Going Big Again
With my friend Mat Marrash opening his gallery show at The Aperture Photography and Variety Store in Tremont, Cleveland, OH this past weekend, I decided to bust out something completely new—my 4×5 sheet film holders that were loaded with (gasp!) color film.
I had obtained this free pack of 10 sheets of Kodak Ektar 100 thanks to the generous staff of the Kodak booth at last year’s PDN Photo Plus Expo. I took two shots – one of Mat and Lauren (which came out fuzzy due to a loose rear element on the wider-angle Komura lens), and this one of Mat and Mike:
Camera: Toyo D45M (4×5); Lens: Schneider Symmar-S 210mm f/5.6; Exposure: 1/4 second @ f/8; Film: Kodak Ektar 100, courtesy of Kodak.; Processed at home with the Unicolor C-41 kit.
I processed this using the Beseler color print drum (gift from Mat) on a Unicolor motor base (from eBay). I have tried a lot of different sheet film processing methods, but this one is by far my favorite. The only downside is that you can only process two sheets at once. This is hardly detrimental, as I don’t shoot very much large format, and I can do other things while the film is processing. Contrast that with the taco method (accidental light leaks) and tray processing (needs total darkness).
Hopefully this shot will start helping to convince people to let me take their portraits with my 4×5 camera.
Sorry for the brevity of the update. What I really want to do is record some Youtube videos, but those take some time to set up, record, and edit down. Patience, dear readers!
From Hasselblad…
First in a two-parter. I recently sent my faulty Hasselblad film magazine to David Odess for repair. Very not-cheap, but I sold a friend my Canon AE-1 to help pay for it. Why would I sell my AE-1 you ask? Well, when I bought it I had definitely NOT done my research and thought it was a mechanical camera. Turns out it needs a battery to function, and I’ve had a beef with it ever since I bought it. And I was sick of it sitting there asking me why I didn’t love it properly with it’s accusing eyes. Anyway.
The problem I was having was the occasional overlapping frame on whatever roll of film I’d put through the Hasselblad. I noticed that this happened once or twice, so I stopped using the camera until I had the cash (more than a hundred, but not quite two hundred) to get the magazine fixed. Fortunately, a call to David confirmed that the film back was all that I needed to send in – the problem is apparently never with the camera body.
Well, I got the magazine back on a Friday and shot a roll of film in it that night. It was a poker night in Stormstown, and I hadn’t had the pleasure of a poker night in a long time. Much to my dismay, however, the frames were still closely spaced. Not overlapping, but closely spaced. I even took the time to measure them, the average being 3.7 mm, translating to a 1.85-mm border for a roughly 60x60mm image. In my opinion, that’s too close for comfort. My latest camera, a Yashica Mat-124G, produces a much more comfortable frame spacing.
So I e-mailed David and he explained that he replaced some parts that ensured the frames wouldn’t overlap. But unlike the old Kiev camera I performed surgery on, there’s no adjustment for spacing the frames farther apart. You have to start replacing parts at that point, and it can get very expensive. Since the original frame overlap problem was fixed, I’m going to just consider the matter settled, even though I thought the frames were going to have a bit more of a buffer between them.
Of course, I’m going to keep my eye on the film that comes out of this camera, and hopefully there won’t be any problems.
Shots from the first test roll, for which I finally used my Unicolor C-41 kit:
Redscale!
There’s a fairly popular cult movement in film photography known as Redscale. I listen to the Film Photography Podcast religiously, and redscale film was discussed very early on – in episode one, actually – more than a year ago. (See John Milleker’s photo that sparked the discussion.) I originally thought the photos I saw were far too red, and wondered why anyone would want to shoot it. So I put it on my personal “back burner” of photography projects.
So what am I talking about? Basically, color negative film is loaded into the canister backwards – though to be fair, I suppose it could be done with 120 or sheet film too. This means that rather than sensitizing the light-sensitive emulsion directly, light must pass through the orange mask of the acetate base to reach the emuslion. This essentially gives you a severe red/orange filter for free. Theoretically, you could have a 100′ reel of color negative film that you purposefully wind backwards, but I’ve never seen any long spools for sale. Instead, there are a number of internet tutorials on how to redscale your film by transferring the film from one 35mm canister to another.
See the step-by-step tutorials I found here and here. Personally, I followed the steps in the first tutorial. Since I originally heard about the technique, I also learned that Lomography now produces pre-redscaled film for sale. But I didn’t like the idea of paying Lomography prices and not knowing what was going into the rolls.
So why did I finally visit redscale? Because as I saw more and more redscale photos, I saw some shades of green and blue. They were actually colorful! The tutorials above both recommend exposing the film one stop more than you the film’s original rating to compensate for the light lost to the acetate layer. But because negative film has such a mammoth exposure latitude, you can still get plenty of detail when you overexpose. Overexposure on correctly-loaded C-41 film is a common practice for wedding or portrait photographers to smooth skin tones. It’s difficult to do this with slide film and impossible to do with digital. I noticed that most images that I disliked had very rich blacks and fairly dense highlights. So, I thought that maybe a good solution would be to overexpose.
Then, I saw this comparison of exposure settings for redscale film. It is a test of redscaled Fuji Superia 400 rated at 100. Right off the bat, the film is given two stops of exposure compensation rather than the one stop as recommended in the tutorials above. In addition, it seemed like the more muted tonality I was going for is a result of further overexposure by a stop or two. So, I followed the tutorial with some Fuji Superia X-Tra 400 that I picked up at Wal-mart. The original film was rated at ISO 400, and I rated it at ISO 50 – a full three stops of compensation.
I shot two of my three rolls of film at the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear in Washington, DC this past weekend. When I came back, I took the film to CVS for a quick development ($4.35 total, I think it was). When I got my negatives back, though, I noticed that some of the felt must have come off and dirtied the film. So, my scans have a bit of white spots. Still, they look pretty awesome, I think. Note: these are straight scans from the EPSONscan software with just a little bit of color temperature adjustment in Adobe Lightroom.
Sharpness
A quick post to (hopefully) improve the sharpness of your film photos.
1. Use a tripod. This is probably the best thing you can do to make your photos sharp. Your hands are always moving, and that means your camera is always moving if you’re not using a tripod. Remember that a photograph always represents a “slice” of time, so you should do whatever you can to ensure that the camera is motionless during that time if you can. If a tripod is unfeasible, a monopod is also an improvement. Otherwise, hold your camera as steadily as you can while you shoot.
2. Use a cable release. More vibration is introduced when you use your finger to push the shutter button. With a shutter release cable, the button is pressed off the camera body and transferred either through a mechanical cable extension or electronically. Thus, there is virtually no additional movement when the shutter fires. An added bonus is that virtually all cable releases feature a lock in case you want to do very long exposures. (E.g., fire the shutter, go eat some pizza, come back, and end the exposure.)
3. Use f/8 or f/11. These are allegedly the sharpest apertures to use for lenses that narrow down to f/22. Sadly, I don’t know enough about optics to tell you why. I imagine it might have to do with diffraction being minimized. Anyway, assuming your subject is stationary, use a longer exposure time so you can use this optimal aperture. Note that a large format user once told me that f/22 is sharper for large format photography. I think both optima are toward the middle of the respective aperture scales for their particular lens.
4. Use the mirror lock-up. When you release the shutter, the mirror on an SLR camera flips up to let light pass through to the film. This introduces very small vibrations to the camera, and you’ll lose a small bit of sharpness. Most SLR cameras have a lock-up function that you can activate before opening the shutter so that you can alleviate the vibration before your image capture. The downside is that you can no longer use the viewfinder, so be sure to compose beforehand. Alternatively, you could use a TLR or rangefinder, neither of which use mobile mirrors.
5. Use medium format or better. Ok, this doesn’t improve sharpness as much as it does resolution. 35mm film can only capture so much detail due to its size and the size of the grain on the film. (35mm still offers way better resolution when scanned than most consumer-grade digital cameras.) Medium format or even large format has a much larger image area, thereby allowing more details to be recorded on the film. It’s sort of like upgrading from a 640×480 monitor to a 1600×1200 monitor. Slower film also improves resolution, as the grain is finer.
6. Use a super-sharp lens. I’ve seen sharpness tests using Rolleiflexes, Mamiyas and Hasselblads – all medium format cameras. The sharpness didn’t vary much at all. However, I can also say that my 50mm f/1.4 on my Canon EOS camera beats the living hell out of the kit lens that originally came with it. This, however, is the most expensive option I’ve mentioned in this list. (Assuming you already have a camera that shoots a larger format than 35mm, of course.)
Example photograph: This was shot on Kodak Portra 400 film. The camera was a Hasselblad 500 C/M with a Carl Zeiss 80mm Planar CF f/2.8 lens. I probably used f/11 or f/8 as the working aperture. The camera was on a relatively inexpensive Slik tripod. The mirror was locked up, and I used a mechanical shutter release cable. I’ve included the overall image, as well as one that shows a 100% zoom in to the 3200 dpi scan.
Impossible Film – Part II
The first results are scanned, and here they are:
This was my very first shot, and as the handy caption area that accompanies every Polaroid print shows, the subject was orange flowers. You’ll notice a profound blue shift throughout the entire frame, since the flowers end up looking yellow. In the lower right, there are some light spots that look a bit like cracked mud, and I’m wondering if that isn’t the old “killer crystal” effect in a lesser form. Also note the orange band across the top of the photo. You’re supposed to shield the negative from light immediately upon exiting the camera, such as by letting the film eject into a box. This band was exposed to sunlight for a fraction of a second, so I’d guess that’s what happened there.
I should note that since I don’t have an SX-70 camera, I’m shooting this through my One Step Close Up 600 camera, which is designed for higher-ASA film. However, the folks at The Impossible Project say that the PX 70 Color Shade works fine, especially if you set the brightness slider all the way to the “light” side, thus allowing more light to fall on the negative.
Exhibit 2:
This sign is something I’ve been meaning to shoot (due to the typo) for a long time, but I never had my camera on me. Now that I have Polaroid film on me again, I not only have my camera, but I’ve got a one-of-a-kind print in two minutes.
The lettering on this sign is red, which brings me to a real complaint – I seem to notice that red is noticeably absent from the PX70 color palette. The film is low contrast and has muted pastel colors, which is fine. But it seems that it just won’t reproduce certain colors – such as red – at all.
You’ll also notice more flowers of brightness similar to the “cracked mud” claim I made about the last photo along the bottom of this frame. There are also a few white dots and even hair-like cracks of brightness that sprawl across the frame. Very interesting.
The final shot I took of the day:
Here, all the problems I mentioned on the last frame are also apparent, especially the hair-like cracks. I took this photo at sunset to test the low-light potential of the film. The sky has a nice effect, and there’s very little shadow detail. You can make out a road, while shadows have an orange tint to them.
Now, it sounds like I’ve been making a lot of complaints with this film, but really, they’re just stability issues that I’m sure The Impossible Project is working on. The packaging even indicates that they’re working on a new and improved batch. So really, all I can hope is that the problems I’ve noticed – the brightness spots, the cracks, and the color balance – will be improved in the next release. They’ve already severely improved the Silver Shade films in a few months time, so there’s no reason to expect that these problems will continue for a very long time. All the problems are easily outweighed by the giddy excitement that you get when you realize that we have integral film for Polaroid again.
I’ll leave you with a scan from my Polaroid 103 Land Camera, taken on some of the last remaining 669 film in existence. It’s a photo of the Joe Paterno statue by Beaver Stadium, on the Penn State campus in State College, PA:
watching the band
Taken in Santa Fe, NM and Overexposed to ASA 100
Camera: Canon AE-1
Film: Kodak Portra 160VC
birds from a parking lot
Birds on cross-processed Fuji Velvia. I didn’t tweak the colors at all.
Camera: Canon A2, 50mm
Film: Fuji Velvia 100F
Chem: C-41 (Cross-process)
Film courtesy the Film Photography Podcast, hosted by Michael Raso (flickr user: michaelraso)
You can check out the podcast at:
www.FilmPhotographyPodcast.com
good luck
A piece of paper lying next to the sidewalk.
Camera: Canon A2, 50mm
Film: Fuji Velvia 100F
Chem: C-41 (Cross-process)
Film courtesy the Film Photography Podcast, hosted by Michael Raso (flickr user: michaelraso)
You can check out the podcast at:
www.FilmPhotographyPodcast.com
payphone
I just like the colors that the stickers add.
Camera: Canon A2 35mm
Film: Kodak Ektachrome Elite II, ASA 200, Cross-processed.
Chem: Unicolor Home C-41 development kit
conduit redux
taken on calder way in state college, pa.
cross-processed kodak elite chrome in my new canon a2. all photos were merely cropped and/or resized. developed and scanned by the local photo lab. i’m not really sure I like how they scanned the roll. Anyway, I just purchased an epson v700 scanner and should have quite a fun time figuring it out for my next series of film shots.
