OMG! A blog post!

The Reader, originally uploaded by fotodudenz.

Hi.

It's been awhile hasn't it.

It's been a long, long, time.

I can't believe it's been almost 4 months!

And you are still reading blogs! Good on you!

I don't even have an excuse. I’m not dead, I haven’t stopped taking photos, but I did have to move house back in March. (BTW The new place is awesome.) I have been shooting a lot of digital, almost exclusively with the 7-14mm. I still like it, it’s pretty, pretty, pretty good, but I don’t love it.



As you would have seen at the top I used the Xpan again recently, now that’s love. Nine months though! Nine freakin’ months since I last used it! That is definitely some sort of record. What put me off was the scanning, it normally takes me about an hour to scan one roll of Xpan film in the Epson V700 and that’s not including retouching. But I had a brainwave a couple of weeks ago at work and now I can scan them in the Fuji SP3000 mini lab film scanner, it took me about 10 minutes to scan two rolls of film AND it looked good, really good.



So I shot two rolls on the Xpan and the plan is to shoot a whole lot more. Some might call it street photography, I do and I don’t give a fuck how wanky it sounds because it doesn’t matter how shit you are at it, someone out there might pay $500 to have a workshop with you.

We still haven’t been to Tasmania, due to the move. A winter trip to Queensland maybe?

Cop you later.

MJ

Leica M9

Cliche Crepe, originally uploaded by fotodudenz.

Hi.

I was a very lucky boy today.



Today I got to play with my friend Ravnish’s Leica M9. And by strange coincidence he wanted to have a go on my new Panasonic 7-14mm lens. So a temporary trade agreement was reached.

It was awesome.

It was sooooooooooooooooooooooooooo fucking awesome.

But that awesomeness comes at a price, $7000 to be exact, that’s a lot of rolls of film and developing.

That’s also a lot of cola bottle lollies, over 593kg to be exact.

But if I had the money I would own one in a heartbeat.



I even did a little lens wideness comparison between the 12mm on the M9 and the 7-14mm on an Olympus EP3. As you can see it’s not that much wider, about 7º. So that works out to be $1000 per degree for that extra wideness. That heartbeat just got a bit longer. Can’t do video on a M9, longer again. Don’t have the money, call it, time of death 9:14pm.

Panasonic 7-14mm

Yellow, originally uploaded by fotodudenz.

As you may have noticed I have bought a new lens for the Olympus EP1, I have been trying to get wide on it without spending too much dosh, the 12mm is ok on there but it becomes a not so wide 24mm and there was that bloody fisheye which was soft as shit. I have been secretly (or maybe not so secretly) lusting over the Panasonic 7-14mm since I got the EP1 and watching them sell on eBay for about $800 used, so I thought I’d check the price on B&H and there it was new for not a whole lot more, so I bought one.



I do feel slightly dirty about the whole thing. I did say I wouldn’t invest more money into the Micro Four Thirds mount because it “would be dead in a couple of years” and I could have bought a shit load of film for $800, especially since Kodak are in the throes of death and I may have to give up my beloved BW400CN for shitty XP2. Plus I feel bad for the Xpan which has pretty much been ignored since September, I must do something about that. The lure of digital has been strong recently also, people taking awesome photos on their Fuji x100s as well as Leica M8s and M9s. So I sat down and told myself that an EP1 is very similar to an x100 and I can’t afford a M9 and if I get the 7-14mm it’s wider than the 12mm on a M8. And... SO THERE!



I like the 7-14mm. It’s wide and as you know, I like it wide. I took it to the aquarium the other day and it performed quite well in the low light but I what I really want to know is why they make it a zoom? Has anyone actually used this lens at 14mm? And what I wouldn’t give for a little vignetting! Just a bit. Oh and hyper-focal focusing would be nice also. Video on this lens is very exciting, I have shot a few already and I will definitely shoot more. So yeah, it’s a pretty kick-arse little lens and I’m quite happy with it.



In other news... nothing really. It was my birthday the other day. Ambre and I are going to Tasmania later this year and I’m still thinking about going into the Outback sometime soon. Work is surprisingly busy for this time of year. That’s about it!

Happy New Year!

Macgregor #9, originally uploaded by fotodudenz.

I thought I'd better write a post for the new year considering I didn't do one in December.

Hi.

How are you?

Oh me, I'm great.

Ambre and I spend Xmas in Canberra with her Dad and Bella the dog, we were only there a couple of days but I managed to shoot a couple of frames, like the one above.

One day between Xmas and New Year we went and checked out the Heide Museum of Modern art and there were some awesome rings there.



Then on New Years Eve Eve Mike told me about some photos he had seen of an awesome abandoned place somewhere in Melbourne. After an hour or so of investigating we gave up and I send a SMS to a couple of people and one of them knew where it was, so the next day we were off to Frankston, my first time.



I also managed to finish Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary Edition and Battlefield 3 and do absolutely no scanning for my Japan book, I still plan on finishing it this year.

That's all for now.

Cheers,

MJ.

David

A man and his Toyota., originally uploaded by fotodudenz.

You're probably wondering who this old fella is I have been taking photos of.



He's not my Dad, Grandfather or Uncle, I'm not related to him at all. His name is David and he's a customer who comes into work. He likes to have a chat and one day when I successfully identified the difference between a Salmon and a Trout it was all on.



For the last few months he has wanted to take me fishing, he's been fly fishing for over 60 years so he knows a thing or two about it and a couple of weeks ago we organised a day. So last Monday he came and picked me up at 3am, no that isn't a typo, 3am. And we drove out to a private lake that he fishes at near Kinglake. He fished and I wandered around and took photos and video, of him mostly.







Then we drove around a bit looking for rivers to fish in and we got to the Steavenson River and we walked up it for a kilometre or two.



It was a very long day but I had a lot of fun, I am pretty sure we both did, lots of laughs and I learned A LOT about fly fishing. Not bad for a 79 year old.