Micael Widell Newsletter #4: Best 15 Photography YouTubers, Large Format Bokehliciousness, using Drones for lighting, Elsa Bleda, and more
Captain's log
Over the past month we doubled in size again, from 298 to 625 subscribers. Thank you for being interested in this newsletter and welcome all new subscribers! I'm the Swedish photography guy on YouTube, who mostly does macro photography, in case you don't remember signing up for this newsletter. This edition is packed with my best 1000 words of photography inspiration and tips, as always.
Moon Landing Anniversary
In the beginning of the month I visited Tekniska Museet in Stockholm, which had an exhibition with 100 important innovations. On display was the original Hasselblad medium format camera model that was used in the Apollo missions to the moon. I guess it was featured because of the recent 50 year anniversary of the 1969 moon landing.
Several times earlier, I have considered getting a film camera, just to try the whole analog workflow. But what has always stopped me is
- I am a lazy person who cares about efficiency, and film photography seem to involve so much extra work than digital
- I have never really preferred or even liked the "film look" that some people claim you can only get when using analog cameras.
When I got home from the museum however, I stumbled across a gallery of beautiful photos from the moon landing mission, taken with the Hasselblad camera I had seen earlier that day. And for the first time, I fell in love with these photos. I decided to explore purchasing a medium format film camera. After digging around some more, I found this flickr page with thousands more photos from the Apollo missions.
In the end, I purchased a Mamiya 645 1000s camera with a couple of lenses, one of them the legendary Mamiya Sekor 80mm f/1.9 lens, which I have been been eyeing for a long time, due to it's plentiful and beautiful bokeh. I hope to start experimenting with this camera and film processing in the coming weeks and months.
Featured Photographer: Elsa Bleda
I have been following South African photographer Elsa Bleda on Instagram for a while. She has a mesmerizing ambience in her photos, often night scenes with a lot of soft interesting colours and fog. Go check her out on Flickr as well.
Favorite Photo I Saw
Anthony K took a very striking long exposure shot using a drone as part of the subject and as a clever light source. Love it. Go check him out on Instagram.
The Best Photography YouTube Channels
I was curious to see what Photography YouTube Channels you guys love, so I asked the question, and here is a top list of all your favorite channels that at least two different people mentioned as a favorite (number in paranthesis is number of mentions). Thank you so much for all the tips, I have added several of them to my subscriptions – it is always great for inspiration to have some now photography channels to follow :)
- Peter McKinnon (5)
- Sean Tucker (4)
- Thomas Heaton (4)
- Brendan van Son (3)
- Matti Haapoja (3)
- mitchellkphotos (3)
- Stewart Wood (3)
- Attilio Ruffo (2)
- Christopher Frost (2)
- Evan Ranft (2)
- Mark Denney (2)
- Mattias Burling (2)
- Nigel Danson (2)
- Nightscape Images (2)
- Tony & Chelsea Northrup (2)
Large format photography
During my research into what analog film camera to purchase, I stumbled upon the most bokehlicious photos I have ever seen – truly a unique look, taken with the Kodak Aero-Ektar 178mm f/2.5 lens. You have to see this! Especially look at these photos taken by Sandy Phimester with a large format Speed Graphic camera and the Aero-Ektar lens. A truly stunning and unique look. I might purchase this setup later in my analog photography adventures.
Most Used Gear in July #1: Ricoh GR III
Some of you might remember my review of the Ricoh GR II and how much I love that camera. I actually loved it so much that I decided to sell it and get the GR III, which is basically the same camera but with higher resolution, incredible in body stabilization which enables you to take handheld shots at 1/8th of a second with sharp results, better autofocus, and other small but important improvements and updates. Review video will come. The two shots below were taken handheld with the GR III.
Most Used Gear in July #2: Olympus 40-150mm f/2.8 Pro
I purchased a used copy of this very compact and lightweight lens, and have been playing around quite a bit with it during July. It is a great telephoto zoom, and I will probably make a review video about it in the future. Below a sample photo. The lens is incredibly sharp at all apertures.
Most Used Gear in July #3: The Laowa 60mm 2x Ultra Macro Lens
This is without a doubt my favorite macro lens at the moment, because it is versatile, small and lightweight, affordable, and super sharp.
My Best Shot of July
My favorite shot taken during July, was this flower photo taken with the Laowa 60mm lens in Kew Botanical Gardens, Richmond, London. I used a small speedlight and a diffuser to get the lighting effect. See this video for more details on how I took the photo.
My Published Videos in July
In case you missed one or want to re-watch, I published these two YouTube videos during July:
- 7 Foolproof Steps for a Perfect Macro Photo
- Macro Photo Walk in Kew Botanic Gardens, London (with Sony A7III + Laowa 60mm)
Goodbye for now
Thank you for reading this far, and see you in a month! Feel free to follow me on YouTube, Instagram and 500px in the meantime. And also feel free to tell your friends about this newsletter, and to reply to it if you have feedback or comments :)
/Micael