Blog - My Soapbox
Photo Day LIVE on August 18 2pm Pacific
It's another Photo Day and Chris has made his way up to the TWiT Brick House in Petaluma to talk photography with Leo Laporte and his guests!
The theme for this Photo Day is Photography outside the mainstream.
Among many other topics, Chris will hang out in studio to talk with Leo and his guests to talk about the origins of Tilt/Shift, taking pictures from kites, digging up 1850s photo technology to create true works of arts and - of course - he'll answer your questions!
Guests include Leo Laporte (Chief TWiT), Cris Benton (Kite Aerial Photography), Paul Sergeant (Tintype Studio) and Susan and Neil Silverman (travel photographers extraordinaire).
Tune in Saturday August 18, 2pm Pacific / 5pm Eastern / 23:00 Central European time!
Follow the show live at http://live.twit.tv/
Ask audience questions via Twitter (hashtag #photoday2012) or at http://tfttf.com/photodayquestion
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?
Changing the Laws of Physics
I just ran across another blog article that asked the question if mobile phones would take over in the long run and overthrow all other cameras because the sensor technology and the fact that you tend to have one with you all the time.
I'm not so sure for a two main reasons.
1. Control. Cameras tend to get better and better, but even the best automated decisions will not necessarily reflect your intentions.
An example: think about a backlit portrait. Without built-in intelligence, the camera's light meter will
tell the camera that there's a lot of light and the image that comes out is likely to be a silhouette of a person. Most cameras nowadays will detect this and compensate for it, resulting in a well-exposed person (and most likely a slightly overexposed background). I guess in most cases that's what the person behind the camera wanted anyway, so it's okay.But how about the times when a photographer intended to produce the silhouette picture but didn't have a way to tell the camera that that's what they wanted?
The way the current mobile phone cameras look, it's very hard for me to believe that they will get to this level of control any time soon.
2. Sensor size. Different sensor sizes result in different depths of field (DOF) and control over DOF is a very important tool for most photographers.
In-focus and out-of-focus areas in a picture are one out of a whole array of essential tools for photographers when it comes to telling a story in a picture. Focus will show or hide things, focus will help you guide the viewer's eyes through a picture.
Smaller sensors make it very hard to control DOF. Everything tends to be in focus. Bigger sensors make it easier to control DOF. A photographer can place focus where it's important. And as things look right now, mobile phone cameras are pretty unlikely to get larger camera sensors.
Even if mobile phone cameras got larger sensors, that would mean that the lenses needed to be bigger and further away from the sensors, adding bulk and size. Very unlikely.
Will newer technologies and computational photography replace the need for bigger sensors in the future?
Who knows, but at this point in time, even the Raytrix and Lytro cameras cannot do their job without a certain level of bulk, and the results are by far not where they'd need to be.
What do you think? Are we going to see DSLRs disappear any time soon?
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!
The Brownie Tree
In September Monika and I made our way to Toronto, Canada, to hold an urban photography workshop. We held it at Sean and Michelle's place, and they were wonderful hosts to us and the entire workshop group.
Before we left, Michelle gave Monika an unbelievably awesome Christmas tree ornament: a Kodak Brownie Holiday Flash, made of glass. Then we had a vision...
In November I managed to track down what seemed to be the last few of these ornaments in stock at a US retailer. When I checked a few weeks later, they were out of stock.
It took them about a week to reach Germany, it took them another three weeks (and a few phone calls) to get through customs. "WHAT is in that package?" - "Ornaments" - "But they look like cameras" - "No, they are ornaments" - "But the boxes say KODAK on them" - "Yes, but they are camera-shaped christmas ornaments" - "Huh?" - "Open one of the boxes, but be careful not to break them, they are made of glass" - "Why would anyone want a camera made of glass?" ...
They finally arrived, ten in total, so together with the one from Michelle, we now have eleven beautiful little brownies hanging off our little Christmas tree.
(By the way, the glass is transparent at the viewfinder, the lens, and the little red window at the back, so you can actually look through them, isn't that awesome?)
Merry Christmas!
And what's your photography-related Christmas decoration?
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?
3D Image Through One Lens
Then one day I started squinting my eyes. Left, right, left, right, .. and I noticed that in fact each eye sees a slightly different picture.
TWO DIFFERENT IMAGES.
THROUGH ONE LENS.
ON A SCREEN.
That's kind of the definition of 3D vision right there. Implemented in a 30 year old camera.
My best guess for an explanation is that instead of being a point, the lens is a surface, and thus light can travel through it in different paths. How the different paths reach the different eyes is a different question.
I see you shake your head in disbelief... let me convince you with this video I just made
Can you explain what's going on here?
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