Florent from France, Brazil and Japan

[FlorentE]

Hi there everyone,

I am Florent, a 23 years old student from Bordeaux, France. I'm currently in Brazil (Porto Alegre) doing an academic semester, and will move to Kyoto for a research internship in February.

I love photography but I'm not particularly skilled...
I mainly shoot analog, with an Olympus OM-20 SLR. My lenses are :

• Zuiko 50mm/1.8
• Zuiko 135mm/3.5
• Zuiko 28mm/2.8

You can check my pictures here. I would love to have some feedback!!

Cheers!

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

Welcome to Photrio, Florent! (gosh, saying Welcome to Photrio sounds strange- I've been saying Welcome to APUG for the last dozen years!).

I would say that you have an excellent eye for photography already - keep on taking more photos, and please do post some here to share! Do try some more color night photography- I think that's a very interesting medium and you're off to a good start on your Flickr feed.

 

[MattKing]

Welcome Florent - glad to have you here.
I enjoyed your flickr material and note with pleasure that your camera and lens kit isn't all that different than what I used in my late teens and early twenties!
I'm still using OM equipment happily, way too many decades later.

 

[Svenedin]

Welcome. Your photos on Flickr look good to me fwiw. It would be nice if you included details of the camera, films, development etc.

 

[Michael Guzzi]

Welcome! If you brought your gear over here and need some film, want to borrow a camera, or anything else, I'm a at a shout's distance(well a LOUD one ~100 km)

Michael

 

[FlorentE]

Wow, lots of very nice answers!

@TheFlyingCamera : Thank you, I really appreciate the feedback! I definitely want to try more night photography but I haven't brought my tripod in my suitcase... I'm considering buying a cheap one went the financial situation gets better (you know how the student life is ) but in the meantime, I use rather fast film and try to take advantage of walls and such.
I'll post more as soon as I get more! I'd like to shoot 5 rolls a days but I find film extremely expensive nowadays (here in PoA it costs $R36 - 10$ for 1 roll of Superia, and in Japan it was like JPY500 - 5$). So it's more like 1 roll a month for me at the moment

@MattKing : Thanks! I got my OM-20 from my Grandpa, he told me that the sensor was broken but it seems to work fine with me (I often set to -1/3 stops because it has a tendency to overexpose, I should do some bracketing soon to find the sweet spot). Zuiko lenses go for incredibly cheap on the web if you spend time looking! The only problem my SLR has is that the foam in the "dark room" (no idea how to say that, the box in which you put the film) is getting old and makes crumbs everywhere. I should change it but I'm a bit scared - and lazy

@Svenedin : Thank you! Okay so here is a bit more info :

• My camera, the Olympus OM-20 is a 35mm SLR made in the 80s. I got it from my grandpa. The OM-x0 serie is the amateur version of the OM-x series I believe. The OM-20 is the second generation, it has a semi automatic mode with priority to the aperture. The speed goes from 1/1000 to 2s and the ISO from 25 to 1600.
• My lenses are all Zuiko, that I bought for extremely cheap on second hand websites (except for the 50mm that was already on the camera when I got it). They work fine and are in shape, but have a bit of unremovable dust inside.
• I don't develop at home because I neither have the gear nor a dark room. I also have and always have had roommates, who I think wouldn't be too pleased if I condemned a whole room and used stinky chemicals in the kitchen. I thus go to the nearest lab. In Japan I used to go to Bic Camera or Yodobashi, but in Brazil I go to the Fujifilm lab next to my place. In France I had my favourite lab which was hella expensive but made quality developments. They scans sucked though, but I don't have my own film scanner.

@Michael Guzzi Wow that's reaaally cool! Obrigado! Would definitely be super cool to hang out and take pictures, I haven't found many people here that are ready to stay several hours early morning to wait for the perfect light I wanted to travel around in the area so maybe I could hop by Caixas Do Sul...

 

[Svenedin]

Thanks for the info Florent. I have used Olympus OM cameras for a long time. An OM2n was the first 35mm camera I ever used. I now use OM4Ti and OM3-Ti cameras and I have quite a few Zuiko lenses. There is an OM group on this site: https://www.photrio.com/forum/threads/the-olympus-om-cult.132219/

Black and white film is cheaper than the Superia you are using but it may be more expensive to have lab processed. An alternative is Ilford XP2 which is black and white film (chromogenic film) that is processed in the usual lab colour (C41) process. Ordinary black and white processing is not particularly stinky but if you have no darkroom or scanner there is not much point! I like night photos in colour and black and white. There are some on my Flickr account (but I don't upload much): https://www.flickr.com/photos/144059001@N05/

 

[FlorentE]

Thanks for the info Florent. I have used Olympus OM cameras for a long time. An OM2n was the first 35mm camera I ever used. I now use OM4Ti and OM3-Ti cameras and I have quite a few Zuiko lenses. There is an OM group on this site: https://www.photrio.com/forum/threads/the-olympus-om-cult.132219/

Ah yeah, I'm really interested in the multispot feature of the OM-4. And of course, the OM-4Ti is really nice for its build quality, right?
I'll have a look on the OM group, maybe I can get some help repairing my foam

Black and white film is cheaper than the Superia you are using but you would have to develop it yourself. Black and white processing is not particularly stinky but if have no darkroom or scanner there is not much point!

Yes, I love B&W too and I think it's much easier to get good results, but here in Brazil I found that morning and evening light is particularely beautiful, and I'd like to try to render that. Also my color pictures are more often failed than the B&W, so I think I should practice color a bit more!

Your pictures are incredibely sharp, I'm impressed! The landscape shots are particularly great IMO, especially this one and this one. Almost Ansel Adams-y!

 

[Sirius Glass]

Welcome to APUG Photrio.

 

[Svenedin]

Yes the OM4-Ti is very well built and is a camera that was my only SLR camera for over 20 years. The multi-spot metering is excellent. The OM4 is also very good but some OM4's have problems where they drain the batteries too fast.

Do you mean the light seal foam or the mirror damping foam? You can buy a kit with all the foam required for the light seals and mirror dampers. It is not difficult to replace all of the foam but it takes patience. A replacement kit is available from a gentleman called Jon Goodman (search on here). His kits are excellent and not expensive. He is based in the USA but will post internationally. I bought kits from Jon when my camera developed a light leak and ruined several films.

Thanks for the kind comments!

 

[FlorentE]

@Sirius Glass Thanks!

@Svenedin The light seal foam. How do you spot a light leak? Could the slight overexposing of my pictures be due to that? I'll check that gentleman out, hopefully he can post me one in Brazil.

 

[mooseontheloose]

Bonjour et bienvenue Florent!

You have some great photos, I’m sure you’ll have a blast photographing Kyoto when you get here. I’ve been here for almost for almost 4 years but still have not photographed this city as much as I would have liked.

 

[Svenedin]

@FlorentE Light leaks usually show as streaks, bands or lines on the photographs. On a negative they appear as darker areas, on a print (the reverse) as light areas. They are usually not uniform overexposure and may extend out of the picture frame, between frames or to the edge of the film. If your photographs are uniformly overexposed it is more likely that the meter or shutter speeds are not accurate. You mentioned you needed a repair for "foam". I thought this is what you meant.