Epic Edits Weblog

With the boom in digital cameras, used film equipment has been dropping in price and increasing in availability. Many people switch over to digital and decide to get rid of their old film stuff that they’ll probably never use again. This is good news for anybody wanting to get into film — cameras and lenses are insanely cheap. The cheap old film cameras are fun to use and great to experiment with. If you currently use a digital camera with all the bells and whistles, I’d suggest looking into a fully manual film camera from the 50’s, 60’s, or 70’s. There’s a huge selection of these cameras out there, and most of them are still in great working condition.

In my “What Should I Write About” poll, Neil Creek asked me what my weakest area of photography is and how I plan to improve it. That’s a pretty deep question, and it really made me think about my photos and what I’m trying to convey with them. Picking out your own strong points may be a difficult task, but picking out your own weak points is near impossible. I’m actually having a hard time narrowing my weak spots down to one, so I’ll break this discussion into two parts: technical and artistic.

Wow, I didn’t expect such a heated conversation to spring from the previous article. In that article, I pulled information from my own experiences and learnings to offer up a definition of “Limited Edition” as it pertains to fine art photography today. Several of the readers offered up their own interpretations and some disputed my explanations. These comments and questions caused me to dig deeper and deeper until I came to the conclusion that a follow-up article was needed. So just as with the previous article, this article is an open discussion.

A few posts back, I mentioned that I put one of my “limited edition” prints up for auction on eBay. In the comments of this post, Stephen Gray asked a very good question about this term. So here are some thoughts and guidelines from a few different sources, including some artists from the Fine Art Photoblog.

On May 19, I announced that the Fine Art Photoblog was accepting portfolios to fill two new spots. In just two weeks, we had 43 outstanding portfolios come through: a few familiar names, and many new ones. This was a larger response than I had expected, and I have to admit that I’m wishing there were fewer portfolios to review! So here is one photo from each of the 43 portfolios.

Cameras, Cameras, everywhere. Sometimes I feel like we get so caught up in “the now” with the digital age and the boom of the dSLR, that many of us probably forget about all the other cameras out there. I’ve been doing a lot of wandering around on eBay lately (which has already caused me to buy four new cameras) and it’s quite apparent that there are a ton of cameras out there that don’t fall into the dSLR classification. So this is just kind of a fun little post that takes a look at each of the main types of cameras still in use today.

First of all, film is great. You guys are probably going to get sick of hearing about film from me over the next couple of months — I just bought two more cameras and a gob of film to run through them. I’m fairly new to film, but I’m already starting to set a few personal preferences. I’ve shot two rolls of color film: one roll of Ektachrome cross processed and one roll of Velvia not cross processed. I should’ve cross processed the Velvia too. Don’t get me wrong, standard color film photos have their place and I’m not knocking them. But for my own artistic preferences, I find the cross processed photos to be more interesting and captivating. Here are some reasons why I love cross processed film.

I’ve been hinting at this for about a week, but it’s now official. The Fine Art Photoblog will be accepting portfolios for review in search of one or two new photographers to join us. We’re looking for upcoming artists who want to gain exposure for themselves while contributing to something larger.

A few weeks back, I posted a poll asking what I should write about. One of the more popular questions was “What’s the attraction of B/W and how do you pick which photos to process that way?” asked by Neil Creek. That’s a really great question, but its one that I hadn’t thought about prior to being asked. I suppose I am a little heavy on the black & white stuff on my Flickr Stream, and it’s not unusual for me to post long stretches of grayscales. In fact, my “Black & White” set is one of my largest sets with over 225 photos. Its not that I’m trying to force all those black and white photos… they just happen. So Neil’s question got me thinking about why I hold such a preference.

A tripod is not a single piece of equipment, but rather, two components joined together: the legs and the head. In this article, we’ll explore a specific type of tripod head called the ball head, or more formally the ball and socket head. We’ll look at some advantages, disadvantages, a list of items to look for when buying, and a few suggested ball heads.