I’ve started a group at Ipernity for Drawings and paintings – welcome to join if you want. I know – a bit outside the scope of this site about photography and cameras, but this work is a big thing for my photography. From the beginning I am a painter and I get a lot of my ideas, composition, feeling, inspiration from the history of art and from my own work. I think it is a good thing – an image is an image and people have been creating them since long before the photography of today.

Here you see a slideshow of my album with drawings and paintings.

For me this is a typical piece of swedish nature shot with old Asahi-lenses (Super-Takumar 28mm/3.5 and S-M-C Takumar 55mm/1.8), and an extension-ring. Lingonberries, heather and mushroom. Late summer/early autumn. The Takumar lenses are so nice for closeups, good sharpness and good bokeh. Slim and light, which is really good when you crawl in the woods ;)

And you need to crawl to get good closups. It’s most often not fun looking at pictures taken with the ground as background.

If you click on the images, you go to the Flickr-page – just click the browsers backbutton to get back here.

I wonder how you look upon this question, “What makes a good picture?”. I believe it is when the artist manage to communicate a feeling.

This image of grass, I wanted to relay the sence off standing in a field with waving straws, the freedom. One might even start thinking about what happened to the straws not standing up any more: Crop field circle by aliens? Animals having a feast? Winds?

But the image is very simple. I have tried to cut out what I wanted to show and no distractions. That’s why I sometimes have a hard time with photographers who want the biggest effect out of everything, to use the most extreme angle or perspective or color just because they can not because the image needs it. It’s also why I have a hard time with photographers only concerned by technical qualities – they bore me to death. But that’s just me.

This field was made with the 60′s M42-lens aus Jena Sonnar 135mm/3.5 zebra on Canon EOS 350D.

October 1st has been announced as a international film buying day. There is a group on Flickr created by Chris Bloom, that you can join. Heres a quote from the statement:

“I ask all who enjoy shooting on film to go out on the same day, October 1, and buy a roll (or rolls or sheets for that matter!) of film. I’m sure the sudden spike in film sales would be noticed [...]”

A noble task indeed!

The focusring on my Helios 44-3 was loose, but is now repaired. Richard told me how to fix the problem, there are screws in the side of the ring but they are so small that I had missed them! Tightened and I took the lens to town with me… to the city park which is full with roses. Here are the result. I feel a bit new to the lens now since I haven’t used it in a while.

Now you can read articles on Retrocamera.net in your own language. Use the Google tool in the column to the right to translate the page. Sure, it won’t be a perfect translation – but if there’s something you don’t understand this tool can help you.

This tool from Google is called Translate Gadget and you can use it on your website too! Enjoy.

This will be a site for people who appriciate old cameras and lenses, even in combination with the digital cameras. My name is Mattias Wirf and I will be one of the writers here. The former site on www.retrofoto.se was in swedish, but I soon realized the interest in Sweden was not enough to sustain the site. Therefore this new site is in the making.

In the next few days new layout and functions and translated lenstests will be added. Welcome!