Rangefinders

Yugus has added a photo to the pool:

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Ahhh how I love using rangefinder cameras... Theres just something about the whole notion of simply looking through a window rather then through the lens of a camera. Not to mention manually focusing is more enjoyable and reliable to me with a rangefinder rather then with a DSLR. Seems I have issues manually focusing DSLR's and often miss unlike when I use a rangefinder. Though auto focus is quite nice I must admit hahaha, well to me my rangefinders are more for fun while my DSLR is for work. I even wrote a little piece on my blog about why I like rangefinders awhile back, you can find the link to my blog at the bottom if you feel so inclined to read more of my ramblings.

Alright so let me first start off by saying this photo was heavily inspired by this shot from Benny Ng, I saw this shot awhile back, though since I rarely favourite anything I had to look for it again today as a reference shot. Ever since I first saw that shot I wanted to do a shot just like it, though I don't own nearly as much rangefinder equipment as that. So in order to do this shot I combined both mine and my brothers (you can check out his Flickr here) collective rangefinder gear for this shot. Mind you I omitted all of his medium format rangefinder cameras and his polaroids since they are quite big. Most of them dwarf my Fuji GW690 II which is quite big. Also only 3 of those rangefinders are mine, people who have followed me for awhile should know which three are mine hahaha, its the Minolta CLE, Zeiss Ikon and of course the Fuji GW690 II that I mentioned.

So I got to say I've more or less been in a photographic slump as of late, even prior to my little road trip and I haven't been shooting nearly as much as I'd like to. Though yesterday I felt a little inspired and motivated to shoot this photo that I've been wanting to do for quite some time because of my brother and his 365 he currently has going on. Actually all he did was use both of our rangefinders and took a photo of my Fuji GW690 II though for some reason seeing all of the cameras there made me want to take a photo of them. So after he finished up I ran around the house looking for some surface the cameras can rest for my shot and came across my old desk (which was actually my brother old desk too) which was still taken apart and used its top for my background. Then I gathered the rest of my brothers rangefinders and started laying them out on the desk. Wish I had some kind of grid so I could have laid them out much neater, though it still looks pretty good. I also had to use my brothers tripod for this photo instead of mine since his has that little boom arm which was very much needed for this shot. All in all I'm very happy with this shot, just remember even the worlds most expensive camera can't take a good photo, thats something you have to do, gear can help but that means nothing without experience.

Strobist Info (very simple lighting since I wanted something very soft and diffused)
2x Nikon SB-800 directly in front and behind my camera, in order to get an even spread both lights were pointing straight up and bouncing the light off the white ceiling at 1/2 power.

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