New Year’s Resolutions

Here’s a couple cool pictures of our New Year’s fireworks taken with the P-300 using the “Fireworks Mode.” This is one of the hardest things to do manually so I was really happy to see that mode on the camera and surprised to see how well it works. Unfortunately it took me a few tries to get the hang of it (of course I never, never, never read the manual first. I just wing it) so I missed the best of the fireworks.

I would like to make some grand and glorious promise to take more pictures or put up more blog posts or lose 50 pounds in 2012 but the truth is I hate New Year’s resolutions. If you or I really wanted to do something we would have done it already or we will do it as soon as time, money or opportunity permits. To arbitrarily say that just because it’s the start of a new year something should now be done that has been left undone thus far is foolish.

The truth is at this time of year the weather is just too crappy to want to get out and do much of anything. On top of that I have been a bit under the weather lately so even indoor activities (like writing blog posts) are being neglected. I will however resolve this year like last year, to post relevant information from time to time and continue my exploration of both film and digital photography and share my experiences with you.

Here are a couple specific areas I want to explore this year.

First, I do want to complete the pin hole camera kit I started and take a few pictures with it just to see how they turn out. I am skeptical as to whether this will be a long term fascination with me but I have always wondered about pin hole camera photography and now have a chance to check it out.

Second, although I am not generally a fan of double or multiple exposure photography I have some ideas about how to use that technique for exploring a couple really creative photographic ideas. My new Vivitar body and the Holga both are ideally suited for experimenting in this area so I will try a few and see what happens.

Third, I have gotten comfortable shooting ISO 400 film both in color and B&W because of the excellent exposure latitude in low light situations (and I hate flashes) but in spite of remarkable advances in the quality of modern film I readily admit that the best pictures are still produced by slower films. Therefore I plan to get back to shooting some film in the ISO 100-200 range. 

Fourth, I really want to do a more in depth comparison between analog and digital photography. To accomplish this I have to find a lab that still produces true analog images (see my Dec 20, 2011 blog post about why what I have been getting from my film lab is not true analog images), and for the most accurate results I have to use slower film as noted above. Assuming I am successful in this area it will be difficult to actually display the results since everything on the blog must of necessity be in digital format. For this reason you will to a certain extent have to just take my word for it unless you want to duplicate my “experiments” for yourself.

…and finally, I don’t believe I have even scraped the surface on the Nikon P-300’s capabilities. In this little gem I have finally found a digital camera that I don’t mind using and a complete discourse on the in’s & out’s of film photography would not be relevant without comparative consideration of digital’s capabilities.

So there it is – my non-binding, non-resolution New Year’s resolution to keep doing what I have been doing and would keep doing whether it was a new year or not – unless of course, I think of something I would rather do instead.

By the way, feel free to comment on the blog and let me know if you have any questions or would like me to explore any particular area of photography in fact (by actually doing something) or fantasy (by merely speculating and telling you what I think about it).