I went on a river boat ride today.....

[raytoei]

....with a fellow RF member / uber Xpan shooter, Fadly. Another friend and helper, Liu, couldn't make it. I was gonna shoot Cass, Australia based model who is on a two weeks working tour in Singapore.

Embolden by two previous shoots,one in a studio and another at a restaurant, I wanted to try a location shoot.

I am going to share my experience here on this thread and show off some images once I develop the film and scan the negatives.

This is going to be rangefinder heavy, since i shot with my m4-p with 50 cron, Bronica RF645 with 65mm, a film SLR Praktica with 50/1.8.

Here is a picture of Cass, taken on my underused 40D with Canon 50/1.8 el cheapo lens.

raytoei

 

[wongsan]

cool...I'm waiting

 

[virtualme78]

Nice... can the boat man concentrate?

Also, don't you get weird stares from the other roads or people at the riverside?

 

[raytoei]

So...this was like, planned since late April, and like a puzzle,
there were questions I had that needed to be answered:

a. What's the lighting like ? Clark quay is surrounded by buildings
which makes the foreground dark but the sky would be very bright,
giving a backlit situation.

b. What is a good DOF ? Would f5.6 suffice to give enough details
to the back and front or do i need to go deeper ?

c. What is a good ISO to shoot this in ? Should I shoot at ISO 100,
or would it be too slow as the boat would be moving ?

d. Lastly, what props ? How many times should the model change ?
How to change in a bum boat ? What time does the boat service start ?
Can we NOT share the boat ? (hint: we had a old couple who joined us and
had a free show...)

questions...questions...questions.

raytoei

sorry. this is still from my old 40D with el cheapo 50/1.8 lens

 

[sim4nee]

Uh Cass, same girl who contacted me before she came, I was ok to shoot her then jobs came in so had to cancel but at the end the job got postponed and her schedule already fully book.

 

[oliprolli]

Wah bro can't wait to see the ones from ur Bronica! Faster post! Love the 2nd pic!

 

[raytoei]

well, i was quite kia-su, i went with Liu a few weeks ago and took a test shot, and
i followup with a second boat ride and more test shots...

This were the findings:

* I need DOF of at least f8 to have some meaningful details in the background.
Shooting at 3pm, the sun would be too bright and create a strong backlit.
the location around clark and boat quay would be too dark.

Shooting at available light would be around f5.6 (assuming sunny-16). However,
to get the DOF at f8, the 3pm shoot would be around 1/60 at iso 200,
or 1/125 at iso 400.

1/30 would be out of the question since the moving boat would cause too much vibration.

The problem of available light would be shadowy facial features which is
always an issue with available light. The obvious solutions would be a
strong reflector, orange filter (yellow would be too weak) and or a flash.

The easiest solution would be to use fill-flash with an orange filter.
But there were too many moving parts:
My m4-p syncs at 1/50
i need dof of f8
i may want to use flash
i may want to use filter orange, with 2 stops compensation
film is either 400 or 200 (preferred)

in the end, i decided that i could resort to either 200 or 400 for all my films depending on the day's condition:

if too dark (f4 or f5.6 sunny-16 sky), then use 400 film (actually plus-x pushed to 400) but rate it at iso 100 to
compensate for 2-stops orange filter. the exposure would be 1/50, f8 and iso 100 (but develop at iso 400).
Flash would be at f4 (i tried f5.6 but still resulted in a bit of harsh flash shadows during the test shots).

Confusing enough ?

Other prep work during the test boat rides, I discovered that the rides were either 30 mins or 45mins. The
45mins went from clark to robertson then back again to clark and boat quay and into the MBS area.

(too be continued)....

(again, sorry, no time to develop the film yet, this is from my old 40d with cheap and good 50/1.8)

 

[raytoei]

Shooting day was this past Tuesday. Monday had showers, Wednesday had showers.
But Tuesday was a blessed day. The skies were clear, at least at 8.30am when i
drove to pick up the model Cass. Cass was a working model who was in town for
2 weeks running shoots, i "met" her online via a model online place several
months ago and after discussing the schedule, and the type of shoots,
we sort of agreed on the format.

Fadly, a professional wedding shooter who only uses film, agreed to be my
assistant/helper. At 9am, we were at the ticketing booth waiting for the boat to start.

( taken on the M4-P with 35/f2 cron, film is Plus-X at ISO 200)

I was lugging a suitcase, which contained 4 bodies:
* Leica M4-P with cron 35/f2 (the boat would be cramped so it would benefit
from a wider lens)
* praktica mtl 5b with CZJ Pancolar 50/1.8, this is a old-new camera i bought
from evil-bay and I love the tank-like quality of this camera, the mirror slap will just reach out and smack you!
* Bronica RF645 with 65/f4 lens. This is a medium format camera capable of
shooting 16 frames per 120-format roll.

Additional stuff included props, a metz ct-45 flash gun, a silver reflector, a sekonic l-408 light meter and film.

In my first studio shoot, about 6 months ago, i used up 10 x 120 and 5 x 135 format.
On my restaurant shoot, i used about 5 rolls in 120 format and 2 rolls in 135 format.
For this shoot, I prepared 10 rolls of 135 format and 10 rolls of 120 format. I removed
the boxes and plastic containers, and protective covering and kept them in the plastic
bag for easy shooting. For film, i decided to standardised on Plus-X for 135 format and
Tmax 400 for 120 format, I have had good success with both films previously.

** to be continued **

 

[bluepowder]

Awesome series, thanks so much for sharing all the wonderful bits of information!

Looking forward to the continued posts!

 

[raytoei]

My heart sort of sank when i saw this old couple joining us for the 9.15am boat ride....
i was kinda hoping that we three (me, fadly and cass) would be the only travelers on
this boat. Nope such luck, a quick discussion with the model and we decided to
proceed with the shoot.

The lighting was very good to us, there were clouds and there was the Sun which
hovered between f11 - f22. This was great as a) i did have to use an orange to
tease the clouds b) good light meant that reflectors could be used.

I planned 4 images, boat back standing, boat back centre, boat front and boat indoors.
The plan was to shoot it with the 3 cameras, and changed the film just in time for the
boat reaching MBS and continue to shoot all the way back to Clark Quay. It would be
challenge as the whole trip would take no more than 45mins, and 2rolls x 35mm
film x 2 bodies + 2 roll x 120mm = 174 frames in 45 mins including film change. I
know of wedding photographers who shoot 5k frames in a day's shooting but 174
frames in 45mins was quite challenging.

Well, everything went more or less according to plan, here are some interesting tidbits:

* The presence of a mask lady in underwear would attract alot of shore onlookers with their DSLR
* Many of my shots had the reflector in it, sort of spoiling it. Well the place was
cramped but this is a mental note to watch for it while framing.
* my Cron f2 UV filter got fogged or smudged and I didn't know (unlike a SLR) and
a whole chunk of the 2nd roll had screen smudges

nothing more to add really, but we had a real blast.

this accompanying picture is an unintended picture. The exposure is all wrong but the effect is quite nice.
Summicron 35/f2. M4-P.

 

[raytoei]

post mortem:

if i were to do this over again, what would i do better:

* make sure the reflector is not in the frame
* periodically make sure the rf lens is clean
* handle the film in a secure place, there were some leaks
from not rolling the 120 film properly.
* bring portable music (?)
* be more fussy on the props: lip stick red, stockings, closed high heels
* focus more on picturesque background

raytoei

 

[raytoei]

hey, one last thing.... if you enjoyed this series and want to diy,
here is how to book the models,

go to a model services website like modelmayhem.com or onemodelplace.com
or even our own clubsnap services.

prices range between 60 sgd an hour to 200 an hour depending
on what you are shooting and how experienced the models are.

usually since this is amateur shoot (ie. non professional),
so you'd specify the hair, makeup you want done.

our own sim4nee is a professional photographer, so
he has more industry information, his models pictures,
usually in the medium format, are incredible.

raytoei
ps. i booked Cass, aka BlueVelvet again when she comes back to
singapore in Sept, you can check her schedule
in modelmayhem, mm #820678


One last picture, this wan from Bronica RF645. Love the texture of this picture,
too bad, the bottom half was blocked by the reflector, something i have to
learn not to ignore next time

TMax 400 in 120 format, iso 200. Developed in XTOL.

FIN