Shot handheld on Velvia 100, with Canon 30 and Canon 50mm.
The dappled colours of the trees, which, especially in a big print, gives the picture a watercolor-like texture.
Just a quick note that the recent radio-silence isn’t entirely on purpose.
Some reasons:
I hope to have at least one picture up this week, as well as another post on B&W developing. Stay tuned.
Leica M3, 50mm Summicron, Neopan 400, Rodinal 1+45 (11 minutes).
I managed to get on film what I wanted to get when I pressed the shutter…
DPReview ((Once referred to as …the place to go if you’ve just hit someone over the head and stolen their nice digital camera, and now need to read a review that’s comprehensive enough that you won’t miss the manual.
(source).)) just put up their hands-on preview of the Leica X1. The following line made me laugh out loud, but is also indicative of one of the reasons I prefer film over digital:
…if you’re after an aquarium mode, HD movies or background music for your slide shows, you’ll need to look elsewhere.
Back to our regular programming…
Part of this is due to the fact that my lab charges more for B&W development than they do for colour (slide) development. (Or their contact sheets are very expensive). Costs run to over 10 EUR per roll. At over 2 rolls a week on average, that gets to over 100 EUR a month.
Luckily, when I chose my film, I went for a classic B&W film, so I dug up my parents’ old developing equipment and ordered some chemicals. This weekend, I developed my first few rolls. It was easier than I expected.
I used Agfa Rodinal, since it’s very cheap ((The `try the cheapest, upgrade if necessary’ tactic worked well for my film, so I applied it here as well.)) and lasts forever (reportedly). I used a 1+45 dilution ((I wanted something around 1+50 and my tank (Jobo 2400) has a 450ml capacity, so 450ml water + 10ml concentrate is easy to measure off, giving great reproducability.)) and developed for 11 minutes, with 30 seconds agitation every 3 minutes. Followed by a water stop-bath and 6 minutes in RXA fixer (rapid, non hardening). Temperature was around 19 degrees, which is the temperature of the tapwater in my kitchen ((Once again, taking the easy way out.)).
I also caught up with my scanning this weekend, so from now on, I can develop and scan each roll in a reasonable time. Who needs digital?
It’s funny how you know things, yet don’t really acknowledge them.
I’ve always known that human vision is tremendously adaptive. Dark scenes, light scenes, red light, green light. See it for a few seconds and the brain/eye combo applies the correct filters, switches to the right aperture, and presto: Well exposed image with a good white balance.
Sadly, cameras suck at this.
By now, I’ve got the colour problem pretty well under control, and know when to adjust my WB/filter my lens, and when to gel my flash. With B&W this problem isn’t even there.
The light problem is trickier though. I’m finding that guessing the exposure in low light scenes is much more difficult than in well-lit scenes ((For reference: I’m counting EV 10 to 16 as well-lit, anything lower as low light.)). Especially once you get below EV 6, light levels drop fast, while the eye keeps up perfectly.
Recently, with the days growing shorter and the weather turning worse, I’ve had more evening indoor scenes, and often noticed that I was overestimating the light ((I’ve noticed this when other photographers (who didn’t read Mike Johnston, and thus were using normal equipment) were also present, and I cheated by looking at their exposure values. Naughty me)). I’ve now come in the habit of taking my first guess and then deducting another two stops. Haven’t had any films back though (more on that soon), so I maybe I’ll just end up with overexposed and blurred shots.