Chester Street Photography with the Mamiya C33 and Ilford FP4+ . . .

“That guy must really like his camera, he hasn’t stopped looking at it for the past 10 minutes?”

At least that’s how I imagine the average ‘Joe’ might regard someone shooting Street Photography with a TLR camera, such as the Mamiya C33.

In all honesty I’ve never felt more comfortable photographing strangers and candid situations, than when using the Mamiya C33 TLR Medium Format camera.

Admittedly the ‘outfit’, with it’s 135mm Sekor lens (90mm in 35mm terms) does weigh as much as a Carling 8-Pack (whatever one of those is). Fortunately this minor (?) handicap is utterly negated by the unorthodox (by modern standards) shooting style.

Ricoh WG-5 Rugged Street Photography Camera Review (Part 2) . . .

. . . continued from Part 1 . . .

It’s all well and good owning what many regard (or regarded) as the ultimate Street Photography camera (Leica M), but if you don’t use it for what it was intended, it becomes nothing more than an expensive piece of jewellery, or bling, or even an extravagance. More worryingly, outside of the relatively ‘clean’ environment of the street, the Leica M could be quickly ruined through dust and water contamination, or damaged from the slightest knock, etc.

What I needed in reality was a camera that would do everything. A camera I could ‘throw’ into the cavernous pocket of my motorcycle jacket and not have to worry about it getting cold or dusty. A camera I could clip to the ‘day pack’ on the front of my Kayak and not worry about it getting wet (or god forbid submerged if I capsized), or a camera I could simply stow in the glovebox of the car. All of this whilst still being able to turn it’s hand to the occassional bout of street photography.

Hence I narrowed my choice down to the Ricoh WG-5 GPS, an all weather, rugged, waterproof (to 14m), dustproof, shockproof, freezeproof and crushproof, 16 megapixel compact point and shoot camera, or as Ricoh prefer to simply describe it, ‘Adventure Proof’.

Ricoh WG-5 Rugged Street Photography Camera Review (Part 1) . . .

. . . The Leica M-E has gone to a new home.

For that matter, the Voigtlander 50mm f/1.5 Nokton and Voigtlander 28mm f/1.9 Ultron lenses and the Leica M2, now also find themselves spread far and wide and hopefully providing many more years of photographic excellence to their respective owners.

Am I mad ?

This was a recurring question that I kept asking myself over many a month. Would clearing out all of my ‘Leica kit’ really be such a bad thing?

Morecambe Not Wise – Expired . . .

. . . To be completely honest and as far as I was concerned, photography was dead to me.

Regular visitors to the Street Photography Blog will be all too aware of my eternal battle with ‘seasonal disappointment’, brought on when the days shorten and the sky turns an uninspirational shade of morbid-grey.

In this frame of mind I would habitually ‘hibernate’ throughout each autumn and winter period, until one day the overcast horizon’s lift, that strange ‘light in the sky’ makes a much anticipated appearance, and it’s no longer necessary to wear five layers of clothing just to go shopping.

This time round however, things felt oddly different.