ever with it. Older/adapted lenses have such great character to them, unlike the laboratory-like precision of a lot of modern glass. I like the quality of the bokeh (did you take the cactus photo with one of these older lenses?) and the feel and build quality is far better than anything new in a similar price range. I also really like the focal length–I notice that I am much more attentive to focused details than capturing large scenes, so I tend toward tele lenses. For the longest time all I used was a Canon 50 1.4 on a full-frame 6D body.

穴 sony rx10 mark 1 for 280 pesos (15 dlls)

Wow that’s a great deal! This is a really solid camera and (for me at least) allows for way more creative freedom than a phone cam, but is more pocketable and practical than the heftier stuff. For me, if I want something small I would tend to reach for a micro 4/3 camera or maybe the fuji x100f. I can’t praise micro 4/3 enough, though sadly I don’t see a lot of future with the format. If you have the opportunity and see a good deal, I would recommend grabbing an old olympus or panasonic camera and one of the tiny primes (olympus 45 1.8 or panasonic 20 1.7, for example) or just using adapters.

Would love to see some video work too! Cinematography and video are things that I never really explored, myself–the complexity (and creative freedom) seem exponentially higher than still work!

Going back to what I was saying earlier re: simple/abstract work, here’s one of my favorite photos I’ve ever taken–this is a shot of venus and the moon taken on a beach in florida, I used a Fuji X-Pro2 and 23mm lens:

rejj

穴 I’ll attach some pictures decent photos that I have taken

To my 100% lay person’s eye – these are certainly more than decent!
I particularly like that cactus photo, but they’re all rather good.

穴

Thanks!!

kory (did you take the cactus photo with one of these older lenses?)

All of the photos that I posted were taken with vintage lenses, in fact all of them except the fourth one (which was taken with the nikon telephoto) were taken with the canon f1.4 50mm adapted to my A6300, the 50mm canon is such a great and affordable lense, I used it as my main!

kory but is more pocketable and practical than the heftier stuff

I think you are thinking of the the confusingly similarly named Sony RX100 here, the RX10 that I have is a bridge camera and is in fact bigger than my Sony a6300. Even though it’s bigger I still find it quite useful for casual settings because my 6300’s kit lens is broken, and it was my only non vintage, non telephoto autofocus lens with zoom.

kory this is a shot of venus and the moon taken on a beach in florida

That’s a lovely photo! the sky color gradient is so smooth!

Oh and also, all of the videos were filmed with vintage lenses! Except for the concerts which were filmed with multiple cameras.

Southeastpaw

kory That reminds me of a photo I took from the roof of the hospital I worked at in Tacoma
Such a lovely sky

kory

穴 Nice! I thought that bokeh quality looked familiar–I really liked using that canon on my old olympus omd, which made it roughly 100mm equiv, a nice compact tele package! Also, oops re: the sony, could never keep those straight. Makes it an even better deal that you got!

kory

Southeastpaw wow, that’s fantastic! I wonder if that’s also Venus, but I’m not much of an astronomer. I love the contrast between the serene sky and the busy city below, though there’s a real harmony to this scene. Lovely

Geoff

Photography can be a lot of fun.
Beyond being fun in itself I like that it encourages me to get out and to do more.
It encourages me to go to events and performances I might otherwise not have felt motivated to see.

Photography lets me share what I’ve seen with others (usually my parents!).
I sometimes use it to express how I see things.
It’s a marvelous artform; creative despite being instant.

For gear I like to keep it as light as possible.
I typically go out with one camera, one lens, and no flashes or lights. Sometimes I’ll have two lenses with me, but not often.
I mostly shoot manual focus lenses. I find it a little more fun to focus manually, and manual focus lenses are often a fraction of the cost of auto-focus lenses.

I’ve been using the original Sony A7 since it came out in 2013. The above shots were all taken with it.
My favorite lenses are ones that use the Sonnar design and other lenses that I (subjectively) consider to render like them.

kory

Geoff These are amazing! The lighting and the contrast in the second one is especially gorgeous…looks like some sort of Unreal shader/ray-tracing demo (lol sorry, i mean that in a good way!)

Sony makes some stellar photo equipment–they really just muscled their way onto the full-frame scene with the A7 and have been putting the old standby companies to shame ever since. Feels a bit like what they did with the Playstation, to be honest. I’ve had my eye on an A7 at multiple times in the past several years, but I’m pretty invested in other systems at this point so it just doesn’t make sense for me. You can find incredible deals on older A7 bodies, though, so whenever people ask about getting into more advanced photography I make sure to recommend looking into them. They are also wonderful with lens adapters–out of curiosity any specific manual lenses you particularly enjoy?

treefroggy

kory

treefroggy these are great, love how they look on an actual crt

Just reminding everyone that gb cam is totally fair game

hellomrkearns

kory nice!
If you don’t want to use a genuine GameBoy Camera, I can recommend:
PizzaBoy Pro for Android. .
mGBA on a number of devices (Desktop, 3DS, Vita, Swtich….)

Here’s something I just learned about.:webgbcam. It works in browser on desktop or mobile and emulates the GB camera style.

tombo

i’ve kinda fallen out of love with photography as a medium as of late, but i used to do it a lot. also with an abstract/mysterious vibe, trying to make images that would make you go “wait, what?”

kory

@tombo#33620 These are excellent…I just can’t get over the colors in that last one. Yeah, I think I’m in the same boat, I just don’t have that same spark as I used to and I’m still not quite sure if its going to be an internal or external stimulus that gets me back.

Here’s some of my other abstract favorites:

Shadows cast on a wall from an LED street lamp:

Spirulina-filled pond:

Random front yard in Key West, FL:

tombo

kory nice! the colours in that last one are no trickery btw! they are the lights outside a police station in Mexico City on a foggy night, that’s just how it looked!

yeso

I’m away from the forum for a week, and when I come back find it’s turned into some kind of dang photography genius website

Geoff

kory

The lens I usually have on my A7 is a Voigtlander 40mm f1.4 Nokton Classic MC

It is a very tiny lens that renders like a classic Sonnar (despite the lens not actually being a Sonnar), and it doesn’t flare.
I use a Shoten close-focus adapter so I can focus closer than the minimum focus distance of 0.7 meters.

It’s a well built lens that renders nicely, and is comfortable to use.
I originally bought it for the size, but shooting with the 40mm focal length really grew on me.
It’s a slightly wide normal. It feels like a 50mm that is almost a 35mm when I need it to be.

I don’t think I would have quite been able to get this shot had it been a 50mm.

That shot was taken in a train compartment. There was no possibility of backing up.

kory

Geoff Lovely photograph! You’re right, this is the perfect framing. Despite being my preferred general purpose prime, I too find 50mm to be just too long in many situations. If I find myself at a gathering of family or friends and they ask for a group photo everyone is very confused when I have to get surprisingly far away (or make everyone jam the heck together)…“just zoom out!” they insist, not knowing I have intentionally hamstrung myself.

I recently picked up a tiny manual focus lens–the 7artisans 35 1.2 for fuji X mount (roughly 50mm equiv)–and the speed and build quality are really something else for such an inexpensive product. I should really get out more with it, I think there is a lot of potential there.

Geoff

kory 7artisans 35 1.2 for fuji X mount

Just googled this and, hey nice, a Sonnar variant! I love the way Sonnars render.

kory not knowing I have intentionally hamstrung myself.

Have you ever had that real awkward moment when someone you know wants to take a photo with your camera, and it’s all ’uhh, you can if you want, but I’ve got a manual focus lens on it’.