Using Cameras Or Making Photographs – Which Do You Prefer?
35hunter | Hunting For Beauty And Balance, Camera In Hand
by Dan James
5M ago
When I was shooting with a phone camera in the mid 2000s, it never occurred to me to use anything else. I just liked exploring places, seeking out beautiful things and trying to capture them in an effective and memorable way, so I could remember them myself, plus share them with others. The camera was really just a tool – a convenient tool that I always had with me anyway, so it made sense to use it to photograph what I enjoyed seeing. Some time later – and I would guess around 2013 when I was knee deep in 35mm film cameras – the final image was still important. Seeing only a couple of photogr ..read more
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Also Available In Colour – The Lumix FZ38
35hunter | Hunting For Beauty And Balance, Camera In Hand
by Dan James
5M ago
When I bought my circa 2009 Panasonic Lumix FZ38 three years ago, there were two major appeals. First, being a bridge camera, it would potentially be more flexible and capable than a compact digital. Second, it has a black and white “film grain” mode. I’ve enjoyed other cameras with similar high contrast b/w modes, like my Nikon P300, Lumix LX3 and Lumix XS1, which I bought about six months previously, and I tend to go for long periods without any interest in colour photography. So then on and off for the next couple years, I shot only b/w photos with the film grain mode, and kind of forgot al ..read more
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The Enigmatic And Unpredictable Blog Stats Theory
35hunter | Hunting For Beauty And Balance, Camera In Hand
by Dan James
6M ago
My post on 5 September 2023 was the first published in over a year. So you’d think in that time, without regular new content, the readership, visits and page views of 35hunter would have dropped off pretty dramatically, wouldn’t you? And then by writing five new posts in September, those stats would see something of a spike, or at least a healthy incline? These are logical assumptions to me. However, as I write this with only a handful of hours of September remaining, the views are about the same and the visits actually less than in August, when I’d published nothing new for the 12th month run ..read more
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But There’s Nothing Else Quite Like It
35hunter | Hunting For Beauty And Balance, Camera In Hand
by Dan James
6M ago
As my return to deliberate photography gathers pace (by deliberate I mean where I go out with a specific camera to look for compositions, as opposed to happening to have my phone with me and taking snapshots now and again when something catches my eye), it’s been interesting to note some other habits returning. Predominantly, wanting to try a variety of cameras. Some of which I don’t even own yet! As with many aspects of life where I need to make a decision, I like to have well reasoned arguments behind those decisions. So for questions such as “Do I really need another CCD sensor bridge camer ..read more
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How I Focus With An AutoFocus Digital Camera
35hunter | Hunting For Beauty And Balance, Camera In Hand
by Dan James
6M ago
From the title, this might sound like a very basic beginners article. But I wanted to explore and lean into how I use AutoFocus (AF) not so much as a guide for others, but to understand how it influences my favoured style of photography, and vice versa. Here’s the basic process, and why it looks like it does. Obviously this is my personal preference, and yours will almost certainly look different. 1. Ensure the camera is set to spot focus, or centre focus, or whatever the particular camera calls it. In other words so it locks focus on one small point in the centre of the screen, and doesn’t us ..read more
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Less Is More – Pentax Optio E90 First Thoughts
35hunter | Hunting For Beauty And Balance, Camera In Hand
by Dan James
6M ago
It’s no secret that of the hundreds of cameras I’ve owned in the last 10 or 12 years, more have been Asahi/Pentax than any other brand, by far. My favourite 35mm lenses are Takumars. The semi-automated (and AF) lenses I use and love most are Pentax K mount. In my film heyday, when I reached for a compact zoom camera, the Pentax Espios were my pick of the bunch. Three of the four DSLRs that remain in my arsenal are Pentax,. The fourth is Samsung GX-1S, a clone of the Pentax *ist DS2. So it’s something of a surprise that amongst the many Sony, Panasonic, Ricoh, Casio, Canon, Olympus and FujiFilm ..read more
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The Beautiful Tools
35hunter | Hunting For Beauty And Balance, Camera In Hand
by Dan James
7M ago
Maybe three years ago now I bought an HP Chromebook to use as my main writing tool, to replace my dear old 2008 MacBook Pro (MBP). The Chromebook is portable, simple to use and the battery lasts ages. It’s an ideal blogging machine for someone who still enjoys a full keyboard and doesn’t have the patience to use an iPad for anything other than browsing online, viewing pictures, and as a portable cinema courtesy of Netflix and Disney Plus. But whilst the Chromebook is functional, I wouldn’t ever say it’s a pleasure to use. The keys are very plasticky, the screen very average (my much older iPad ..read more
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DJ 4 CCD 4 Ever
35hunter | Hunting For Beauty And Balance, Camera In Hand
by Dan James
7M ago
Have you ever seen one of those carvings in an old tree by young (or not so young) lovers, with their initials cut into the bark to signify that they were here, and give a lasting monument to the magnitude and endurance of their love? We have a tree in our local woods that came down in a storm a couple of years back, but it previously had a few such carvings. I always wonder whether those with dates on were genuine, or that the inscriber had deliberately used an already passed date to make the carving appear much older than it was. Anyway, the way my photography has been trickling along, and p ..read more
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Cameras For Kids
35hunter | Hunting For Beauty And Balance, Camera In Hand
by Dan James
1y ago
Our middle son is just over three years old, and has a healthy interest in cameras. Which usually manifests as him creeping into his parents’ bedroom, grabbing a camera from a shelf and running off with it laughing. Beyond this, he does actually want to use them to make photos, and knows how to aim and shoot, most of the time. The purist in me – who doesn’t much like using a phone as a camera and has gone through dozens of cameras in the last decade finding the select few I love holding and using – is all for encouraging him, and teaching him more with a “proper”, old school (digital) camera ..read more
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Master Of None
35hunter | Hunting For Beauty And Balance, Camera In Hand
by Dan James
1y ago
Back in 2012 and 2013 when I was shooting up to 15 rolls of 35mm film a month, I used a range of cameras. Although many, I was shooting them just about often enough to get used to their unique functions. Plus, with the manual focus 35mm SLRs from the 70s and early 80s I was focusing on back then, once you’ve used a few, you realise there is great similarity in how they operate, and skills in using one can be transferred fairly seamlessly to another. Far more recently, even with a major camera purge a few years back, I’ve found I’ve been using cameras less often overall, but the differences bet ..read more
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