SDN Photography Talk Thread

[J]

Here's some faux Velvia, although getting the sky as blue as the real thing would have required some work. This is just a straight saturation increase:

Sort of...I guess...when I shot Velvia it was in the style of Ken Rockwell, I chose subjects for maximum contrast and saturation, some of my slides are even richer and more saturated than that, I'm hoping the scans can get fairly close to the colours I'm seeing on film. We're currently researching and comparing various scanning services in my city, there's quite a few of them but few promising leads, they're mostly of either questionable quality or "do you really expect me to spend $250 to scan two dozen slides? Seriously? Get out!"

Anyway, I've now moved onto the Ektar 100 project, we were thinking about black & white but the prices were absurd if we wanted to make prints, like, even worse than the above for scanning slides. Yeah, no thanks, maybe if I were a large format fine arts photographer. Which I'm not.

So Ektar 100, I've read all kinds of conflicting reports about the colour, some say it's great while others complain it's too magenta and contrasty. An image search showed examples of everything, Ektar 100 was all over the place and there was no "signature" if you will to the film. Confusing. Well, it turns out there's a reason for it, through adjusting the exposure it's possible to get all kinds of looks to the film. So I now have a film which can be adjusted from soft portrait colours to cartoonish circus colours. Take that, digital! Hah!

[Marcus Aurelius]

Here's some faux Velvia, although getting the sky as blue as the real thing would have required some work. This is just a straight saturation increase:

Sort of...I guess...when I shot Velvia it was in the style of Ken Rockwell, I chose subjects for maximum contrast and saturation, some of my slides are even richer and more saturated than that, I'm hoping the scans can get fairly close to the colours I'm seeing on film. We're currently researching and comparing various scanning services in my city, there's quite a few of them but few promising leads, they're mostly of either questionable quality or "do you really expect me to spend $250 to scan two dozen slides? Seriously? Get out!"

Anyway, I've now moved onto the Ektar 100 project, we were thinking about black & white but the prices were absurd if we wanted to make prints, like, even worse than the above for scanning slides. Yeah, no thanks, maybe if I were a large format fine arts photographer. Which I'm not.

So Ektar 100, I've read all kinds of conflicting reports about the colour, some say it's great while others complain it's too magenta and contrasty. An image search showed examples of everything, Ektar 100 was all over the place and there was no "signature" if you will to the film. Confusing. Well, it turns out there's a reason for it, through adjusting the exposure it's possible to get all kinds of looks to the film. So I now have a film which can be adjusted from soft portrait colours to cartoonish circus colours. Take that, digital! Hah!

My faux Velvia was very much faux. It's just a digital image with a straightforward saturation increase. Real Velvia has different color balance and even more saturated colors. I couldn't ramp it up more because the color balance was wrong and I would have ended up with a too blue image, but I didn't have the time to do it properly, and matching Velvia colors exactly would be very hard based on a JPG image (it's a cell phone shot).

I haven't tried Ektar 100 yet, but it's good to know that you overexpose only if you want really saturated colors. In fact all color negatives do have that quality to a degree, but many faster ones can be overexposed much more with only moderate increase in saturation. It will, however, always reduce visible grain in the shadows. I usually expose my ISO 400 color negative at ISO 320 or 200 and only at ISO 400 if I need the speed (i.e. in low light). ISO 160-200 usually at ISO 100-125 but sometimes as low as ISO 50. For example the lowly consumer Fujifilm Superia 200 works nicely at ISO 50 (2 stops overexposure). I also like the lower saturation exposures of the Ektar 100. Looks like it can be a really versatile film.

About B&W printing: if you wanted the prints on a real B&W paper the prices are going to be high. Scanning and printing on matte color paper is much cheaper and usually yields acceptable results, although it is not the same thing, of course. Scanning B&W should not be any more expensive than slides. The fact is that scanning can be expensive, especially if you want anything better than 1200 ppi scans, and the place Rockwell uses seems to be an exception to the rule. Usually it is cheaper to buy a scanner if one wishes to shoot and scan more than a few rolls a year. I have the Epson V700, which can do medium and large format as well, even though it is not as good for 35mm as good dedicated film scanners.

[J]

I haven't tried Ektar 100 yet, but it's good to know that you overexpose only if you want really saturated colors. In fact all color negatives do have that quality to a degree, but many faster ones can be overexposed much more with only moderate increase in saturation. It will, however, always reduce visible grain in the shadows. I usually expose my ISO 400 color negative at ISO 320 or 200 and only at ISO 400 if I need the speed (i.e. in low light). ISO 160-200 usually at ISO 100-125 but sometimes as low as ISO 50. For example the lowly consumer Fujifilm Superia 200 works nicely at ISO 50 (2 stops overexposure). I also like the lower saturation exposures of the Ektar 100. Looks like it can be a really versatile film.

Interesting, I didn't know that. I kinda vaguely remember hearing somewhere that negative films should be overexposed a bit to reduce grain, I never knew that they also colour shifted and changed contrast & saturation with exposure. I don't think I took anything beyond simple snapshots with my parents' Olympus OM2 before they bought an automated point & shoot film camera so I'm kinda learning as I go here. Thank god for the internet!

About B&W printing: if you wanted the prints on a real B&W paper the prices are going to be high. Scanning and printing on matte color paper is much cheaper and usually yields acceptable results, although it is not the same thing, of course. Scanning B&W should not be any more expensive than slides. The fact is that scanning can be expensive, especially if you want anything better than 1200 ppi scans, and the place Rockwell uses seems to be an exception to the rule.

Well, yeah, I didn't think it would be quite that high. Then again they probably have to do everything by hand which would put labour costs through the roof thus explaining the exhorbitant prices. I could justify it for a few pictures which I'm going to frame & hang on the wall, speaking of which, I really need to get the second set of portraits of my friend & myself enlarged one day. These are big 6x9 medium format frames on old style Adox CHS 25, the photographer was absolutely enthused with the tonality from the film. All I remember is "jesus, enough lights already!" I guess a 25 speed film will do that.

[Marcus Aurelius]

Interesting, I didn't know that. I kinda vaguely remember hearing somewhere that negative films should be overexposed a bit to reduce grain, I never knew that they also colour shifted and changed contrast & saturation with exposure. I don't think I took anything beyond simple snapshots with my parents' Olympus OM2 before they bought an automated point & shoot film camera so I'm kinda learning as I go here. Thank god for the internet!

The color shifting is highly dependent on the film. In some cases you can overexpose as much as you like and the effect is barely noticeable. The Ektar 100 seems to be a pretty extreme case. It probably has something to do with the fact that it's based on the Kodak Vision 3 cine film tech rather than any earlier still film. One stop overexposure will usually not have much effect on colors, but much more on grain. I also have not seen too much changes in contrast. Overexposing will normally in fact reduce the apparent contrast, since it lifts the shadows up but will not blow the highlights very easily with most color negatives.

Well, yeah, I didn't think it would be quite that high. Then again they probably have to do everything by hand which would put labour costs through the roof thus explaining the exhorbitant prices. I could justify it for a few pictures which I'm going to frame & hang on the wall, speaking of which, I really need to get the second set of portraits of my friend & myself enlarged one day. These are big 6x9 medium format frames on old style Adox CHS 25, the photographer was absolutely enthused with the tonality from the film. All I remember is "jesus, enough lights already!" I guess a 25 speed film will do that.

Have you considered shooting Kodak BW400CN or Ilford XP2 Super? They are chromogenic B&W films which are processed in standard C-41 process. Very nice films with low contrast and huge exposure latitude as well as a lot of dynamic range. Contrast can be increased digitally, if you want more contrasty shots. They have a pretty unique look which is different from real "silver" B&W, but pretty nice.

CHS 25 is reportedly a nice film for that 1950s look. The big manufacturers (or even Ilford) no longer make such films. I haven't tried it personally, since I'm lazy to develop myself, which you have to do with real B&W. Labs use one developer for all film types, which rarely works very well with B&W (well, if you shoot only T-Max it may work acceptably).

[The Grim Squeaker]

What do you use to frame your prints? (A4-A2 sizes)

(I want to print out a number of prints from Hawaii and the like, and framing them straight from the shop is quite expensive. I want to try doing it myself, despite a lack of handycraft skills, and i'm thinking of good, cheap, easy to do framing options - Kappa, canvas, wood, etc').

[aerius]

Since I used to work in a picture framing store, I can tell you that there's no cheap way to do it. You can't really go down to the Home Depot, buy $10 of materials and make picture frames out of them. You can make picture mounts (basically, gluing the picture to a rigid board or board & frame setup) but not proper frames since you need glass & matting boards for that.

The cheapest way is to buy standard size framing kits from the store and then mount & frame the pictures yourself. The problem here is that standard sizes may not give you the crop you want on the picture so you may need to do some work in Photoshop to adjust the picture to fit the frame.

[Marcus Aurelius]

The cheapest way is to buy standard size framing kits from the store and then mount & frame the pictures yourself. The problem here is that standard sizes may not give you the crop you want on the picture so you may need to do some work in Photoshop to adjust the picture to fit the frame.

Yeah, it's the cheapest way, but there are also aspect ratio independent DIY systems like the Hahnmühle Galerie Wraps:

http://www.hahnemuehle.com/site/en/216/ ... wraps.html

I have not tried that myself, but I know people who have and they said that it provides pretty good value, although it's not exactly cheap, either. It does not seem to require much handcraft skills and you can probably get it right the first time if you just follow the instructions carefully. I don't know about availability in other countries than Finland and obviously Germany, but probably you can order them over the 'net regardless.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

ARe there any good articles and websites that go over the general overview of the various film?

[J]

I think I started here or a page which was very similar to it. Afterwards I went to the Fuji & Kodak websites to browse their entire catalogues and used google to find reviews and pictures samples of each of their films. I also spent some time on Picasa & Flikr typing in the names of various films to see even more samples.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Hmm.. I guess I will go try out all the usual films like Velvia, Provia and if I can find them, Ektar, and some of the B&W films like Tri-X and Neopan.

Is the Superia any good?

Any recommendations on a light meter? Thinking of a Sekonic 308s.

[J]

I would not advise starting off with Velvia as it's a very unforgiving and challenging film to expose properly. I managed to get away with it since the meter on my camera had the perfect metering pattern for the scenes I was shooting plus I used a compact digital camera to gauge the scene contrast before shooting with my SLR. Without the compact I ruined around 1/3 of my pictures. Not good.

Superia I think will depend on your local photo labs, the ones in my area suck with Fuji's lower speed films (too green & washed out) even though they all use Fuji machines. They do a pretty nice job with Kodak's films though, the prints come out well and I don't need to futz around in Photoshop to make them look good.

I can't help with light meters, unfortunately, my camera has one and it works, and that's all I know about them.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

The spot metering on my Bessa R2M is a pain to use in low light conditions. I tried using a Iphone light meter software, but it has its limits.

I think I need to invest on a good meter.

Is Kodak Gold the Superia equivalent? I am trying out some Afga Vista and APX films at the moment. I'll see what they turn out.

[aerius]

Is Kodak Gold the Superia equivalent?

I think so, I haven't used either of them since around 2005 so they might've changed things since then. I got better results from Kodak Gold in general, prints from either film could vary a lot depending on the lab but Kodak was more consistent and I liked the warmer colours better. To be honest there's so much variation in the way labs print up negative films that you're better off finding a film they can print well unless you're scanning the negatives yourself, the variations in lab prints is often larger than the differences due to film brands & types.

[Marcus Aurelius]

New capture and printing process agnostic photography forum:

Digital Photography Users Group

Despite the name the site is intended for all kinds of photography discussions, although the primary focus group is probably people who shoot film and scan it, in other words the so called hybrid process, since this site replaces the old hybridphoto.com site. However, pure digital discussions are naturally welcomed as the name indicates, and discussions about traditional analog printing are allowed, even though http://www.apug.org is probably a better place for them.

I thought this might be of interest to people here, since we seem to have quite a lot of people doing both hybrid process and digital capture.

[aerius]

Nice. I'll check out the site and try to pick up a few tips here & there. My photography's ground to stop recently since I'm having too much fun doing other things.


In other news, Schneider-Krueznach and Zeiss have joined the micro 4/3 group. The Olympus rep at the camera show last fall said there was a professional version of the PEN system under development, looks like Zeiss and Schnieder will be making lenses for them. I don't know if I want to see the sticker prices though, you can bet it won't be affordable.

[Bounty]

Brand-spanking new Pentax K-x with 18-55 lens. We're gonna have fun together.

[Marcus Aurelius]

In other news, Schneider-Krueznach and Zeiss have joined the micro 4/3 group. The Olympus rep at the camera show last fall said there was a professional version of the PEN system under development, looks like Zeiss and Schnieder will be making lenses for them. I don't know if I want to see the sticker prices though, you can bet it won't be affordable.

Well, not affordable in the same way some other lenses... The word on the street is that they will probably just port some of their video, cine and Leica M -mount lenses to mFT without bothering with AF or any that stuff. The ZM (M Mount) lenses are not terribly expensive, being manufactured by Cosina in Japan, but Olympus or Panasonic lenses are still going to have much better value for money. Some of the Schneider & Zeiss cine lenses on the other hand... well, they're meant for professional productions

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Not all the M mount lenses work entirely well on MFT, especially the wide angles. Any purple fringing etc. will become very obvious because the sensor magnifies the center of the image.

[J]

Brand-spanking new Pentax K-x with 18-55 lens. We're gonna have fun together.

Pretty! Looks very film like.

Also, did you get it in bright pink?

[Bounty]

I was hoping to find a dark-green one, but they only had the black version left. Did get a nice discount, though.

[aerius]

I'm going to a sex show next week. They're going to have naked strippers and burlesque shows on the stage, not exactly my usual photographic subjects. I think I'll be using film for the most part since a)my film camera has a much faster lens and b)film is more forgiving with the whacko lighting they're going to have with the stage shows.

Should be pretty fun.

[The Grim Squeaker]

I won the University/Campus contest for photography, winning places 1-7 (out of 11) respectively
The 7 photos are printed, framed and on the walls of the all new students' "lodge"/hut.

Yay me .

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

The Fuji x100 samples are sending my mouth watering away.

http://www.flickr.com/groups/x100/

[Marcus Aurelius]

The Fuji x100 samples are sending my mouth watering away.

It's a nice camera, but the price... I really couldn't justify spending US $1000 on it when you can get something like the Olympus ZX-1 for half the price. If it was $700, it would be a different matter.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

The Fuji x100 samples are sending my mouth watering away.

It's a nice camera, but the price... I really couldn't justify spending US $1000 on it when you can get something like the Olympus ZX-1 for half the price. If it was $700, it would be a different matter.

It has an APS-C sensor though compared to the small one the Olympus ZX-1 has.