An Ongoing Practice

I just felt like shooting manual in the last few days.

Using my old Canon FD24mm F2.8 on my XT1 gives me the best of both worlds.

Retro styling from the form factor of the camera and a fully manual operation Lens.

It’s a different vibe and discipline.

This way of creating images is slower - reaction time to a moment is compromised.

Zone Focusing is a beautiful thing.

My Aperture is set to F8 - F11 with pre-set focus distance of 1.5 to 3 meters. I make changes accordingly based on what I see and my relative distance.

This has been interesting because making subtle changes has become part of the technical practice. I noticed myself doing this without really being prepared to do so - it happened.

My brain or subconscious knows what needs to be done.

I am present to a different muse here; this way of shooting is a perfect meditation.

It slows me down in movement, thought and action. With Zone Focus I can respond quickly if I need too.

More often than not, I am just paying attention to the light and feeling it’s magic on life.

I love this.

Finally, I must say this combination a beautiful technical skill along with the magic of digital technology.

I am in awe of the image creators who only used a pure manual way of shooting.

It was all the had.

They got it right in camera.

Trial and error, constant adjustments until they knew it on an intuitive level.

I can only hope to come close to this level of perfection.

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