35mm Film – Hit and Miss
July 20, 2011
I don’t often get excited about the images I shoot on 35mm film but occasionally I do. I really want to see how this enlarges in the darkroom. I printed a couple images from the same roll using my colour darkroom but overlooked this one based on what I saw in the contact sheet. I’m starting to grow fond of it however and I want to see what it looks like enlarged to a good size. Images where the viewer gets to peer into somebody’s personal space interest me and this is one of those images. Plus the colours are wonderful and the contrast makes the bushes “pop”.
135 Kodak 160VC film. Canon Elan 7e camera with a Zeiss 35mm T* Distagon 2.0 ZE.
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First Colour Prints
July 18, 2011
This weekend I printed my first few colour prints. I enlarged a bunch of 35mm film to 9×14 inches to get a feel for the roller transport unit and gain some experience with white balancing. I decided to move on to some 4×5 negatives and print full-sized 16×20′s. Boy am I happy with the results! They’re very large, very sharp and the dynamic range is excellent. The shadows go deep and dark but there’s still plenty of detail to be seen. While the “dynamic range” may not be as deep as what I see from glossy inkjets from my Epson R3000 the tonality is stupendous. There are no dot patterns to be seen either, just smooth tonality, even among the finest of details.
The tonal range seems to fall perfectly compared to the troubles I’ve been having with inkjet prints, too. Part of the reason for the chromogenic RA4 prints looking the way they are is because What You See is What You Get (WYSIWYG). I make adjustments and alter my approach and I see the results in the final print. I’m not spending hours and hours on an image, viewing it on the monitor, then lamenting over the print not looking similar to what I see on the monitor. Removing that intermediary viewing stage makes me concentrate on the final, printed image and I feel the results are great when I’m forced to do so.
While the print on the left required about 6 proof prints to get what you see the print on the right was printed immediately after with the exact same settings. The results were pretty close to well balanced with a slight bit too much cyan. Determining the density (brightness/darkness) was easy but colour balancing is turning out to be much more difficult than I thought. I still need to come up with a good & fast workflow for determining a good colour balance quickly. At least I have a “starting pack” determined for Ektar 100 4×5 shot in mild shade. Note taking is much more important when enlarging colour, I’m finding, compared to enlarging B&W. Overall it’s much more difficult.
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Colour Darkroom 100% Ready. Finally.
July 14, 2011
So my colour darkroom is officially ready for use and in operation. I finished modifying an old Ilford CAP-40 roller transport unit. It’s a device that takes your paper in with rollers and rolls it through each bath. You get extremely consistent development times and temperatures which are very important for the colour enlarging process. CAP-40′s are cheap and abundant because they’re designed for the slow times of Ilfochrome. They’re great machines, however, made of titanium parts due to the heavy acidity of Ilfochrome bleach but they’re too slow for the short development times of RA4. So I swapped out a pulley wheel for a larger one, installed a new drive belt and slowed the machine down from 3 minutes to 1 minute. It works like a dream!
Unfortunately my colour prints won’t be seeing the net too frequently because they’re just going to be too damned big to scan. I’m getting pretty close to requiring a separate portfolio site with a selection of works available for purchase as prints. This weekend I’ll be printing an edition of 16×20′s of Winter Wetland – Turner Valley, a 4×5 film shot taken during the winter in Turnery Valley, located in Alberta, Canada. It’s an extremely sharp shot and from the proofs I’ve printed it’s MUCH more sharp than the detail my V700 can record, even at 80 “megapixels”. I can’t wait!
I may have possibly sold some work at a recent show which will be great because the money will go straight into colour 4×5 sheet film and a few other things I need for my colour film process. Unlike with a digital workflow colour film needs to be balanced before taking the shot or else strange cross curves develop. I’ve seen the results where it can be described as cyan hilights and red shadows. While in photoshop you can just create colour balance layer and adjust the hilight and shadow colour balance you can only apply overall colour adjustments in the darkroom. This means the light needs to be measured before hand for it’s colour temperature then colour correcting filters screwed onto the camera’s lens. It’s not a big deal because it already takes me a long while to take pictures with the large format Wista 45SP. Note that I didn’t pay that price for my camera. I paid about $350 for mine, including a multicoated fujinon 180mm lens, and mine was manufactured in the 1970′s. Despite it’s age it performs admirably and many people still shoot with this system today. The camera’s remained virtually unchanged since the 1970′s and there’s no reason to change it. Large format is the only area of photography where you can buy a Schneider lens for under $400 and get better pictures than the Leica boys do. I love it :).
On a side note: I realized when printing some proofs of this image that I’ve been circulating the above version on the net with the hill on the left. Unfortunately this wasn’t how the landscape was and I printed the proofs with the image flipped, putting the hill on the right as it should be. I have a feeling the composition will work in a very similar manner for those who haven’t seen the image before but it looks like a completely different image to me. This image has been viewed for so long and so many times by me that it looks completely alien when reversed. Just thought I’d mention that.
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And the Rain Did Cometh
July 13, 2011
See that little spot where the rain’s coming down? Calgary was right there. Shot with my Sigma DP2. Stitched with PTGui. Blended & processed with Photoshop. I still have yet to print this. I’ll be buying ink on payday. It’ll be about 13×28 inches.
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More Sigma DP2 work and almost printing RA4
July 11, 2011
I’ve been building up a series of little 5×7 prints from my recently acquired Sigma DP2. They’re more or less “sketches” of work that I plan to take further with medium & large format film photography. This little camera renders the nuances of fine lighting detail similar to my Schneider Super Angulon does so it does a great job at working out the “feeling” of an area before I bring out the big guns.
Colour printing in the darkroom is getting closer to “ready.” I have been using a Jobo CPA-2 to process the paper and yesterday I finally had a proof print that wasn’t horrible. Last weekend and Saturday I was having trouble with cyan hilights and brown/red shadows. I was trying to determine if it was cross curves in the negative I was printing or contaminated developer. Yesterday I settled on my losses and mixed up entirely fresh RA4 developer and ran a test print again. I was pleased to see dark shadows that weren’t ugly brown like before so it was decided my developer wasn’t mixed up to par. This stuff is extremely sensitive to variances in proportions between the ABC parts. This time around I used a 10mL syringe and carefully measured out the portions for 1L of developer replenisher.
The CAP-40 is just about ready. I have the replacement pulley and it’s center hole has been bored to fit the machine. It’s installed and now I’m just waiting on getting the belt. Once that’s done I have to order some bleach-fix and developer starter and then I’ll be using a roller transport machine. I can’t wait! While the jobo machine is better than trays the RA4 process is just too quick for the jobo. It’s fine for film which has 3 minute development times but the 45 second development time of RA4 is just too much of a hassle to do in a drum. Plus the developer has to be used one-shot which is a serious waste compared to replenishment.
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Storm Clouds Moving On
July 02, 2011
I was heading home on Thursday and thankfully I brought a half decent camera with me. During the day I heard thunderous claps as rain was pouring down upon everything and the sky was full of grey mess. It even hailed for a short bit and all I could think about was “what will this look like on my way home?” As I was driving home I could just barely see the storm clouds and thankfully they were travelling slower than my car. By the time I reached home I had them right above me, requiring me to lean myself forward in the driver’s seat to look up through the windshield to view them in their entirety. They were so large!
So I shot twenty-four exposures as fast as I could, about 2-3 seconds between each exposure then spend the evening massaging them into place to produce this image. It’s available in an open edition, printed with my new Epson R3000 with archival K3 inks at 13×27″. I’m pricing it at $350 with acid-free mat and backing or $600 framed. I have a pretty good connection for framing so let me know if you’re interested in framing one of these. I can get something pretty snazzy at a good price ;).
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Connections – Ruberto Ostberg Gallery
June 16, 2011
I’ve been accepted into the annual, juried show at Ruberto Ostberg Gallery in Calgary, Canada. The show runs from June 17th to July 9th. The opening reception will be happening Friday, June 17th 5-9pm (tomorrow). I plan to steal away for an hour or two from helping my wife, owner and operator of Sketch Art Supplies, cover her booth at The Calgary Comic & Entertainment Expo which opens on the same day (tomorrow). I’m exhibiting two large-format black and white darkroom silver prints of local Calgary architectural and industrial sites. There will be a lot of artists’ work present so be sure to come check out the show!
Ruberto Ostberg Gallery, 2108 18th Street N.W., Calgary AB, T2M 3T3, 403-289-3388
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Sigma DP2 – First Impressions
June 15, 2011
Last weekend I acquired a Sigma DP2. Months ago I caught wind of Fuji coming out with an extremely compact camera with an APS-C sized sensor in it. It was an appealing idea to me because it would be the formula for a camera I could have on me at all times and still take pictures that should make good web resolution shots and maybe the odd 12 inch print. Then I discovered Sigma had made a camera aimed at the same market: The DP2. The Sigma DP2 uses a Foveon X3 sensor. Theoretically a Foveon sensor records more accurate colour information which I felt I would appreciate. Many reviewers of the camera gripe over it being only 6.5 “megapixels” but they fail to recognize that Bayer sensor cameras interpolate those extra pixels. DPreview did a test of a Foveon camera, the Sigma DP1, and had shown that megapixels don’t make up everything and the Foveon sensor whipped the butt of many of the competing APS-C cameras, including the Leica M8.
So I was a bit nervous buying the last one at the local camera shop, their demo unit. This camera’s received very mixed reviews but I had assumed that most reviewers were not understanding what this camera was capable of. It’s frustrating that people can’t get beyond the “megapixels” and that more means better. They think that a camera has to be blazing fast. Yes, a wedding photographer wouldn’t like taking this thing along for a shoot. This is not a camera to take pictures of your kids with. But if you’re the type of photographer who takes time to compose the image, shoots subjects that aren’t moving around quickly and want to really push your pictures in Photoshop then this camera is great. And it fits in the pocket so there is absolutely not excuse for not having a camera on hand at all times.
This was one of the first pictures I shot with the Sigma DP2. I instantly fell in love with how it rendered the intricate shadows of the foliage. My 5D can’t do this. Even with Zeiss glass. The following are a few more shots I’ve taken since getting the camera 2-3 days ago. The first one (the barfy flowers) is a 100% crop showing the colour detail this camera records. The rest are full-views.
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Printed Ilfochrome Yesterday
June 12, 2011
The Ilfochrome process (formerly known as Cibachrome before Ilford acquired it) is a photographic printmaking process that uses Azo dyes embedded in a photographic emulsion for slide reproduction in print form. It works specifically well with Kodak Kodachrome slides due to the slightly muted nature of the slides (Ilfochrome is extremely contrasty paper) and the limitation of cross colour errors in shadow and hi-light areas (blue shadows, magenta hi-lights, or vice versa). It’s also extremely saturated because the Azo dyes are embedded deep in the paper and stripped out through the process creating CMY colour values. It’s technically not a paper but instead a photographic emulsion suspended over a plastic film. It is supposed to be one of the most saturated photographic printing processes with the largest dynamic range out of any printing technology to date.
Recently I had acquired an Ilford CAP-40 roller transport unit. It’s a machine for processing darkroom photo paper and specifically designed for the Ilfochrome process. I had plans to modify the machine, speeding it up for the 45 second development time required for RA-4 colour negative paper. However, when I arrived to pick up the machine I discovered that the gent selling it was including some boxes of Ilfochrome chemistry and paper. About $500-1000 in Ilfochrome chemistry and paper; I knew I couldn’t let it go to waste.
Alex Moon, a good friend of mine and printmaker/video-artist, had a large collection of Kodachrome slides taken by his late great uncle. Kodachrome processing was discontinued in 2007 meaning there will be no more Kodachrome slides produced any more. Ilfochrome is unavailable in Canada and the availability of the product is spotty at best in USA. After some discussion we had decided to use some of the paper and chemicals I had received to produce prints of his uncle’s slides and organize a show of them.
Friday I had acquired my colour enlarger finally and yesterday I learned how to print colour photographic paper using the Ilfochrome process. The results were outright amazing! The tones and colours have a luminescant quality, appearing to be back-lit due to light reaching deep into the paper and reflecting back to the viewer, similar to the surface of a pearl. The colours are rich and I have never seen a print with such deep blacks and bright whites. We were working with expired paper and chemicals and accidentally contaminated our first batch. However, we finally have our colour balance figured out and we should be able to turn out a large number of prints today. I believe Alex Moon and myself may be the last people in Canada to have ever made a Cibachrome print. This is exciting stuff. I’m pretty busy making prints so when I have a chance I’ll post a scan or two but unfortunately these prints have to be seen in person. The Ilfochrome print is something that a computer monitor just cannot match or even mimic. These prints look so good.
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New Darkroom Almost Ready
June 01, 2011
I took the day off yesterday due to it being my Birthday. The day was spent on finishing touches in my darkroom and spending it with some friends.
I expanded my drying racks from two 20×20 inch racks to nine, meaning I can finally dry an entire edition of 16×20′s without having to hang them on clotheslines (and risk them falling on the floor, or other ghastly issues). I installed the ventilation which is even more light tight than last time.
Already the new darkroom is better than my last and I can start printing in there right away, draining waste water into a bucket like I did before (and dumping it down the toilet). I’m sourcing out a good, stainless steel sump pump to get the water from a catch basin below the laundrey sinks into the laundry drain 4 feet above the floor. Once that’s done I’ll have a trouble free workflow.
A good friend gave me a colour analyzer for my birthday which is awesome. It also works as a densitometer for B&W prints. I’m going to use the new darkroom this weekend for some B&W work and see where I end up. I’m pretty excited :)
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