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Forum: Film SLRs and Compact Film Cameras 10-28-2011, 10:53 AM  
Uttering the words of satan... film...
Posted By Vertex Ninja
Replies: 138
Views: 18,158
Ironic because I could almost bet that her pictures from the lab were printed on film, or close enough; RA-4 paper. My biggest gripe with the digital age has nothing to do with the cameras themselves, but rather the perception that images have to be better because the technology is newer. As if all the great photos from the last century have suddenly lost quality. :confused:
Forum: Film SLRs and Compact Film Cameras 10-28-2011, 09:48 AM  
Uttering the words of satan... film...
Posted By Vertex Ninja
Replies: 138
Views: 18,158
Thanks. :)

I hope they look right on other peoples monitors. I've only seen them on my laptop(uncalibrated) and a couple cell phones. There were no edits other than setting white, black, and gray points, and -4 saturation. So I guess you could say those are the nartural colors of the two films. That was my first time using flash with the 4x5. It's easy enough to meter it, but hard to visualize exactly what the shadows will do without a modeling light.
Forum: Film SLRs and Compact Film Cameras 10-28-2011, 07:45 AM  
Uttering the words of satan... film...
Posted By Vertex Ninja
Replies: 138
Views: 18,158
I just happened to shoot some Ektar in 4x5 the other day. The per sheet price is a bit pricey, but I develop at home for way less than I could send out. Shot some Portra 400 too.


20111025_Ektar_0001_Web by Vertex Ninja, on Flickr


20111025_Prtra__1_1 by Vertex Ninja, on Flickr

Need to get a portable softbox so I can smooth out those shadows!
Forum: Film SLRs and Compact Film Cameras 10-02-2011, 09:27 AM  
Uttering the words of satan... film...
Posted By Vertex Ninja
Replies: 138
Views: 18,158
Yes, I suppose so! Most importantly it told me that F2.8-F4.0 is sharp but very noticeably lower contrast than smaller apertures and that the lens peaks at 5.6-8.0. Basically backing up the test here: Medium Format Cameras - Testing Lenses

Also I found it interesting that the letters in the crop with text("D" in Direct TV) are roughly the same size on film as the heads of the people on the scan Steve posted. At 100LP/mm we're talking about being able to see differences in tone between those peoples ears and their hair or the gaps between their fingers!
Forum: Film SLRs and Compact Film Cameras 10-02-2011, 08:52 AM  
Uttering the words of satan... film...
Posted By Vertex Ninja
Replies: 138
Views: 18,158
:lol:



Definitely some exciting things to come!
Forum: Film SLRs and Compact Film Cameras 10-01-2011, 07:35 PM  
Uttering the words of satan... film...
Posted By Vertex Ninja
Replies: 138
Views: 18,158
Then we could hop in our time machines to go back and stalk digital shooters and mock their "prehistoric" digital cameras with our film of the future! :lol:
Forum: Film SLRs and Compact Film Cameras 10-01-2011, 01:41 PM  
Uttering the words of satan... film...
Posted By Vertex Ninja
Replies: 138
Views: 18,158
Well if you think about it, all the same rules apply to digital that apply to film with regards to resolution and optics. Digital has bayer and low pass filters, but film has grain and dye clouds. Just as different films have different resolutions and granularity, different digital cameras have different levels of resolution and noise performance. The choice of optics play the same role on whatever you shoot, good lenses will be separated from bad ones as resolutions increase. Currently without any question, certain films(not all film) still hold the resolution crown, but digital marches on and will match them in short order. There is a physical and practical limit and digital will eventually hit this wall too.
Forum: Film SLRs and Compact Film Cameras 09-30-2011, 01:16 PM  
Uttering the words of satan... film...
Posted By Vertex Ninja
Replies: 138
Views: 18,158
When you think about how small 1mm is, it's insane to think that all that information can be stored in such a tiny space. Be it a sensor or a piece of film, it's crazy! I think it's all the more impressive seeing it on a negative though, because it's right there in front of you. You look at it and see a blob, even with a 10x loupe. You then stick it under a microscope or have a ridiculous scan done, and there it is. Think about all the things that have to be perfect to achieve over 100 LP/mm. I think we are going to hit a wall with digital sensors very soon. Even a perfect lens, which there are none, has limits. Sensor size will be the only logical way to increase resolution, particularly for occasions you need DOF and will be diffraction limited.

Edit:
When I got my Rolleiflex, I wanted to see roughly how good the lens was. So I did this silly shot below. I have only ever shot Pan F this one time, I guessed at development time, I didn't focus bracket, the camera was sitting on my $129 tripod, on a tile floor over a basement in a 1929 home(i.e. a little bouncy), and my scanner can not optically scan at this resolution... oh, and the exposure was about 8 seconds long. So do not take this as any type of quality test. About the only thing it told me was the lens on this 56 year old camera is good enough and that I had just wasted a roll of film.

Anyway, the scan was done at 7620SPI reduced to 5080SPI(100LP/mm) to see how much detail I could get with my setup. I adjusted the contrast and sharpening with reckless abandon towards quality. The 2 crops are 1mm x 1mm and the little speck next to them should be about their real life size(depending on the resolution of your monitor). My conclusion from looking at the negative under a microscope was that the film was limiting the resolution, but that it would have to be in the neighborhood of 90-100LP/mm.



/Edit

Anyway, we've went way off topic.:lol:
Forum: Digital Processing, Software, and Printing 09-29-2011, 11:05 PM  
Resizing (Reducing) Images In Photoshop Elements
Posted By Vertex Ninja
Replies: 13
Views: 7,349
I've started using a program called "photoline" to do my resizing for the web. I own Lightroom and Adobe design premium suite, but I still think this cheap program does it better. It's available in 64 bit, is super light, and best of all, it uses Lanczos 8 to do the downsampling... even 16bit images! I looked far and wide for lanczos that would work on 16bit images.

I sharpen a little before resizing, resize in one step, then add a smidge more sharpening. Lanczos does a better job at retaining detail than any other resizing method I've tried, but 90x60 is a small thumbnail and not gonna show much difference.
Forum: Film SLRs and Compact Film Cameras 09-29-2011, 10:07 PM  
Uttering the words of satan... film...
Posted By Vertex Ninja
Replies: 138
Views: 18,158
Oddly, when I take my Rollei out for a walk people can't help but stop me and talk fondly about it and film. While at the state fair, I even had a little kid come over to see what I was looking at on the ground and when I showed him that I was actually just crouched looking into the waste level finder, he flipped. After showing him what the screen looked like, he went yelling out loud to his parents how cool my camera was. On the same trip, I had a guy shooting a digital SLR come take a picture of me taking a picture. His wife said to mine, "I'm so embarrassed, he's stalking your husband, loves his camera". I was then stopped by at least 10-15 other people over the next few hours. I've never had that happen with any other camera. Maybe it get's such positive comments because there is no mistaking it's age and the nostalgia, IDK.

Digital is the future, but there is no reason why film should die. I will never understand the mentality of when something new comes along the old is considered junk. Read any digital message board and you will likely find at least one person that comes along and says film just needs to die, digital is so much better... or something along those lines. Why? Do they need to justify a purchase by bad mouthing the alternative? I don't get it. Thankfully, the internet is not real life and I've never had anyone give me sh!t to my face. It's unfortunate that others have had bad experiences, but thankfully we can just ignore the haters and keep doing what makes us happy... at least for awhile longer.
Forum: Photographic Industry and Professionals 09-29-2011, 09:30 PM  
Gloomy outlook for Kodak
Posted By Vertex Ninja
Replies: 20
Views: 3,617
Not entirely true with regards to film. If I'm not mistaken, many many movies and TV shows are still shot, projected, and archived on film. Lots of it! I would like to know what Kodak's film business does in comparison to their digital printers etc. Would Kodak be better off concentrating on film, paper, chemicals, and digital sensors etc., IDK? I want Kodak to take their Creo technology and build a line of more affordable scanners, something in the $1-3000 range. When all the old scanners die, what will museums, fine art photographers, archives etc. scan their stuff with. Surely these jobs require more than Epson quality. Maybe Aztek and ICG have those markets covered, IDK.

I just watched this video the other day, pretty interesting:














You Tube



Forum: Film Processing, Scanning, and Darkroom 09-25-2011, 12:28 PM  
Guessing Game: film or digital?
Posted By Vertex Ninja
Replies: 8
Views: 1,803
OK, I read your blog post and for once I guessed right! The tale tale sign for me and it appears others here too, was the disparity of sharpness/detail in comparison to the grain. Film is easily capable of the sharpness you achieved, especially with the use of flash, so it wasn't the presence of detail that gave it away. For me, the hardest part of trying to make digital look like it has film grain is trying to make the image look like it was formed from the grain rather than trying to fight through it. Also the space between grain is different in the shadows than it is in the highlights, so overlaying film grain from a gray card will not produce a convincing look under close inspection IMO. It does look good enough in most cases.

Anyway, I've attached some 50% crops from some recent scans to try and illustrate what I'm used to seeing. These crops should be comparable to the magnification you showed in your picture. They were shot on medium format, but they are massive crops that are way smaller than a frame of 35mm film. The first is Acros, the second Tmax 400, and the third is HP5+. All developed in Pyrocat MC.

10mm x 13mm

20110827_Acrs_Crp by Vertex Ninja, on Flickr

16mm x 16mm

20110317_TMY_001_Crp by Vertex Ninja, on Flickr

16mm x 16mm

20110917_HP5_0003_Crp by Vertex Ninja, on Flickr
Forum: Film Processing, Scanning, and Darkroom 09-25-2011, 10:19 AM  
Guessing Game: film or digital?
Posted By Vertex Ninja
Replies: 8
Views: 1,803
Haven't read the blog yet, but I'm guessing digital trying to look like film. The noise does not look like grain to me, especially in relation to the detail around the eyes. OK, off to read the blog post to see how terribly wrong I was!:o
Forum: Film Processing, Scanning, and Darkroom 09-25-2011, 10:13 AM  
C-41 Chemical exhaustion
Posted By Vertex Ninja
Replies: 14
Views: 8,355
Bill,
I found that document! it's on page 4 of this thread: Kodak C41 chemicals and availability

Lots of other helpful stuff in there too.
Forum: Film Processing, Scanning, and Darkroom 09-25-2011, 09:24 AM  
C-41 Chemical exhaustion
Posted By Vertex Ninja
Replies: 14
Views: 8,355
I love that camera, but It's been sitting a lot. I prefer to shoot a bigger negative when I can. Was thinking of replacing it with a Hasselblad, but I think I've decided to keep the MZ-S and pick up that Hasselblad too! Now I just have to figure out how to convince my wife why a hobbyist needs so many cameras... sure I'm not the only one around here with that problem!:lol:
Forum: Film Processing, Scanning, and Darkroom 09-23-2011, 09:03 PM  
C-41 Chemical exhaustion
Posted By Vertex Ninja
Replies: 14
Views: 8,355
Bill, likewise! I may end up selling my MZ-S and grip that I got from you, can't believe I'm even thinking of it!

It seems you have way more experience doing this than me, I've only just started! I can only say that my negatives developed at home are as good and in many cases better than what I was getting from the lab. I was mostly interested in being able to do my 4x5 at home, because that stuff is expensive to send out!!! I use the amber/brown glass bottles you've mentioned for my B&W chemicals. They are very nice. For the color chemicals I knew I'd be changing the stuff out more and decided to just get the brown plastic ones made for photo chemicals. I throw everything into a cooler and add hot water until the temp stabilizes. Then dump directly from the bottles into the daylight tank and then back into the bottles. I'm probably doing a lot of stuff wrong, but for what little color I do, it seems to work out alright. No problems... yet!:cool:

I wish I could find that paper on adjusting times for reuse of flexicolor chemicals. "Photo Engineer" a (former?)Kodak chemist posted it on APUG. I thought it might be in one of the links I posted above, but I was mistaken.
Forum: Film Processing, Scanning, and Darkroom 09-23-2011, 04:50 PM  
C-41 Chemical exhaustion
Posted By Vertex Ninja
Replies: 14
Views: 8,355
Bill,
I can't offer you anything but my own experiences with home C-41. I use the Flexicolor chemicals from Photographers Formulary, but all C-41 should be the same with the exception of blix. From what I understand the Rollei kit is just repackaged Fuji Hunt chemicals. The Formulary's kit ships pre-measured, under gas, in sealed bottles and ready to make 1L. The included data sheet basically says to use it one shot and do 4 rolls of 36exp 35mm or equivalent, but older Kodak documents list times for reusing the chemicals. They say add 30Sec for every 4 rolls of film... hmm or it might be 15 sec, need to find that document! :o

Anyway, I've done up to 12 rolls within a 4 month span between the first 6 and the last 6, without problems. I don't run test strips, so it's likely they are not perfect, but everything looked fine to my eyes. I ended up dumping the chemicals and mixing new ones, simply because I was developing pictures intended for someone else. I have no reason to believe the chemicals weren't still good. I store everything in brown plastic bottles with the majority of the air squeezed out.

Probably of no help, but thought I'd share my experiences anyway.

You may have seen these, but I'll post them here just 'cause:

Rollei Digibase C-41

Capacity of Kodak Flexicolor (C41) chemicals
Forum: Pentax Medium Format 09-12-2011, 04:43 PM  
Which MF camera?
Posted By Vertex Ninja
Replies: 23
Views: 6,100
Another option are Bronicas. The RF645 is a Phenomenal camera and I wish I still had mine. Ergonomics and size are great, as is the build quality and optics. ETRSI is also nice and it is ridiculously cheap to buy into that system.

I love my Rolleiflex, but a TLR is probably not the best choice for landscapes. Great for walking around with though, and people love to stop and talk about them. Like tuco said, you'll probably end up with two or more systems eventually. In addition to my Rollei I have an Agfa folder I got for cheap to carry in my cargo pocket while hiking. I won't feel too bad if it falls off a cliff, but I'd be tempted to jump off after my Rollei. I'm also gonna buy a Hasselblad soon because I want something smaller than my 4x5 that I can take on family trips for tripod use. The 4x5 takes way too long to unpack and setup with two young ones running around. In my opinion, with 35mm your system/brand choice doesn't really amount to much, but in medium format I think it's really hard to find a camera for all instances.

I agree with what redrockcoulee said about having to try for yourself. All anyone can do is tell you why a particular camera was the right choice for them.
Forum: Film Processing, Scanning, and Darkroom 08-08-2011, 12:28 PM  
How to control green cast in scans?
Posted By Vertex Ninja
Replies: 10
Views: 7,850
Try This tutorial. Make sure to scan in 16bit. (read the comments, there is some valuable pointers there)

Advanced Color Correction Tutorial that will Knock Your Socks Off!

It's best to get it close to right in the scanner first. The above tutorial should help you get an idea of what the images should look like and where to place your white, black, and gray points. Maybe try scanning the photo at low resolution, CC in Photoshop, and then go back and do a better scan using your corrected image as reference.
Forum: Film Processing, Scanning, and Darkroom 08-08-2011, 12:07 PM  
Hybrid Workflow and prints
Posted By Vertex Ninja
Replies: 20
Views: 5,399
Easiest way to see what your losing or stand to gain, is to send out a single frame and compare it to the very best you can do at home. If your main issue is 35mm, you can pick up a used Minolta on ebay for pretty cheap. It won't even have to be top of the line to return a sizable improvement over your current Epson.
Forum: Film Processing, Scanning, and Darkroom 08-08-2011, 11:46 AM  
What resolution and dpi should we scan 35mm negative to digital
Posted By Vertex Ninja
Replies: 49
Views: 32,911
He's right. Even a 10MP digital camera is not 10MP of resolution. 10mp of pixel dimensions maybe, but not resolution. Otherwise, it wouldn't matter what lens or aperture you used... they'd all be the maximum resolution and sharpness. Same applies to scanners. 6400 sensor sites per inch does not necessarily mean there is 6400 lines per inch of resolution on the film or that the lens in front of the sensor can even project that kind of resolution.
Forum: Film Processing, Scanning, and Darkroom 08-08-2011, 11:38 AM  
What resolution and dpi should we scan 35mm negative to digital
Posted By Vertex Ninja
Replies: 49
Views: 32,911
Epson printers are capable of 300-600 pixel resolution on the paper... It just requires a loupe to see it... and the right paper.

Piezography resolution in comparison to Epson ABW | PiezoPress
Forum: Film Processing, Scanning, and Darkroom 08-08-2011, 11:33 AM  
What resolution and dpi should we scan 35mm negative to digital
Posted By Vertex Ninja
Replies: 49
Views: 32,911
Agree totally. I like to use SPI(samples per inch) when talking about scanning, PPI(pixels per inch) when referring to digital files viewed on screen, and DPI(dots per inch) when referring to actual dots of ink on paper. An inkjet does not print the dots(pixels) in the file, it divides them into much, much smaller dots of individual ink using a screening pattern.
Forum: Film SLRs and Compact Film Cameras 05-02-2011, 05:46 PM  
MZ-S IR remote is...?
Posted By Vertex Ninja
Replies: 7
Views: 2,536
You have to hold the remote's button in. The timer release can set the exposure length.
Forum: Film Processing, Scanning, and Darkroom 04-20-2011, 08:08 PM  
ISO 400 Films Compared
Posted By Vertex Ninja
Replies: 30
Views: 10,945
I have both in my freezer and If I remember I'll try and shoot the same scene, same exposure, etc. and develop them in the same tank. I have in the past developed both in the same tank with pyrocat and both came out looking very similar; maybe a little less speed and a little more fog on the legacy pro. Grain and tone looks about as close as two different rolls, shot days apart, can look.
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