Abandoned Rural Home
October 31, 2011
I’m really loving this Autumn light. We had our first day of snow today but hopefully we’ll get to see light like this for another few weeks. This was shot on some expired Kodak 400NC that Noah Addis gave me when he sold me his Mamiya 7II system. The cross curves are pretty strong giving some very blue/cyan shadows and warm hilights. The effect is of a benefit in this picture.
Comments (1) | More: Medium Format, Photography, Rural Alberta
Diptych of Light
October 27, 2011
These were shot a couple weeks ago and the autumn foliage is now almost gone. Frost is on the ground every morning but this wonderful yellow light is still here. I sold my Mamiya RB67 Pro-S but I had luckily shot my last roll with that system capturing these images. I shot some good photographs from it but it’s gone on to another user in exchange for a Mamiya 7II. I’ve wanted something with symmetrical lenses similar to what I shoot when using my 4×5 view camera and it appears as though the Mamiya 7 rangefinder system can provide that same image quality at a scaled down size and weight.
Kodak 160VC film, scanned.
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Pin Registration System
October 24, 2011
I just got a pin registration system from Lynn Radeka. It’s been great and I highly recommend it to others.
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Long Term Review: Mamiya RB67 Pro-S
October 03, 2011
When I jumped into 4×5 film photography I skipped right past medium format. About a year ago I was suspecting that shooting roll film, medium format photographs would be easier and cost less time than individual sheets of 4×5. I ran into a good deal on a Mamiya RB67 Pro-S kit and pulled the trigger on the following:
- Mamiya RB67 Pro-S body with waist level finder
- Pentaprism finder (without meter)
- 50mm C 4.3 lens
- 90mm C 3.8 lens
- 120 back
- 220 back
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Abandoned Property, Southern Alberta
September 26, 2011
Directly across the highway from us is an abandoned property that has fell into complete disrepair. This is a storage unit on the property that’s falling over and the house is falling apart as well. It appears as though somebody had started building it during the boom then gave up when everything went bust. It has to be the largest home I’ve ever seen with my own two eyes.
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No Time for Light
September 02, 2011
Tonight my wife and I went south of Calgary to High River where a good friend of our’s, Mali Vargas, was having a solo show at Evanescence Gallery. The show was great and congratulations to Mali for getting all the work together!
On the way I had seen the most incredible lighting develop I had ever seen in my entire life. It was a shame that I was neither prepared nor had the time to stop and photograph what was happening in the sky. Thankfully my wife was driving and I did what I abhor: I shot photographs from a moving car. This one photograph turned out fairly well. This is how the photograph came out from the camera. No adjustments to anything, those colours were this crazy in real life. Shot with a Sigma DP2 (Foveon).
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End Of Summer Morning
August 25, 2011
The end of summer is almost here. The wheat is starting to turn gold and there are hints of yellow on the trees. This was shot today on my way in to work at around 9:30am. The light was just beautiful and I ended up being 10 minutes late for work to get this picture. Shot with a 5D and Ziess 35mm T* 2.0 ZE.
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35mm Film Scanning Comparison: Epson V700 and Nikon LS-2000
August 23, 2011
Frequently I have told people that from my experience the V700 is a great scanner at the price but compared to a dedicated film scanner, such as a Nikon, it’s not perfect. For almost a year I have been scanning my medium and large format film with a V700 and for about half that my 35mm film with an old Nikon LS-2000. I’ve begun shooting primarily colour negative film and I decided to show a comparison of colour negative film scans using the two scanners. This complements my previous findings that my LS-2000 outresolved the V700 when scanning 35mm b&w film.
The above image was scanned using Hamrick’s Vuescan (a very excellent piece of software for a very low $40) on the LS-2000. I removed the orange mask by tweaking the RGB led gain, thus ensuring all 12 bits the scanner is capable of were dedicated to resolving the image. After extensive use this has got to be my favorite feature of Nikon film scanners. The image was scanned at 2700 dpi to a “DNG” tiff with default sharpening performed in Adobe Camera Raw.
Above is a detail from the image at 100% with the levels adjusted to enhance what was recorded in the shadows. Here you can see the resolution of the scanner is near “pixel perfect” producing approximately a 9 megapixel scan. Not bad for a scanner manufactured in 1997 which I picked up used for a tidy sum of $250 but it doesn’t match my 5D classic even when using the same lenses. I can understand why shooters of 135 film flocked to DSLRs.
This is a carefuly performed and time intensive scan produced from an Epson V700. I used a piece of ANR glass laid in the epson holder to keep the film as flat as possible. My holder needed the feet removed for the sharpest image but it’s different for every unit and should be checked periodically in case mechanisms drift. I scanned at 6400 dpi then downsampled to 2700 dpi using the bicupic sharper algorithm in Photoshop. First thing you’ll notice is the dust. While a 2700 dpi scan with infrared dust removal takes only about 40 seconds with the Nikon LS-2000 it takes a whopping four minutes with the Epson scanner. Plus when using the ANR glass to flatten the film digital ice can’t be used at all. This adds a large amount of time spotting scans for dust and scratches.
This is a perfect example of dmax specifications being a complete hoax. The LS-2000 claims a dmax of 3.6 while Epson claims the V700 has a dmax of 4.0. In the above example where the levels in the shadows have been bumped up it’s obvious the V700 has the lower dynamic range. I thought maybe the V700 is capturing details in the high end instead of the low end but when increasing the levels at the high end the situation was the same: the LS-2000 outperformed the V700 across the entire tonal spectrum. I believe the reason for this is that the V700 uses a white light source. The LS-2000′s light source can be tweaked in colour to remove the orange mask like mentioned above. The V700 has to dedicate a large portion of it’s tonality to removal of the orange mask. I don’t shoot positive slide film but I suspect that those who do may see slightly better results when scanning with the V700. The medium format Nikon scanners are discontinued and currently there are no models in production that allow the user to adjust the light source for each channel. I think this is an extremely useful feature that unfortunately is no longer available in any models today.
Chromatic Abberation is visible around the edge of the trees and overall the image is lacking in sharpness. When scanning 135 film I only trust the V700 to produce adequate results for web resolution images and small, 5×7 prints. The LS-2000 scans can print to about 9×12 at the most. I’ve printed inkjets of 11×14 images from scans of larger 6×7 and 4×5 film images with adequate results. I haven’t been able to enlarge 6×7 scans, using the V700, to the same size and quality I can enlarge in the darkroom so I have begun long-term plans to replace my V700 with a better image capturing method. I don’t know yet what that method will be yet but I believe I’ll need to upgrade from the V700 in the next year or so. Until that time I’m going to be squeezing all the image quality I can out of both my LS-2000 and V700.
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River Light
August 02, 2011
My wife’s and my first anniversary was spent at Banff National Park in Canada. She brought sketching supplies and I brought my Mamiya 6×7 and did some walking and sight seeing in and around the town of Banff. We also checked out the galleries and the Whyte Museum. The day developed into spotty showers with some moderate cloud cover and while eating dinner the lighting finally started to get good. We took a scenic drive and I raced down a hill to catch this image before the sun disappeared over the mountains.
It’s amazing how much colour Ektar can show in a scene. Thankfully negative film is biased towards the hilights so the sky wasn’t lost in the photograph. I have a spot meter now so I was able to just barely expose the forest enough to ensure some detail and retain the sky. The V700 has a hard time rendering the shadowy regions, however, compared to what I usually see in analog enlargements in the darkroom. I’d like to see what this image looks like in the darkroom when I have some time.
Shot with a Mamiya RB67 Pro-S through a 50mm F4.3C on Ektar 100. 1/8th sec at F32 if I remember correctly. Scanned via EpsonScan on a V700.
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First Contrast Reduction Mask – Dust Like Crazy
July 24, 2011
So I did my first contrast reduction mask. The above is an 8×10 print from a 4×5 colour negative image with a contrast reduction mask sandwiched against the negative. Because the negative is a negative of the image, you end up masking off the darker regions of the image, getting more exposure in the hilights for a more natural contrast adjustment compared to burning & dodging.
Without the reduction mask Fuji CA paper is just too contrasty for tough scenes like this, blowing out the sky almost completely and rendering the upper-left tree into complete darkness. There is about 10 stops of difference between the white clouds of the sky and the dark shadowy region of the tree. It’s important to get the registration bang on.
This is an example where I misregistered by about 0.25mm and it gave a similar look to the “emboss” filter in photoshop. Not desirable! It was also before I finished dialling in the colour balance (which I’m starting to get the hang of).
I contact printed Ilford FP4+ B&W 4×5 film under the enlarger with white light (0,0,0) on my Omega dichroic II’s “low” setting for 1 second. I exposed 5 negatives from f 5.6 to F22 to see the effect and after some prints with a few of them I liked the F22 shot the most. They were tray developed in D76 1:1 for 9 minutes (about iso 50 according to ilford’s documentation).
I feel quite liberated now that I know how to do masking and while the registration wasn’t perfect it’s not as intimidating as I thought it was. The only serious trouble I’, having is dust exposing into the contrast mask. I used a rocket blower like crazy on every single surface (colour negative, b&w negative, plexi glass for weight) but dust was exposed into every single reduction mask I made.
When I solve this dust issue in the mask negatives I’m going to have for some beautifully toned prints. I can’t wait!
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