Street Shots

I just cannot stop getting new cameras! Those who are closer to my family know that at least once every 6 months, I changed camera. Started with Sony Nex3, Micro 4/3 Olympus EPL1, latest was Ricoh GXR which can mount my trusty old leica M-lens. 

After all these years, I can still pick up any camera, with a little of practice, I could get some nice (not great) pictures. Why, because taking picture is about composition, color, lighting, shutter speed and exposure. Every camera can offer shutter speed and exposure, however, it is not so easy to get the composition and color right. With composition, I recently try to shoot something out of the rules by placing the subject in the middle, like the shadow of a tree behind a chair in my last blog, since the subject was about shadow, I think I managed to get away with center composition. Well, most of the time, please stick with the 1/3 rule, at least you can get pleasing pictures.

What to do with just a camera body with with no len. I spotted a 50 years old (manufactured in 1960's) Canon 50mm len for the leica screw mount which is quite clean and reasonable priced. The len has a yellowish coating which some friends told me that this is because the glass has radioactive element to increase the reflection index and bend the light better. Needless to say, I mounted the len and went shooting on the street.

This is an apparently boring picture of a dump collection point on sunday in Causeway Bay, Hong Kong. Many people walked by without even looking at the lady at work. After I snapped the picture, or at the moment of snapping the picture she spotted me. The interesting part, and indeed the most interesting part of this picture are the eyes of the lady with a red hair band. I cropped the picture to focus on the person.

What can I say, the eye contact created a big impact of this picture. So please, and I plead again, please do not go out and shoot the back, or body part of some person on the street, if you want to be successful in street photography, shoot when the eyes are wide open, otherwise, we might as well put away our camera and keep walking.

This is nothing more than a block of compressed aluminum cans, thousand of them. By the way, each can of soft drink has about 60 grams of sugar, try to weight 60 gram of sugar and you know how shocking I feel when drinking a can of coke. This block of cans, probably has a ton if sugar. Stay away, or reduce. 

So far, the color of the 50 year's old len seems pleasing. I tried to push the limit a bit. If you have a chance to look at the picture in full size, (the posted is only 75% of original), you can see details of the leaves, the flowers. At the same time, I realized that the color matches with the actual subject. Leicas' beware, a hidden jewel has been found. I actually don't mind to advertise this len a bit, because, when you go out and rush bidding of all the old Canon ltm lens, this could indirectly improve the value of my collection. 

Please look at this picture more closely, do not just skip because there is no eye contact. I like this picture despite it is just a snap shot on the street. The leaves in the foreground is as sharp as we desire, we can even examine the veins in the leaves. The color in the foreground was slightly saturated, but look at the bokeh (!). It is totally smooth, with not halo highlight, not harsh lines in the background. I think this need a very well corrected len, with this I believe my canon lens collection has started.