my shameless confession

My name is Mark “nocklebeast” Nockleby and I’m a roller derby fan and photographer.

My interest in photography has waxed and waned and waxed again since junior high/high school when I shot with a Minolta XG-M.  I took a black and white photography course in college.

hydrant by nocklebeast (1989)
 

After a dry spell, I was seduced my “lomography” and plastic cameras.   

Walkin' the dog by nocklebeast (2007)

My experience with digital photography started with a couple of crappy point and shoots, which I mostly used to take photos of potholes. So I could more effectively complain about them.

Front Street pothole by nocklebeast (2007)

In the summer of 2007, I saw my first roller derby bout, the first round of the Rat City playoffs. It was epic.  I wrote a gushing fan boy account of the bout here: http://nocklebeast.blogspot.com/2010/03/it-only-takes-one-bout-to-get-hooked-on.html. 

For my choice of my first fancy digital camera, the seed was planted by a friend in Seattle, and in February 2008, I succumbed to Leica’s marketing and the notion of shooting with a digital camera with the least amount of computer in it.  One of the design goals of Leica’s first digital rangefinder was to use the same lenses as their film rangefinders, which meant lenses with manual aperture and manual focus. 

Does this lens work? by nocklebeast (2008)

In March 2008, I found a Santa Cruz Sentinel article about Santa Cruz Roller Girls’ first bout at the Civic. I kicked myself for missing it, and I immediately went online to buy tickets for the next bout.  The Civic’s website said that photography is forbidden for some of their events.  “Oh, I just got this fancy new camera! That would be a blast!”  (Never mind that rangefinders are supposedly not suited to sports photography).  I haven’t missed a Santa Cruz bout since (and I still occasionally shoot film at the bouts).

 Get the jammer  by nocklebeast (2008)

skating through trouble and green slime by nocklebeast (2010)


reaching by nocklebeast (2010)

I’ve also attended some Silicon Valley and Bay Area bouts, and some WFTDA tournaments, and I made it back to Seattle for one Rat City bout since my first bout there.

Pia with the star off by nocklebeast (2009)


Burlybot skates fast by nocklebeast (2010)


blowin' kisses to the crowd by nocklebeast (2008)

 
 Hambone, watching, waiting by nocklebeast (2009)


Dumptruck calls it by nocklebeast (2010)


jammin' by nocklebeast (2010)


Psycho Babble by nocklebeast (2010)


put me in Coach by nocklebeast (2009)

seeing the subject

This post takes its name from an recent essay by Sean Reid from his photo review site (http://www.reidreviews.com/reidreviews/). Reid's review site features reviews of various photographic equipment and general essays on photography. His essay touches on something I've been thinking about awhile now... my somewhat unconventional approach to derby photography (for a future post).

Now, long time fans of my photostream on flickr may be wondering how often I actually use the viewfinder of my camera. And they would be right in being suspicious about this, as I sometimes shoot nearly an entire roll of film without actually looking through the viewfinder of the camera.


biking in the sun by nocklebeast taken with a Hexar RF rangefinder, shot from the hip.

Now, most people don't shoot from the hip. Different kinds of cameras offer different ways of seeing the subject.  This is what Reid's essay is about. Reid lists five or six general types of camera with different kinds of finders.

One type of finder is of a camera that I don't have, the ground glass finder of the view camera.  The view camera focuses the image on a plate of ground glass. The photograph focuses and composes the photo looking at the inverted image on the ground glass (often using a tripod) and then swaps out the ground glass for some film and then snaps the photo.

Another type of finder is the wire frame camera. The finder consists of two rectangular frames, the first is an eyepiece that you press your eye up against and the second is just a frame that shows the camera's view.  Naturally, this sort of camera has a fixed focal length.  Reid claims that cameras with this finder haven't been made for quite some time, but several years ago, lomography.com offered a quad cam with this simple direct view finder made entirely of plastic.


they don't make wire frame finder cameras by nocklebeast

Reid's essay includes a photo taken from a 4x5 crown graphic press camera with such a wire frame finder.

The most newfangled type of finder is the electronic view finder, which consists of a little TV screen in the back of the camera or in an eyepiece.  Most people are familiar with this sort of camera and call it a digital point-n-shoot. Some digital cameras include an EVF and another type of finder.


a little tv screen by nocklebeast

Another type of finder is the "twin lens reflex" or TLR camera.  The camera has two lenses. The taking lens focuses an image on the exposed film, while the second lens coupled to the first focuses the image on a mirror which bounces the image onto a plate of ground glass.  Most TLR finders are viewed from above while the camera is held at waist level. I don't think anyone makes a digital TLR, but there's no reason why a digital TLR shouldn't exist.

 
why doesn't anyone make digital TLRs? by nocklebeast

Another type of finder is the "single lens reflex" or SLR camera.  The camera has a single lens.  The lens focuses the image on a mirror which bounces the image onto a ground glass prism which the photographer sees in an eyepiece above the lens.  When it's time to take the photo, the mirror collapses and the image is focused on the film or digital sensor while the view from the prism goes momentarily dark. Most often when people refer to "pro cameras" they're talking about digital SLRs.

 
Minolta X-GM

The last finder is the "window finder" which consists of a piece of glass or window.  The entire window may show the view that will be recorded or the window will have a "framelines" which show what will be recorded on the film or digital sensor and the surrounding area of the recorded photograph.  A subset of the window finder camera is the rangefinder.  The rangefinder camera has a secondary window which is coupled to the mechanical focusing mechanism of the lens.  When the image from the second window lines up with the image of the primary window, the lens is focused on what is in the center of the field of view.

 
Zorki-4K