Quarters

Photography is a two-part process.

In the days of film, there was negative making (“shooting”) and printmaking (“printing”). With digital, nothing has changed, the image is captured/created, then processed into a final product.

This means that sometimes you can find an old image you weren’t fond of and re-imagine the processing to get something you do. This was shot on Ilford FP4+, scanned as a negative, and processed digitally. Call it whatever you want, but it’s just stage one from one process and stage two from the other.

Pentax K1000, Ilford FP4+ in Clayton F76+.

Fear/Update Part II

I was looking through old scans and forgot about this one.

I’m pretty sure I know who this truck belongs to, and this picture of this truck seems a fair reflection of his personality.

“FYI- YASHICA CAMERA” arrived today, and was a miserable disappointment. The film advance isn’t really connected to anything, the mirror is stuck up, and the shutter won’t cock. These problems are probably all related, but the point is that the camera is definitely not usable. After all of that waiting and frustration, it is utterly worthless. Now begins the delicate eBay refund tapdance. Though my dealings with the seller so far aren’t exactly confidence-inspiring, I hope this one isn’t too painful. Moral of the story: Don’t be stupid like me- learn your lessons.

I loaded up my students’ cameras with Tri-X tonight, and they’re off into the world of hybrid black-and-white photography. Most have never handled a 35mm camera before, and none has used a manual camera before. One pair is using a KR-10 from my personal stash (actually, it’s borrowed) in place of the disappointing Yashica. I forgot that it has a light leak, so I’ll have to track them down tomorrow with some electrical tape.

It’s strange trying to explain exposure and film and metering to people who have never tried it before. It’s easy to forget how foreign these things feel at first, especially to those of us hailing from the digital age. There’s a difference between explaining and teaching, and I’m hoping this week of playing with the cameras will help take me from the first to the second. Only time will tell.

Probably my KR-5 Super II loaded with Plus-X. I should write these things down.

Shadow

Photography is a diversion.

I was sitting in my apartment at around one o’clock last night with lots of work to do but zero motivation to do it. I decided another shot at low light 35mm was in order, so I loaded my borrowed XD5 with a fresh roll of APX400 (setting aside the roll I took out, destined for more pulling experiments) and wandered into the night. I immediately realized that, like many manual focus semi-automatic exposure cameras, the XD5’s meter consists of a scale of shutter speeds or apertures (depending on mode) with a red dot that lights up next to the metered value. This works fine in bright sunlight, but when there is no backlight in the viewfinder to illuminate the numbers, it is more or less useless. This is why aperture- or shutter-priority cameras, though capable of full manual operation, tend to be less utilitarian than fully manual cameras for this purpose. I reloaded the film into my Ricoh KR-5 Super II, which has big bright “-,” “0,” and “+” LEDs to give a reading even in complete darkness. Unfortunately, the rewind knob on the XD5, which has always made me nervous, did absolutely nothing to rewind the film (except make the telltale “click” that should mean that the leader has unattached and it’s safe to open the camera) and I ruined some of the film. Also unfortunately, I had taken the batteries out of this camera to play with the KR-10 I had borrowed (vastly inferior for the aforementioned reasons, though built a little better). I found a quarter, swapped the batteries, and stepped out into the night. Let this be a lesson to those of you who want to maintain large collections of almost working but entirely worthless old cameras.

In the fall, I had tried shooting APX400 at 800 and 1600 with really unimpressive results. Now that I have a better understanding of film speed and developing, I decided to try a roll at as close as I could get to 400 (usually 800, sometimes an indicated 400 that wassn’t a very good meter reading anyway) and develop for 800. Within ten minutes of walking back in the door, I had the film in the tank and soaking. In less than an hour it was hanging to dry. This morning, I scanned it. This was a rare burst of productivity that may never occur again.

The exposures worked better, but the fact that most of the frames were lit in the center with barely exposed dark areas at the edges made it diffcult to determine where one negative ended and another began for cutting, and made it even worse on my scanner. I ended up with some frames cut off and a few panoramas. This is one of the cut off frames. There’s a horizon and “sky” here. I may try to resurrect it later, but for now I’m pretty happy with this.

Agfa APX400 at 400-800 developed in Clayton F76+.

Revolution 1

Photography can be unexpected.

Not too long ago, I thought I had perfected the color film in black and white chemistry processs with my particular set of film and chemicals. Thrilled that I had finally worked out a foolproof formula, I shot and developed another roll. As soon as I took the negatives out of the tank, however, I knew something was wrong. They were darker and denser than the previous set, and the scans bore out my suspicions: Bad. However, one image of a mural in an alley over a doorway looked like it might be redeemable. I “redeemed” it by cropping out everything but the mural (which was the only thing even remotely close to correctly exposed). Here it is.

Fuji Superia 400 color film developed in Clayton F76+ black and white chemistry and shot in a Minolta XD5 with center-weighted metering, which I no longer trust.

Photography is a learning experience, but learning experiences are less fun than they’re made out to be.

I was at the Met over Thanksgiving (also mentioned here, although the image is from an entirely different Eastern Seaboard city) and made what I thought was a terrible mistake. I had my Ricoh with me, which is an all manual 35mm camera. I had just received some Kodak Plus-X film in the mail, and had brought a mix of that and Agfa APX400, my go-to black and white film at the time. The Plus-X, at ISO 125, would be perfect for sunny outdoor work, while the 400 ISO APX400 would be great in the museum. I originally loaded up a roll of the Plus-X anticipating a walk to the museum, but when we parked underneath, I pulled it back out and loaded a roll of APX400, its higher speed better matched to the presumably dark indoor lighting. As I worked my way through the musem, I was glad I had switched to the APX, because I was barely able to get shots at 1/30 f/2 in most situations, which is barely handholdable and has a very shallow depth of field. At about exposure nineteen on a roll of twenty-four, I had a startling realiztation: I had left the camera set to 125. I had shot nearly an entire roll of APX400 at Plus-X speed, overexposing the film by one and two-thirds stops (this also explained why the film had seemed so slow in realtively good light). There was nothing I could do but finish the roll at 125 and see if I could salvage it later.

I figured the roll was ruined (if you shoot digital, try setting your exposure compensation to +1 2/3 and see what happens to your images), but a little research revealed that many APX400 users shoot at ISO 200 under normal conditions. I let the film sit until last night, and then, in a flurry of photographic productivity, I developed it. Though many of the images themselves are unimpressive (and many are blurred from the slow shutter speeds I was forced to use), the smoothness of the tones and the  shadow detail are amazing. From now on, I will be shooting my APX400 at ISO 200 except when I need the speed of 400 or 800.

Agfa APX400 accidentally pulled to 125, Clayton F76+ 1+19, Ricoh KR-5 Super II as film holder and light meter.

Full Clip

Photography is equipment-intensive.

With access to a borrowed Minolta 35mm camera and some lenses, I couldn’t resist the urge to try out some macro work with the 80-200mm “macro” zoom (which, when combined with the included 2X teleconverter, got pretty close to macro without quotations). Some of the shots worked, some didn’t. I think this one came out quite nicely.

This is 35mm, but it isn’t black and white film. It wasn’t converted after scanning, either. It’s 400 ISO color film shot at 200 ISO (one stop overexposed) and developed in black and white chemistry. Why, you ask? That’s a good question. To be honest, I don’t really know either. Something about the challenge is enticing, and the results are unique. Something about it just works for me. This isn’t my first try with this technique (or my second), but  think I’ve found a process that produces usable negatives (my last roll was completely ruined by incorrect developing times, which is tough since you more or less have to determine them by trial and error).

Fuji Superia X-tra 400 shot at 200 in a Minolta XD5 with a third-party “macro” zoom and a 2X teleconverter, then developed in Clayton F76+.

Marilyn

Nicotine and objectification. What could be more American? Oh wait, this part is usually a photography truism.

An interesting way to observe people is to study the space they occupy. This is from a friend’s desk. The items were actually props for an art project. Moments later (or before- I just developed this on Monday but I shot it more than a month ago, so I really have no idea), I stepped on a bowl of watercolor paint and spilled it on her carpet.

Agfapan APX400 in my K1000, Clayton F76+ diluted 1+19 with the time slightly reduced to decrease contrast. Intended as an experiment in making more scannable negatives.

Psycho II

Another happy accident.

I’ve been playing with my new film scanner lately, trying to get negative scans that aren’t disappointing on every level. For various reasons (mostly their lack of translucence compared to print films), traditional black and white negatives are notorious for scanning poorly. Many solutions have been proposed (and many photographers swear by various combinations), and I’m trying to stumble my way through some of them to find a process that works for me.

The Digital Image Enhancement Engine (DICE) scanner technology that allows dust-, scratch-, and generally blemish-free scans of color negatives does not work with black and white negatives. However, in my experimenting with software settings, I gave it a shot without thinking. This was the result.

As usual with my “weird looking” posts, this is not some bizarre Photoshop filter. This is the original scan, with only a minor exposure adjustment.

Agfa APX400, Clayton F76+, my K1000’s questionable meter, and scanner serendipity.

Ian Curtis

This is another cross processed shot. The thick film base that my methods don’t clear necessitates drastic steps to get the darks back, which results in the lovely artifacts on this image.

There’s just something about this one that I like.

Pentax K1000, Fuji Superia X-tra 400 cross processed in F76+.

Suspicion

Manipulation may be older than you think.

What a bizarre effect. Two images superimposed onto each other. And the tones- that is a strange-looking black and white image. There are two things that are going on here that are more than meets the eye:

1. Double exposure. The roommate and the glass look like two different pictures. In fact, they are. Two exposures are made on the same negative (with some careful exposure adjustements, since the sum of the light from each expoaure must fall within the desired range), and there it is. In some cases, one doesn’t fully understand the workings of one’s brand-new twenty-eight year old camera, and the exposures only half overlap. The result? This image. No Photoshop trickery, just old-fashioned analog mind games (and user error. Come on, the camera’s older than I am).

2. Cross process. This image (this one too) were fake cross processes, designed to digitally replicate processing slide film in color negative chemicals or vice-versa. While this is the most common cross process, developing color film in black and white chemistry counts too. The results are generally unique (to say the least).

There you haeve it. All sorts of tricks played with film chemistry that have been available for much longer than I’ve been living. Some people have a visceral reaction to “Photoshopping” of digital images, but fail to realize that many of the techniques reflect the sort of manipulations that photographers have been up to since, well, a long time ago.

This is a long one, so bear with me: Pentax K1000 body on its maiden roll (in my hands, at least), Fuji Superia X-tra 400 (color negative film), Clayton F76+ black and white developer. Alright, so not as long as I thought.