Some old fashioned galleries
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Shooting with the Nikon S3 using the stock 5cm lens. I’ll update the post with other films as I get them developed.
Lab scanned, I only cropped, otherwise whatever the software decided.
Portra 400:
For comparison, Portra 400 with the F6. Lab scan again, but not the same day or the same scanner operator so… whatever the Noritsu shits out. For a bunch of that I was looking at leading lines while on my afternoon walk, so not great art. Just composition studies.
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This will be a big picture dump. Mostly so I can share with a friend. I’ve shot some more film, and some of it on 135. I’m using an F6, which should be far more foolproof than my Fuji. And just about any film camera ever made, for that matter. My goal in getting it was to do experiments like bracketing exposure that are expensive in medium format, or taking more dynamic shots that are kind of difficult with a 12 pound beast on a tripod. The camera writes exif data, so I can work faster and match up exposure data when the scans come back.
The F6 I just set the exposure compensation up 2/3 of a stop. The Ektar I shot with the 680 I fudged up to the next stop
My first two rolls were Kodak. First Portra 400, then Ektar. I wasn’t completely happy with what came back. While technically correct, even shots taken using Program Auto were still a little dark, the Ektar was kind of red with lost details in the shadows, and the Portra seems a little grainy.
That second reminded me of something. I have a new method based on what I read on someone’s site — I don’t even remember where I read it — but the writer said that he was shooting portra up 2/3 of a stop if it was meant to be scanned. Like, he’d shoot Portra 160 at iso 100, but not push the film at all. So the most recent roll of Portra 400 I ran through the F6 I just set the exposure compensation up 2/3 of a stop. The Ektar I shot with the 680 I fudged up to the next stop, since that camera only works in whole stops. When I bracketed, I wanted to see the exp on the dark shot and a + with the angry beeping on the light shot. In fact, I’m not convinced that for anything with more than 4 stops of range, if I don’t get the overexposed warning I might consider another shot at one stop longer exposure time.
I’m happier with what I got back this time. Both the medium format Ektar and the Portra 400 in the F6. If I stumble across that website again I’ll have to drop a thanks to the author for that suggestion, assuming it wasn’t written 15 years ago.
Enough writing. Here are some photos.
Portra 400 from the first roll in the F6:
And the first roll of Ektar. The bird and surfer shots are all hand held, so while the pelican is a little soft and underexposed, getting sharp enough to see him taking a shit at 500mm, offhand, with no monopod or tripod, I am going to count as a win.
I needed some magic from the photo shops to bring up the shadows in the photos along the bluffs, and they’re very red. Strangely, pointing straight into the sun works better, the sunset shots are almost exactly what came back from the lab.
For contrast, here are a few shots from my third roll in the F6. For most of this roll I had the camera set with +2/3 exposure compensation. And, yes, they’re very random. I had no goal in mind other than burning a roll of film to see if the exposure compensation worked.
More exposure seems to mean less grain there. Important with the higher speed film, and it’s pretty hard to blow a highlight with these negative films, so I’ll fudge up from now on.
Here’s the roll of Ektar. I was playing with filters as well as bracketing. Even 1.3 stops over exposed (from the meter reading) I like it better than shooting at what the meter tells me.
This next gallery wasn’t here when I originally posted as I didn’t get the film back until after I made the post. But nobody reads this blog so I’ll add it here to make for an easy reference since it’s the same scenes.
Portra 800, shot at the same time as the Ektar above. I metered at 640, then fudged up, so everything would be at least a quarter stop over, but as much as a stop and a third over. Most of these shots the camera was beeping and flashing +, so it thought I was overexposed. The first three have very little editing, the bottom two I pulled the highlights back, but they were more than 5 and 6 EV over the reeds. The fact that I was able to compress the dynamic range enough to get it all printable means I’m on the right track with my shoot 2/3 stop over method.
on I spent some time in December gathering film in abundance in an attempt to get a full view of the 120 negative landscape. This began with blurry pictures of surfers and the thought that a faster film might buy me a couple of stops to get sharper waves and moving things. Maybe the significantly larger negatives might mitigate some of the grain issues I remember from my 35mm film days a quarter century back and I don’t always need the very finest grain, regardless.
There really aren’t a lot of options these days. From what I have seen of pictures on the internets posted by fellow photographic luddites, each film has its own qualities. And what most intrigues me is that Portra 400 and Portra 800 seem to be different than the Portra 160 I have already tried. The only film stock I didn’t much care for in the samples I’ve perused was the Fuji 400H, which seems even worse with shadows than the Kodak offerings I’ve tried, but I have been interested in the Fuji Pro 160NS. It isn’t imported to the US market, but a few people seem to be getting cases and reselling them on ebay. Luckily, I found one seller right here in town and got a 5 pack from him.
So, my experimental films:
Alas, I only have two backs, so I wasn’t able to really do apples to apples with all of them. And film and processing is so damned expensive I am not going to waste film on nothing but experiments, so I just kept a different film in each back and when I had time and the light looked interesting I went out to shoot.
For apples to apples, I got Ektar and Portra 160
Portra 800 and Ektar
Portra 400 and Fuji Pro 160NS
When I say Apples to Apples, the Portra 400 and Fuji are a little farther off than the other two. Both were loaded in the field as I ran out other stock and the images were captured more than a few minutes apart, so it was a little darker when the Fuji was shot. But the other comparisons were back to back1 and as close to the same exposure as I can get.
I uploaded a couple of shots super large. All I did was make them 90% jpeg so the file size is manageable, no color correction or sharpening. The idea was is get an idea of just how grainy the films are. Right click and view image for the monster sized version.
I have my favorites so far. Not going to say which ones, or why, but I have an idea now of what I might try in different situations. And I know the 800 is definitely grainier, and noticeably so, but not to the point of distraction. I might have to try to get some surfers after all.
I have been editing the crap out of some of these scans just to see what I can get. And have been experimenting with filters, though my filter holder is too small for the 50mm lens. I have to hold a filter in front of the camera while opening the shutter, and then hope the scan doesn’t come back with my fingers in the frame. My 100mm lens has relatively petite 82mm filter threads, so I have experimented there with success, but the wider lenses are 95mm and 112mm threads.
This isn’t the real problem, though. The real issue I had with many of these exposures is a byproduct of how reflective the water is near the reeds in the Bataquitos lagoon. There, the sky was only a stop or a stop and a half above the reflections in the water, but my reverse GNDs are 2 or 3 stop, and my hard GNDs are 2 and 2.5 stops.
In this case, if I want to get the reeds in the middle exposed with any detail the sky is 4 stops up and the water is 2.5 stops up. Using a 1 or 2 stop soft GND the border darkened the reeds and not the water in front of them. Using a hard GND at 2 stops brought the sky down to the same or even below the water. I tried using a soft 1 stop flipped upside down, which worked great to tame the sky, but that’s a cheap Formatt Hitech filter and it has a magenta cast so the sky ends up redder than the water. Every solution is suboptimal.
I need to ruminate on this, but it seems like a 1 stop hard or medium might come in handy. Or I could stop being an idiot2 and trying to tame an overly contrasty scene. I’ve been reticent to get one because 130mm filters are stupid expensive, but I could still hold a cheaper 100mm with my fingers, and I could use it with my 100mm holder on the tiny little baby Nikon cameras that only have 77mm threads as well.
Enough ruminating. I’m just going to post edited images now by film type.
Fuji Pro 160NS
Portra 400
Portra 800
Portra 160
Ektar 100
The first Ektar shot shows the value of a real holder, an easy horizon, and an appropriate filter. There’s 2.5 stops of reverse GND on that sunset and the clouds in the other shot (not posted) that don’t have the filter lack detail while the foreground is very dark. That’s an 8 second exposure a bit after the sun was down and I exposed for the grey bridge support on the shady side. Those cacti are a darned good substitute for middle grey and they were down maybe 1/2 of a stop as I have learned to fudge up, not down, when shooting Ektar. The others were just frustrating, either the sky was too bright, too dark, or had a magenta shift from that crappy filter and all the post editing to get the exposure balanced top to bottom doesn’t make the reflections the same color as the sky.
I took some digital shots while I was at these sites as well. I’ve posted the ones from the late sunset over the bridge, but I don’t think I shared the ones from the bird sanctuary. Taken after the film was gone as the sky just didn’t want to give up.
1. Literally. I took a photograph, swapped on a different film back, adjusted to get as close as possible to the same exposure, then took the other photograph. I can’t always get perfect exposure parity as ISO 160 is only 2/3 of a stop faster than 100 while the camera only adjusts in whole stops.
2. We all know that’s not going to happen.
on Just a few shots I took looking for challenging metering. I pretty much lost half of each roll doing this, but I think I am learning some. Taken over the course of a week in Early December. I’ll just leave them here without further comment.
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This afternoon there was a lovely, broken, high cirrus with no scud on the horizon and little possibility of the marine layer blocking a glorious lighting of the high clouds. It was going to be a perfect sunset for photography.
I put the ultrawide on the film camera, and camped on a spot where I saw several strings of pelicans flying by at low altitude, and where I expected plenty of options for subjects beneath the spectacular glow. Then I watched the sky as the clouds dissipated, leaving me with nothing above the horizon. Instead of a firmament of ping, purple, and yellow I got mostly blue, with the only color being right where the sun hit the horizon. And the pelicans never again flew past. That’ll teach me to get excited for the weather.
At least I had the digital with a 24-70 lens, so I spent some of the time experimenting with powerful backlighting. The tide was extremely low and the breeze was out of the north. Plenty of seagulls were using the jetties for lift, at some moments congregating in groups a dozen strong, and I got a few cormorants heading north for variety. It wasn’t what I was looking for, but at least it was a fun way to spend an hour outside on a chilly evening.
I dumped a smattering of the images to jpeg and I’ll just leave them here.
