Hipsters and hasselblads

[Sirius Glass]

It also made it possible for my to have 16mm through 4x5 cameras. I have Canon, Nikon, Pentax, Minolta, Fuji, Olympus, Bronica, Mamiya, Graflex, Kodak, Praktika, Yashica, and many many others sitting on a shelf. All for less than I paid for my digital camera and lens. To get sorta back on subject. This is still a magical time to live in for photographers. Outside of internet auction sites that the hipsters drove the prices up, cameras are so very cheap. I have people give them to me. And film too. I have a fully equipped darkroom, more developing tanks than I know what to do with and with the internet I have 150 years of knowledge at my fingertips. I learned more about photography in the last half decade then would have been possible 20 years ago.

Without the digital revolution I would not have been able to have a 4"x5" Pacemaker Speed Graphic, 4"x5" Graflex Model D, a Jobo processor, full color and black & white darkroom, Hasselblad 903 SWC, Hasselblad Fisheye lens, and many formally expensive lenses.

 

[Huss]

Chimping makes one miss shots? Silliest thing I've heard today...but it's early.

Gimme a few minutes, haven't had my coffee yet.

 

[Huss]

The digital revolution has made it possible for me to have Hasselblads.

No kidding. It allowed me to buy cameras I used to dream about!

 

[jerrybro]

pre-buffering your shots so you can literally take a picture that happened before you press the shutter button

I want one of those! Then I can blame technology for all the bad shots.

 

[Pieter12]

Chimping makes one miss shots? Silliest thing I've heard today...but it's early.

Anything that involves action. Sports, children, street photography, animals. While one is chimping, a lot can happen that won't be repeated.

 

[Alan Gales]

funny thing is people have been chimping since before polaroids were invented and after that when auto winders were made. I always laugh when the analog mafia goes off on chimpers when they probably chimped before it was called chimping ... friend from college's dad was some sort of well known nat geo photographer or something .. who said he had to take 10s of thousands of images to get 1 that was published and if you gave a chimp a camera they would probably be able to take the same photo ... unlike Shakespeare it wouldn't take 1million of them.

Yeah, but it can get obsessive. I've seen some digital photographers scrutinize every single image they have taken before taking another.

If Henri Cartier-Bresson had done that, he probably would have missed the decisive moment while looking at the back of his camera.

 

[Cholentpot]

Without the digital revolution I would not have been able to have a 4"x5" Pacemaker Speed Graphic, 4"x5" Graflex Model D, a Jobo processor, full color and black & white darkroom, Hasselblad 903 SWC, Hasselblad Fisheye lens, and many formally expensive lenses.

Right on!

In 2004 I was shooting point and shoot disposables. That was literally all I ever shot. I went to school over seas and took a few one time use cameras. For two years! And they lasted me for two years.

I'm now doing things with cameras I couldn't even dream about. Nikon F3 HP with motor drive and flash? Sure, I use it occasionally. Bronica s2? Sure, I take it out a few time a year. Shooting 110? Shoot it? I develop and reload it. Slit my own 4x5 from xray film too once I'm at it. Anamorphic photography? I'm there. With so much at hand why complain about anything?

 

[Vaughn]

If missing something while chimping a worry, then as someone else mentioned, one can put it on full-auto and fire at 24 frames per sec or how ever fast those things can go. A lot can happen while one is scratching one's ass, too.

It is just a tool/method -- chimping can't do anything, how it is used is what's important. It can also be a great tool for learning as one goes, if one is interested.

Edited to add -- I so much would like to add "Hamsters" to the title of this thread!!!

 

[Pieter12]

Checking the image on a digital camera display (or tethered monitor) is definitely an advantage and should be used as needed depending on the shooting situation. Chimping is the bad habit of obsessively checking after every shot.

Before digital, I recall many commercial shoots where a Polaroid type 55 was shot and the negative given careful inspection for sharpness before film was shot, as well as snip tests being made before determining if adjustments needed to be made to the final film development.

 

[Sirius Glass]

Anything that involves action. Sports, children, street photography, animals. While one is chimping, a lot can happen that won't be repeated.

Also one does not need to chimp if one learns to anticipate the action. This is why good film photographers do not need to chimp and they are used to waiting for the film to be developed.

 

[Sirius Glass]

If missing something while chimping a worry, then as someone else mentioned, one can put it on full-auto and fire at 24 frames per sec or how ever fast those things can go. A lot can happen while one is scratching one's ass, too.

It is just a tool/method -- chimping can't do anything, how it is used is what's important. It can also be a great tool for learning as one goes, if one is interested.

Edited to add -- I so much would like to add "Hamsters" to the title of this thread!!!

Replace skill with technology.

 

[Sirius Glass]

Checking the image on a digital camera display (or tethered monitor) is definitely an advantage and should be used as needed depending on the shooting situation. Chimping is the bad habit of obsessively checking after every shot.

Before digital, I recall many commercial shoots where a Polaroid type 55 was shot and the negative given careful inspection for sharpness before film was shot, as well as snip tests being made before determining if adjustments needed to be made to the final film development.

Polaroid was used to check lighting, in particular artificial lighting. Again not chimpin'.

 

[removed account4]

IDK SG
I think you are a bit off TBH. there is a long and tired history of people with film cameras chimping. ...
here is some action film stills of LLSC... as you can quite easily see. ... Lancelot link and his crew used to chimp with their film cameras as far back as 1970s, and they were chimps, not chumps. ..

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_MRBC4yYX0RM/S46oqWEMWAI/AAAAAAAAAMM/6BA04QYH6-c/s400/lanceLinkDiana1.jpg

 

[Pieter12]

Polaroid was used to check lighting, in particular artificial lighting. Again not chimpin'.

Polaroid 55 was used to check focus as well as lighting.

 

[Pieter12]

IDK SG
I think you are a bit off TBH. there is a long and tired history of people with film cameras chimping. ...
here is some action film stills of LLSC... as you can quite easily see. ... Lancelot link and his crew used to chimp with their film cameras as far back as 1970s, and they were chimps, not chumps. ..

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_MRBC4yYX0RM/S46oqWEMWAI/AAAAAAAAAMM/6BA04QYH6-c/s400/lanceLinkDiana1.jpg

Before digital, film makers would use video assist to check takes as they were shot and again after, before proceeding. Before video assist, some used video cameras alongside the film camera to do the same.

 

[Sirius Glass]

Polaroid 55 was used to check focus as well as lighting.

Again still not chimpin'

 

[Pieter12]

Again still not chimpin'

Sure. But that was my response to your comment about Polaroids.

 

[Sirius Glass]

Sure. But that was my response to your comment about Polaroids.

Understood

 

[AnselMortensen]

I used to do a lot of auto racing photography, and I have seen first-hand times where photographers have missed a peak-action shot (i.e. crash, banzai pass, etc.) because they were chimpin'.

 

[Pieter12]

I used to do a lot of auto racing photography, and I have seen first-hand times where photographers have missed a peak-action shot (i.e. crash, banzai pass, etc.) because they were chimpin'.

BIngo!

 

[Sirius Glass]

I used to do a lot of auto racing photography, and I have seen first-hand times where photographers have missed a peak-action shot (i.e. crash, banzai pass, etc.) because they were chimpin'.

Please stand up and take a bow. You proved one of my points.

 

[grat]

Again. Poor priority management. Checking the shot on auto-racing is a waste of time-- whattya gonna do if you didn't get it? Ask the driver to go back through the corner?

So-called chimping in sports photography is just being stupid.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Back to the original post ... I haven't seen any hipsters with Hassies. I have seen old rich fogies stumbling around a short trail at Pt Lobos with a cane and Hassie around the neck, pointing here and there almost randomly, assuming that because they have enough money to live in that neighborhood, and can afford a fancy camera, it makes them the next Edward Weston, who was actually poor and couldn't afford the best gear.

 

[Vaughn]

I used to do a lot of auto racing photography, and I have seen first-hand times where photographers have missed a peak-action shot (i.e. crash, banzai pass, etc.) because they were chimpin'.

Didn't occasionally they get hit because they can't take their eye from the viewfinder? Did not some one mention in another thread that the exceptions prove (test) the rule?

 

[grat]

Didn't occasionally they get hit because they can't take their eye from the viewfinder? Did not some one mention in another thread that the exceptions prove (test) the rule?

It's been known to happen that photographers have been hit-- but not because they don't take their eyes off the viewfinder, but because they were in an unprotected area-- or just in the wrong place at the wrong time. At 100+ mph, it doesn't matter whether you see it coming or not. A couple of years ago in Macau, a race car went airborne and slammed into the photography tower backwards, then fell on a marshal-- fortunately, there were no fatalities (although the driver had spinal injuries, she's back racing again).

It's a stupid argument anyway-- professional photographers don't bother checking their replays because they either got the shot or they didn't, whether they're using an EOS-1DX or a Deardorff.

The people who claim "chimpin'" is a hazard of digital cameras remind me of the infomercials where in order to prove a product is useful, they have to film idiots who not only don't know how to use a colander or some other equally simple kitchen implement, but they manage to burn themselves and set fire to the kitchen while draining pasta.

It's disingenuous at best, and just plain insulting. And that ignores the reality that the general public is convinced cell phones are good enough, and those have full-time live view.