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I like film...(open thread)


Doc Henry

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Struggling to see why the lens would accentuate the grain Antonio, I wonder if the fact that the negs might be a tad under-exposed that caused it?

Gary

Agree with Gary. Either that, or the lens has a very low contrast, which the scanning software tries to compensate for thus causing more grainy look.

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Nice pictures, Antonio. I agree with Edward and Gary. Do the negatives from the 90mm look less dense than those taken using the 50mm (ie are they "thinner" or more transparent?)? If they have been underexposed you'd expect to see that (unless you've compensated by increasing the development time), and that will accentuate the grain. Your developing, though - as judged especially by the first picture - looks fine. Also, apart from metering considerations, perhaps the lens itself could be tending to underexpose a little? Other than that, the lens looks like it performs well.

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Hopefully this won't repeat...

(SWC w/ Portra 160 @ 80)

B001 by Eoin Christie, on Flickr

 

B003 by Eoin Christie, on Flickr

 

B004 by Eoin Christie, on Flickr

 

Nice pictures Eoin (including the one from your daughter).

 

I notice the dreaded Ektar green shadow monster has crept into a couple of the SWC shots. I hope you don't mind, but for illustration I got the following rough example by simply sliding to -22 cyan in the "neutral" setting in Adjustments - Selective Color in Photoshop. It may not be how you saw the picture, but I think it's tending to be a bit more neutral in colour:

 

p2901942808-3.jpg

Edited by stray cat
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Nice pictures Eoin (including the one from your daughter).

 

I notice the dreaded Ektar green shadow monster has crept into a couple of the SWC shots. I hope you don't mind, but for illustration I got the following rough example by simply sliding to -22 cyan in the "neutral" setting in Adjustments - Selective Color in Photoshop. It may not be how you saw the picture, but I think it's tending to be a bit more neutral in colour:

 

p2901942808-3.jpg

Indeed, portra 160 was designed for attractive skin tones but it has too much green for general photography. I often find myself adding magenta in post.

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That's interesting, Edward. I find most of the scans I do - colour print or transparency - give me too much cyan and I end up taking varying amounts of it out almost as a matter of course. I think I am now obsessive about seeing cyan casts in colour pictures!

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Leica 111f & 50mm Summitar - Fuji Provia100

 

North west Scotland - Diving party, early evening in Ullapool harbour

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That's interesting, Edward. I find most of the scans I do - colour print or transparency - give me too much cyan and I end up taking varying amounts of it out almost as a matter of course. I think I am now obsessive about seeing cyan casts in colour pictures!

It’s probably a peculiarity of your scanner/software combination, Phil. Or you might have a preference for warm rendering :)

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Struggling to see why the lens would accentuate the grain Antonio, I wonder if the fact that the negs might be a tad under-exposed that caused it?

Gary

 

 

Agree with Gary. Either that, or the lens has a very low contrast, which the scanning software tries to compensate for thus causing more grainy look.

 

 

Nice pictures, Antonio. I agree with Edward and Gary. Do the negatives from the 90mm look less dense than those taken using the 50mm (ie are they "thinner" or more transparent?)? If they have been underexposed you'd expect to see that (unless you've compensated by increasing the development time), and that will accentuate the grain. Your developing, though - as judged especially by the first picture - looks fine. Also, apart from metering considerations, perhaps the lens itself could be tending to underexpose a little? Other than that, the lens looks like it performs well.

 

Yes, it must be the scansion. As I said they came out 1/2-1 stop under exposed so there's something going on with the way I scanned the negatives. I guess I prefer shooting more instead of scanning them again!

By the way, because I am still against flatbed scanners for 35mm (my position is becoming dogmatic), I ordered a used Sony A5100 for a good price, so I'll be scanning with a 24 megapixels camera instead of 16. We'll see if it is worth it.

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From what I have read, and from personal experience, lenses all provide the same exposure (within measurable parameters). So f8 is f8 is f8.

 

You problems are almost certainly elsewhere.

 

Some lenses inherently have more or less contrast. The old 90mm Elmar was not a high contrast lens by todays standards.

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From what I have read, and from personal experience, lenses all provide the same exposure (within measurable parameters). So f8 is f8 is f8.

 

You problems are almost certainly elsewhere.

 

Some lenses inherently have more or less contrast. The old 90mm Elmar was not a high contrast lens by todays standards.

 

Yes, for sure I messed up the scans.

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From what I have read, and from personal experience, lenses all provide the same exposure (within measurable parameters). So f8 is f8 is f8.

 

You problems are almost certainly elsewhere.

 

Some lenses inherently have more or less contrast. The old 90mm Elmar was not a high contrast lens by todays standards.

Lens light transmission is another factor, I believe; not all lenses are born equal apparently. Video photographers work in T values apparently. (T for transmission.) Edited by Steve Ricoh
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Zenit Crystal M39 SLR,  MIR 50/3.5, Kodak 200 (Some variation of Gold?)

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Thank you Rog for introducing these intriguing observed pairs. I think also of Steve Ricoh's pairings made with his nifty little Olympus Pen, and there have been other contributors to this forum who have paired images and expanded the breadth of our understanding of the medium. The conversation between Rog and Wayne above is particularly interesting - the potential for visual exploration afforded by the "first building" syndrome. Thinking back on Strand's wonderful career, and even how at the end, photographing in just his backyard (or Kertesz from his window) what wonderful pictures were made - Monet in his garden is perhaps the supreme example. Rog's examples of paired Color Implosion pictures are deceptively simple, but looking at them in terms of balance, color and structure we are reminded of works by bridget riley, perhaps even mondrian - echoes of the work of the abstract expressionists and color field painters of t1940s and 1950s are invoked. These precise pairings are available to us all, and it is liberating to think that we can explore a host of possibilities in the next building, or even in our own home or backyard. Or, like Wayne, we can see classicism - again in or nearby our back yards - and explore it with an open mind as to materials and processes. Gary, too, has looked at architecture and design in formal terms by using great light and interesting perspective - importantly, within the square, to great effect. This thread - consistently the most interesting in the forum - just keeps upping the ante.

Phil

Dead solid perfect, you are right on the mark. I could not agree more: this forum is over the top informative and formative. A never-ending Lazy Susan of energetic ideas and novel perspectives.

 

Let me carom off of some of the doors of discussion you open. Color field painting! Yes! I really should not categorize my paired photographs as diptychs because that implies an entirely different lineage, the 11th century religious altar, which is a whole other discussion. They are more appropriately constructed fields of color.

 

The frame of my color field constructs is “to look at the overlooked” and consider the uncommon in the commonplace.

 

Eggleston focuses his vision on a catalog of the banal, mundane object/place much to the chagrin of Ansel Adams who dismisses Eggleston‘s aesthetic. Consider Eggleston’s color photograph of empty gallon plastic water containers on a dirt road as opposed to Adams’s iconic black-and-white photograph of Half Dome in Yosemite Valley. Eggleston defines an aesthetic grounded in urban objects/places that echoes Duchamp’s celebration of what he called the ready-made, such as a common urinal, as art because as an artist, he says that it is art.

 

With my color constructs, I’m playing with planes of color as subject/content rather than image as identifiable object/portrait. Ferdinand de Saussure postulated that we learn what colors are by what they are not; red is the color red because it is not blue, yellow, or green. Even though there is a sense of realism in the planes of color in my photographs—identifiable textures and form, sometimes reflections— I am trying to minimize this recognizability of the thing itself and emphasize contrasting colors as the subject, instead.

 

When there is some small realistic detail in the color field, like a patch in the fabric, a nail in the wall, or a bolt on a girder, it acts like an aha, the surprise recognition that the color field is an actual object. I am thinking of Alexander Pope’s 18th century landscape theory and the design to provide a winding path through the forest of the English estate that surprisingly opens onto a vista to which the visitor exclaims, “Ah, ha!”

 

In addition to the artists you mentioned, a hopper full of others come to mind: Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, Dan Flavin, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Gerhard Richter, Clyfford Still, and the Bauhaus.

 

As for equipment, I am using my latest thrill, a black chrome M-A, while my M3 is in for CLA, with either a 50 mm or a 90 mm. I like the Macro-Elmar-M, and I have been giving the Thambar-M some exercise. Kodak Portra

400 is vibrant, but I have been mixing up the scenario with ADOX Implosion after seeing Adam’s work. I like the painterly granularity, almost pointillist “Implosion“ look. Though ADOX is rare, I have been prospecting in the hills of Kentucky and found a rich vein which may just upset the gold standard. Don’t I wish?

 

Anyway, as you and Wayne point out, there is a lot prospecting to do in the backyard. And around the block.

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Red Bollard Blues

M-A Thambar-M CS ND6 ADOX Color Implosion

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Had a strange yellow light in the evening, just about the time the neighborhood cats go out on patrol.

 

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Zenit Crystal m39 SLR, MIR 50/3.5, Kodak 200

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