Yesterday in London, Chinatown

Yesterday's walkabout was a long day. I need to finish off the film in my Olympus Pen EE, and shoot my first roll of 35mm through my newly acquired Minolta A5. The Minolta is an Ebay special, costing the grand sum of less than £20, it's a rangefinder, & completely mechanical, no battery required, and has no light meter so I had to do it manually. (God only knows how the images are going to turn out!).

So I started in Covent Garden and worked my way to the British Museum, via a couple of old vintage camera shops! After the film had been spent, I started shooting the GF1, by this time I was around the Chinatown area, so I decided to have a look at what was left from the New Year celebrations the day before. The big tidy up was well in full swing, and still plenty of people milling around.

I got 'captured' loads of times, I think it has something to do with the wrist strap I was using on the camera, instead of shooting from the chest, using the neck strap. I'm not sure if it's better or not. I felt more conspicuous, and I don't think the shots are as candid, as people clearly can see you are taking their photograph, however I can get different angles with the wrist strap.... the jury is still out.

I did intended to try out some settings on the GF1 with the 20 mm lens, the dynamic black and white setting I had read about on a Flickr group I belong to. I have set it up into the custom settings so I can get straight to it for b/w street shooting. El Stupido, I forgot I was shooting RAW format, and the files would still be color once downloaded to Light Room!!....Doh, major cock-up!

Anyway here's some of the images, edited to b/w using Adobe Light Room.


Lanterns.

Year of the Dragon Cake.... Yummmm...

Interviews.

Autographs?

News.

Spotted in Chinatown.

Spotted in Piccadilly.

Spotted again in Piccadilly.

Spotted on Tottenham Court Rd.

Happy People.

A Winter Afternoon on the Southbank

The south bank of the River Thames, it is my favorite place to go shooting street photography. I love it there, there's always something going on, the people are very easy going, and there are lots of cafes to sit, have a coffee and people watch. The type of people there are so varied, from tourists from abroad, to the artists on the little 'beaches' creating sand sculptures, to the Londoners out for a stroll along the river.

I usually only take my Lumix GF1, but this time I was armed to the teeth!... the Lumix, my Nikon D200 equipped with 85mm f1.8 lens and a little Olympus 35mm film camera half frame, almost a film version of a point n shoot.
I wanted to try the 85mm lens in a street photography environment as I had not used it like this before, and the Olympus I have only just got from Ebay, so I want to use the film up and can't wait to see the results! I have to say I was most impressed with the 85mm on my old D200, it is sharp, quick to focus and gives a lovely out of focus background Bokeh.

So here are the pics, feel free to leave comments.

Christmas on Oxford St. London

I went for a walk around the west end of London with the Lumix and the 20mm pancake lens to try and get a bit of the Christmas vibe going off down there. The decorations on Oxford St. were a bit of a let down, but there were some good things to be found on the back streets in the area. Carnaby St. in particular was very christmassy with a great atmosphere.
Here's the pics, all edited using the snapseed app on iPad..... I might have mentioned before, I love this app!!!!