Now, being the impatient bastard that I am, I ripped open the package, jammed the film into my aging SX-70 camera and off I went. I am sure there is a beautifully worded quote somewhere about haste and waste, but it doesn’t come to mind. Lets just say the first shot that slid noisily from the bottom of the camera didn’t do the things I expected.

As you can see, well actually, you can see very little, but it is an over exposed mess. Ah crap! One shot down, only seven left. As I stood shivering, watching the deep blue of the exposed area turn slowly white, I was wondering what I had done wrong. Not wanting to risk another 12.5% of the shots left, I thought I would jump in the car and drive to work and have a think about it. Half way to work, I saw a couple of very young calves standing right against the fence line. I braced myself against the chill and lept from the car. Click! Whirrrrr. Out pops another shot. I stand there, looking at the deep blue turn bright sepia again. Oh for the love of baby cows, what the hell was going wrong? I trudge back to comforting warmth of the car. I drive a further 10 minutes to work, my brain a mess. Pete was going to drown me in a tub of Guinness if I stuff all eight shots up. I jam the first two duds into my pocket, grab the camera and my work pass and jump out of the warmth of the car to head into work.

Oooh, look, an interesting cloud formation all around the comms tower that stands above my work giving cancer to all the birds that nest in it. I can’t help myself, here goes another 12.5% of the film. Click! Whirrrr…

I wont repeat what I said when this one popped out of the camera and into my freezing mitt. The $10 camera damn near went for a fly across the car park. I walked into work a broken man. I was beginning to think the “Impossible Project” was a very good description of this film. I fell into my chair and pulled the 1st three shots out of my pocket. Poo! Bum and wiss! I was not having a good start to the day. Right, off to the web site to see if others are having issues.

You may be wondering why some of the text above is in italics. Well they are all clues. Here is a grab from the web site…

The chemistry of the PX Silver Shade films is very sensitive to temperature.

For most balanced results, it is recommended to provide a medium room temperature of 17-24°C (63-75°F)

In extreme cold (10°C and below), the image will become very light, quickly resulting in almost white tones, erasing most contrast. Use with caution.

In extreme heat (27°C and above), the image will turn very dark and change to reddish, orange, and yellowish shades of extreme contrast
TIP: When shooting in extreme temperatures, you can put the image in your pocket to warm it when out in the cold and keep it in the shade or cool water to avoid too much heat when in hot surroundings.

Oh, or more to the point, d’oh! It was all of 6?C that morning going to work. I was a fair way, temperature wise, from the 17-24°C that I should have been using the film in. Insert facepalm here. What a goose.

I had 5 shots left. What to do. I checked the weather forecast, top temps of 17?C that day. Well, things are looking up. I took the camera down to the car, hoping it would absorb a few more degrees of warmth during the day.

Knock off time. I am excited. I have actually read a bit more about it, and I am determined to get the film out of the camera and into a warm dark pocket, post haste. I head back to a place that I thought would produce Polaroidy goodness. The brides car has an outside temperature reading on the console, so you can imagine my joy when it read 17?C on the way home. I got to the destination, there was an old shed, some silos, a few cows and a country road. This isn’t Polaroidy goodness, this is Polaroid Gold!

I line up a shot of an old shed. Ansell Adams would kick the lid off the coffin to see this masterpiece. Click! Whirrr..and straight into a snuggly and dark pocket. Ha. Nailed it. I knew I was carrying in my left pocket a shot that would burst into Flickr’s Explore faster than you could say Impossible Bloody Project. I took 3 more shots of exactly the things I spoke of earlier. Silos, a road and a cow. I actually kept them all in my pocket all the way home, and didn’t take them out until I got into a darkened room. I was giddy with anticipation. Here they come.

The shed shot. As it came out of the pocket. You’ve got to be kidding me. The world around me was starting to look over exposed and lacked contrast. Devastated is probably not too strong a word to describe the way I felt. I know I had ruined 37.5% of the shots in the morning, and I had another 37.5% in my left pocket. I wont go into it any further as it will depress you and your loved ones. Lets just say I was disappointed in the results. Here are the other three shots from that afternoon, complete with some digital shenanigans to try and fix them up.

I have played with the levels on this shot above to try and tidy it up. It is a long way from what I was expecting from a monochrome film.

I converted one side of this shot to B&W to show the difference.

And this was more like what I was expecting to see. I am sure some of the Photoshop gurus could tart it up to look even better, but you get my drift.

I still have one shot left in the camera, but I am scared to use it. I have to soon because the camera has found a new home, and I need to wrap it up and send it off. I will try and take another shot when I cook dinner tonight to see if I have any luck in a toasty warm environment.

Impossible Project, I’ll say.

Plenty of people have had stunning success with this film. I think, given what I know now, I could produce a lot better images in a warmer environment. Don’t bork at using the new Polaroid film just because I was a dickhead and jumped in before I researched it. Have a go. It may well be Possible after all.

Black Rock, originally uploaded by norbography. ]]> http://toddnorburyphotography.com/blog/2010/black-rock/feed/ 0 http://toddnorburyphotography.com/blog/2010/gary-heery-and-the-sony-a900/ http://toddnorburyphotography.com/blog/2010/gary-heery-and-the-sony-a900/#comments Fri, 12 Feb 2010 05:21:46 +0000 norbs http://toddnorburyphotography.com/blog/?p=2523 An interesting email landed in my inbox the other day. A disclaimer first up, the email was sent from Sony PR, nothing unusual there, I have been getting loads of emails like this of late. Lets start out with one of the shots that was attached.

Quite a spectacular shot. What made me sit up and take more notice was when I viewed it at 100%. Check it out here for the full resolution shot. (You made need to click on it to see it full resolution). That is pretty impressive. It certainly got my attention, so I read the rest of the email. Gary has done a collection of high speed bird photographs, using the Sony a900, the rest you can see at http://www.garyheery.com/photographer/winged/ which is part of the Sony campaign make.believe. which launches this weekend.

Not knowing a real lot about the A900, I headed over to DPReview for a gander at their write up. It is certainly an interesting camera, and you cant argue with the results Heery is getting out of it.

For people who have a range of Minolta lenses, and are keen to jump into digital photography, this seems like a great camera to drag you into the digital age.

It seems that each previous year I have tried to pin a theme to my photography. 1st year was a real learning experience. The 2nd year seems to have been a year of experimentation. The 3rd year I gained a better understanding of light. Year 2009 saw me take a different approach. I made a conscious effort to shoot less, but of a higher quality than previous years. Looking back, that may have been a mistake, as I didn’t have the same interest level last year as the previous ones. I think a better idea for a hack like myself is to adopt the “What the duck” approach. That approach had served we well for 3 years.

On a trip down to Albury, I spotted this tree near Yass and took a shot that I was worried wouldn’t work because off all the negative space. Turns out people liked it because of exactly that. Even better, on the drive home I saw a great rainbow, and managed to get it captured on the digital sensor.

I was still in love with film photography, but combined with the new ethos of less is more, I didn’t use it as much as I would have liked. I still had a load of different cameras in the stables, and tried to get them out as often as possible. Here are a couple, including one taken by someone else!

Olympus Trip 35.

The norb!

I even managed to take the Yashica 635 TLR down to the beach!

I think I should do that more often. That is one of my favourite photos from 2009.

I even tried my hand at gig photography, with limited success.

That had to have some digital shenanigans to get it to look ok.

January ended with Monty (RIP) starring in a photographers nightmare.

More on that on the blog here. Poor Monty.

February rolled around and I splashed out a cool $35 bucks for this little piece of plastic wonder.

What a great investment.

When it turns out shots like that, you can understand why I liked to carry it where ever I went. Makes photography as easy as taking a breath, and the results can be fantastic. They can also be god awful.

The 5D and macro lens took a trip out to the vege patch and I spotted a blue lady beetle.

Not an every day sight, that’s for sure. I haven’t seen one since.

March rolled around, and with the days shortening, and the weather cooling, it was back to the local boat ramp for seagull shots.

An early rise nearly always means beautiful colours, and this morning didn’t disappoint.

The end of March saw me drive down to Melbourne for a day at the GP. God almighty, thos fences really stuff up the photos of the cars, but things on your side of the fence can still work out AOK.

More fun with the Yashica TLR and B&W film.

April usually involves two big events for me. The Sydney Royal Easter Show and ANZAC Day. Here are some shots from both events.

That final shot ended up a full page photo on the front of the local paper. Score one for norbs.

May was a very quiet month. I really took the whole “shoot less, more quality” thing to far. Here is the best from May.

June and I finally hunted down an affordable Polaroid camera. With film costs going through the roof, I probably bought at the worse time. But I love the results you get.

The Yashica TLR also had a few trips out in June.

It was also the time when the good bride saved one from the big trash can in the sky. I didn’t like the look of this at first.

The bride told me to keep it, and I am glad I listened.

July was the start of a rather ambitious project for me. The 52 week project. One self portrait, every week, for one whole year! It didn’t start with the best photo I have ever taken.

It was also the month I got the new push bike. Things were about to change. I was a whopping 105kgs, as heavy as I had ever been.

Hopefully that would help. It did, and still is, at the expense of photo time.

I also had a crack at time lapse photography.

August, and time to experiment. The full story is here. Pretty much me and two young kids having some fun making a camera obscura.

It really was worth the effort.

The International Space Station was making a dash across the sky one night, and I managed to grab a shot of it hurtling by. It is not until you see it flying by at speed that you really sit back and think what a treat it must be to be in that floating tin can in space.

If you would have said to me I would do a nude self portrait, I would have probably punched you in the head then walked off shaking my head. Well, I did actually do one. And before you say it, I was nude at the time!

I think the whole internet breathed a collective sigh of relief when I posted it. “Thank ye gods for the crop” was a popular exclamation.

September was very quiet at the beginning, but then I got a hair cut, got all strobisty on the world and went on my road trip.

It was 30 odd degrees before I took off on the trip, so I was hardly expecting this.

It snowed a couple of times.

Here is the GPS track of the trip.

And a couple of my favourite photos from the road trip.

The whole trip can be seen here.

October 28th, a day before my 42nd birthday, the 5D decides to throw a tantrum and the mirror falls off.

Happy Birthday Mr Norbury! Bugger.

With the 5D in camera hospital, out came the film again.

By the time the camera was back, we had just got a new dog. Introducing Millie Norbury.

The little helmet cam was taken out into the surf and I managed to grab the most popular photo of the year.

Sleeping with the fishes.

I also managed to grab some video footage of wild dolphins.

My mum turned 60 in early November, and I didn’t have the 5D back from camera hospital, but I managed to fluke a shot on film that I liked.

December was a very lean month. Some cycling.

And a few self portraits for the 52 week project.

And that pretty much rounds out 2009. I don’t think I took enough photos last year. And that showed in the amount of quality images taken. The big lesson from 2009 is to get out there and shoot more often. Cycling has certainly cut into my photography time, but I should still be able to do both and get some good photos.

Thanks for looking and I hope you found it interesting. Another instalment in 2011.

More here.

]]> http://toddnorburyphotography.com/blog/2009/some-bikes/feed/ 0 http://toddnorburyphotography.com/blog/2009/my-best-of-2009/ http://toddnorburyphotography.com/blog/2009/my-best-of-2009/#comments Tue, 15 Dec 2009 00:00:03 +0000 norbs http://toddnorburyphotography.com/blog/?p=2378 These are my 12 favourite shots of mine from the year 2009. One for each month.

Making Tracks

Bugs Life

Float

ANZAC Dawn Service 2009.

Lone fisherman in the afternoon light.

JB

Back lighting

“Barry, hey Barry, watch this…

Goodnight big bright disc in the sky.

Get up there!!!

21/52.

Leaf Killer

a quickr pickr post

It isn’t often I get as excited as I was this morning. Here is what I wrote on Flickr….

Out swimming this morning after a bike ride, and a pod of dolphins were a couple of hundred yards off the beach. I swam out to meet them and then they headed up the beach. I got to within about 3 metres of them at one stage. Was terrific. I have never got that close to wild dolphins before.

The quality isnt the best with the GoPro camera, but you can see what they are.

It was very cool.

20/52, originally uploaded by norbography.

This weeks self portrait for the 52 Week Project was taken at sunset at Tilbury Cove. Pity the clouds came over, as it was a stunning site about 30 minutes beforehand when I rode past on the pushbike.

Once again, I set up the off camera flash.

norbist info : Flash at full power, off to the right of the frame at 45 degrees to me.