shortscale photography thread.

[Mages]

WARNING, ESOTERIC MINUTIA THAT YOU PROBABLY DON'T CARE ABOUT AHEAD...

it just strikes me that scanning color negatives is a much more analog/digital hybrid process than I had thought about. I'm not all that interested in the processes of digital photography which is why I was trying to work with film. the way I'm thinking about it is like this:

B&W negatives are essentially an analogous representation of what the print will be. only in reverse. you can change it around in processing but essentially the image is there.

Slide film is essentially done. even more than B&W. that's the image as it's supposed to be seen. you're done. put it in the projector.

Color negatives on the other hand are very far from the completed image and will always require further processing. originally this would have been done in the enlargment/print process. a filter that compliments the film make is used to remove the orange mask and photo paper that matches the film is used to stretch the contrast range. by scanning negatives you are basically stepping in at this essential point of the imaging process and going digital. IMO, this basically makes all images from scanned color negatives analog/digital hybrids in a significant way.

[Mages]

ok, pictures.

these are with the Miranda EE. these are all manual, with no light meter.
exposure value is estimated and I set everything accordingly.









the last two were exposed for a couple seconds by setting shutter speed to B and using a remote cable.
the Epson Scan software would not let them come out correctly so I used Photoshop.



these are with the Smena 8M.
this thing takes some gloriously fucked up pictures.

flickr sets here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/25902022@N06/sets

Info on color developing:

► Show Spoiler

so in review, the color development process was a smashing success. I recommend it to everyone who shoots color film. anyone who can follow instructions can do it. the only unforeseen difficult bit was the scanning. all my rolls have come out perfectly fine by my measure and I fucked up the times by 30+ seconds in the first couple tries and agitated in only a sort of half-assed manner. I followed the instructions as demonstrated by the fellow in the video Hurb linked. the thing he doesn't show is the stabilizer stage, and there seems to be differing opinion on how to go about it. I simply run the film through a shallow tray of stabilizer about 8 times, then run it through the bathroom sink with photo flo, then hang to dry.

some other tips buried in the link Hurb posted are.....

• if hanging to dry in the bathroom, running a hot shower beforehand makes the air humid reducing dust in your negatives.
• photo flo is the same as dishwashing rinse aid (jet dry, etc.)
• one guy commented he had developed upwards of 40 rolls of film with one 500ml kit! He simply kept extending the developing times for the decreased efficiency of the chemicals.

Info on scanning:

► Show Spoiler

Hurb, Dan, let me know if you find out otherwise but as far as I've found, the nature of the beast is this: the only way to 100% accurately render an image from a color negative is through the print process. there are special complimentary filters and photo paper that match the specific film you are using. there is no comprable digital replacement for that. the digital process is all a bit of a shitshot best guess type of scenario that will always require a certain amount of subjective input to make sure the computer is doing the job right (aka fucking around in photoshop). the results are mostly quite good so it's not that much of a problem, except that you never know exactly what the image was really supposed to look like. oh well I guess.

[DanHeron]

The shots from the Miranda look really nice! I still want to develop some more black and white films and get familiar with the process before moving on to colour but I definitely will try it one day.

This way of 'scanning' films using a DSLR and a macro lens is quite interesting. The quality looks great but the amount of time it must take is nuts. If you ever want to print big it could be worth doing though:
http://www.petapixel.com/2012/12/24/how ... acro-lens/

Basically its taking lots of extreme close ups of the film negative and then stitching them together to get a hi-res image in PS. You will see in the article that the details and sharpness seems much better than when compared with the flatbed scanner results. I don't think I would ever bother though.

[DanHeron]

This rather fat cat has taken to living in our house recently:

[Bacchus]

This rather fat cat has taken to living in our house recently:

This is cool, the way the shape of the cat mirrors the shape of the tiles.

[Dillon]

I finally got my first roll of film developed from the Canon AE-1P I got earlier this year. In fact, it was my first roll of film ever. They turned out so much better than I expected, and I think I'll be shooting film for a while now, even though I have a much better lens selection with my DSLRs.

I'm somewhat convinced that Canon must've abandoned the FD lens line just to troll everyone, 1980s big business style, because the level of detail, and the smoothness of the out of focus areas, is way nicer than most of the EF lenses I've owned. And these particular FD lenses were entry-level. Maybe it's just the film?

The photos below were taken with Kodak Ultramax (Kodak Gold?) ISO 200, which can be had at pretty much any pharmacy or grocery store around here for cheap. I'd like to try something a little higher quality, though. Any suggestions?

Also, I plan on doing some street photography in a busy area tomorrow night. Will an ISO 400 film suffice for that kind of lighting without being pushed? Or should I hunt for some higher ISO film?

[Hurb]

Some lovely pictures on this page! Love all the film talk!

A friend of Lady hurb has a style/trendy website and asked to use some of my pictures for a diet feature. Unfortunately they are digital pictures but I guess I am sort of published? haha

It is funny how they took Lady hurbs words and just changed everything about them to point where the recipes don't even make sense haha The carbonara recipe is mine and it is lush, but the way they have done it would make it like scrambled eggs with spaghetti. Journalists eh?

http://www.styleparla.com/diet-delights/

[Dillon]

Yes, I love the film talk, it's so much more fun than digital I think I'm going to try developing color negatives on my own after watching just the first part of that video you posted. Congrats, by the way!

I just went to the local photo store and bought a 4-pack of Fuji Superia X800. I'm excited to use that (you might even say "super" excited ), especially if I get around to some of the local pubs I like to check out new bands in. It seems to be a very popular film for taking photos at small venues, and every shot I've seen online has been on par with or better than the results of my Canon 5D. Aside from that, I picked up a couple black and white rolls: Ilford Delta 400 and Kodak T-Max 100. It'll be my first time using B&W film!

Oh and I'm grabbing another AE-1 tonight (though not a "Program" model), with a 50mm 1.8 and 135mm 2.8. The entire package is $75 and I want the lenses. Can't hurt to have another camera at that price If it works, I'll use both AE-1s tomorrow night, one with the ISO 800 film and one with some 400 pushed to 800. Just out of curiosity.

[Hurb]

Yes, I love the film talk, it's so much more fun than digital I think I'm going to try developing color negatives on my own after watching just the first part of that video you posted. Congrats, by the way!

I just went to the local photo store and bought a 4-pack of Fuji Superia X800. I'm excited to use that (you might even say "super" excited ), especially if I get around to some of the local pubs I like to check out new bands in. It seems to be a very popular film for taking photos at small venues, and every shot I've seen online has been on par with or better than the results of my Canon 5D. Aside from that, I picked up a couple black and white rolls: Ilford Delta 400 and Kodak T-Max 100. It'll be my first time using B&W film!

Oh and I'm grabbing another AE-1 tonight (though not a "Program" model), with a 50mm 1.8 and 135mm 2.8. The entire package is $75 and I want the lenses. Can't hurt to have another camera at that price If it works, I'll use both AE-1s tomorrow night, one with the ISO 800 film and one with some 400 pushed to 800. Just out of curiosity.

I love delta 400! these are some shots with it







Never tried T-max, I really like tri-x from kodak so have never felt the need to try it, tri-x being grainy film tmax being fine grain.

Kodal portra is a nice colour film and pushes well.

[Mages]

cool. Canon AE-1s are cool. I read that Canon sold 5 million of them, and it seems they were popular for a reason: they take great pictures! what kind of place did you get the film developed? are those scanned negatives they gave you, or scanned prints?

I just developed a roll of Kodak Ektar 100.



I think the colors are pretty nice. it's not as flexible as the more consumer level films though. you really have to get the exposure right.

I've also figured out how to get a little better resolution out of scanning the negatives. you really have to take your time with each picture, similar to how you would if you were making a print.

[Dillon]

Nice! I'll keep that in mind about the Ektar. And yeah, that's the beauty of the A-series Canon cameras: they're plentiful and inexpensive, yet they take great photos. When they work, that is. They are 25+ years old, after all. The AE-1 that I bought last night only fired off a few shots before one of the electromagnets that holds the shutter release in place failed, so now when I advance the film, it also fires the shutter. It seems taking the magnet assembly apart and cleaning it might fix it. If that fails, replacement magnet assemblies are only $15.

They are also quite limited by modern standards. No aperture priority mode to speak of. And in the program mode, it doesn't display what shutter speed it's selected, only the aperture. But according to the interwebz, the metering system on the AE-1P is excellent, and the program mode works very well. So when I go out shooting with it tonight, I plan to use only program mode at first, to see how well it really works. It'll be a good chance to learn how to use AE lock, too.

Oh, I had the film developed and digitized at Walgreens, which is a chain pharmacy if you're not from the US. I imagine they're scanned negatives, as I didn't have prints made, and I doubt they'd make prints if they didn't have to. And I did get the negatives back of course.

[Dillon]

Got my first roll of the Fuji Superia 800 back from development. The results were largely underwhelming For one, I think even ISO 800 isn't enough for ambient lighting, like from street lamps or in a pub. Or it could be that the Sigma 28mm f/2.8 I was using just isn't that great, or it could be that the metering system on a 20-year-old camera isn't suited for indoors without a flash. But, I think it's mostly the film. I wish ISO 1600 film was more widespread. Or that the pro grade ISO 800 films weren't $10 a roll.

While the highlights and the colors are nice, the blacks lack contrast, so everything came out looking underexposed. Here's an example of what I mean. I metered off the beer taps but it looks more like it metered for the signs and lights.



Even in dim lighting such as in a restaurant, it looks a bit odd, I don't know how to describe it.



On the other hand it does work well for certain contrast-y things.

[Mages]

Got my first roll of the Fuji Superia 800 back from development. The results were largely underwhelming For one, I think even ISO 800 isn't enough for ambient lighting, like from street lamps or in a pub. Or it could be that the Sigma 28mm f/2.8 I was using just isn't that great, or it could be that the metering system on a 20-year-old camera isn't suited for indoors without a flash. But, I think it's mostly the film. I wish ISO 1600 film was more widespread. Or that the pro grade ISO 800 films weren't $10 a roll.

well I think lighting in restaurant or from street lamps is about an exposure value of 3 or 4, in a pub it's often even darker than that. with ISO 800 film and the camera at 1/60s (longest w/o tripod) and f/2 or 1.8 you are at an exposure value of 5. I recently experimented with pushing superia 800 to 1600 and it works really well and will get you to EV 4. to get pictures in a pub you probably need to set the camera on something or brace against a wall or something and go down to 1/30s or 1/15s. IMO it's best to use manual photography in dark situations because the meter is really just optimized for daylight photography.

[Dillon]

I suppose I really need to look into EV. Learning all sorts of new things with a manual camera IMO 1/30 is no problem handheld with a small prime lens like a 28mm or 50mm, but anything below that is pushing it. I rarely use shutter speeds much slower than that anyhow as it starts blurring subjects. I doubt the local drug store labs will push but I haven't really asked, I'll have to do that.

[Dillon]

OK, so I did do some reading up on EV. I'm so confused EV table looks kind of like this:

Code: Select all

  a  p  e  r  t  u  r  e     v  a  l  u  e
        1.0 1.4 2.0 2.8 4.0 5.6 8.0 11  16  22  32  45  64
s    1   0   1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9  10  11  12
h    2   1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9  10  11  12  13
u    4   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9  10  11  12  13  14
t    8   3   4   5   6   7   8   9  10  11  12  13  14  15
t   15   4   5   6   7   8   9  10  11  12  13  14  15  16
e   30   5   6   7   8   9  10  11  12  13  14  15  16  17
r   60   6   7   8   9  10  11  12  13  14  15  16  17  18
   125   7   8   9  10  11  12  13  14  15  16  17  18  19
s  250   8   9  10  11  12  13  14  15  16  17  18  19  20
p  500   9  10  11  12  13  14  15  16  17  18  19  20  21
e 1000  10  11  12  13  14  15  16  17  18  19  20  21  22
e 2000  11  12  13  14  15  16  17  18  19  20  21  22  23
d 4000  12  13  14  15  16  17  18  19  20  21  22  23  24

So, theoretically, at 1/60 and f/2.8, I would need an EV of 9. What I don't get is how that number corresponds to actual exposure. I mean, it would make sense that if the number is higher then the exposure is brighter. But that's clearly not the case, since, for instance, f/2.8 and 1/1000 yields an EV of 13, which in any low light situation would be vastly underexposed. I guess I don't get what the EV number actually means in the real world, or how to know what number you'd need for a given lighting condition.

I'm also not sure how ISO affects this. That table is for ISO 100...and from what I'm reading, you simply add the difference in stops (i.e. 3 stops between ISO 100 and 800). That means ISO 800 would yield an EV of 11 witth those same shutter speeds. Isn't that actually much "more" than necessary?

Edit: THIS helped a lot. Makes much more sense. I think I need a fast wide-angle lens That extra stop or two would get me to the 3 or 4 EV that's needed.

http://www.photokaboom.com/photography/ ... values.htm

[Mages]

well I don't know if this is technically correct but how I learned it is the EV is the amount of light in the picture.* like EV 15 = sunny day. EV 10 = something like twilight. EV 5 = well lit nighttime interior. EV 0 = ambient light from a candle or something.



*technically I think it is the exposure settings corresponding to a certain measurement of light, but it seems easiest to think of it as just, a measurement of light.

[Mages]

So, theoretically, at 1/60 and f/2.8, I would need an EV of 9. What I don't get is how that number corresponds to actual exposure. I mean, it would make sense that if the number is higher then the exposure is brighter. But that's clearly not the case, since, for instance, f/2.8 and 1/1000 yields an EV of 13, which in any low light situation would be vastly underexposed. I guess I don't get what the EV number actually means in the real world, or how to know what number you'd need for a given lighting condition.

right if you go from 1/60 to 1/1000 you are exposing the film with much less light. so this corresponds to to a scene that is much brighter, like say an EV 13 instead of EV 9. the higher the EV, the smaller the aperture, and faster the shutter speed. the more light in the scene to be photographed, the less light you want to let into the camera.

[Mages]

this is a fairly well regarded reference on the internets: http://www.fredparker.com/ultexp1.htm

it explains this whole topic really well. that's the method I use and it works really well for me. if you just skip through anything you already know it doesn't take that long to read.

[Bacchus]

That's the website I used when I started.

Then I found iExposure, which is an iPhone app which works as an exposure calculator where you enter your EV value and your film speed and it lets you know what f-stop and shutter speed. Whilst that might not be all that useful, it also has the same table of EV values as on that Fred Parker site, more or less taken verbatim.

[Mages]

Then I found iExposure, which is an iPhone app which works as an exposure calculator where you enter your EV value and your film speed and it lets you know what f-stop and shutter speed.

that's pretty cool. it reminds me that on the ilford website they have a wheel style calculator you can print out. we used it in high school.

here it is: http://www.ilfordphoto.com/Webfiles/201 ... 612113.pdf