You have to limit your equipment to become more creative with photography. You don’t need the latest gear and expensive equipment, you just need to know how to use what you’ve got and how to be creative with it.
In this video I will prove this by taking on a challenge from my good friend Aaron. The challenge is to limit my equipment to an entry level DSLR camera, a fixed focal length portrait lens and then take landscape shots with it. Aaron is also limiting his equipment to an old 35mm film Zenit camera.
This will be a great tutorial for beginner photographers or those that are on a budget and proves that all that gear will get you nowhere if you don’t know how to use it and more importantly, how to get creative with it.
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Do you teach how to actually use an SLR?
Thanks
finger crosed is pagan belived
My dad had a zenith. I used it on many vacations before buying my first digital in 2002. I loved it. It must be at my family's house.
44M lens is 58mm f2 lens, amazing lens
The Zenith E was a Soviet camera. I bought mine back in 1976. With over 40 years of taking photos and using a medium format camera nowadays, after many years of using Leicas, I have to say that the best photo I ever took, and which incidentally won a prize (the photo was taken in Chichicaztenango in Guatemala in 1979) was with this Zenith E. So much for all this modern, expensive and sophisticated equipment nowadays…
Brokenback mountain day out
Helios 44 is not a 44mm lens. It's a 58mm lens. Helios 44-2 gives the most swirly bokey.
Ah, so the pictures did not come out, han. OK, no problem. Love to learn photography with you guys, in all these free video tutorials. Thanks a lot. #theschoolofphotography is great to learn photography.
Lol at 4:50
Canon 85 is a killer lens on any body.
Peter Mckinnon did this! Except he did it to sell some cameras 😂
I have been using my Canon 1100D with a nifty fifty only for about the last 6 months, exactly for the reasons you outline, limit myself to try and improve my photography.
My first camera was FED http://www.sovietcams.com/index.php?414372438
Where is a zeniths photos?
Is this the New Forest? Thanks, good work.
School of photography? When you describe a 58mm Helios 44M lens as being a 44mm lens..? Doesn't inspire confidence I'm sorry to say, especially when you had to double check the name "Zenit" and not know that it's Russian. However I admire the ethos in limiting equipment BUT how much better this would have been if we could have seen some results from the film camera, so please do the challenge..!
Proposal for a new "challenge"; use your camera of choice with some vintage lenses!
Like Canon FD, M42 screw mount, etc It is fun and they are not expensive (unless you go for a FD 85mm f1.2 …. or so).
Indeed as below, the Zenit (late model TTL model i think, 1976-85) is a USSR (Soviet Union) camera probably made by Krasnogorsky Zavod (KMZ). The mount is a M42 screw mount and the KMZ Helios 44M lens (44 M => "M" standands for M42 mount version) is a 58mm lens f2, with 8 blades. This lens is sharp to very sharp and can be used on modern DSLR and mirrorless cameras like the Sony A7, Panasonic GH5, Olympus etc. The adapters M42 => MFT/NEX/EOS/… are cheap and run between 6€ and 25€. The camera's and lenses are easy to find on ebay.
The only ruskie export….like Practica made in East? Germany.
Had that camera many moons ago and still use the Helios lens that came with it on my Canon 5Dmk2.
Where's Aarons Photo's?
My first camera was a Praktica MTL3 with a 50mm f1.8 Zeiss Tessar lens, built like a tank in East Germany and bought in December 1978 for my 21st Birthday. Fully manual with a match needle exposure meter. No auto modes. This was when you had to LEARN how to take photographs and understand the relationship between Film Speed, Shutter Speed and Aperture. I took some of my best photo's with this and scanned versions are still doing well in Club competitions even today. It also survived falling off the back of a scooter in Crete in 1980 with just a slight dent in the hotshoe. My mate who got me interested in photography, started with a Zenith EM. Perhaps a truer reflection of the abilities of both cameras would have been if you had limited yourselves to manual exposure, manual focusing and 400 ISO? This would have put the Canon and the Zenit(h) on a par with each other and IMHO would have been a truer comparison as the Zenit does not have any Auto modes (in fact some of the early ones required the use of a separate hand held meter,) and would have been restricted to a single film speed.
Well, believe it or not it was my first SLR camera back in 1977. It has 42mm threaded lens with the aperture pin and the cloth horizontal shutter. The early models did not have the pin for aperture so when you set the aperture the image comes dims to dark in the viewfinder.
And yes it was made in Russia. Gemrman's had similar name Practica., similar to the original Asahi Pentax or Chinon.
Crop sensor Canon camera with 85mm prime limited to f4 vs a full frame Zenit film camera with a 58mm f2 in an overcast landscape where the focus is not on fast moving objects should give the decisive advantage to the Zenit which has more creative leeway…cheers from Jamaica from a film and digital user.
it is russian , i use to have one
Did a bit of research. Zenit cameras are built in Krasnogorsk in Russia, just outside Moscow. They brought out their first DSLR in September last year. Equipped with a 35mm f/1.0 lens, it is priced at a staggering €5500. They try to mimic Leica. Can't see many of us rushing to the shops to buy one – ho well.
I have the Helios 85mm 1.5 – Love it so much, so much I might get the smaller one~
Yes it is Russian, I started off with one in the 60s
Your subject is really cute!! 🙂
I like the way you teach, thank you
Great video guys,in this day and age of the "All singing & dancing camera's" I think sometimes we need to get back to basics and relearn the art of photography either by switching to manual and using prime lenses. I often leave my Nikon D810 at home, grab my 30 yr old Pentax ME super c/w 50mm f1.7 lens loaded up with some asa I 200 film and see what happens. I must admit that finding film seems to be increasingly difficult.
You can always meter off the grass if you don't have a grey card handy.
I use Zenit lenses all the time on a sony apc…58mm Helios is about 87mm on sony apc…makes lovely images! 🙂
Zenit camera's are produced in the Soviet Union. Great video!