ooop noooorth

We trekked up through beyond vile weather on friday afternoon to Rotherham/Sheffield as I had a gig up in Sheffield on the Saturday night (join my music page here: https://www.facebook.com/KrauseyMusic/app_220150904689418) and stayed with some of Emily's family who hadn't met Matilda yet.

The snow hampered our journey up to Rotherham and once we were there it made it's self a bit of a nuisance but in all it was nice to see some proper snow again! Just a couple photos from the iphone.



Heading to the pub on friday night with one of Emily's cousins to meet the other cousins and their other  (better) halves!

I also took the opportunity on Sunday to take some photographs with my newest aquistition, my Halina Viceroy medium format 120 film camera. 

It really makes you slow down your photography, think about the settings, compose the shot (it's backwards in the viewfinder so a bit weird getting used to lining things up) and think about the actual shot more rather just firing away like is possible with digital. 

The only thing I'm a bit worried about is that the shutter is 1/60th of a second which is pretty slow and it was quite cold so maybe going to have some camera shake in the shots but I guess that's half of the excitement as we'll find out when they get developed...

I've got a few more frames to shoot (only 12 shots on a roll) so will get them developed soon as possible!! 


Obviously whilst up there I did take a few shots with the 5dm2 and our newest lens, Canon's 85mm f/1.8 USM. 

I've got to say...my flabber has been well and truly gasped by it!!  The speed and silence of focus really does pay off against the heavier, slower f/1.2 version especially considering the outrageous price difference between the 1.8 and the 1.2. I think we have one of the best lenses available and would willingly choose the 1.8 over the 1.2 again knowing how good it is and what we'll be using it for mainly - primarily purchased the f/1.8 85 for weddings, using in low lit venues/churches we needed it to be quick and quiet but without compromising image quality. Check out the photos below...I can't see any compromise there.  We have the 50mm f1/.4 USM and I was hoping it was going to be from the same stable (pardon the pun), it is! 

2 Photographs from different ends of the aperture.

Canon 5dm2 + Canon 85mm f/1.8 USM - 1/60th, f/16, ISO400

Canon 5dm2 + Canon 85mm f/1.8 USM - 1/320th, f/2.8, ISO400

and this one just because it's cute...

Canon 5dm2 + Canon 50mm USM - 1/1000th, f/1.8 ISO400

 I'll do another post on the 85mm f/1.8 soonish with some more photographs.



As always, if you have any friends getting married, don't hesitate to recommend us so they can get in touch to chat about their wedding photography! We shoot all over the UK and further afield! email: weddings@justinkrause.co.uk

My first foray into Medium Format...

...and I CAN'T WAIT !!

I've managed to bag myself a 1960s Halina Viceroy 120 Film Medium Format TLR (Twin Lens Reflex - pseudo TLR?) for a bargain off ebay. The seller has been very helpful in answering, what must be to him, some stupid questions and has also thrown in a black and white film to get me started! 

I'm looking forward to having to really look for the photograph rather than have the ability to just go mental and snap away as can be the case with digital.

The simplicity of this camera is what has appealed to me mostly (that and it looks too cool and retro for words). 

It has no light meter or focusing. Only three aperture options ( 8, 11 and 16) and two shutter speed modes: 1/60 and Bulb.

Film: 120 Roll Film with only 12 shots...non of this 16gb of card space to play with!!

There's more info on the Halina Viceroy HERE.

New designs for PhotoBooth & Save The Dates

Ok so I've wanted to give the PhotoBooth and our weddings as a whole more of an identity.  

The whole vintage thing is MASSIVE right now but mainly the reason for this style is because I'm fully in LOVE with these fonts I've found and tailored to make fit our work.

First up is the PhotoBooth signage. This an example of a graphic for our PhotoBooth. When printed it's on textured cream card in a gold gilt frame hung from one of our artist easels at your wedding venue.

As part of some of our engagement shoots a couple of our Brides & Grooms asked if they could be done as "Save The Dates" to send out to their friends and family over Christmas.  I took the opportunity to put together a couple designs in a similar style to the PhotoBooth signage but also using their wedding theme colours.

Above, Amelia & Paul's Save The Dates.

Carley & Stuart (right) wanted to combine the design I did with some of the shots taken from their engagement shoot.

@castone34 tweeted:

@JKrausePhotos we have had so many messages today from people loving our save the date card! 

 

 

@AmeliaRGibson tweeted:

What do you think of our amazing wedding save the dates? We love them and thanks to @JKrausePhotos who did awesome job! pic.twitter.com/RtLhRkTB

  

‏ 

‏@tracie121lewis replied:

@AmeliaRGibson @jkrausephotos aww I love them xx

  @AmeliaRGibson replied:

@tracie121lewis @jkrausephotos good, I have one for my beautiful bridesmaid! 

Glad everyone is happy with them!

Test photos!

These are test photos from my Vest Pocket Kodak (c.1925) mounted (as per the previous post) on my modern Canon 5d mark2.

 





I have to report that these photos are disappointingly good quality! It works for everything from portraits to macro & arty abstract to landscape and focuses by sliding the lens on the rails forward and back. 

 






I was hoping for ghosting, light leaks, flares and at the very least ridiculous vignetting! None of which are apparent to the extremes I was hoping for :-(   The worst thing about this lens is I've cleaned the glass and I can still see black spots and various marks on the photographs.   

 
For me this lens' strongest feature is it's ability for close up portraits and macro shots. The aperture is controlled by spinning a disc on the front of the Kodak lens that literally has 4 different diameter holes in it (1-4 although I'm not sure what these reference to regarding f#). What I can see is that due to round apertures the bokeh is really quite nice as it's not dictated by the number of blades as per more modern lenses.  As it was pretty dank and grey out today I kept the aperture wide open on #4 but I still had to crank the ISO so that's why some of the darker photos might look noisy if you're pixel peeping. Ctrl Click (MacOS) or right click (windoze) to "save as" to view the Shutter and ISO on each photograph.

None of these photos have been near photoshop (apart from to go through my droplet to make them a more web friendly size).  The photo of my daughter to the right was an in camera sepia effect.

All in all this lens actually works very well if you can manually focus and definitely got a few odd looks and started a couple conversations when in town and in the coffee shop. 

I got the EXIF data from Simple EXIF Viewer - available for free.

I think I might have to try fitting another of my vintage cameras to the 5d to see what happens. STAY TUNED! 

In the mean time, if you have any friends or family getting married, anywhere in the world don't hesitate to get in touch (I promise not to use this setup ;-) )

Old meet new (ish)

I had had this thought when I first started collecting the vintage cameras a couple years ago. I then saw someone had done somewhere else and thought I'd give it a go when I had 5 spare minutes.  
 
It took me a while to figure out which camera would fit best. I wanted to use the Butchers No.4 (c.1915 I think - correct me if I'm wrong) to the left but I couldn't get the shutter to stay open also the Butchers' body would have needed mounting further away from the 5d's body to allow me to get it off and on. I finally decided on the Vest Pocket Kodak Model B (c. 1925) from my little collection. Sure, it's worth some money, not a massive amount but the cameras are just sat there in the studio. 

I wondered what it would be like to shoot through a near hundred year old lens...which then led me to thinking about all the things this lens might have shot and bearing in mind what the world has been though in the last hundred years I was sat daydreaming (and cringing) for quite some time...

I'm going to test this out this afternoon so more pics to follow!