Blog - My Soapbox
An Incredibly Organic Process - Video from the Toronto 2012 4x5 Large Format Workshop
I didn't expect this workshop to sell out, but it did so, and pretty quickly too. I had such a wonderful time, and judging from the feedback, so did the participants. Here's the official workshop video:
4x5 Woes: Mills, Birds And A Leak
You know, one of the most satisfying things for me these days is to spend a day at an interesting location and take six or twelve pictures with a 4x5 large format camera.
It's hard work. It means to carry a heavy-ish bag over your shoulder and a tripod with a big camera attached to its end. It means to thoroughly set up the camera, check the angles, open the shutter, stick your head under a black cloth on a sunny day with
temperatures in the 90s. To focus on the focusing screen, you use a loupe that's hanging around your neck. It means to use a hand-held light meter, fish a film cassette out of your bag, load the camera, set the aperture, set the shutter speed, hope that you didn't get any of the steps out of sequence, pull out the dark slide and finally take the shot.It's error-prone too. It means that there are at least 10 different steps in the process of making one exposure where you can mess up. Accidental double exposure? Been there, have even done a triple exposure once. Forget to set the right aperture after metering? Yep, I have my share of overexposed large format negatives.
If it's that hard work and that error-prone, then why am I doing it? The answer is simple: in the end it's one of the most fun and rewarding experiences that I've had in a long time. Nothing beats creating something with your own hands and finally holding the result of that work in your hands. Or post it online for the world to see. Much more rewarding than any digital shot has ever been.
Over time you get better. Most errors you only do once, as it hurts to lose one out of just a few pictures you'll take that day.
Last weekend I brought my trusty Grafmatic film holder system, a revolver-type 6-shooter that allows you to keep 6 shots in one magazine. Very convenient, but also heavier than normal double cassettes. Which turned into yet another source of error. I accidentally brushed the Grafmatic at the wrong angle with my arm, while the dark slide was still pulled. This resulted in a nice big splash of light pouring onto the exposed negative for a brief time. Long enough to ruin the shot. So I thought.
I ended up actually being quite happy with it. Is it because it's one of my babies? Or is there something about a perfect 4x5 picture seemingly ruined by light leaking onto it?
Let me know what you think.
Here's another picture of the same day. And another one.
The kind of HYBRID stuff we do on the weekends
Wir sind Hummel, oder: 4 Blendenstufen Push sind Pillepalle
Es gibt Workshops und es gibt Workshops. Im Fall der aktuellen Absolut-Analog-Veranstaltung in unseren neuen Räumen in Tübingen, war es ganz klar einer der spezielleren. Und das im positiven Sinne. Mit Begeisterung und Spaß haben sich die Teilnehmer den unwirtlichen Lichtbedingungen gestellt, vor die wir sie geschubst haben und was dabei raus kam, seht ihr hier.
Der Push
Am Anfang zum Aufwärmen und dran gewöhnen haben wir erst mal mit einem Push über 2 Blendenstufen angefangen. Standardprozedur, nix wildes. Nur wer meinte, der Push wäre nur zum "heller machen" da oder zum verkürzen der Belichtungszeiten in dunklen Situationen, der durfte sich dann über die ungewohnte Kontrastausbeute freuen. Bei prallem Sonnenlicht. Steffens Klappfalter war da dann sogar etwas überfordert, weil er keine tausendstel Sekunde konnte. Ergebnis: herrlichste Kontraste im prallsten Licht.
2-Stufen-Push (Alex)
Die Hummel
An dieser Stelle kurz die Anekdote mit der Hummel. Aerodynamiker haben dereinst behauptet, die Hummel könne aus physikalischer Sicht nicht
fliegen. Verhältnis Körpergröße und Gewicht zu Flügelfläche oder so. Die Hummel hat nun mal leider von Aerodynamik so ziemlich überhaupt keine Ahnung und darum schlägt sie einfach mit den Flügeln und … fliegt.Der Pull
Phase zwei - wir nennen sie jetzt einfach mal die Hummel-Phase - ist die mit dem Pull über drei Stufen. Also die Behandlung eines ISO-400-Films als hätte er ISO 50. Ausgeschrieben ist das die 8-fache Menge an Licht, die er eigentlich bekommen soll. In manch einem Online-Forum liest man, dass das nicht geht. Auch die Ausbeute an Entwicklungsrezepten, die man für diesen doch eher ungewöhnlichen Fall online so findet, ist so gering, dass man fast meinen möchte, es ginge tatsächlich nicht.
3-Stufen-Pull (Alex)
Aber wir waren einfach mal ganz Hummel, haben uns nicht verunsichern lassen, und die Ergebnisse sprechen tatsächlich deutlich für sich. In diesem Fall war das ein T-Max 400 in D-76, 1:1, 7min20sek bei 20°C.
Es geht halt doch, und zur Belohnung für den Ungehorsam bekamen die Fotografen dann herrlichste Grauverläufe mit extrem viel Detail und einem Kontrastumfang, der seinesgleichen sucht. Gut gemacht!
Was gelernt
Und auch wir selbst lernen jedes mal noch etwas dazu. In diesem Fall hatte ich (Chris) mir eine sehr kontrastreiche Situation (Innenraum mit Fenster und sonnenbeleuchteter Umgebung außen) geschnappt und eine Belichtungsreihe mit sieben Belichtungen mit je einer Blendenstufe Unterschied gemacht. Was am Ende hinten raus kam, hat selbst mich verblüfft.
Bild 1: 1/1000s, Bild 2: 1/15s
Die Ausarbeitung der Bilder wurde am Ende zwar noch minimal angepasst, aber alleine die Tatsache, dass der Film bei diesem 3-Stufen-Pull locker - und ohne irgendwo Zeichnung zu verlieren - diese sieben Blendenstufen breite Belichtungsspanne einfach so ohne zu murren wegsteckt, hat sogar mich weggehauen. Zieht man noch den gesamten Kontrastumfang der Szene in Betracht, dann wird hier eine Breite an Tonwerten erfasst, die fast unmöglich erscheint. Ich werde ab jetzt garantiert noch öfter Pullen. HDR? Wer braucht das? :)
Der Nachbrenner
Am Abend haben wir dann Phase 3 unseres gerissenen Plans gestartet und unter den Teilnehmern den Pushwettbewerb losgetreten. Zur blauen Stunde und zur tiefen Nacht. Wieviele Blendenstufen verträgt so ein TriX oder T-Max 400 wohl?
TriX 400 @ 1600 (Moni)
TriX 400 @ 1600 (Moni)
Gut, 1600 laufen also. Wie sieht es mit 3200 aus?
TriX 400 @ 3200 (Steffen)
TriX 400 @ 3200 (Steffen)
ISO 3200 wird also schon etwas knackiger, aber hat dadurch natürlich auch eine entsprechende Wirkung, der man sich schlecht entziehen kann.
Wollen wir noch eins drauf legen? ISO 6400 - Herrrrrrrrschaften! Der Push über 4 Stufen - ohne Netz und doppelten Boden! Jetzt nur für Sie in dieser Manege! Trommelwirbel… *drrrrrrrr*
T-Max 400 @ 6400 (Alex)
Och, wer sagt's denn. War doch gar nicht so schlimm. Sogar Graustufen haben wir noch einige. Die Hummel fliegt, und das ganz schön hoch.
Salto mortale
An diesem Punkt könnten wir uns nun eigentlich bequem zurück lehnen und den Workshop zum vollen Erfolg deklarieren. Push und Pull in vielen Extremfällen erfolgreich abgeschlossen, kein einziges Bild des gesamten Workshops kam auch nur annähernd schlecht aus der Suppe und es gab für alle Teilnehmer reichlich Erfolgserlebnisse.
Eiiiiigentlich wäre es also hiermit vorbei… wäre da nicht Jürgen gewesen, der - ganz Hummel - meinte, die 4 Stufen Push seien ja wohl Pillepalle und sich auf die ISO 12800 stürzte. Zwölftausendachthundert. Wohl gemerkt mit einem Film, der eigentlich für ISO 400 gemacht ist.
T-Max 400 @ 12800 (Jürgen)
Und zu solch einem Ergebnis muss man nun wirklich nicht mehr viele Worte verlieren. Vielleicht auch, weil man etwas sprachlos ist. 5 Blendenstufen, ISO 12800. Ausgeschrieben: ein zweiunddreißigstel des Lichts, das dieser Film eigentlich braucht.
Die Teilnehmer haben ihre kreativen Werkzeugkästchen wieder mit neuen Tools versorgt und wissen nun - nein, sie haben mit eigenen Händen und Augen BEGRIFFEN - dass es außerhalb der gängigen Lehrmeinung noch so einiges gibt, was den Rahmen herrlich (und fast schon subversiv) sprengt und dabei noch richtig glücklich macht.
Leute, wir sind mächtig stolz auf euch!
Chris Marquardt und Monika Andrae veranstalten in der Reihe Absolut Analog Fotoworkshops in Deutschland und in Kanada, die sich der analogen Fotografie mit Film widmen und richten sich an alle, vom Anfänger bis zum fortgeschrittenen Analogfotografen.
Weitere Termine 2012:
14.-15.7.2012: Herrlich Hybrid, Analoges in der digitalen Welt
24.-26.8.2012: Large Format analog, Toronto, Kanada (Sprache: Englisch)
3.-4.11.2012: Einsteigerworkshop, Panschen in Tübingen
How's THAT for a constraint?
I've lately been in an experimental mood. Experimentation is where I usually cast my caution in the wind and do the things I wouldn't usually do.
Over the weekend, Monika and I held an analog photography workshop here in Tübingen, we were sold out and our group was wonderful! We did a lot of shooting and developments and all was good and fine.
One of the things these workshops do with me is they help me get into that experimental mood and this one was no exception. After the workshop was over on Sunday afternoon, I stayed in the studio to catch up on some office work and tidy up the chemicals and other workshop stuff.
I then decided to take my good old Mamiya 645 with me on my way home. Every sane person would've loaded a roll of TMax 3200 or some similarly sensitive material, but as I said, I was in an experimental mood. So I decided to drop in a roll of Fomapan 100.
As its name suggests, Fomapan 100 is an ISO 100 film. Kinda. I've read somewhere that it is even a bit lower in sensitivity. But that doesn't mean I can't try something weird with it, does it? So I took it to the test, exposing it more in the range of ISO 800 and due to the lack of a light meter I had to wing the exposure, trust my gut.
To add insult to injury, I also didn't have a tripod with me, and it was raining.
With an estimated exposure time of 1 second at f/2.8, the lack of a tripod meant that I had to find places to rest the camera on or against while shooting. Speak of a constraint when it comes to choice of perspective.
But the pictures themselves were just one part of the equation. In the end I also remember quite a few voices that claimed that you can't do a 100 to 800 push with Fomapan 100. What they didn't know is that "you can't do that" is a trigger for me. And it usually evokes the exact opposite reaction from me.
Long story short, I'm extremely pleased with the results. The constraints of using the wrong film, leaving the light meter at home, not having a tripod and having to shoot in the rain allowed (or better: forced) me to take pictures that I wouldn't have taken any other way.
You can see all the pictures here.
What is most remarkable: out of a single roll of 15 shots I liked six (!) pictures enough to post them online. That's a keeper ratio of almost 40 percent. With digital I would've NEVER had a ratio that high.
How about you? Does your choice of medium and the constraints that you shoot under change the percentage of pictures that you like?
Don't fly and scan
It happened again. This time not on purpose, but by accident. After returning from Toronto the other day, I decided to develop some of the pictures I took on the trip. Looking through my stacks of stuff, I ran across an older batch of undeveloped negatives, that should have been developed long time ago, but wasn't. Probably too busy back then.
The problem was that I didn't know what type of film the negatives where. To find out, I took the film cassettes into the dark bag and felt the notches. Each sheet of large format negative film has a characteristic pattern of notches on one side that help you to face the film the right way and identify it in the dark.
The problem was that when I tried to detect the type of film, I was too tired, having not slept in over 30 hours, and I got it wrong.
This is why six sheets of Velvia color slide film ended up in black and white development chemistry. But as we know from my experiment a while ago, it should work in theory.
And it did work. I ended up with black and white negatives and there was even something on them. So I scanned one and you can see the result above.
Any photo accidents you'd like to share? Leave a comment!
Red is the New Black
Black and white film has undergone a lot of changes over the years. One of the bigger changes was making it less blind to certain colors.
Colors by Chris Marquardt
Yes, less blind. If you look around you, different colored objects will appear to you at different brightnesses, and you might be able to imagine how the scene looks in black and white, simply by translating the brightnesses into grey levels.
And that's how many black and white films work these days. They try to create a black and white picture that reflects the perceived brightness levels that you see with your eyes.
But originally, black and white film would translate colors very differently.
Look at the visual spectrum. It starts right beyond infrared, goes through red, orange, yellow, green, blue to violet and then disappears into ultraviolet. Infrared and ultraviolet are black to our eyes, simply because we don't have the right receptors to see these colors.
Now imagine a black and white film that can see an even narrower range, film that can only see part of the colors. And that's exactly what black and white film did in the old days. It was blind on the red side of the spectrum, so whenever it saw red light, it would register that as black. We call that an orthochromatic film. Only some time after the 1950s did black and white film become more sensitive to other colors. A film that sees the entire visible spectrum is called a panchromatic film.
Here's a snap I took of the same scene, but this time with a digital camera:
Compare the two and you will notice that the black and white film is very sensitive on the blue side, but it almost doesn't have any sensitivity on the red side of the spectrum. Blue renders almost identical to yellow, and green is somewhere in the middle grey area. In the early days of black and white photography photographers had to learn how to see in black and white to get to the picture they envisioned, and still today a lot of films have their characteristic look that's at least partially based on how the different wavelengths are rendered on a scale from black to white.
Back in the day, art went so far that during early black and white film productions, the actors had to wear bright and colorful make-up so that a normal looking black and white image could be achieved. Imagine an actor with green lipstick to avoid the lips from going all black on the film. These early film sets must have looked very colorful.
Pimp My Cam
There's nothing wrong with the screen that came with the camera in the first place, but I've recently purchased a used 30-year-old Schneider Kreuznach 65mm f/8, which translates to a prety wide angle. The normal focal length for 4x5 is about 160 millimeters. It's a fun lens to work with, but it's also pretty dark.
In the large format world, such a wide angle means that the distance between the center of the lens and the edges of the screen are much longer than the distance between the center of the lens and the center of the screen. And that longer distance translates into an image on the focusing screen that's much darker at the edges. In addition f/8 as the widest open aperture has its challenges too. I guess everything in photography comes with a price tag.
So I did some research, and I repeatedly ended up being pointed towards Maxwell Precision Optics, a small company that among other things has specialized on focusing screens. Smooth and bright focusing screens. We're talking several stops brighter.
And today, after two weeks in German customs, the new screen finally arrived!
Taking the old screen off the wooden holder was only a matter of removing four screws.
The new screen came well protected in lots of bubble-wrap and wrapped in soft paper.
In addition to the screen I had ordered a protective screen with a grid and medium format markers on it. You don't want to trap dust or fluff between the two layers, or it'll annoy the hell out of you. The brush helped a lot there. It is the awesome fluff-off by Spürsinn, which I also very successfully use to take dust off negatives before scanning.
Finally the first tests - lookin' good!
Composed in almost total darkness:
How do you pimp YOUR camera?
When MEH becomes HOLY COW
Group shot, Berlin LIMITED workshop 2011. Photo: Sean Galbraith
Large format photography has the potential to seriously mess with ones mind. The photographer's mind and that of the audience.
For a photographer it is still the most affordable way to get spectacular resolution. The camera movements allow for compositional freedom beyond anything that is
possible in smaller formats. Due to their simpler and much more symmetrical design, the image quality of the lenses is generally superb. And last but not least, the different workflow and the more thorough approach to each individual photograph generally make for more thought-out pictures.The audience reaction to large format pictures is often a different one than to 35mm photography. Due to the higher resolution, the pictures will typically have more detail, which oddly enough tends to be true even when downsized to web resolutions. The large size of the medium (4x5" and higher) results in a very different look and depth of field. And the typical lack of falling lines tends to give even very busy pictures an amount of structure and a tidy appearance that is hard to achieve with smaller formats.
My typical reaction to the higher resolutions used to be: "meh". My impression was that at the sizes typically used on the web, it wouldn't make any difference if the picture was shot with a DSLR or if it was taken with a large format camera.
After having immersed myself in large format photography for a while now, I had to change my previous "meh" into a "HOWLY COW" though. The amount of perceived detail even at smaller resolutions tends to be spectacular.
I should have known about the detail thing from the video side of things though. A very similar effect happens when you downsize HD video footage (1920 x 1080) to SD resolution (544 × 480). The amount of perceived detail is just a lot higher than with native SD footage.
Here's my audio engineer's look at it: sound recordings are often made at a much higher bit-depth (24 bits) and higher resolution (96 kHz) than the resulting CD will ever have (16 bits / 44.1 kHz). Why? Higher perceived resolution, even at the final down-sampled stage.
My next step is to print one of these pictures at 25x50" to see the ACTUAL detail. Zooming in to tiny portions of an image to see them at a 100% pixel resolution on your screen just isn't the same.
By the way, here's a little detail from the above shot:
Group Shot (detail), Berlin LIMITED workshop 2011. Photo: Sean Galbraith
What's the largest print you've ever made?
Die dunkle Ecke der Monster
Car Train (click to view and comment on flickr)
Man muss analoge Bilder auf die Schatten belichten, die Lichter finden sich dann schon von alleine. Solches hört man immer wieder, und es ist schon ein Stück weit berechtig, speziell wenn man sich im Bereich der "guten" und "normalen" Belichtung befindet.
Die wirklich spannenden Bilder finden sich allerdings oft in den Extremen.
Was, wenn man sich an die Enden heran pirscht, an die Bereiche ganz im dunkeln oder im hellen? Bereiche, die sich an anderen Stellen auch gerne mal "Zone 2" oder "Zone 9" schimpfen. Bereiche, die man als guter Fotograf gefälligst mit einem Reflektor oder einem Blitz aufzuhellen hat?
Dort begibt sich so mancher Fotograf dann in derart unbekanntere Gefilde, dass er sich nicht mehr so ganz auf die Dinge verlassen mag, die er viele Jahre lang gelernt und praktiziert hat.
Ist Schattenzeichnung wirklich so wichtig? Darf man nicht doch diese Ungewissheit ins Bild legen, die dem Betrachter Spielraum zur Erforschung gibt?
Von 15.-17. Juli 2011 halten wir in Braunschweig einen Doppelworkshop gemeinsam mit Spürsinn zu den Themen Fotografie am Ende des Lichts und Entwicklung am Ende des Lichts, in dem wir uns ganz analog und mit viel Spielfreude in die Extreme begeben.
Die dunkle Ecke im Keller, in der sich die Monster verstecken, mag beängstigen...
...spannend ist sie allemal.
Black Forest Large Format
Being confined to the studio with the Plaubel Peco for several months was a good thing as it allowed me to experiment and try out large format photography within a safe environment. But taking the Chamonix out for a first spin felt really really good too!
I took my friends Sean and Michelle for a spin in the Black Forest during their Germany vacation, and Sean brought his foldable Shen-Hao large format camera, which is virtually the same as the Chamonix.
Two guys with large format cameras in the black forest. Imagine the amount of geeking .. and eye-rolling from non-geeks ;)
Black Forest (click to view and comment on flickr)
Photographing large format is a very different way of working, and there are several things that blew my mind when I used the camera in the field and when I returned home and had a look at the pictures. One of the mind benders is the amount of freedom you have with the camera movements, also known as tilt, swing and shift. Perspectively correct pictures automatically become the norm, not the exception. You set the camera up straight, then shift to your heart's content. If the lens has a large enough image circle, that shift can be quite extensive.
And then there's the massive amount of data in these pictures. I scan my negatives on a regular Epson V600 flat bed scanner. Still, my digital files end up at about 100 megapixels and that's far from what would be possible if I cranked up the settings. My little MacBook Air 11" sure takes a bit of time to render the full size Lightroom previews.
If you're not used to this resolution, zooming in has the potential to cause a bit of mental damage to the viewer. And drooling.
By the way, this detail is a crop from a down-sampled 50 megapixel version of the image.
But having all that said, large format is only partially about resolution. I love pictures to tell stories and that doesn't depend on resolution at all. Large format photography gives you the tools to take your time, enjoy the process, set up the pictures while thinking about their details, composing well and then taking a well-metered shot. Usually.
I have just dipped my toe into the large format waters though. There is so much more to learn, and I'm looking forward to diving more into its creative potential.
Black Forest Drama (click to view and comment on flickr)
New Camera In Da House
I've been playing with large format photography for a while. Last year I bought a used German-built Plaubel monorail large format studio camera, I'm in the process of building the Marquardt International Pinhole large format camera, which is by the way moving forward and if you are on the list, you should soon get an update.
I had been missing one important piece in the puzzle: a 4x5 camera with all the required movements that I could use in the field without needing yak and two sherpas to carry it for me.
A few weeks ago I discovered the Chinese manufacturer by the not so Chinese name Chamonix. They are a small company with 8 employees and they build various foldable large format cameras, 4x5" being their smallest one.
It's the model 045N-2, it comes in at about 3 pounds without a lens and this morning one of them arrived here at my studio.
I'm going to spend some time with it to get used to the camera and to experiment. The initial impression is that it's really well built and that it is very functional for a camera of that size.
Stay tuned.
Der Push, das unbekannte Wesen
Als ich vor vielen Jahren die Schwarzweißfilme noch bei Foto Kreidler zum Entwickeln gab, da war mir schemenhaft klar, dass man Filmen beim Fotografieren weniger Licht als eigentlich notwendig geben darf, und das dann in der Entwicklung durch das sogenannte "Pushen" wieder ausgleichen kann. Das klang dann meistens so: "Guten Tag, hier sind zwei Ilford HP5, die habe ich auf ISO 1600 belichtet, können Sie mir die bitte pushen?"
Wie das Pushen genau funktioniert, und welche Auswirkungen es hat, wusste ich nicht. Nur, dass mir die Bildergebnisse immer ganz gut gefallen haben. Meine Bitte, die Filme dann noch auf hartes, kontrastreiches Papier auszubelichten, wurde meistens mit einem ungläubigen Kopfschütteln quittiert, gemacht hat er es dann - wenn auch widerwillig - trotzdem.
Heute weiß ich, dass der Push nicht zwingend das Korn vergrößert. Ich weiß, dass das Kopfschütteln des ausgebildeten Fotografen der Verschiebung der Kontraste galt, die nicht so ganz in sein Weltbild passten. Ich weiß, dass der Push nicht nur die ISO erhöht, sondern eher an der Ausbildung der Kontrastkurve rüttelt. Und das wirkt sich vor allem auf den Bildausdruck, auf die Kontrastverteilung und die Auffächerung der Grauwerte aus.
Das wirklich schöne daran: diese Bildergebnisse passen perfekt in die Bildsprache der heutigen Zeit.
Und ich weiß jetzt auch, dass es unglaublich Spaß bereitet, sich an die Grenzen des machbaren zu tasten und zum Beispiel den 400er-Film zur Abwechslung mal mit ISO 12800 zu belichten und mit der entsprechenden Entwicklung Ergebnisse zu erzielen, die einen locker vom Hocker hauen.
Die Freude an diesen Extremen möchten wir natürlich nicht für uns behalten, darum haben wir gemeinsam mit Spürsinn zwei Workshops kombiniert, die sich genau diesen Themen widmen.
Workshop 1: Fotografie am Ende des Lichts mit Michael Weyl und Tilla Pe
Workshop 2: Extremes Entwickeln für Fortgeschrittene mit Chris Marquardt und Monika Andrae
In dieser Tandemveranstaltung geht es darum, in extremen Lichtsituationen gut zu belichten und das belichtete Material dann auch entsprechend zu entwickeln. Pushen bis der Arzt kommt. Vielleicht auch etwas Pullen, denn auch das hat seine Berechtigung.
Das Tandem findet statt von 15.-17. Juli 2011, und bis Mitte Juni gibt's das Paket zum Frühbucherpreis: mehr Informationen hier
MixTour Feinkorn v2
When you shoot digital at ISO 100 and the light goes down, you change the ISO to something higher, let's say 800. But what if you shoot analog and you have half your film exposed at ISO 100? One option is to change film, which is a hassle. Another option is to carry a second camera with a higher ISO film. Also a bit of a hassle. My new favorite option is to just change the light meter to a higher ISO and keep shooting with a different sensitivity onto the same film.
"But how do you go about developing that film?" I hear you ask.
I have recently had the pleasure to play with a new developer, called MixTour. It's a product by German company Spürsinn (full disclosure: I am friends with them and we hold analog workshop together). It is actually more than just a developer, it's a four-component DIY kit that you can use to mix any type of developer you like. Fine grain, contrast, push, pull, universal, ... you name it.
MixTour comes with a set of recipes to get you started, and one of them is a universal developer that goes by the name of Feinkorn v2, and dare I say, I've fallen a little in love with it.
Here's what I did: I used Monika's Holga Wide Angle Pinhole camera to shoot of roll of Efke 100. The camera features an f/135 pinhole. Precise exposure? Virtually impossible. Especially in changing light conditions. I measured once, then timed the exposures according to my gut. AND THEY WERE ALL OVER THE PLACE! More precisely they were spread over at least three f-stops, probably closer to four. On one roll of film, next to each other.
Turned out MixTour Feinkorn v2 handled this range of latitude without even blinking. Now I'm looking forward to finding out what other tricks it has up its sleeve.
Six degrees too hot
So I return from that film dev workshop that we held in Braunschweig, home of Rollei and Voigtländer, and I had completely forgotten about that one incident.
Until just now.
Rewind. Imagine a group of photographers experimenting with different developers, fighting about water of the right temperature, stepping on each others' toes (in a nice way of course) and then imagine me standing in the middle of this, thinking
"why don't I develop that roll of Efke 50 in T-Max developer?", then elbowing my way to the basin and mixing the developer.According to the Massive Dev Chart development should have been 6 minutes at 20 degrees Celsius. Turns out amidst all the chaos I ended up with 26 degrees (don't ask), and I didn't notice until it was already in the development tank. Oh well, no harm done, higher temperature can be somewhat evened out by shorter dev time. Didn't have a formula though, and I'm a sucker for strong contrasts, so I went with what my gut told me: "shorten it, but not too much. Maybe down to 5 minutes", which is what I ended up doing.
After the full cycle of developing and fixing the film, I got a bit of a shock when I opened the tank. The film looked like it wasn't fixed. Brownish in nature and the bits that should be transparent didn't look very transparent. Luckily film is pretty much light proof after only a short time of fixing it, so you can always fix some more if you need to. 10 minutes of fixing later the film still didn't look right. It looked pretty much half fixed. Bummer. I asked my favorite film photography expert Michael of Spürsinn on what to do and he finally resorted to bathing the film in undiluted fixer for a minute, just to see if that would do something.
But it didn't.
We rinsed the film, pulled it out of the spiral and lo and behold, it was transparent, just with a pretty strong tint that looked opaque from certain angles. Super weird.
I forgot about the experiment until a few minutes ago, when I began scanning some of the pictures.
Turns out the Efke 50 / T-Max developer combination produces great contrast that still leaves enough room to work on in the (digital or analog) darkroom.
Here's a negative scan straight from the scanner, uncorrected:
And here it is with just a slight black point adjustment and a tiny raise in exposure level:
I love it when the photos are 80% where I want them straight from the camera and they still give me enough headroom to play with. I'll file this film/dev combination under B as in BINGO!
What's your favorite combination?
www.internationalpinhole.com
Sometimes things move forward faster than expected. As it's just now happening with the Marquardt International Pinhole.
We had a meeting today and one of the outcomes was that we are going to build a run of ten cameras to see how people accept it. This will be a very special camera, not only because it creates beautiful pictures, but because each and every one of them will be a hand-made unique one-of-a-kind item.
I will not go into more detail right now because I simply can't - I know the general direction and I like it, but as you, I will have to wait for the final cameras to know what they will exactly look like.
As soon as they are finished, I will post pictures.
If you are interested in one of the first ten cameras, please send a mail to chris@internationalpinhole.com
Offical website: www.internationalpinhole.com
Forget the large format MIP! Here comes the MMP!
Introducing the Marquardt Mini Pinhole (MMP) f/10 9mm. Who needs large format f/200 pinhole cameras that take sharp-ish pictures at crazy long 2-minute exposure times?! (hint: I do). Making pinhole cameras from matchboxes is not new (I took my inspiration from this video on YouTube) but I wanted to build one of those at least once. Perfect project for a Sunday early afternoon. Building this takes
Due to lack of black tape, I used a light-proof metal-based tape that is normally used to tape pictures into picture frames. Not ideal, as it's reflective, but it should still do the trick. Might end up with some light spills inside the cam though.
I used a matchbox and two rolls of film, an APX to shoot on and a cheap Lucky SHD to dump in order to get the empty film roll. Note to self: next time don't dump all the empty film rolls, so you won't have to sacrifice a film for this.
There's something strangely satisfying in pulling out a perfectly good roll of film during daytime. 1.99 € down the drain. The things you do on a Sunday afternoon...
I cut a hole into the matchbox drawer. This will hold the film in place and provide for an unexposed frame around the picture.
Empty roll of lucky to the right (the exposed film will go into this) and full roll of Agfa APX to the left.
This is how the film will go behind the drawer inside the matchbox.
And this is how it'll look after it is put together.
But first, the matchbox needs a hole for the "lens".
Here's the pinhole. I used the same metal-based tape for this as it sticks nicely. The hole turned out a bit too large, so I can expect nice and short shutter speeds, but probably quite a bit of lack of sharpness. Focal length of the camera is the distance between hole and film plane, in this case 9mm.
Attached the film to the empty spool...
...and put the spool back into the cartridge. That's one of the reasons I used a Lucky SHD film: the film cartridges are easy to pull apart and put back together without tools. The film will be transported by turning the spool on the receiving side and winging it by gut feel. Some of the pics might overlap, some might have bigger space in between them. Oh well.
Using more of the light-tight tape to seal the camera from the rays of the evil day glow ball in the sky.
More sealing
Sealed all around (hopefully). Erm.. let's call the design functional. But then, did I mention it's a disposable cam? It will be destroyed at the end of the process anyway.
The camera needs a shutter now. I cut this out of the adhesive light-proof tape so only the sides stick.
A black strip of paper acts as the shutter. Just pull it up to expose and push it back down to finish exposure. It'll be difficult to time though, my little pinhole calculator tells me that the exposure time at this focal length and aperture is less than a second, so forget about precision. I have decided that I'll be happy if only two or three pictures on the film will come out alright ;)
This is what it looks like with the shutter open. Say CHEESE!
» Insert frantic picture taking activity here «
Removing the film in a changing bag and putting it into a development tank basically means destroying the camera. Bye bye little MMP.
And now (cue drum roll) presenting the first and only pictures that have ever been taken and will ever be taken with the Marquardt Mini Pinhole:
MIP FTW
Ready for the first picture out of the Marquardt International Pinhole? (yep, I have decided to call it the MIP from now on, heh)
» MIP: The Making-Of
» MIP: The first test (video)
Update: The official Marquardt International Pinhole website is now online
Put It To The Test.
The other week I got hold of several rolls of Kodak Ektachrome E200.
Expired Kodak Ektachrome. Very very expired.
But I thought I'd have some fun with it. So I shot a roll in the Pentacon Six and went on to develop it.
Wait, Chris. You don't do color development. And Ektachrome is not even a color negative film, it's a color slide film that requires an even different process. What are you up to?
No, I haven't gone crazy, this is my curious side trying to learn more about film. (my motto has actually quite nicely been portrayed by They Might Be Giants in this little song)
And what better could I do than get everything wrong that I possily could...
Let me get a few assumptions out, based on what I have learned about film so far:
- The film is eight years expired. The date on the packaging is 06/2002. We should expect quite a bit of grain, if anything at all. This could be messy.
- The E-6 process is a reversal process, e.g. it makes a negative into a positive. I don't have any reversal chemistry. Only negative chemistry. But I have read that you can process color negative film in black-and-white chemistry. Actually there's no good reason why you shouldn't be able to do it, it's basically based on the same kind of silver halide crystals.
- The main difference between color negative film and color positive (e.g. slide) film is the missing orange mask. Other than that, the negative vs. positive outcome is determined by the process. C-41 is negative, E-6 is positive. So if anything at all, the development should make this into some sort of negative, and the missing orange mask should help with getting better results when scanning.
So far the assumptions.
Wait, one more thing: most black-and-white films have one silver layer. Color films have three layers with filter layers in between. I'm not sure my developer will be able to penetrate all of them, so the outcome is likely to be on the weird side.
On to the development. If you've followed my film developing, you'll know that I'm a fan of stand development. It's pretty safe in most cases, you don't really have to time anything and it has never really let me down, even in experimental situations like when I pushed Efke R100 by three stops.
So it was Rodinal 1:100, 20 degrees Celsius, 60 minutes stand development, 20 seconds of slight agitation at the beginning, 5 seconds of slight agitation at the 30-minute-mark.
When I finally pulled the negatives out of the fixer, they were almost black. So black that I thought the fixer was exhausted and made a new batch. I still watered the film, and when I finally pulled it out, I was surprised to actually see something on the negatives. Not much, but hopefully enough to be scanned.
A first preview round on the scanner revealed my greatest fears: almost no information available. Look at the histogram, it's very very thin.
I'd hate for such a histogram to happen to any of my regular pictures, but in this case I was pretty happy that it was this wide and not thinner. I know my scanner can make something out of that. Nothing great, but something workable. It's going to be far from ideal, but hey, this is what extreme experiments are for: to test the waters of what is possible.
So I'm happy to say that yes, it is possible to get something on eight year old slide film. It is possible to develop said slide film into a black-and-white negative using a black-and-white developer like Rodinal. It is possible to scan the developed film. And it is possible to play with the thin dynamic range in order to get something that works.
Actually the scanner did such a good job, that the resulting histogram didn't look too painful anymore:
What surprised me most is the grain though. I know Ektachrome 200 uses the modern T-crystals, that can also be found in the T-Max black-and-white films, so I was very curious about how the grain would look like, especially on an 8 year old film developed in the wrong chemistry.
Here it is at 100%
Not too shabby if you ask me.
And what have I learned from this? Color film is a not that different from black-and-white film, from now on I won't be paranoid about expired film anymore, and this is proof to methat film is a lot more forgiving than most people think.
I also had a ton of fun while doing this experiment and feeding my curiosity!
Push It!
A day spent with photography is a great day!
We spent the first day of this year in the Autostadt in Wolfsburg, the huge Volkswagen museum right next to the VW factory.
They are very photography friendly there, especially if you're there almost by yourself. January first is not traditionally a day where the Germans go to car museums. So instead of the thousands of visitors that have usually entered the premises by noon, in some of the exhibit houses we were among
the first ten. And the employees even helped us get the best pictures by adjusting the lights and getting out of the way.We made two major decisions upfront: analog only and medium format. The third decision was dictated by availability of film and the fact that most of the photography would take place indoors:
We had no choice but underexpose and push the films. By quite a bit in some cases.
At this point, instead of saying anything to those who keep going on about how much you're going to lose out of an ISO 100 film when pushed by three f-stops using Rodinal, I'd just like to show you some pictures (click goes big):
The other film I had with me was the good old Ilford HP5+, which I used to shoot a lot with back in the 80s but kind of lost track of. I'm glad I gave it a shot the other day, and I'm glad I did a one stop push, the tonal distribution that came out is just wonderfully creamy, and the push development managed to give it a nicely steep-ish gradation curve.
Some of my learnings of the last two days:
a) I'm turning into more and more of a fan of push stand developments using Rodinal. With the right film the results can be wonderful.
b) In order to push Efke 100 by three stops, you'll have to make sure to get the exposure spot on, as you won't have much to play with later on.
c) Spending a weekend with photography, playing and trying out new things and learning lots in the process is FUN FUN FUN!
For those of you who want to give this a go themselves, here is some information on the films and the development:
The first three pictures were shot on Efke 100, underexposed by 3 stops, stand-developed in Rodinal 1:50 (for Sean: that was 12 milliliters for a 120 film) at 20 degrees Celsius for 70 minutes, 30 seconds mild agitation at the beginning, 10 seconds mild agitation 35 minutes into the development. Stand development means that after the first agitation you do not even think of touching the development tank. Hands completely off until it's time to agitate again.
The last three pictures were shot on Ilford HP5+, underexposed by one stop and developed in Rodinal 1:25 (24 milliliters) at 20 degrees Celsius for 8 minutes, 30 seconds initial agitation, then a few light swirls each minute.
All pictures were taken with the Pentacon six and an almost uncoated Biometar 2.8/80mm lens. Exposure metering was done using an iPhone 4 with the free Pocket Light Meter app.
Monika wrote a German blog entry here with more pictures from the same day, that she shot with her Pentax 6x7, which we call "the beast".
Let me know what you think, I'd love to hear from you in the comments!
Going Suuuuuper Wide: The Spinner 360
click for big
Well, when I wrote super wide in the title of this post, I didn't mean it in a regular DSLR 8mm lens sort of way.
This baby covers a field of view of some 400 degrees.
"What? I thought there were only 360?"
Yes, there are, but if you aren't careful (or if you are so inclined), this thing gets you on the same picture twice.
I'm talking about the Lomo Spinner 360. Monika gave me one for Christmas, and I haven't had that much photography fun in ages.
We took it for a spin (erm. sorry, couldn't resist) on Boxing day in the Herrenhäuser Gärten, a park in Hannover.
click for big
Here is how it works: you hold it at its handle, you pull the string and as you let go, the entire camera turns 360 degrees, and sometimes more. It doesn't have a shutter, and it constantly exposes a slit of light onto the film. At its normal rotational speed, this ends up with an exposure time of somewhere between 1/125s and 1/250s.
Unless it's -8 degrees Celsius, then it turns slower. Which in turn (sorry again) results in a longer exposure time. And as the light was already fading and I only had an ISO 100 film in the camera (they recommend 400 for daylight), it turned out to be just perfect :)
click for big
This is a camera to have fun with. It's a camera that doesn't take photography too seriously. It's a camera that explores what's possible in a really playful way.
The Spinner shows the world in a way that we usually don't experience, and it does it in full sprocket hole glory. Yes, you might have noticed that it uses the full width of a 35mm film, including the sprocket holes that are normally only there for the film to be transported.
What this means is that you won't be able to simply drop off your film and get prints made. For now I have used the Spinner only with black and white film that I developed myself. You should be able to tell your local drug store to only develop the film and return it uncut though.
And then it's time to scan. Most flatbed scanners will not allow you to scan everything including the sprocket holes because the film masks they use hide them. You could try simply placing the film directly on the glass, or you could get the DigitaLIZA, which is a contraption that allows you to scan almost the entire negative minus a tiny bit at the outer edges where it holds the film.
Which ever way you get the pictures into the computer, from there you can print them, post them online, blog them, and simply enjoy a new way to look at the world around you.
Update: Just found an article that covers a bit of the history of spinning 360 degree cameras.
Update: Looks like the Lomo Spinner 360 is actually the rebirth of an older camera called the Spinshot 35S that was developed by Rick Corrales in 1991 and had a build run of only 1000 pieces. As opposed to the Lomo Spinner 360, the Spinshot 35S has a viewfinder and a bubble level on the bottom of its handle. It also featured an longer-than-lifetime warranty with the words "Full Spinshot warranty buyer protection for life ... plus reincarnations"
» more information here
Update: I just found some more excellent information about the history of the Spinner 360 and about its inventor Rick Corrales, as posted in a flickr comment by Gimel Vav
Finding Vivian Maier. This Project Needs Your Help. Now.
Update: There is a now a short 10-minute video documentary over at Chicago Tonight
Today I received a Tweet from @funkerpucki. It was in German and said something along the lines of check this out together with a link. I get quite a few of those. I'm usually hesitant clicking them, especially if they are shortened and I don't know where they go.
I'm more than glad I clicked the link this time.
This is about Vivian Maier, a street photographer who was discovered in 2007, two years before she died. I can't believe I haven't heard about her until now.
From the few pictures I have seen, this is a sensational discovery. Her sense of space, geometry, timing, situation and her storytelling are
so captivating, it's hard not to fall in love with her photography.
John Maloof and Anthony Rydzon have opened a Kickstarter project to secure the funding for a feature-length documentary and a book about Vivian Maier.
I love her photography and I want to see more of it. I also want to know more about how her work was discovered. This is a wonderful story.
If you follow me, you know that I'm careful about what causes I publicly support, but this is clearly one that should get the funding to continue working.
So why not pop over to Finding Vivian Meier Kickstarter pager and pledge a few dollars?
I just did.
Update:
» Blog about Vivian Maier (with lots of pictures)
» Chicago Magazine about Vivian Maier
» The flickr discussion post that started the whole story
» More Vivian Maier pictures
Milliliters or Dev Ratios?
What I'm a bit more concerned about is that nobody seems to really talk about the amount of developer per film. Are ratios really everything?
Look, different films have different surfaces. 35mm film needs a different amount of developer than a sheet of 4x5 film. The hight of the film in the developing tank determines the amount of liquid you will need to keep it submerged. But then the dilution won't really be that precise, because in one tank you might need 590ml of water to cover a 120 roll of film, and in another tank you'll need 700ml do achieve the same.
If the recipe tells you to use a 1+25 dilution, then in the 590ml tank you would end up with 22.7ml of developer, and in the 700ml tank you'd end up with 27 milliliters.
I understand that there are two rather different types of development. You either give the film more developer than it needs to fully develop, and try to precisely time the development, temperature and so on. Then after the time is up, you stop the development either by using a stop bath or simply by rinsing with water (I prefer the latter) and then fix the film.
The other method is the stand development where you give the film the amount of developer it needs, but not more. This together with the way the film locally exhausts the developer during a stand development (you don't move the development tank during development!) means you won't have to be too concerned about time (about an hour or two) because it's hard to overdevelop.
So here's my question: should we stop using dilutions and rather start working with milliliters per type of film roll?
I got some suggested values for Rodinal developer from this very interesting discussion thread:
135 film: 3 to 3.5ml per roll
120 film: 4ml per roll
220 film: 8 ml per roll
I might be completely off track here, what do you think?
12.5 Hour Film Development? EPIC!
The further I explore this medium, the more doors open for me and let me find new avenues. Right now I'm looking into the intricate details on how to develop black and white film.
Switch. Lucky SHD 100, Rodinal 1+100, 3 degrees Celsius, 12.5 hours
The basics are very easy and mostly the same: you put the film in a light-proof development tank (usually a plastic container), you dilute developer with water, at a certain temperature, you fill the developer into the development tank, you agitate it every now and then for something in the range of five to twenty minutes, then you pour the developer out, rinse with water, fill in fixer for about 5 to 10 minutes, rinse again and you're done.
Now there are a lot of variables, you can use different kinds of developer (you can even develop film in coffee!), the developers work with different dilutions. Then there's the time component. And the amount and frequency of agitation. And the temperature.
Here are the parameters for a pretty normal film development:
Film: Lucky SHD 100 (exposed at ISO 100)
Developer: Spürsinn HCD
Dilution: 1+15
Development time: 7:30 min
Agitation: 30 seconds, then swirl the tank a few times once a minute
Temperature: 20 degrees Celsius
Fixing time: 6 minutes
The results are very predictable, especially if you stick to this very routine and don't change any of the parameters.
Don't move!
Then I started to hear about stand development, which changes several of these parameters. In stand development you often work with thinner developer, e.g. at a higher dilution, the development time is longer, sometimes even an hour or longer. And as the name suggests, you don't agitate the development tank as much, sometimes just in the beginning and then just let it sit do its thing.
Developer gets used up during development, normally you have to mix a fresh batch every time you develop film. Stand development makes use of that fact. During stand development, the developer doesn't move over the film, and so at the places where it touches the film, it gets used up. And once it's used up, it won't develop anymore, or at least not that fast. So it has a self-stopping characteristic, the development will slow down further and further. But it doesn't get used up at the same speed everywhere. It will quickly develop the brighter areas of the film (e.g. those areas where the negative is dark) until it's used up. At the same time the darker areas of the film (e.g. where the negative is brighter) don't use it up as fast, so the developer has more time to go to work there.
The result can be more detail in the shadows and typically less grain.
Mercury II. Lucky SHD 100, Rodinal 1+100, 3 degrees Celsius, 12.5 hours
Did I tell you I love extremes? When I want to find out what a slider in Lightroom does, I don't just move it gradually, I crank it all the way right or left, then ease back. And when I do a stand development, I crank it too.
After reading enough about it, I thought I should give it a try. The hard way. The stand developments that I've done so far were in the 30 minute range, and I couldn't see that much difference from the regular process.
So this time I changed several of the parameters. First I exposed a roll of Lucky SHD 100 at ISO 800. Some say it's impossible to push this relatively cheap film this far. I beg to differ. Second I decided on a much lower temperature by putting it outside on the window sill. During winter. At 3 degrees Celsius. I also used a different developer: Rodinal R09 one-shot (I read somewhere that it works really well for stand development), And last, I thought why not go all the way and left it there over night. For 12.5 hours to be precise.
Let's recap:
Film: Lucky SHD 100 (exposed at ISO 800)
Developer: Rodinal
Dilution: 1+100
Development time: 12.5 hours
Agitation: 30 seconds, then ignore for the rest of the time
Temperature: initially 20 degrees Celsius, cooling down to 3 degrees
Fixing time: 6 minutes
It was an experiment, and certainly not one under controlled conditions. I had changed several parameters at once, and didn't have much experience with stand development other than the few times I used pretty conservative recipes to develop by. All I could have hoped for was to find at least a bit of seomthing on the pictures that wasn't completely overdeveloped.
Down. Lucky SHD 100, Rodinal 1+100, 3 degrees Celsius, 12.5 hours
What came out was pretty much beyond my expecations. Great tones and a quite low level of grain. Very scannable too.
Conclusion
I must say I'm pretty much happy with this! Up to today I was a semi fan of the Lucky film. It has its quirks, and under some lighting conditions I just could never get good results from it. This method has pretty much changed that for me <3
Now all I'll have to find a good way to do such a development during summertime. Might have to get a separate development fridge soon...
Universal Mercury II
Yes, it needs cleaning (damn you, macro lens!). But just take a look at this beauty. When I recently came across this camera, I simply had to get my fingers on one of them.
It's the US-made Universal Mercury II, the only camera I know of that has a rotary shutter. Which explains why the camera has this odd protrusion at its top. This half frame (18x24mm) camera was made in the United States around 1945 and it features a super fast shutter speed of up to 1/1000s.
It squeezes 65 frames out of a regular 35mm film.
And now after having watched this video repeatedly, I'm going to clean it. Promise.
Plaubel Peco Universal II
Here's one of the tiny little things I brought from the Fotobörse Darmstadt. My new preccccccious...
Hm okay, one of them.
It's a German-built Plaubel Peco Universal II, it sports an international back and takes everything that fits within a size of 4x5". I've got it with a set of 4x5" and by 9x12cm cassettes. Now I'm looking for a 120 film back. Happen to have a spare one lying around? Also looking for a Polaroid back.
And yes, large format is a big journey, but it's also really exciting!
The Invisible Camera
It doesn't really matter if with an iPhone, a full frame DSLR or a medium format analog camera, I simply love photography. Capturing that moment and telling that story is what it's all about for me.
Whatever tool works best for the job is the right tool. But at the same time it's always the photographer who takes the picture, the equipment can merely help you with getting that one picture that tells the story and add its flavour, both during the taking of the picture and in its visual representation later on.
But it is clear that there are always two sides involved: you and the camera, the camera and you.
Years ago someone asked me "when are you a photographer?" and I didn't have a good answer back then. I think I have now found it while surfing the web.
User imaphotog posted this on reddit:
I've been taking pictures since I was a little kid. I've been working professionally for five years. And only now is my camera disappearing.
What I mean is that while working, I can see in my mind's eye quite accurately what frames are possible with the given conditions. I can envision composition, perspective, contrast, depth of field, and metering pretty well. I'm pretty sure it's by virtue of hours and hours and hours of practice with 35mm.
Now I don't think about the camera. I just dial in and shoot. Look at the scene, see the images in my head, and grab them. I might snag a glance at histogram every now and then to confirm myself, but no more of the LCD chimping that slowed me down for so long. (except when I shoot film)
Am I crazy?
This is what happens if you spend time doing something instead of just reading about it. Someone said it takes 10 years until you master something. That is 10 years of spending time, not 10 years of taking the camera out an hour on the weekend.
I don't think you're crazy imaphotog. I think you nailed it!
Now.. go out and shoot!
(source: reddit)
Large Format: Anarchy And Restriction
Okay, seasoned pros will smile at me calling 4x5" large format, as it is just the baby of the larger formats in photography. But hey, I have become super excited about it!As you know I am right in the middle of my journey rediscovering film photography in all its glory. I don't believe I am doing this because I'm a hopeless nostalgic, trying to desperately preserve some of the long gone good old times. Far from it! It is actually much more a combination of realizing that next to the obvious weaknesses, analog photography does have a lot of strengths that go far beyond some of the aspects of what digital can do, and that there is something wonderfully refreshing in having to work within a restricted environment.
I grew up shooting 35mm film with a Minolta X700 SLR. The 35mm format (today also known as "full frame") is the format that defined me. The 35mm format speaks a visual language that I understand very well and that I know how to handle. It feels comfortable. Sometimes almost too comfortable.
Then came medium format. 6x4.5cm, 6x6cm, 6x9cm. Later even the in-between 4x3 and 4x4cm film size. Again, a different visual language, supported by having to use a different approach in composition, workflow and by having different depth of field to work with. Initially that felt strange, and it took some time to get used to the new language and find its strengths and weaknesses. And I actually can't claim that I am completely there yet. But I feel I'm getting pretty close, and a certain level of comfort has started to set in. Still far from the too comfortable level
Then two weeks ago I attended a large format photography workshop. Two days of venturing into alien territory. And boy have I seen the light.
If you take a look at your non large-format camera, no matter if digital or analog, if compact or full-frame SLR, even at most of the medium format cameras, you will realize that they all have a clearly defined reference framework. The film plane is parallel to the lens plane, they are both on the same visual axis and the distance between film and lens is usually fixed.
On the one hand those conditions help to get to a defined state, which inevitably makes photography easier accessible to more people, on the other hand photography didn't really start out this way.
There are ways to work around those: you can use a tilt lens to leave the parallel universe (sorry, couldn't resist), moving outside the optical axis can be achieved by a shift lens, and the distance between film and lens can be changed by adding bellows in between. Or macro rings.
Enter large format photography.
The lens and the film plane are situated on two independent boards that are connected by bellows. Tilting, shifting and changing the distance are second nature to a large format camera. Total freedom. And we are not just talking about tilting and shifting the lens, you can also tilt and shift the film. Or both.
To say it in the words of a large format photographer friend: PURE ANARCHY!
But wait. A large format camera is heavy. And the film isn't on a roll, it comes in sheets that individually go into film cassettes. If you use a double-sided cassette, you have two shots per film. But you will have to reverse the cassette to take the second shot.
So doing large format photography is not only anarchy, it also is a lot of restriction. If you want to shoot outside, you will have to carry a heavy beast and a heavy tripod, just to return home with a hand full of pictures.
Restriction combined with the ultimate level of freedom. What a crazy combination! And what a refreshing one at that.
I for my part have caught the virus big time. The Fotobörse Darmstadt, one of Germany's largest trade shows for used photography gear, is less than two weeks away, and at the top of my shopping list is a 4x5" large format camera. Maybe a Toyo, maybe a Cambo, or a Plaubel, a Sinar, or maybe even a Linhof, a Horseman or a Tachihara. Or a folding Graflex.
I have the feeling that this might not be the last time you see me writing about this...
Photo: mikefiction
Youngster vs. Old Lady
Last weekend while on a large format workshop (I'll talk about this another time) I took pictures using my 35mm Minolta X700 with a 35/1.8 lens on it and a roll of Efke 100 film, which I later pushed to ISO 400 in Rodinal R09 one shot developer. I used this 1+50 recipe for development.
(click for bigger size and comments)
Then today I got the package with a Zeiss Ikon Ikonta B (this is what it looks like, here's a review) that I got from eBay. It's a 6x6 medium format camera with a folding front, has a 75mm lens and takes 120 roll film. It also has an uncoupled rangefinder built in, which means you'll focus with the range finder, then take that result and dial it in on the lens. A two step process for focussing with a nice built-in error margin. And it doesn't come with a light meter, so you're down to external metering. All this slows down the process quite a bit, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, just a different way of working.
To me there is quite a different feeling between the results that come out of those two cameras. The 35mm pictures from last weekend give me an upbeat feeling. Even though they are on the darkish side, they feel very open and inviting to me.
In contrast the pictures I took today almost freak me out. In a good way. Almost a depressive vibe, which is what I was going for when I took them. That and a bit of luck, as it was the first time I used this camera and the first time I developed this specific film in this specific way.
The pictures from both these sessions touch me in different ways, and evoking emotion is one of my main reasons for doing photography. For me a good picture is the one that touches me.
So what makes those two photo sessions have such different results?
Let me try to analyze:
Weather
The weather was almost the same, both times the sky was overcast, but the 35mm pics were all either taken at night, or indoors, so there was definitely a different quality of light by default. Hard to compare from that perspective.
Film
The 35mm pictures were shot on Efke 100 film at ISO 400, then pushed during development. The Ikonta pictures were shot using Rollei Tonal 100 (an orthopanchromatic film) which is also an ISO 100 film, also pushed to 400 during development. Both films are different animals, and I intentionally did not scan both of them to grayscale, but left the color information intact. You can see the Tonal 100 having a slightly warmish tone which I think helps the vintage nature of the camera I used.
Both films also get a bit more grainy due to the push development, but it doesn't show as much in the medium format film due to its much bigger size compared to the 35mm negative.
Format & Lens
6x6 medium format, that's 60x60mm. Compare that to the 24x36mm that a 35mm camera does. 3600 vs. 864 square millimeters.
Let's try to compare: the 35mm camera's normal focal length would be 43mm, the diagonal of the film. The 35mm lens is therefore slightly wide angle. The normal focal length for a 6x6 camera is about 85mm, so the 75mm are also slightly wide, so in that respect they sort of compare.
There is one big difference though: The size of the film has a big influence on depth of field. At the same aperture and distance and comparable focal length, the medium format camera will give you less depth of field, which you can see in the pictures. In order to get the same shallow depth of field with the 35mm camera, you will either have to get closer to the subject, or you have to use a wider open aperture.
Crop
The 35mm format has an aspect ratio of 3:2, the medium format of the Ikonta B is 1:1 - square. The pictures I tend to get out of a square format are often much more closed and less dynamic compared to the more open 3:2 crop. In one of the 35mm images I even used an almost 3:1 ratio.
Composition
The two series are fundamentally different in composition. With the 35mm I used much more close-up action, and the compositions are overall more dynamic. The faucet is dynamic in it's assymetrical nature, the rainy window balances out the light sources, one behind a rainy window and many other blurry ones in the far distance. And the Canadian flag is a very dynamic experiment where I moved the camera while exposing for a second. There is also not much that connects the pictures. (Maybe water could be the connecting element, but then you'd have to soak the Canadian flag, and I like Canada way too much to do that)
In contrast the 6x6 pictures from today are all very static. They all share strong verticals and those verticals are dead center. This is something the 6x6 format makes me do. I can't help it. I didn't notice until I returned home and scanned the pictures. Looking at each individually, I think those three pictures are okay. I believe putting them together in a triptych creates something bigger than the sum of the individual pictures.
Vignetting
All vignetting that you see is a product of the lenses used. The 35mm lens has some vignetting when shot wide open - and all the shots you see are shot wide open. The Ikonta also does vignetting, even stopped down one or two f-stops. In fact, while the 35mm pictures were shot at f1.8, the Ikonta pictures were all shot at f5.6 - that's a difference of over three stops. And the vignette the Ikonta's lens produces at this aperture is just very silky and smooth and vintage feeling.
Conclusion
I'm not sure what to draw from this comparison, but I will take a few personal observations away from it:
- The 35mm format tends to produce more dynamic results, the 6x6 Ikonta ends up with more static pictures
- The vignette produced by the Ikonta looks great. Must. Use. Ikonta. For. Portrait. Session.
- Due to its warm tone, the Tonal 100 film is a good choice for vintage type results. Its orthochromatic nature helps this feeling too
- Both the Efke 100 and the Tonal 100 can easily handle push development to ISO 400. The Efke 100 reacts with a bigger contrast boost than the Tonal 100, which is more soft in that respect
- Working with the 6x6 is much slower (no built-in light meter, two step focusing), and as a result I tend to end up being a bit less experimental than I am with the 35mm
- This is also helped by the fact that a roll of 120 film on a 6x6 camera yields only 12 pictures, the 35mm film allows for 3 times the exposures
- Grey November weather is great for shooting with the Ikonta, it allows me to be lazy with the light metering, because nothing changes much. The 35mm with its built-in meter is more agile in quickly changing conditions
- The depth of field on the 6x6 is much more shallow than on the 35mm, which will help isolate subjects even if they are not very close
- The Zeiss Ikon Ikonta B is a vintage camera with bellows, which makes it much more interesting for passers-by than the much more modern and regular looking Minolta. This can be a great conversation starter, but it can be in your way if you want to inconspicuously take pictures. Street photography with the Ikonta? Probably not.
Do you have any specific camera/film combinations that help you take pictures of certain moods and with certain characteristics?
The Post Digital Photography Era
Because I do two shows on photography, and because I'm a very curious person, I keep close tabs on a lot of the things that go on in photography. Every day something new happens, something gets invented, something becomes popular or disappears back into obscurity. Remember the disposable flash bulb? Remember the Kodak Disc? Photography is very much alive. It has always been. Some trends will only be of interest to a select few, some will gain wider interest and some even become so well known, that you see them being used over and over.
An example? HDR became pretty hip pretty fast back when HDR processing software Photomatix was released, especially when used in the form of a way-over-the-top effect. Now, several years later, I see more and more people using it the way it was originally meant to be used: to subtly increase the dynamic range of an image. Another example? The tilt effect (also often mistakenly referred to as the tilt/shift effect) that allows you to make regular scenes look like miniatures is one of those trending examples. It has been around forever, but it only became popular a few years ago. And it already is beginning to look somewhat old and dated.
It's easy to look at these trends as unrelated events, but the sheer amount of interesting things that have popped up over the last few years makes me believe that we are actually at the beginning of a fundamental shift in how the medium of photography is perceived and how it's being used in more creative ways than ever.
The Analog Clean Room
Some of us, myself included, come from a film SLR background where it was crucial to get the best, the slickest and most reproducible results. Good glass and technique helped to make sure you didn't end up with any unwanted vignetting, and it was a sign of quality of your equipment and work if you pictures had the desired level of sharpness and contrast next to a good composition. Cropping was done when enlarging photos, but it was less practical when shooting slide film, unless you used my method of cropping the slides by sticking black electrical tape on them.
The Digital Clean Room
Then all of a sudden digital was there, and even though I gave up a lot of control, my first two mega pixel camera with its tiny sensor, its from today's perspective horrible dynamic range, and the overprocessed JPG images that it produced - JPG was the only choice - even with all that, there was something magical about the instant feedback and the possibility to try as often as I liked to get the desired result. The first DSLR followed a while later and it gave me back control. And perfection. Overexposed? Correct and shoot again. Got the framing wrong? Move the camera, shoot again. White balance off? Fix in post. Almost like a computer game where you have an infinite amount of lives. Died during the boss fight? Try again. And again.
Spray and Pray
There are a lot of situations where the spray and pray approach is the only one that will allow you to get the exact result you want. There are a lot of jobs and situations where digital is the only way to go, and I love to be able to quickly grab the camera, take a 21 mega pixel picture and post it online before an analog photographer can even get the film to the lab.
But if you take a look beyond that, you are bound to realize that for more and more photographers the digital way is becoming less and less satisfying. And I'm not even speaking of the massive backlog of pictures un-dealt with that more and more photographers fight.
Imperfections
Thanks to the fact that Lightroom, Aperture and other photography software allowed us to move the vignetting slider in both directions, a lot of photographers started to add vignettes to their pictures as opposed to removing them. Artificial grain was added to make digital black and white images more moody, more analog looking, and to bring back some of the overall grittiness that the analog world used to have. In fact my hard drive still hosts a high-res scan of a gray medium format slide, that I used to overlay on some of my pictures in Photoshop.
Lenses With Flavor
Now we have Hipstamatic, Camera Bag, The Best Camera, Lo-Mob and more. These are iPhone apps that simulate an analog look, and you find a lot of them on other platforms too.
When it comes to your DSLR, you can buy creative lenses like the Lensbaby, the Subjektiv, the Dreamagon, adapters to use a Holga plastic lens on your Nikon D700, or even stereo lenses, all optical ways to turn your camera into something entirely different. Ever shot with a zone plate instead of a regular lens? How about a pinhole? The sometimes not very predictable results that those lenses give you, make it really exciting to finally look at the pictures on your computer and be delighted with the imperfections that they add to your photography. Without using a single digital filter.
The Music World
In my other life I produce audio, and I can't help noticing big analogies between photography and the field of sound. Audio went digital quite a bit earlier than photography did, and I suspect a bit of a parallel development (pun not intended). Back in the 1980s, when the CD came out and everything in the production world all of a sudden turned digital, a lot of productions started to sport a very clean and almost analytical sound. Drum tracks turned very sterile thanks to clean quantization, removing the flawed human element. And the loss of that often went hand in hand with the loss of emotion. Consequently it didn't take the drum machine manufacturers long to introduce humanizer circuits into their boxes to get some of the feeling back. And the clean and digitally recorded sound ended up being fed through digital algorithms that simulated the warm sounding distortions of analog tubes and tape machines.
Hipstamatic anyone? I'm actually surprised neither Canon nor Nikon have introduced any effective "make it dirty" sliders in their DSLRs yet.
Today with audio,I do the same many other producers do: I add dirt by running my microphone through an amplifier that uses an actual analog tube. I do that because neither have I found an equally good sounding digital version of analog tube distortion, nor am I patient enough to spend the time it takes my computer to make all the intricate calculations to add those fake distortions. This is simply more authentic and faster. Many music producers still (or again) record certain things on actual tape machines, because the punch their productions get through the tape saturation is unparalleled in the digital world. Analog is alive and kicking in the music business.
The Right Tool For The Job
There's a really interesting shift happening in photography too, and I believe it goes beyond being a fad, beyond being a trend that will have disappeared again a year from now. At least for their creative expression, a growing amount of digital photographers is moving (back) into analog photography, and away from the clinically perfect digital world. Why? Maybe because digital photography makes you unhappy? Maybe because it is missing some of the human element? Maybe because it allows you to re-introduce a certain amount of randomness back into your art? Maybe even because photographers are too impatient to spend all the time and effort (and in case of expensive digital filters the money) to re-create a digital version of their beloved Ilford HP5+ pushed to ISO1600. Actual Ilford HP5+ pushed to ISO1600 simply does a better job. And a more authentic one at that. And if you still feel like playing, there's always the hybrid approach where you scan your negatives and continue working on them in the digital realm.
We Want Our Flaws Back It Seems
We have all seen a lot of perfect, we have been marinated left and right in crisp, noise-free and predictable digital photography. It almost seems, people want the flaws back. And that clearly shows in a lot of developments (sorry, douldn't resist). Look at all the creative films that you can get today. Some of my favorites are the Rollei Crossbird (a slide film that has been made to work really well in cross processing), the Redbird (a red-scale film that has the color emulsion reversed, resulting in some intense red color cast), and even the Fuji Astia 100F 100F slide film, which produces some pretty intense results when processed in negative film chemistry instead of its intended slide film soup. Cross processing gives you results that are somewhat unexpected, results that you probably wouldn't have achieved (or even tried) in digital, that's how different they can look. But nevertheless results that are much more likely to make you come back and look at these pictures for a second time.
The Trust in Chance
Instead of fully controlling every aspect of their work, more and more photographers deliberately introduce elements into their workflow that are hard to reproduce exactly the same way. Look for instance at some of the instant film materials you can get through the Impossible Project at the moment. Predictable results? Hardly. Or look at double exposures. Taken by different photographers. Did you know you can buy exposed film on eBay to add your own second layer of exposures, then develop it to find out what you've got? What an element of surprise! Some deliberately shoot film that is far beyond its best-before date and take advantage of the interesting characteristics some aging film materials get. Some expose the whole 35mm film, including the sprocket holes, and some even partially remove the lenses from their cameras and tilt them to achieve effects similar to lensbabies and tilt lenses - that's called "freelensing". Or the deliberate manipulation of the medium, as seen in the emulsion lift, where integral instant film is taken apart and the photo emulsion gets transferred onto a different material.
Innumerable interesting and important developments that define a new style and even more important, a new approach to photography that is much more playful and unpredictable than anything else in photography has been for many decades.
Photography goes far beyond the clean and perfect results that our 24 megapixel DSLRs and our impressive L-class lenses will give us. And even if you don't want to take a step into the analog world and instead opt to use Hipstamatic or Camera Bag on your iPhone's digital camera, at least you give the random element some level of chance.
And maybe, after a while, you're ready to spend twenty bucks on eBay for a used old brownie, you load it with a roll of 120 slide film, you shoot some fun pictures, then you drop the film off at the next drug store with the note "please develop this slide film using the C41 negative process" - and after a few days, you'll get to enjoy the prints of your first batch of cross-processed pictures ever.
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