Until then, I had not shot any film since 2002 when I sold up all of my film cameras.  Actually, that’s not quite true, I still have an APS film camera and little Polaroid Fisher Price thing lying around somewhere, but they’ve not been used since around the same time.

So, there I was.  Not only was I wondering around the streets of Liverpool shooting film on a cartoon emblazoned camera which had cost me the princely sum of £1, but I was also having fun.  Not the same kind of fun I used to have when I last shot film 7 years ago.  This was different.  Not only am I a different photographer from when I was back then, but I’d become so entrenched in the digital way of life I was still checking for the LCD review after the first few plastic, hollow shutter releases.

There’s something very liberating about shooting a camera which has no means of focusing apart from physically moving it within the suggested shooting zone of 1-3m, no means of adjusting the exposure apart from switching on the built-in flash, and no means of knowing whether or not you’d just ‘got the shot’ without dousing it with chemicals.  Heck, I didn’t even know what ISO the film was.

Being used to shooting in low light conditions and allowing auto-ISO to ramp things up for me, I avoided using the flash even in a dimly lit church.  The result was some photographs of bright white window shapes surrounded by very dark grain.  Not quite the serene scene I’d pictured in my mind, but it did make me smile at a time when digital would have had me reaching for the ISO button.

Technically, the photographs I took weren’t the greatest I’d ever shot, but there was an organic, almost unpredictable quality to them that’s so different from the precise, binary world of digital I was used to.  I had to have more.

I’d toyed with the idea of medium format before, after playing with some of the cameras owned by other Fab Collective members, but in the end I’d decided I didn’t want to invest in a whole new system.  So, I decided to get myself a used film body with which I could use my existing Nikon lenses with.  After a bit of research and deliberation, I started fishing on eBay and landed myself a Nikon FM2n; a fully manual camera which would even continue to work without any power source.  I’d decided I wanted to branch off away from the world of digital and auto-focus, back to something which was essentially the same as my first ever SLR; the Minolta SRT-101b.

Holding the FM2n up to my eye was like going back to the place I’d not been to for a long, long time.  It was good.  I’ve shot about half-a-dozen frames of XP2 so far and have no idea whether any of them are sharp or well exposed, but that doesn’t matter so much right now.  For now, I’m taking photographs.

One way to make these gradual changes more visible is to record snapshots over a longer period of time and then review them over a shorter period. Like drawing a line on a wall to record a child’s height over a period of years. Viewing the snapshots together in a sequence makes the change easier to see.

Photographs are one such means to record snapshots in time and I’ve been experimenting with creating videos made up of photographs of the same scene over a period of time aka time lapse photography. This is where individual photographs are played back in a sequence – as frames of a video clip – effectively compressing time and allow the viewer to more easily see gradual changes in a scene.

Here’s one of my first attempts at time lapse photography from my recent trip to the Lake District (Cumbria, UK)

To make this, I shot 999 exposures using the intervalometer function on the D700 over a period of 2.8 hours, from 06:50 to 09:36 12/09/2009. Then, I batch process the images in Lightroom and used them to create an image sequence in Quicktime. From Quicktime, I exported the sequence as a video file and imported it into iMovie where I added the titles and carried out the final export.

I feel like I’ve discovered a new room at home, since I started doing these time lapse videos. I’m only just starting to touch on the possibilities and I’ve a few more ideas to try yet. I just hope the shutter on my cameras last for the duration!

Quick tip: having a second body to use whilst your first is tied up shooting time lapse is immensely useful and helps to ensure you don’t miss other stuff that’s going on.

Out went the Canon EOS 5D and in its place came the Nikon D700.  So, why the big move?

• Improved high ISO performance. From everything I’ve seen, read and heard from others, the D700 has arguably the best low-light capabilities of current DLSRs.  As I mostly shoot in natural light without flash, being able to use higher ISO settings without significantly degrading image quality is a significant benefit to me.
• Automatic ISO selection. This was a hugely useful feature which I missed on the 5D.  Shifting in and out of low light conditions meant manually changing ISO along the way.  Forget to change from ISO 1600 when moving from a dim room into the bright outdoors meant unnecessarily noisy images.  Then there’s the reverse of moving from bright conditions into low light with ISO 100 and trying to shoot with shutter speeds likely to suffer from camera shake.  This might not be an issue for some, but it was for me.
• Up to 9-exposure bracketing. The 5D could bracket up to +/-2 stops, but only for 3 frames.  The D700 is capable of bracketing more frames which offers potentially better material for HDR.
• Live View. I’ve found this to be a very useful feature for those times when looking through the viewfinder is difficult (e.g. when holding the camera overhead) or just not the preferred option (e.g. when shooting candids).
• Electronic virtual horizon. For landscape shooting, I usually carried a hot shoe mounted double-axis spirit level to help ensure my horizons are level, but this meant not being able to mount a flash gun or radio remote release receiver.  The virtual horizon removes the need for a separate accessory and can be layed over the Live View image.
• Bigger, higher resolution LCD monitor. Compared with the 5D, reviewing images is a whole lot easier with the D700.  A larger screen with a higher resolution gives me a better idea of whether a shot was focused correctly and is sharp etc.
• Access to the Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8 lens. I love shooting landscapes and usually with an ultra-wide lens.  On the 40D, I used a Canon EF-S 10-22mm and on the 5D I used an EF 17-40L.  The images and reviews of the Nikon 14-24mm showed it to be a fantastically sharp lens, even sharper than some fixed focal length lenses within the same focal range.
• Improved autofocus system. With 51 autofocus points and more focus modes than I can shake a stick at, the D700 has the best performing AF of any camera I’ve used.
• Faster access to important settings. Having more dial and switches to control important functions such as autofocus mode and bracketing means less time hunting through menus.
• Built-in wireless TTL control of remote flashguns. Who needs a separate remote flash controller when there’s one built right into the pop-up flash.
• Built-in pop-up flash. Whilst it’s not something I’d use unless I really had to having the option of a flash on board is a nice option to have when you’re desparate for light and you don’t have your flashgun to hand.
• Ability to use lenses designed for cropped sensor bodies (DX) on a full frame body (FX). When I sold my Canon 40D and old-graded to the 5D, I was forced to replace my EF-S mount lenses with EF lenses.  I’m unlikely to want to use DX lenses, but it’s nice to have the option and should also make the upgrade path for existing DX users a little smoother as they’d be able to continue using their lenses before upgrading to FX lenses.

The above are some of the main reasons why I migrated to Nikon.  At this moment in time, Canon just don’t seem to be able to offer what Nikon can at this level.  The 5D Mark II was the obvious consideration, but with all I’ve researched the D700 was the better route for me to take because it seemed to be the better overall package.

For example, Nikon’s implementation of the auto-ISO feature is an excellent example of how they’re delivering to photographer’s needs.  Not only does the D700 (and some other Nikon cameras) let you specify a maximum ISO value, but you also get to specify a base ISO and a minimum shutter speed which it will maintain by varying the ISO giving you the best quality output for as long as possible.

For example, let’s say you set the base ISO to 200, minimum shutter speed to 1/100s and maximum ISO to 6400.  This means the camera will try to maintain ISO 200 as possible as long as it’s able to use a shutter speed of at least 1/100s.  Only when 1/100s becomes insufficient for the metered scene is the ISO increased.  Fabulous!  It’s so obvious and yet not every camera manufacturer offers this feature.  Why?

So, on the whole, the move to Nikon has been a wholly successful one barring a slight defect with the D700 I received and I’m very impressed with the lenses I’ve got.  The 14-24mm f/2.8 is very wide and very sharp.  The 24-70mm f/2.8 is also incredibly sharp.  Much sharper than Canon’s equivalent L lens, I’d say.  The 85mm f/1.8 is astounding as a portrait lens.  Its relatively low cost belies its sharpness wide open and its ability to blur a background.  The built-in remote flash control has opened up a whole new area of photography for me to explore and so far, I’m loving that too.

If Canon had produced a like-for-like equivalent to the D700 then I probably would still be shooting Canon now.  Trouble is, they had their chance with the 5D Mark II and, in my opinion, blew it.