Stuff We Like: Museo Rag, Zoom H1, S95, Silver Efex Pro 2 & 3/11 Tsunami Photo Project

IPA Craft & Tools, Reviews 4 Comments

1. Museo Portfolio Rag Paper Our favourite inkjet print media – Museo Portfolio Rag Paper. 100% Cotton. 300GSM of Archival beauty. Great for B/W Prints, especially with multi-black cartridge pigment ink. 2. Canon PowerShot S95 We’ve used the Canon PowerShot S95 and love it. Smallest RAW shooting compact camera that really fits in a pocket. Love it’s analogue-style control ring too. Feels like a modern digital version of a Rollei 35s/Olympus XA to us. 3. Silver EFex Pro 2 The best digital b/w darkroom application just got better. We tried the new Silver Efex Pro 2 by Nik Software and …

Should I Give Up On Photography, My Passion?

IPA Craft & Tools 21 Comments

Should I give up photography? Is it time to get a ‘real’ job? There has been a recent spate of discussions online about that very question. And every photographer, or artist of any genre, has at one point or another in times of difficulty pondered the idea of giving up, sometimes on numerous occasions. The answer from mentors and the supportive will usually be to ‘Never Give Up’, to follow your heart and passion, and to pursue your dreams. But how honest or realistic is it to listen to that advice and persevere in the hopes that luck and fortune will …

Tokyo Documentary Photography Workshop

IPA Craft & Tools, Exhibitions & Events, Photography 9 Comments

Update: Invisible Ph t grapher Asia is proud to support and partner the Tokyo Documentary Photography Workshop. Tokyo Documentary Photography Workshop (TDPW) is a 5-day workshop on documentary photography held in August 2011 in Tokyo, Japan. This is a unique and rare opportunity to work closely with instructors including photographers and curators who are working both nationally and internationally. 

Leica Store, Singapore Opening & ‘Of Legends and Beliefs’ Exhibition by Yang Yan Kang.

IPA Craft & Tools, Exhibitions & Events 11 Comments

We made an impromptu visit to the official Leica Store, Singapore which opened today at Raffles Hotel Arcade. Coinciding with the store launch is a beautiful exhibition ‘Of Legends and Beliefs’ by Yang Yan Kang, a China-based photographer and member of French agency VU. Yang Yan Kang was present so we had a little chat.

Rangefinder Cameras: A History & Introduction (Part 3)

IPA Craft & Tools 7 Comments

Beyond manual focus and the popular 35mm film format. Continuing from the world of interchangeable M mount lenses, there were many cameras that were offered as fixed lens 35mm rangefinder cameras by several manufacturers, mainly Japanese. Being extremely small, compact, and with great reliability, cameras like the Olympus 35 and XA, Canon Canonet and the Yashica GSN have all become cult classics today. Modern offerings in the form of high-end compact cameras also made their way into the market. These include the Contax’s T series, Ricoh’s GR21, Nikon’s 28Ti and 35Ti, and Minolta’s TC-1 amongst others.

Rangefinder Cameras: A History & Introduction (Part 2)

IPA Craft & Tools 4 Comments

The M mount In 1954, Leica launched the M3 rangefinder camera, which featured a new bayonet lens mount, a high magnification viewfinder, as well as an improved film transport. This was the beginning of the M System we know today. The Leica IIIg, which was launched in 1957, was the last thread mount camera that Leica offered. However, it is important to note that the new M mount did not spell an end to the now ubiquitous Leica Thread Mount (LTM) lenses. Instead of being an obsolete system, LTM lenses can be mounted on M mount cameras via thread to …

Rangefinder Cameras.

Rangefinder Cameras: A History & Introduction (Part 1)

IPA Craft & Tools 11 Comments

Guest Post by Benny Ng. In the beginning.. In the early 1900s, there was a man with a vision for portable photography. His name was Oskar Barnack, and in 1914, he created the Ur-Leica, forefather of the 35mm film format that we know today. This camera was also the cornerstone of the evolution of the rangefinder system of photography. In the early days of rangefinder photography, there were several manufacturers and quite a few differing formats of lens to camera interface as each sought to develop their own proprietary mount. Many of the early lens mounts were not coupled as …

Sebastiao Salgado on the Decisive Moment.

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A beautiful description of Cartier-Bresson’s “decisive moment” by Sebastiao Salgado. “His operating philosophy, this integration with the subject, is different from Cartier-Bresson’s “decisive moment”, a theory that the photographer must catch the instant when the elements present reach a balance. Salgado, borrowing from geometry, describes the ambiance of a scene as a crescendo of moments, a rising curve. The critical moment for Cartier-Bresson, Salgado says, would be when the curve reaches its peak and begins to fall. Salgado wants to live within the curve, experiencing all of it with the subject.” Source: New York Times