The life and photography of Mr Bunny Chow

Good Leap Day to you all dear readers,

today I’d like to talk about the contents of my Camera bag and my uses of those camera’s as well as talk a little about some of my inspirations.

My current camera collection consists of the excellent and versatile Fuji film HS20EXR for those of you who are unfamiliar with it I’ll go into a little detail. It’s what is commonly known as a bridge camera, taking the convenience of a compact camera (no interchangeable lenses) and adding in features of a full-blown D-SLR with full manual controls and an incredible zoom extending all the way out to 30x or 24mm to 720mm in old money. It has many fantastic features that I wanted when looking for a camera to replace my much older stolen Fujifilm S5000 a fantastic little camera in its own right. I could go into huge amounts of detail about all of the things that I love about it but I think it would be more prudent to point you towards the review that initially persuaded me that it was the camera for me. The only other thing I will add is that one of the most powerful deciders for me was the fact that unlike many other camera’s today it still makes use of AA batteries meaning I can have a couple of sets of fully charged high power 2500MaH batteries with me and still be able to just buy disposable’s pretty much anywhere in the world.

The camera that you have seen the most from recently on this site is a fantastic cheap little compact from Canon called the IXUS 107. Technically this is identical to the IXUS 105
in every way except for the fact that it was a limited edition colour (baby blue) and happened to be what was in stock when I was shopping with the insurance vouchers from the earlier mentioned robbery. I have to confess that I didn’t put much research into this camera before purchase, and whilst I am more than happy with the image quality it produces when you consider it’s price and pocketable size it has no manual controls and is happiest if you leave the settings along and let it figure things out for itself. The only thing I tend to adjust is that when I shoot at night I’ll invariably put it into black and white mode as this seems to reduce the noise common to shooting at high ISO in low light.

Lastly but I guess by no means the least I use the camera that is always in my pocket the some what ubiquitous iPhone4. I have been forcing myself to carry the little Canon most of the time but no one can deny the sense behind the quote “the best camera is the one that’s with you” I’m not a die-hard iOS man in fact I’m hoping to jump over to the Android ship as soon as my contract expires but there is a reason why the most used camera over on Flickr is the iPhone, it’s convenient, it takes great snaps right out of the box and there are dozens if not hundreds of Apps for making your pictures look arty without trying too hard. I for one am going to hugely miss Hipstamatic which at the time of writing at least is an iOS exclusive app which uses software to replicate dozens of retro films, lenses, flashes etc. I adore the random nature of what it captures although you can if you choose individually mix and match these elements to exacting specifications I actually like the hit and miss nature of its shake to randomise function.

So there you have it, the contents of my camera bag laid bare for derision and ridicule.

Anyway continuing my ramble about camera’s and photography I’d like to make mention of some of the people and websites that blogging has exposed me to. First on the list absolutely has to be the incredibly talented but approachable Nick Mayo of http://nickexposed.com/ he posts pictures and the stories behind those pictures on a daily basis. I’ve learned a lot from him and look forward to learning more.

Next up I’d like to talk about Bellamy Hunt and his incredibly fascinating site http://www.japancamerahunter.com/ Bellamy as you can probably guess from the name of his site runs a business out of Japan seeking out camera’s for clients. He specialises in old film camera’s but the main reason I want to talk about the site is the incredibly fascinating posts Bellamy and his guests write about all aspects of photography and Camera porn in general. They do reviews, suggest idea’s and just speak about their own experiences of what they love with such passion and incredible knowledge that you cannot help but be inspired. 

The last person I’d like to talk about is the incredible Mike Shaw who is not only a blogger over at http://mikefshaw.blogspot.com/ but more importantly for me at least he’s a huge personality over on Google+ you can find his profile here. Mike is an incredible man and incredible photographer, his portraits strike right at the core of human emotion and his landscapes are just beautiful. Mike suffers from depression and shares openly an honestly about this both in his stories and pictures. I really do wish I could understand how someone so compassionate and talented (he has over 700000 followers on G+ at the time of writing) can find the time not only to share his own stories but interact with someone like me. He was even generous enough to share my name amongst others as upcoming inspirational photographers. Wow what an honour, I can tell you that my email and google+ streams nearly exploded on that day, how he keeps up I’ll never know. I will continue to admire and support Mike through his troubles and hope that many of you join me.

This is turning into quite a ramble but I’m not going to apologise it’s what I do I’m afraid, I’ve been thinking about my photography a lot recently during quiet times when I’ve been out walking the dog, I of course would love to throw lots of money at it and buy copies of Photoshop, lightroom etc to go with the Leica rangefinder collection and big professional standard D-SLR with f1.4 prime lenses but of course I know that this won’t improve my eye one jot it will just make me lazy. Why bother chasing fantastic shots when I can just edit them later. Sure if I had the money I might invest in some of the above but I don’t so it’s irrelevant even thinking about it.

Something that I would like to do though is try shooting with lots of different camera’s especially older ones so if any of you out there have an old camera of any description lying unloved in a drawer that you’d like to donate to me I’d be most grateful. I have no prerequisites in this blatant begging process, I don’t care if it’s film or digital working or not, I’m sure that whatever it is I can learn something from it even if it’s just in the taking it apart and seeing how it all works inside because it’s beyond economical repair.

Otherwise how are you my friends of the blogosphere, are you keeping well?

I always love to hear from you and am getting pretty good at being interactive both within these pages and over on my google+ profile where you can not only interact with me but see lots more of my photography than I share here. I tend to post most of my pictures publicly so you don’t even need to sign up until you’re ready.

Thank you for taking the time to read this far.

Take care and until the next time

TTFN

Mr Bunny Chow

P.S.

The photo’s within the post are a few of the ones of which I’m most proud, and play no real part in the narative, I just like them. If you want to use any of them for personal use then please feel free, I’m happy for them to be published on personal blogs etc. as long as you provide a link back and credit.