Winter In The Bone

December 2011, Chicago, Illinois
(Agfa B-2 Cadet, Fomapan 400 120 film, home developed and scanned)

K said she would like to see this printed big - something along the line of several feet across. This does get cooler as it gets bigger, maybe one day when I'm fabulously wealthy.

Out Of Focus Fridays (OOFF) - Step Into My Parlour

October 2011, Benecia, California (Canon Elan 7ne, Kodak Ektar 100, 17-40mm f/4.0)

So a dear, old friend (or is that an old, dear friend at this point), tells me that she "wants to go with me" on these out of focus experiments, but they make her head hurt. This one is for her: a little slice of focus on the right side of the spiderweb will give her eye something to rest on, and hopefully keep her little head from aching too bad.

Morning Herald

October 2011, Benecia, California (Canon Elan 7ne, 17-40mm f/4.0, Kodak Ektar 100 film)

An angel figurine in one of K's parents spare bedrooms. The statue can actually look quite creepy at night, but I loved the way the lace curtains diffused the morning light coming through the window for this shot. To get the statue to be more than just a silhouette, I had to use a very slow shutter speed. No tripod, just bracing my back against the side of the bed as I squatted down to get the angle.

Quite impressed with the Ektar 100 film, although it was a little tricky to get the film to scan correctly. Will probably do a longer write-up on the film later, but short version seems to be that it is a really nice color negative film that gives almost slide-like results, but with a lot more exposure forgiveness. Not a perfect film - does a horrible job rendering skin tones for white people - but damn good, nonetheless.

North Side Space Port

Holga 120 WPC, Kodak T-Max 400, Home developed and scanned
November 2011, Chicago, Illinois

One of the CTA elevated train stations near our apartment. Shot with another one of my plastic cameras: the Holga Wide Pinhole Camera, which takes 120 film and gives you a 6cm x 12cm size negative. Never done much with pinholes before, but I like what I am getting with this camera. More coming soon.

Digital Darkroom: Scanning Black & White Film In Color

This post is about being reminded that while trial and error can be lead one down creative roads that would otherwise remain unexplored, it can also send you down the wrong path without even being aware that there might be a better way.

It's a basic fact of modern photography that almost all film shooters are also digital, even if they don't own a single digital camera. Unless all you want to do is make wet prints in the darkroom to pass around by hand, you are going to need to find a way to digitize your analog images if you want them to get seen. Most people don't even deal with paper prints anymore - they shoot on digital, post images to Facebook, Flickr and etc. or maybe email digital photo files to friends, family and like, all of which get viewed on some type of monitor.

"New Year Light" - January 1, 2012, Chicago, Illinois
(Canonet QL-17, Fomapan 400 film, home developed and scanned)
The final, post-processed "color scan" of the black & white negative. The negative was scanned as a 24 bit color image (RGB) and outputted to a 24 bit RGB TIF file. There is much more detail in the shadow areas and much smoother transitions between tones than any of the Grayscale scans of the same negative, even when saved at the highest Grayscale bit setting.

If you are shooting film, getting that image converted to a digital file means getting a scan somewhere along the line. You can scan prints, of course. And scanning a print is relatively straightforward. Even low-end scanners will generally give you a decent scan of a color or black & white print. But a scan of a print is, at best, a third-hand representation. The negative is used to make the print, which is used to make the scan - each step in the chain represents a potential loss of detail and degradation of the image.

Out Of Focus Fridays (OOFF) - "Into The Woods"

September 2010, Chicago, Illinois (Polaroid Land 250, expired Polaroid 669 film)