THE IMAGE: I love my Olympus OM1MD and OM2MD Cameras. I haven't shot film in them for over 8 years. I took the straps off for the first time since I put them on as a 15 and 21 year old! My grandparents bought the OM1MD (seen in the background) for me by giving my parents the money for it in 1975 when we went on a family holiday to Italy. I remember the day so well. It was hot and sunny and we looked everywhere in the city of Reggio in southern Italy. We finally found a camera store that had one! 230,000 Lires (about $230 Australian dollars at the time! That was a BIG DEAL).
I took my first image in the park with a soldier walking through the image. It was black and white on Ilford 125ASA film. I loved this camera on that trip. My last roll of film on that trip was memorable as I hadn't taken a great deal of images of people, but as we were leaving and I was taking family pictures, the train rolled away...exposure 36, 37, 38...39...40...oh, oohh. I hadn't loaded the film properly! I was heart broken!
I bought the OM2MD seen here in the foreground duty free at Ted's Camera Store in the city and picked it up, sealed for our honey moon to Fiji. While I loved that camera, it doesn't hold a patch on the OM1MD when it comes to memories.
I would never part with these cameras, and you don't know how upset I was to take the straps off after 33 years for this shoot!
The lighting for this image was super primitive! I used two desk lamps with 5000k flouro lights, and a couple of LED torches to highlight areas. I used one of my wife's blue brandy glasses. Helen's in Sydney on Business, so when the cat's away...
I used a super small f20 and a 1/6 second exposure to maximise depth of field.
THE EDIT: Levels, USM, dodge and burn, clone out some dust and a scratch mark on the front of the camera, some blur, some Noise Ninja, some saturation and colour adjustment layers. I really massaged this to make it look like the image on the brochure at the time.
THE PREDICTION: I am hoping this will go well. High 6's or I will be super disappointed. The thing that will go against me is that it looks like a studio product shot and it may lack the creativity of having a human somewhere in there as I predict many images will...I am going to guess 6.8246
I like the final results.
POST: I honestly thought this would do so much better. I wanted the look for the original brochure and think I ended up with a good quality image...not sure why this scored so low.
Statistics
Place: 27 out of 137 Avg (all users): 6.0516 Avg (commenters): 7.5000 Avg (participants): 5.8033 Avg (non-participants): 6.2128 Views since voting: 1841 Views during voting: 312 Votes: 155 Comments: 12 Favorites: 1 (view)
Nice colors and nice setup and composition. Lighting is interesting and well executed. It certainly meets the challenge.
As to why it didn't score higher? I'm not sure either. I gave this a 6 but could just as easily have given it a 7. There are a few artifacts/jaggies from resizing. One of the comments I heard or received was that a lot of the shots looked like a product shot. This is a step beyond that but I think people were looking for a bit more. (like you mention - perhaps a human element)
This is beautiful. That touch of ethereal blue light is brilliant! There is no figuring on what strikes the voters on any given week is there. I'm noticing tho that they are leaning much more for a touch of gimmick lately.
This is very well done! Olympus should buy it from you!
Returning to comment
I had a OM10 at the time and would have given anything to get the OM2, what a great camera. To bad they didn't transition in to digital more gracefully.
Overall a very nice photo but I find the reflection of the room in the lens a bit distracting.
I think you're right. There is something sexy about these as compared to the new models. Very nice lighting here, and gutsy move to have the reflection in the lenses...but I like it.
Finally! This is the first oly camera I see so far and I'm at image #109 of 137. I should have submitted one of my oly cameras too. I have 2 OM2's as well.
Good setup and lighting. Looks like a pic from the late 70's or early 80's.
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