jeudi 7 juin 2007

Is the Olympus E-1 shower-proof? ...for another Self-Portrait Nude I bought an Olympus E-1 and standard 14-45 zoom "kit lens" six months ago primarily to evaluate how the 4/3rds format suited my way of seeing images. For over 35 years, having processed and printed all my own black-and-white work, I'd been all too aware of the incompatibility between 35mm film with its 2:3 dimensional ratio, and my (everyone's) most used size of printing paper, the standard 8x10 inch sheet which has a 4:5 ratio. It may not seem of much consequence to those many readers who have not processed their own prints but, getting down to the fine details in millimetres, a 2:3 ratio negative enlarged onto 203x254mm (8x10 inch) paper using the full length of the negative uses only 169.3mm of the width of the standard sheet of paper - which in semi-metric terms means a 35mm negative makes very close to a 6.75x10 inch size print... wasting 1.25x10 inches, or over 16% of the silver-rich paper. Working in the other direction, using all of the available paper surface for image making means clipping (whilst enlarging, not with a pair of scissors!) the negative... so that from the 24x36mm negative, only 24x30mm of the recorded image is being used to make a standard 8x10 inch print... this time wasting 6x24mm, or over 16% of the silver-rich negative. Of course this is all academic with digital because the standard sizes of fibre and RC bromide printing papers such as 8x10, 16x20, etc. no longer apply. With digital printing International DIN "A" sizes have become the standard with A4 at 210x297mm (8.25x11.75 inches) being the normal print size for hand holding. The next larger size is A3 at 297x420mm (11.75x16.5 inches) and for framing on the wall. Both these sizes are completely and acceptably normal to us because A4 is the size of most magazines we buy and A3 is that same magazine format opened up to be read as a double-page spread. Here, however, I'm referring to European periodicals... American sizes, as usual, differ slightly. So for a long time I'd been wasting either film or paper or both... had the "4/3rds" format been available for 35mm film users then it would have been an "ideal" format. "Ideal" format? Where have we heard that before? When using 120 roll-film in medium-format cameras there were two ideal formats, 6x4.5cm and 6x9cm... although there are anomalies which make them so because the so-called 646 format is actually 56x42.5mm (on the Mamiya Super roll-film back I measured) and within half a mil of the 4:3 ratio, whilst 6x9cm which appears to be the 2:3 ratio is usually nothing of the sort being closer to 6x8cm (measured from my Cambo roll-film back) and actually the "ideal" ratio again. I also work with the 4/3rds format when writing as well as image manipulating in Photoshop. My desktop iMac screen has that ratio... and I hope the latest MacBook Pro, due to land on my lap in the next 24 hours, doesn't change that because it feels very comfortable on my eyes and angle of vision. So is the reason for buying an Olympus E-1 for the 4/3rds ratio all in my mind? Probably because I don't print much nowadays... my output being aimed primarily at magazine repro through stock-agency sales. And because most magazines are the International A4 size my equipment should capture that ratio to utilise as much of the sensor as possible... with most agencies requiring files which open to 48mg there's a limit as to how much upressing is possible from, say, my Nikon D200's 10mg sensor. But the E-1 has seen use which I wouldn't put the Nikon D200 to. I occasionally take a few self-portrait nude shots whilst I'm in the shower... hell, Penny at "my so-called lesbian life" posts other people's steamy shots every Wednesday so why can't I, a guy? Anyway, the E-1 has been repeatedly drenched as if by a season of tropical storms... and I just towel it dry every time with no ill-effect. Mind you, the lens gets splashed and very misted up and because of the occasional fingertip wiping the images are not very sharp... so I play around with the contrast, colouring and grain to produce something more like the feeling of a hot shower. For those faithful followers of the freedom of self-expression there are some more self-portrait nudes on this weblog taken whilst relaxing naked in a French courtyard lying on a brass bedstead in a dark-chocolate coloured room with honey-coloured floorboards somewhere in the North of England, reflected in a glazed door in London, cooling off again in a French garden by taking an impromptu hose-pipe shower... and reflected in a French hotel bedroom wardrobe mirror... snapped whilst cooling off in the breeze from an open window during a break in art-studies during the summer of 2006 when it was too hot to be outside in the sun. There's also my article on "The Penis in Art" for those interested. 12:27:18 PM    comment []