Blog

2012 Was The Year Of The Dragon

Gone Walkabout Up Country As Almost No Snow In Toronto

Toronto Islands  In January

The Diffusion Of Occupy Toronto Into The Collective Memory 

Trying Out a Couple of New For Me Medium Format Cameras

From The Mamiya RZ67

Hasselblad 500cm

In and Around the Streets Of Toronto

A Couple Of Double Exposures For Old Times Sake

In And Around The Streets Of Paris

Some Portraits And Modeling

Some Countryside

The Year Wouldn’t Be Complete Without Some Strangeness 

Fall Path

My blog on Plustek scanner mentioned my purchasing of the scanner software Vuescan to replace the software that came with the scanner. Up to now I have avoided using it for my epson v500 as I find the epson scanner software very easy to use. For a change I decided to try the Vuescan DNG output. DNG is equivalent to a RAW file only in a Adobe format. This turns out to have several advantages if you happen to own Lightroom or Photoshop.

• You don’t have to fuss with scanner settings for each individual image (Just set gain and base colour on an unexposed part of the negative once per roll)
• You can extract and save all the information that the scanner can provide in a standardized archival form
• Fits into Lightroom’s non destructive workflow so reprocessing does not degrade the scan.
• Merges your film and digital workflow
• You can make and apply your own colour profiles, curves, fx and other post processes as many times as you want
• You start out with a RAW file that has more information and less noise then a conventional tiff scan with some curves applied during the scanning phase

Warning the Vuescan DNG has a linear gamma of 1 the same as a scanner so opening up a file out side of a gamma aware program will result in an image seeming to have a very strange contrast curve.
New note on Vuescan/Epson V500 here.

For Pixel Peekers

Have a look at this example of 35mm Nikon FMn2 105mm hand held street portrait on HP5 film developed in Xtol + Rodinal and scanned on my Plustek 7400

Original scan from the Plustek B&W scanned as a 48 bit tiff

1:1 with some slight sharpening in post

Lomography DigitaLIZA

I have to give the Lomography DigitaLIZA  120 Format film holder a 4 out of five rating compared to the epson holder 2.4/5 rating. It’s so much better for keeping curly film flat. It’s also easy to load the film.

Tips:

• For the digitiliza make up a template that you can place on your scanner bed to make it easy to align the Digitaliza with the scanner bed (I made mine out of a stiff cardboard looks like a thick L) be careful not to cover the calibration area of the scanner
• I use a rocket blower rather then canned air to blow any dust off the negative. 
• A pair of silk inner liner gloves (from a sports or outdoor shop) are much better then cotton gloves for handling negatives

• Urban
  environment
• Range
  of distances: from up close and personal to across the street. (Across the
  street being more urban life scene less traditional street.)
• The
  subject should scream life and humanity all those personal quirks and
  everyday little and big things that make us human
• The
  subject does not have to be a person or persons regardless it does have to
  evoke an image of humanity
• There
  has to be some transit nature to the subject. An example: A half eaten ice
  cream cone melting on a pavement evokes memories and tells a story
• Generally
  the single photograph should stand by it’s self even when it’s included in
  a larger photojournalist type story. Whether or not the single image shows
  truth in the photojournalist sense is not relevant.

• Beach
  scenes; nature scenes, country roads; Architecture, statues and art as the
  primary subject.
• Static
  objects including empty streets (too obvious and trite) although fog
  street scenes are tempting
• Road
  traffic where the cars, trucks … are the subject even is it’s a long
  exposure and shows pretty light painting effects
• Too
  much staging although I hate getting into the street portrait debate

• Sometimes
  a backside is just a backside and a snapshot is just a snapshot, trite is
  trite in whatever guise
• Geometric
  organizations and patterns, can be really interesting but if too clinical
  and clean without the grit it’s more of an abstract
• Sometimes
  a sign mixed with people work as street, it depends if the subject is the
  people rather then mostly the sign.

Most important: If you see a shot take the shot! If you take a shot then consider staying a minute or two and taking another the shot from several different positions and angles. Worry about any definitions of what is or is not street afterwards,

By my definition here are some borderline Street photographs. Except for
the first one they all came from the same roll of film. Remember there is
no right or wrong answer.

 

Robocall: “Democracy Can Kiss My Shiny Metal Ass”

Body Language

Freshly Squeezed

At The Bay

In my first review of the new Kodak Portra 400 I had one negative about the film

Cons : Needs post processing to bring out contrast 

Turns out there is a splendid work around: Unlike most other colour negative films Kodak Portra 400 shooting at ISO 640 and developed pushed 1 stop in normal C41 chemistry really brings out the contrast  and colors. These days this is my preferred way of using the film.  The dynamic range (contrast ratio) is increased at the expense of a slightly decreased latitude. In addition an extra 2/3 to a stop of increased ISO really helps out in hand holding medium format cameras.

Beware that unfortunately not all labs will correctly push c41 films.

Kodak Portra 400 Shot at ISO 640 and pushed one stop in C41chemistry

Slide show of some more pushed Kodak Portra 400

Cross processing is simply developing film in a different process then it was intended to be processed. The most common type of cross processing is developing slide film as colour negative film. Normal slide film is processing is called E6 and normal colour negative film processing is called c41,

If you are interested here is a slide show of some of my slide film cross-processed in c41.

Also here is my blog posting exposing some of the myths of cross-processing:

Now days there are plenty of actions that try to duplicate the “Cross-processed” look. But it turns out much of what we consider the cross processing look and feel
is as a result of a lab scan as opposed to a printed photograph. Mini lab scanners when scanning cross processed film as a
normal c41 assumes a nonexistent orange base plus a normal
colour channel gamma.

I am interested in duplicating the look of cross processing by back engineering a normal image back to a faux cross processed negative. Just for fun after scanning I converted a
Portra 400 negative film to a cross processed slide by reversing the
result and then reversed the negative back to a positive assuming a
none existing orange base that a regular negative film would have.

This is my first attempt in using a model rather then a canned action:

Original Photo

Faux Cross Processed