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Silver Alchemy – Xtol Plus Rodinal

There is a certain modern retro look that I have in my mind for a portrait project I have in the works. The Lomo 120 ISO 100 film AKA Shanghai GP3 looks like a possible film for the project For the developer I would like to use Xtol. Xtol looks good but seem to lack a bit of an edge. Xtol’s primary component is vitamin C and vitamin C is compatible with Rodinal. The idea (from apug) is that a pinch of Rodinal in Xtol adds a bit of edge definition which is normally absent because of the solvent action of the Xtol. So this might be just what is needed.

http://www.unblinkingeye.com/Articles/Rodinal/rodinal.html

http://www.apug.org/forums/viewpost.php?p=959820

New update on the process can be found here: silver-alchemy-xtol-plus-rodinal-part-ii

It’s a balance between grain and highlights with the Rodinal and shadow detail with the Xtol. The 2 developers just happen to be chemically and PH compatible. But Xtol is a solvent compensating developer while Rodinal is not.

I use around a 2 minute water presoak at the same temperature as the developer and standard agitation (first 30 seconds and a couple of seconds every 2 to 3 minutes thereafter). So far in an unscientific sampling it looks like I’m on the right track. Very happy with the results:

Kodak TMAX 400 “Xtol 1:2 + Rodinal 1:112 for 10.5 minutes 19c”
Xtol was meant to be the dominant component yet with the tmax 400 I can
see a definite difference in the highlights over xtol alone. I know by
my scanning histograms compared to previous work with xtol and TMAX
that the DMAX has increased with more highlights and midtone details
then what would normally be seen with xtol alone while the shadows are
pretty normal for xtol 1:2.

Fuji Neopan 400 “Xtol 1:2 + Rodinal 1:112 for 12.5 minutes 19c”
It is less clear that there is any benefit to adding Rodinal to Xtol
when developing Fuji Neopan 400 at box speed. I suspect that because it
is easy to block shadows with Neopan 400 at box speed using 1:2 Xtol
instead of my normal 1:1 Xtol the shadows are closing obscuring any
benefits of adding the Rodinal. Upping the Xtol to 1:1 seems to give
better results.

Neopan at 400 souped in xtol 1:1 plus rodinal 1:112 for 9 minutes19c

HP5 at 400 souped in xtol 1:1 plus rodinal 1:135 for 9.5 minutes19c
HP5 is a difficult nut to crack The first time was far too grainy. The
second time worked much better very sharp maybe even too much acuity.

Shanghai GP3 developed in Xtol 1:2 + Rodinal 1:112 for 15 minutes at 19c.

Shanghai GP3 developed in Xtol 1:2 + Rodinal 1:112 for 15 minutes at 19c.

Shanghai GP3 developed in Xtol 1:2 + Rodinal 1:112 for 14 minutes at 19c.

Shanghai GP3 developed in Xtol 1:2 + Rodinal 1:112 for 14 minutes at 19c.
Hard to see at this resolution but good sharp details with the snow
grains and just a touch of blotchyness in the deep shadows. Looking
pretty good but I need to get a better baseline before I can make any
conclusions.

Shanghai GP3 in Xtol 1:2 + Rodinal 1:100 for 10 minutes 27c, pushed +1 shot at ISO 160

Tri-X 320p “Xtol 1:2 + Rodinal 1:112 for 12.2 minutes 20c

Tri-X 320P shows good dynamic range and retention of highlight
details in this high contrast snow scene with only a slight blocking of
deep shadows.

Fomapan Action 400 in Xtol 1:2 + Rodinal 1:100 for 9 minutes 19c

Danger Lurks In Toronto Ravines Beware Of The Killer Giant Hogweed

Fomapan 100 in Xtol 1:2 + Rodinal 1:112 for 9 minutes 20c

Tri-X 400 at 500 souped in xtol 1:1.7 plus rodinal 1:100 for 9.5 minutes at 23c


Ilford Delta 3200 at ISO 3200 souped in xtol 1:2 plus rodinal 1:100 for 11 minutes at 25c (Pretty smooth for ISO 3200)

December 23, 2010

Google Analytics 8 Months On The Path To World Domination

My Photo Blog at blog.metrix-x.com has been hosted by Google for 8 months now so the data is 4 months shy of a year. The interactive maps are one of the more interesting aspects of using Google analytics to track visitors. From the world map you can click down to the country and then down to the specific town.

December 11, 2010
The New Kodak Portra 400 – Wasn’t What I Was Expecting – A Short Review

From My First Roll Of The New Kodak Portra 400 Shoot With My Mamiya C220

It’s not often these days of digital that a new colour film is released by a major manufacturer.

Last month Kodak released a new Portra film to replace both the Portra 400 NC and Portra 400 VC with just straight Portra 400.

What was I expecting? Maybe a ISO 400 film with the best characteristics of Portra 160 VC and NC with maybe some of the pizazz of the new Kodak Ektar 100.

What I got was a perfectly tame film. Good skin tones better then the old VC version of the film with slightly more saturated colours then the old NC version.

Scanning is extremely easy, usually I have to play around with the scanner black and white points for each colour to extract the whole dynamic range of a negative. Not so with this Portra even under difficult sun back-lighting it’s one touch scanning. The problem with the scans is that they lack contrast basically dull with all the information packed nicely into a smooth histogram,unusable without further digital processing. Once processed the results are rather good.

Portra 400 is definitely not a replacement for Portra 400 vc or nc it is a entirely new film designed for the digital age. This film fits the needs of a professional photographer that needs a film that works consistently well with their digital workflow. It’s not for those that want to develop and go directly to print. Yet with a bit of post both the new Portra and Ektar can make large prints that blow the DSLR out of the water in both colour and resolution.

Pros : Accurate skin tones, Sharp, Medium Saturation, Easy to scan
Cons : ~~Needs post processing to bring out contrast~~ update
Best Uses : Difficult Lighting, Batch Workflow

December 10, 2010
Lomography 120 Film ISO 100 Is Shanghai GP3
Last Saturday on a photo walk I found out that Toronto had an official Lomography store. Of course I had to check it out here’s a place that you can buy a $40 Russian camera from Ebay or $300 in the store. Interesting stuff but way over priced except for this 3 pack of 120 black and white film that was going for$10 taxes in. The store manager said it was repackaged Chinese Shanghai GP3. Surprisingly I had wanted to try some because I had heard some good things about the film.

Specifications:
Made in Shanghai, CHINA, for professional photography, practising photographing and developing.

The film is made by coating a panchromatic photographic emulsion on a polyester or triacetate film base.

It could be used both for professional and amateur photographers for all-purpose providing fine-grain at full tonal range.

Unit item weight:30 g

Suggested Developing time:
20C degree:

D76 stock – 8 minutes
D76 1:1 – 14 minutes
D23 12 minutes
Rodinal 1:50 15 minutes
D72 1:4 4 minutes

Made by the SMPIC Photosensitive Materials Factory of Shanghai, an industry leader with more than 40 years of experience in making photographic materials.

The parent company, SMPIC , was founded in 1973 and is currently joint venture partner in China with Polaroid and Fuji Xerox, making cameras and office machines, and is also a major producer of high-quality optical glass.

SMPIC makes their photosensitive films to very high standards of quality, easily the equal of the major international brands. Each boxed roll is heat-sealed in a paper-plastic laminate high-barrier wrap, and can safely be stored in a refrigerator or freezer without worrying about moisture damage.

Definitely Shanghai GP3 because of the edge code of “SGPFF” It had a slight strange plastic smell when I was loading on to the developing reel. I haven’t seen the punched hole near the end before. Also the sticky end of reel tape did not have any useful glue (make sure you carry an elastic band in your pocket), cheap backing paper with grey on black printing and a curl with enough springiness to act as leaf springs for a truck.

My first roll of Lomography/ Shanghai GP3 film.

This film is rated at Iso 100 and I shot the roll at 100 Developed 11 minutes in Agfa Refinal 19c this is a 2 stop push with no agitation after the first 20 seconds because the telephone rang and I forgot about the film. Except for one shot with blown highlights they turned out OK. I suspect the film should be rated at ISO 60, Nice tonality not that sharp. Light to medium blue dye in the pre-soak water. The film curls badly but doesn’t bow so it is still easy to scan. See previous photo for more details about the film.

My second roll I developed 8 minutes at 19c agitated every minute or so. The result was much better tonality also better sharpness for some reason.

Rare find in Toronto a Volvo C202, C303, Laplander or Valp

My favourite out of the second roll the tint comes from my scanning method to pull out more from the negative.

The third roll was developed with Xtol 1:2 plus Rodinal 1:112 for 14 minutes at 19c scanned using the same method as above.

Unlike Kentmere films it is a useful budget film to have in the bag for a slightly retro look.Flickr slideshow of my shots using Shanghai GP3
November 8, 2010
Using Olympus 35 sp Rangefinder For Night Street Shooting With Fash
The Olympus 35 sp (produced 1969-1976) had some interesting advanced for the time feature. One of the features is flash control: By setting the flash guide number (GN) on the aperture ring-dial the rangefinder‘s aperture setting is slaved to the rangefinder focus distance. The farther away the the subject is the more the lens opens up to compensate for light fall off of the flash with distance. For this type of event this method has certain advantages over an auto flash which is often fooled by bright or dark surfaces.

Add to the camera a small flash with a coiled connecting cable and this allows for some interesting handheld off camera flash use. Most of you need no reminding the benefits of using off camera axis flash over on camera flash. So far I have only used this for night street use but maybe I will try some Bruce Gilden flash in the face style shooting.

More of 2010 Halloween On Church St.

Contact sheet for the annual Dufferin Park The Night of the Dread. Here are the rest of the shots taken that night.

So ends the first stage of the experiment
Conclusions:

Aperture slaved to flash guide number and the rangefinder’ focus distance works well for getting good exposures.

Flash handheld off angle is better then on camera flash and you can still focus OK

For close work a flash diffuser would really really help and also allow a lot more background to show up.

For this use B&W is better then colour.
November 4, 2010
Art of Triptychs, Diptychs and Polytychs – Intuition Versus Intellect, Left Versus Right

A few years ago I started a small group on flickr called Art of Triptychs, Diptychs and Polytychs. The form fascinates me but I can’t help wondering how some of the contributers to the pool do such a superb artistic and aesthetic job of choosing their images.
I confess my own polytychs are not very artistic. I’m a pretty equal right brain/left brain type of guy. Unfortunately this doesn’t mean I’m balanced, quite the opposite at one moment of time I am either one or the other not both.

Image via Wikipedia

For me polytychs are particularly hard art form because as soon as I start to think about joining 2 or more images together the reasoning/logical side of my brain switches in blocking out any intuition and creativity.

I don’t have this problem with in camera double exposures. I either plan the 2 shots before I take the first one or I take the first shot and hold it in my mind until I find something that fits with the first shot as the second exposure. In either case when I’m photographing my brain is usually in creative mode. I have been practising doing double exposures for several years now so even the planning is subconscious.

September 18, 2010
Converting A Colour to A Black And White Image Utilizing Selective Colour Contrast Filtering

Sometimes you might want to convert a colour image to B&W. You have used the usual techniques like contrast and brightness curves and maybe even the channel mixer, you have dodged and burned but it still seems to have lost some of the details of the original colour image. Thats pretty normal because some of the details in the original are because of changes in colour not changes in intensity.
Consider a portrait where a person has no fashion sense or maybe Scottish and is wearing a red and blue plaid shirt. If the blue is near the same intensity as the red the checker pattern will blend in when you convert to B&W. Well the quick answer is to use either the channel mixer or a selected colour filter when you do the conversion this would either selectivity darken the red or the blue. But wait although the plaid shirt looks OK the skin starts to look blotchy, not very flattering for a portrait..
The answer is rather simple you selectively blend 2 B&W versions of the image together. One version optimizes the plaid while the other optimizes the skin. If needed you could add more versions to optimism additional parts of the image.

Original Colour Image

I am going to try to illustrate using a bad example, bad because the colour version from the MF film shot looks far better then the B&W. Note the bright red berries back-lite translucent in parts and the bright green yellow pallet of the background.
In this example I used the channel mixer to create 2 images plus a 3rd which is the luminance channel from the original colour image.

Left: Red Berries Centre: Green Background Right: luminance channel

The best (at least for this example) of all 3 images were combined together to give the final image. The berries in the left image was selectively combined with the centre image and finally the low contrast upper right corner was taken from the luminance channel.

Final B&W with selective contrast filtering

September 14, 2010
Fun With B&W Film – How To Do HDR From A Single Scan

Right side is a special colour scan of a B&W negative, the middle is a normal scan plus some dodging and burning. The right-side is a HDR image obtained with the 48bit colour left-side image. The right side is scanned in 48 bit colours where the individual RGB channels are adjusted for gain, offset and gamma via the histograms utilizing the epson software prior to scanning in this case the green channel is normal exposure the red is -1.5 stops under exposed and the blue is +1.5 over exposed. After the scan the RGB channels can be manipulated as a colour image or separated into 3 monochrome channels. You can then process as a colour image or alternatively as an HDR or with tone mapping software. Or as I mostly do you could keep it as a toned image or convert it back to B&W.

This being 30 years old Kodak Plus-X it does not have nearly the dynamic range of that of most fresh films such as tmax would have.

RGB channels are actually B&W tinted for visualization purposes only

The Ghost That Walks Beside Us is a direct manipulation of a 3 channel B&W scan

Casa Loma Stables – The gold tones are because of the scan RGB gains of (1.5,0,-1.5) The reverse of the blue tint above.

September 12, 2010
Fun With B&W Film – How To Get Duotone Straight From The Scanner

Left side is scanned in 16 bit B&W mode. Then duotone tinted in Lightroom. The right side is scanned in 48 or 24 bit colours where the individual RGB channels are adjusted for gain, offset and gamma via the histograms utilizing the primitive epson software prior to scanning in this case to give the red tint. The above film is 30 years old Kodak Plus-X!
Note: French lavender pictured above is now grown in some peach orchards because they repel a moth that is a pest to the peaches.English Lavender has a far weaker scent and does not have any of the same insect repelling properties.

September 12, 2010
Who Says Sunny 16 Can’t Lie

The title is a spoof on this 1959 Popular Science article Who Says a Light Meter Can’t Lie I doubt if this was the first article on the subject it certainly isn’t the last. Personally I use a good light meter mostly in incident mode. If it lies it’s because of operator error usually because I didn’t make up my mind before I took the shot on what the subject should be.

One of the proposed solutions is not to use a light meter. If you shoot film you have most likely heard of Sunny 16 Fred Parker’s The Ultimate Exposure Computer is the best reference I can find on the application. Sunny 16 seems to be a good method in normal outdoor nature type photography that is if you have some experience with the light in the location. Normally scattered light makes up only 10% of the incident light but this can change because of reflected surfaces and atmospheric conditions. How hazy, diffused or how soft can be a difficult measurement to make with only the human eye. As it was not a survival requirement us humans are not good at making absolute light intensity measurements, you need experience and references to adequately judge light in many conditions.

Most of my shooting is done in a city environment where tall building often shade out the sun, where scattering and reflections make up a higher proportion of the light then in the open air. Even here a friend of mine has learned to judge the light mostly correctly but sometimes a couple of stops off. He uses years of experience not sunny 16. In the golden hour shooting into the sun and away from the sun is one of the best times to get dramatic city scenes. But sometimes he is fooled and is several stops wrong.

When the sun is at 10 degrees to the horizon on a early fall afternoon in Toronto because of the extra amount of atmosphere or air mass (AM) it has to pass through there is about 1 stop less light then at noon. The science is well developed and you can go here to see the math and use their calculator. The factor depends mainly on global position, time and date.

Shooting into the sun you have to contend with a super bright background (the sun and sky) and reflections of surfaces like pavement, choices like highlight or silhouette. How much reflected light is getting back on the subject and so on. Shooting away from the sun both the reflected light and the angle of the subject to the sunlight can make up to 4 stops of difference. The amount of light falling on the subject varies around 3 stops depending on the angle of the sun to the subject. At 10 degrees to the horizon there is about 2 stops lower illumination between the horizontal surface for example a road and a vertical standing structure such as a person. Once again this interactive graphically illustrated calculator comes to the rescue to save the reader from having to view my hen scratching.

Tip: I learned to use a incident/reflective light meter by carrying the meter around with my digital camera. After about a month I could set my digital camera using the meter and get better exposure first time then using the digital: shoot, chimp the histogram and repeat method. At that point I knew I could rely on on the meter for all my film camera. Even with digital I still prefer the light meter in studio and critical lighting conditions.

Don’t forget that film is usually more sensitive to under exposurer while clipping because of overexposure is the bane of digital cameras.

August 25, 2010