Getting started

I've been working hard over the last few weeks to find a pleasing way for connecting my tumblr with this blog for being able to let tumblr be a photo-only publishing website with links to this blog for those who want to read a few insights, too. Here are the stories, my thoughts and many more to come. Some insights for equipment, stories, photo-editing and I'm planing to present a few of my most inspirational photographers at the moment as well as some very interesting blogs and websites I have inside my bookmarks.

To start with here is the first shot of a large series of travel-photography I did this year. It's probably the first real travel shot of any photostory as you are finally sitting inside the plane, waiting for take-off and thinking about the wonderful things you are going to discover within the time of your journey or travel adventure.

I will be mixing this up with some photos I took recently while carrying my camera with me. If you have any questions regarding editing, gear or getting featured, feel free to contact me by writing either a comment or sending me a short message via twitter. Make sure you're using one of the few following options below or via tumblr and twitter to get the latest updates as soon as they arrive here.

Heavy Rainfall in South of Germany

http://martinlux.tumblr.com/post/51877964945/heavy-rainfall-in-south-of-germany

Over the last two or three days one half of the country was faced with an incredible amount of water coming from above and filling the rivers throughout the region. At the moment there are still a few places where the situation is under high-alert, because the large amount of water still fills up the bigger rivers like the Rhine or Donau. Yesterday I had a meeting around noon and left together with my camera. On my way back I stopped next to the road at a place where there's usually no water on the fields. This day there was a wonderful sea with some very cool reflections. Working with one lens and focal-length only was a very inspiring feeling and I'm finally pretty happy with the results for a little unexpected photo experience. Enjoy!

PS: There is a second announcement today. I redesigned and renamed my blog and my tumblr-page together with a new and fresh logodesign. Together with the recent changes on the new flickr I'm finally able to use it as a storage base for the blog content uploading the same data that I'm using on tumblr. This makes me really happy, because I wanted something where I can write a bit more as well as a photo-only tumblelog. So from today on, there won't be any larger texts on tumblr, but only a link below every photo or photostory that can me visited here on blogger.

Welcome to Inside the Framelines! Don't forget that the website URL has changed, too! It's now http://insidetheframelines.blogspot.com/. You can still use the general http://www.pholux.com/.
If you are on tumblr you can follow here: http://martinlux.tumblr.com/

My first Film experience

If you followed me on Instagram or Twitter you might have noticed that inspired by some photographers I'm in contact with and based on my own interests that actually came up using VSCO Film for Digital Photography I bought a medium format film camera together with a 80mm F2.8 standard lens. For the beginning this should be enough to have some fun because this "beast" is really heavy and built like a tank but it actually has the best viewfinder I've ever used in my short life. It's way better than the 5D viewfinder and it's brighter, too.

So when I bought the camera, the weather kept staying really bad for the following weeks. I didn't want to waste some film shots on stupid weather but I always had in mind that some day I really needed to bring the camera out into the fields.

I'm staying at home at the moment for the exams-period at university and there isn't really any big city life around but when I close the door behind me, I'm actually standing in the middle of pure nature.

So one day, while I was studying for my last exam and wanted to take a short break, and instead of doing sports, I selected one film and went out for a one hour photography break. On this day I took a roll of Fuji Reala 100 with me. I bought it a few days before, knowing that it was discontinued last year but it was a sunny day and I wanted to take some shots at wide open apertures to see how the 80mm looks like on medium format film. Actually it's a 50mm equivalent compared to 35mm film. My negatives are 6cm x 4.5cm big, so it's called a 645 camera.

I'm really happy with the results I got back today after it took a little bit more than one week to get them developed and scanned. In the near future I want to scan the negatives myself, so I have to invest in some good scanning equipment. This time I wanted some reference for low-res scans like my lab offered me. C-41 developing and scanning for 13x18cm at 300dpi was 20€. Developing only is just 5€, so much more affordable if you scan the film yourself.

I cropped the black film frame away on most of them as they didn't scan the whole frame with the Fuji imprint. The originals are at about 2515 x 1830 Pixel. Enough for web usage I think but decide for yourself.

The last one is the actual film shot of the photo I made through the viewfinder using my iPhone on the first photo of this post, just to show you how good it already looks like through the viewfinder before you press the shutter release. On 35mm DSLR's I'm used not to see the real depth of field below F2.8 if you're using a 50 F1.4 for example. I then normally switch into liveview mode to see how thin it really is. 80mm F2.8 on medium format 6x4.5cm has almost a depth of field like 50mm F1.8 on 35mm but in this camera, you really see how strong the out of focus part is and that's the reason why it gives you an almost 3D impression while looking through the viewfinder.

I hope you liked the results of my little film adventure!

Martin