Selected photos of hot air balloons in Goreme, Cappadiccia (Turkey). All photos taken either while in a hot air balloon, or balloons in-flight – me on Terra Firma. If you get the chance – do it !
Click on a photo to make it bigger, then click on the small arrows to move to the next photo.
One of my favorite photos, chosen by National Geographic editors.
Enjoying the sunrise a thousand feet up.
It is 2015 – and I bought a film camera. Most readers won’t even know what a film camera is. let me put it this way – it is ‘Old School’, just like the rotary telephone, VHS tapes, the ‘walkman’ and LP records.
Yes – I am ‘Old school’. I used all those things as a kid, and now in my adulthood, there is a certain pleasure in using them again.
The camera I bought is as old as I am; there is no autofocus, no flash, no light meter and no batteries. It is a simple, though incredibly heavy – all metal and glass rangefinder camera. There isn’t even any plastic, and not even a place to attach a neck strap – it weights as much as a brick !.
It was made in the USSR, again, most readers won’t even know where that is, unless that happen to have heard the Beatles song…’Back in the USSR…’ (Dad – Who are the Beatles?). The USSR no longer exists, a legacy of the Cold War, and the camera (Revue-3) is based on the German Leica cameras from designed and built before World War 2.
Although I do not expect to get professional quality results from this camera
I do expect to have fun, to play, and feel youthful even a bit nostalgic…
Is your Camera is Better than Mine – Or Not.
I confess, at times I dream about owning a Leica digital rangefinder M-E; German design, hand built precision engineering – think of the pure joy of owning a Porsche, Audi, or BMW. The price of a Leica M-E is a little steep (new price $4,700), which is almost half as much as it cost me to travel around the world for 10 months. And, that price is for the camera body only, add a Leica Noctilux-M 50mm f/0.95 ASPH Lens – then tack on an additional $6,000.
I also dream about owning a Canon 5dMark III, or a Nikon 810 with a 36mp million pixel sensor, multi-point autofocus array, matrix metering, Full HD video recording, ultra high ISO, built in flash, external flash control and super high shutter speed (1/8000). Despite dreaming about the other cameras, I am not complaining about my Fuji-X camera, it is small, light, certainly more stealthy than a large DSLRs.
But the camera I am talking about is my newest camera. It is a F-I-L-M camera (yes kids, one of those cameras that you have to open to put in a small container and load the thin plastic sheet; if you loaded it correctly, you can take up to 36 photos, then remove the film and have it developed…). It is a Revue-3 rangefinder camera, consider it the great grandparent of the Leica M-E (copied by the Russians after World War 2).
Compared to the Leica M-E, Canon 5dMark III, Nikon D810 and my Fuji-X cameras – there are a lot of things the Revue-3 does not have have;
Most or all, the (Revue-3) camera doesn’t have anything – I am 100% in control.
I do not have a light meter – adjusting for the correct shutter speed an aperture are based on my knowledge, my experience to manually set exposure (shutter speed and aperture; there is no setting for ISO).
So – Really, is your camera better than mine ?. You decide. For me, the bare bones simplicity of the Revue-3 is my way of learning. There is no option to rely on a computer programmed to recognize light conditions to set, or suggest the correct exposure. Through experience and some trail and error – I am learning about exposure, about the quality and intensity of light, learning about the balance of foreground light and background light, learning about exposure in sunny conditions and exposure in cloudy conditions, and most of all learning about myself – how I see the light.
I do not expect that many of my exposures will be correct, or that the image will be in correct focus. What I do expect, is that the process of taking my time to really look at the scene before me, and examining the light, thinking about the balance between the highlights and the shadows, thinking about the direction of light and how it will effect exposure, thinking about shutter speed and how it affects exposure.
And, when I go back to using a fully computerized digital camera, it will instantly display the ‘correct’ exposure. Not only will my computer – (the one in my head), have a more in-depth knowledge and understanding of what all the numbers on the LCD screen mean and why they were chosen. My computer, based on experience gained using a camera without a light meter, will also be able to suggest other values for aperture and shutter speed to over-ride the computer in the camera for an exposure that is more meaningful to me.
And to those of you that snicker and giggle when you see me taking my time – taking a long time (sometime a long, long time) to think about exposure while you simply push the button on your auto-everything cameras…