Monthly Archives: April 2011

New toy – Seagull TLR

Spiderman on the house. Click to enlarge.

As I still love shooting film and my main camera is a RB67 which is a little heavy to drag around town, I was looking for something light-weight to try some street photography. Also I very much prefer waist-level finders so I ended up looking for a TLR (so at least one out there has two eyes :-)) There are quite a few different models available on ebay. I went for a Seagull (4A-103 I got) as these give nice results and are usually going for a nice price – it’s planned as a “toy” after all…

As with all bargains from ebay there’s always the chance to get a crappy piece. But so far I’ve been quite lucky. Again so this time. It arrived in very nice condition. Clear lenses, no scratches, very little dust to blow out and a nice and bright focusing screen. The shutter also seemed just fine by listening. One interesting thing to note is that the aperture setting doesn’t have click stops and by the smooth feel of it, it never had. That too is truly analogue. Over all the Seagulls seem to be very well built and solid. Continue reading

Studio Lighting Essentials review

I recently won a copy of Marc Wallace Studio Lighting Essentials DVD set in a photo contest. I am really impressed by the DVD so I wanted to share my thoughts on it. Especially since I recently came across a discussion questioning the price of this DVD set.

I usually don’t read many instruction books or watch teaching videos. I’m more of a try-out-yourself guy. But that DVD and Marcs teaching has the potential to change that. I am really impressed by it. Since then I’ve watched a number of other videos by Marc and I must say he is an awesome teacher. Even the things I already knew get explained in a way that makes me think “wow you can explain it that simple?!” Especially light setups are pretty new for me. So far I mainly used available light or a single flash and just started to explore the magic of modifying light to my needs. So the DVD came just at the right time. Continue reading