ILPhoto Gallery (a thread to show off your pictures)

I have a Plustek Opticfilm which is great for the price. It is 35mm only though. No medium format, no large format, etc. I'm able to get a lot more out of my negatives by scanning myself. No blown highlights, no washed out blacks that the lab tries to make gray. I scan scan dark photographs as dark and light photographs as light, etc, and I can get away with a bit more overexposure and with using cheaper film.

so dum dum f/u question: is it cheaper to just have negatives developed? or do you do it yourself? and is THAT cheaper/easier? i've never done any kind of darkroom work, but you guys have got me more interested in film stuff lately

for medium format and even some varieties of large format you can use an epson v500 or v700. the v700 is GREAT for medium format and really good for 35mm too. I have noticed a drop in quality and resolution changing to a v500 but the v500 is also 1/5 the price.

the v700 also has some quality control issues ime, or at least with the one I had.

(largely because my dad's got an m6 just fucking sitting there gathering dust....and an m8, ffs....figure i might be able to twist an arm or two and borrow the 6 for a little bit)

xp for color, it's way easier to send it off to a lab. people have used wal-mart as the cheapest way but it can be a crapshoot since sometimes they make you pay for prints. if you can find a local lab that still does color developing that's great. or you can take it to a target or CVS or something and see if they'll just do developing (it's like $1 at target sometimes.)

for b&w, home developing is definitely the way to go, but requires an investment, time, effort, etc. xp initial investment in equipment would probably be anywhere from free to $100 depending on if you got a good deal on craigslist or if you bought everything new.

scanning is probably the most onerous part of the whole exercise - even with a v700 that does 24 frames of 35mm at once, it still takes about an hour per 24 frames.

you also have to start investing in negative sleeves and binders. it's a lot of work compared to digital!

hoh shit, if your dad has a m6 lying around, put on the ski mask and make a visit at night...

well, tbh, the up-front work/expense is the biggest barrier for me, esp since i have a perfectly functional gf1/LR3. still, the slow-pace/DIY part is actually sort of appealing? esp if, at the end of the day, i can still manipulate the images digitally? the main reason i never used my canonet (that is, before it broke) was because it was such a pain/$$$ to get stuff developed and then end up with sorta shitty prints that i couldn't do anything with.

xp ha, nah, i think i can just ask him. he let me borrow the M8 to take to frikkin central africa for a month, i think he'd probably be okay with letting me borrow the other one for a little while.

yeah - I just outlined a way to do it cheaply. if you're only shooting a few rolls every month or so, there are mail order places that will provide you w/ developing + lab quality scans at like, maybe $10-20 per roll?

I have corner store lab just down the block from where I work that does $3 a roll for develop only (I think he actually has B&H do the developing, but whatever), so it's trivial for me to drop off and pick up a lot of rolls, snip them into strips of six negatives apiece and run them through the scanner. When I was dropping off for developing and scanning at a pro lab, a roll of 36 cost $16. Big price difference!
My pro lab was super nice though and I feel guilty about not going anymore. They even gave me a bottle of wine for Christmas!
And scanning is slow. I'm always trying to come up with strategies to make it faster.

I kinda like scanning though. Like I'm a little sad when I realized I just finished a roll, cuz it's fun to see what picture is coming next.

My pro lab was super nice though and I feel guilty about not going anymore. They even gave me a bottle of wine for Christmas!

<3
i do not really have a good lab situation at the moment, i just switched from a kinda indie place that p often fucked up my photos (didn't print some, gave me gloss instead of matte &c) to a kodak branded place (that is p good). i love going to hardcore places, though. the first real, semi-industrial development place i ever went to, i was asking for prints of a roll of ilford delta 3200 & they squinted, sized me up and said, "... but you shot it at 1600, right?"

oh man i don't even get that :-/

haha guess your negatives weren't thin enough for 3200!

the true speed of delta 3200 is actually about 1000 fyi. xp

oh man i don't even get that :-/

yeah neither did i, my mind was just blown by it being correct - i have an om-1, which maxes out at 1600; a couple of other cameras i have won't go higher than 1000 - so i assumed they were just such old hands that they knew what kind of thing i was doing and then processed accordingly, if that was an adjustment to make.

camera-math is something i really cannot do, really; i'm fine correlating f-stop, aperture & film speed, but when you throw in pushing or compensating or whatever it feels like some sort of insane double negative ("oh so i guess i must just shoot this fast film slower, wider open, with more light"). am shooting some 100 speed b/w on 800 at the moment on received wisdom and out of a distaste for 100 speed b/w film (all greys imo).

one thing that took me a few years to get is that there is no such thing as 'correct exposure'

they were probably asking you what speed you shot the roll at for development purposes, not for printing purposes?

I think I reasonably understand what it means to push or pull film now but it'd take me some time to type it out

they were probably asking you what speed you shot the roll at for development purposes, not for printing purposes?

oh yep, i was just getting prints
not gonna make you explain pushing!, i'm good w/it at the moment, sorta as an extension of no-such-thing-as-correct; i'm not really dispirited by things coming out different, & would only be concerned if it was going to literally bleach or denigrate the shots. it's never been that dramatic, just plays with contrast. actually have some nice photos from a roll i shot (similar kind of thing, some weird iirc agfa 100 film, shot on 800-ish), taken in glorious sunlight, that i should scan. slightly weird colour ranges or something.

uh, just getting negatives.

yeah, my photo math is sort of limited to the relationship between f-stop, shutterspeed, and film speed, and even then i'm kinda flying by the seat of my pants---i shoot my gf1 on aperture priority like 95% of the time because i'd rather control depth of field, and my subjects are rarely moving so fast that shutterspeed is even an issue.

a big part of wanting to shoot film is to better understand all that stuff

yeah I didn't really understand that stuff too much before shooting film w/ a manual camera, and even then it took the better part of a year, where each week I was probably developing a scanning 3-10 rolls

now that I've somewhat got a handle on that, I'm making my life even more complicated by trying to learn how to print in a darkroom, fun fun fun fun fun fun fun fun

I certainly didn't have a sense of "no such thing as correct exposure" until doing home scanning. I had lab scans that would blow out whites and hike up the contrast, and I was always left trying to figure out just how I might have over or under exposed on any particular shot, when a different scan might have actually looked just fine. It's nice to know that you can mostly guess, and err on the side of overexposure when unsure.

I tend to rate most film at a stop or two slower than the listed speed to begin with.

have we talked about the Zone system on here before

the zone system is for weenies

haha really? i only know from what i've read on wiki, but i'm a big fan of heuristics (just learned about the sunny16 rule, etc), so any sort of simple framework is always nice

it's not a simple framework

imo it's for photographic aspies, people who enjoy the process of taking a picture much more than the picture itself

huh. i basically took this away from it:

-find the darkest area that you'd still like to be detailed
-meter it
-take that reading and go down two stops

-if yr shooting color, do the same except meter the brightest area you want detailed and open up two stops

that sounds right except I think you switched the 'go down' and the 'open up'

that's not the zone system though

heuristics I follow: the first one you mentioned, 'f/8 and be there'

also I think if you're metering for highlights you go down 4 four stops... can't remember. this is all for negative film btw

nah, i think i had it right: meter the darkest area that you want detail ~preserved~ in, not want you want to be the "neutral" or Zone V area. so if you go down two stops it'll be darker there than the meter wanted, but it'll still be ok detail-wise

wiki:

Visualize the darkest area of the subject in which detail is required, and place it on Zone III. The exposure for Zone III is important, because if the exposure is insufficient, the image may not have satisfactory shadow detail. If the shadow detail is not recorded at the time of exposure, nothing can be done to add it later.
Carefully meter the area visualized as Zone III and note the meter’s recommended exposure (the meter gives a Zone V exposure).
Adjust the recommended exposure so that the area is placed on Zone III rather than Zone V. To do this, use an exposure two stops less than the meter’s recommendation.

ok yeah my mistake! I think yer right. and close down 2-4 stops from a highlight reading

I think zone system is for weenies because zone system users go to a scene (usually an immobile one like a landscape) and spend a lot of time ~analyzing~ the light there using a spot meter, making decisions about where to place certain elements in which 'zone', etc.

if the one thing you take away from zone system is 'open up two stops from where you metered the shadow details" then 1.) you're all set and 2.) that's not the zone system anymore

wait now I'm confused again

meter brightest thing, then ~open~ the aperture two stops so that the neutral stuff isn't too dark

meter the darkest thing, then ~narrow~ the aperture so that the neutral stuff isn't blown out

we should prob have a separate thread for metering huh

no wait you're right, I just get confused when I talk about this stuff on the internet

I think stuff is most useful with spot meters tho

I just messed around with my gf1 and the "standard" meter (which is basically a spot + ambient) gave similar results as spot metering and then stopping up or down

The Zone System is so complicated Adams had to break it up into five books, IIRC. It goes far beyond basic exposure rules into pre-visualization, exposure, developing, printing, dodging/burning/etc..

his most popular work (moonrise over a desert in NM, I think) is kind of funny, because it was a quick shot that has to be extensively dodged and burned when printed

i have an app on my ipod but i use it abt 50% of the time and the rest of the time i guess but it really helped me figure out what will look like what. like i actually take a photo that looks like somthing on every frame now which is a long way away from how i started.

playing with my new X100, my housemate is unenthused

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6156/6134233911_73bb18fb31_b.jpg
Roomie by celluloidpropaganda, on Flickr

Just had a mess with Silver Efex Pro in lightroom, seems ok, will have to spend some time with it.
1st shot using Silver Efex pro...
http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6158/6136067390_02e3b85e50.jpg
Media City by carljgodwin, on Flickr

I guess Flickr changed my image URL afterward...

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6156/6134233911_7df171c3ac_b.jpg
Roomie by celluloidpropaganda, on Flickr

milo that's a beautiful shot

Didn't have my wide angle while out today. Managed to get some good results with the nifty fifty.
http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6168/6150592034_8bfa6c9074.jpg
Dovestone Reservoir by carljgodwin, on Flickr

Looks better here,
http://www.flickr.com/photos/carljgodwin/6150592034/lightbox/

Very nice! I love the deep shadow and the detail within.

Thank you.
More reflection stuff
http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6169/6155370202_3fc8b6325b_z.jpg
Untitled by carljgodwin, on Flickr

Added a little saturation, otherwise straight out of camera.

Tremendous.

Just some guy. But he has a great nose.

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6207/6161237564_861267db9c_z.jpg