Tools – the Praktica

I have just completed, with the arrival of a package in the mail, my revolutionary camera.

Maybe this needs some explanation. The camera is nothing revolutionary, it is not an example of the newest and most advanced technology.

I chose to call it revolutionary because I intend it to be the tool I will use to photograph demonstrations, strikes or other movements of social protest.

Perhaps with some associated prejudice, the set is made up of elements from countries with very little (or not at all) democratic regimes, under communist rule, the body being a Praktica MTL 5 B, manufactured in the German Democratic Republic and the 58 mm lens, a Helios 44M-4, Zenit, from the Soviet Union. Two elements just stand out: a UV filter from Hama (from Germany, made in the Philippines) and a strap from Canon (from Japan).

I chose this camera for several reasons. The first is the fact that it appeared in front of me (at a very low price) and in good condition in a Cash Converters store (yes, it's true that I am somewhat fascinated by these stores; it's just unlike the store specialized in photography where the seller wants to receive the money corresponding to the photographic object, at Cash Converters what the seller wants is to earn some money for an object he no longer uses or has probably never used). Prices are therefore low and objects can be in very good or very bad condition. It is up to the buyer to evaluate.

Returning to the issue of the camera, what was for sale was the camera and its user manual, with a Pentacon 50 mm f/1.8 lens (with protective filter and cover) and a “leather” case. As the camera allows for fully manual operation, I tried it even without the battery (it only serves to activate the photometer and I have a handheld photometer from Sekonic) and the test detected only one problem: the lens aperture ring was not work. By the way, the ring rotated, the diaphragm at f/1.8 didn't close. But as, fortunately, the lenses of the M42 system are relatively abundant and at very affordable prices, I decided to buy the camera. I opted for a Helios 44M-4 to replace the Pentacon, which I bought on eBay for €16, a choice influenced by a successful experience ten years ago with a Zenit with the same lens. Good construction, solid, and with an excellent optical quality. The maximum aperture is quite good – f/2.0 – although the minimum could be a diaphragm beyond the f/16 it offers.

With a Chinese battery for the photometer, I hope this robust set will live up to the photographic excursions I intend to take it on. And I hope, by the way, that the photographer is also up to the equipment.

The Two Eyes of the Cyclops

A few days ago I went to visit the exhibition “Os dois olhos do cíclope" (The Two Eyes of the Cyclops) by Nuno Pinheiro. I confess that photographically few images really conveyed anything to me. Not that the photographic work presented is without value, but perhaps because these exhibited photographs cover too long a period of time to find greater coherence in them.

Interestingly, this photographic exhibition ends up underlining what I said earlier: the way in which the image is captured has an influence on the final product. Many of the photographs were taken with an old Rolleiflex with its 6 x 6 cm frames. And it was this same camera that influenced the name of the exhibition, referring to the conversion of human binocular vision into photographic vision, which is limited to that provided by the only lens that sees (photographs) even in the case of a TLR camera in which the two front lenses boil down to one that captures the image

Of course, I admit again and reinforce that the capture medium influences the final image but does not confer value on its own. We can have a Rolleiflex TLR and two hundred rolls and the camera will not be able to take good pictures without the more or less sensitive vision of the photographer.

The tools and the work

I read, some time ago, in a book or in a magazine, that knowing what photographic equipment was used in the production of a certain work is as useless or inappropriate as asking a writer what typewriter he used to write a certain book. I get the idea but I disagree. I understand that what is decisive is the sensibility of the photographer and the choice of the subject to be photographed and not so much the fact that the image was captured on photographic paper inside an empty can of mushrooms or with a Hasselblad film from Ilford or on the digital sensor of a Nikon D700. It seems clear to me that the individual talent for photographing goes well beyond the issues of the means used to capture the image. A bad photographer doesn't start taking good pictures just by using a professional camera.

However, I do not believe that the means used to capture the image is irrelevant. It may be for some viewers but certainly not for everyone. I believe that the means of capturing the image turns out to be closely linked to the final result. I can, when shooting, want to get a certain effect that is based on the square format of the image. For this I may prefer to use a camera that captures the image in square format. Or choose to use another one and then cut the surplus of the square to obtain the desired result. I think that each of the choices, even if valid, will condition the photographic approach in a different way. The same goes for shooting black and white on film or digital in color and converting to black and white in processing. Or in the use of greater or lesser grain. Or the use of a large format camera that will require a totally different approach to the way of photographing. I am not here trying to demonstrate that there are more or less correct ways to achieve a result, but rather to defend that the way chosen to obtain it is an intrinsic condition. I might decide that I want to shoot headlights on color slide film with my Rolleiflex 3.5F. It will not be the right or wrong choice. But the result will necessarily be different from what I get using the Nikon D200 with a 28-80 mm zoom lens.

Then another question arises: to what extent does this discussion interest the viewer of the final image? To what extent will the spectator have the capacity to interpret and integrate the technical data of the capture into the final result? The photographer must answer this question internally and decide how important the process was or was not in his creative work.

And as for the public, if he's like me, he'll think that the process is not indifferent, that the camera used is important in the way of photographing and that he'll obtain more layers of reading an image.

Me and photography

I recall saying in a conversation in 1998 I didn't like photography. Because photography is just a mutilation of reality, the transposition to the perception of one sense of what was experienced by five. That's why I have few memories of holidays, of festive moments. Because there are things that must be kept in memory, which, although more complete, fades with time, without being reduced to an image. I always think it's a waste of the moment to try to fixate it in a photograph.

But what I like in photography is something else, different, with greater emotional detachment. Sometimes spontaneous, other times more worked and constructed, a moment of beauty, specifically constructed not to be experienced with senses other than sight.

This is what I try to do, with what I know, with what I'm learning, using the little time I have available and always runs away...

Curiously, it was in the same year, 1998, that I started taking pictures. Since then I have been improving the photographic equipment I have, sometimes focusing more on the quality and quantity of equipment than on photographic production, always with a view to professionalizing my photographic activity.

It was in 2010 that my photographic posture changed substantially in a way that I hope will last. Two factors contributed to this change:

- The impossibility  (due to workplace incompatibilities) of aiming that photography would become a professional activity:

- A photography workshop in Paris (which I didn't attend).

If the first brought me a lack of responsibility for photography, a non-concern of trying to turn photography into something profitable, the second, through the precise report of those who were there, helped me to direct and better understand the path I intend to wander with the camera to attain something that really satisfies me.