Working with some older manual cameras the last week. Specifically an F3 and an FM3A. The Ektar shots here are from the FM3A, the B&W are Ilford FP4 in the F6. I think the Still I Stand shot is a winner, the rest are mostly trash. Partly because they’re just snapshots as I was excited to try out my new old camera, but also because the scans are kind of terrible.
There are horizontal stripes in the skies of many of the shots, especially the Ektar. I’ve had this issue in the past and it is not on the negatives (or the slides, I’ve had it with Provia, too, and with medium format negatives) and I’m just not sure why it’s happening. At this point I’m convinced the lab’s software is shit, and these are JPEG artifacts, as they are almost exactly what happens when I try to reduce size on a digital shot from the Z6.
The thing is, I don’t get why this happens from the originating scan. Shouldn’t it be like a full sized digital image? Are they reducing it to make it smaller for the download and just overcompressing the jpeg? Whatever it is, they claim they can’t seem to see it at the lab and, frankly, I can’t not see it. They say nobody else has the problem, but I just cannot imagine how that is true! I don’t know if I want to even bring it up again, I’m getting a reputation as the complainer, but I’m to the point where I think I’m going to have to rig a light source for my camera and a macro lens and just scan my own.
Whatever. I’m just really fucking annoyed. Here’s what I came up with. I didn’t bother to pick and choose, this is any of them that aren’t blurry because I can’t focus.
Last week, during the sunny weather, I shot a roll of Velvia. It was just after the Provia, but I didn’t finish the roll until yesterday, so I didn’t get the chance to develop it until now. While doing some of the shots I had Ekar in the other back so I could get a direct comparison. Have I mentioned how much I love slides? Like love love them. I like looking at them on a light table with a loupe, they have a quality even these scans can’t reproduce. The sharpness, the saturation, the colors cool and vibrant, they’re a totally different animal than the negative films.
Slides aren’t for everything. The Kodak films have way more exposure latitude, for example. I shot two frames of sleeping tiger each with Provia and Ektar, one frame about 1/3 stop over the incident light, the next one stop up from that. The Ektar scans might as well be the same, you can color correct them in software to be identical and nothing is lost. The Provia that’s 1 stop over has washed out color and the sky color is just plain gone.
Velvia is the same, and the shadows go black extremely quickly, so you had best plan on that. And 50 speed is mighty slow. Shots of the cooling pond have what looks like grey clouds, but they aren’t clouds. They are pelicans. Even in full daylight, if you’re looking for extra depth of field you’re going to hold the shutter open way longer than any Portra. Even the extra stop of Provia and Ektar is appreciated. The trade off is almost no grain, and saturation that is more real than real.
Enough yammering. Here are the photos. Sleeping Tiger, the cooling pond, and the tree were all taken back to back for direct comparisons. The Velvia shot of the dredge was taken before the sun started to pop on the powerplant, so even though it’s only a couple minutes before the Ektar, it is not a direct comparison. The light just got better over the course of 5-10 minutes before dying off completely. I might have gotten a better shot in the good light on the next roll. The Ektar is using 1 stop GND on the sky, but pretty much straight out of the camera, so I’m really hoping I got something as nice on the next roll of slides.
This is a roll of Ektar. Like the previous Portra 400, it’s just snapshots from around town, taken during my evening walks. The dredging photos are all unique, I was experimenting with hyperfocal distance and framing on those. The duplicate shots on the seawall are just cropped to see what 8×10 vs 8×12 looked like.
I was using a Nikkor 28-105 AF-D lens, which I got for dirt cheap. It’s a walking around lens, not the highest of all quality. It’s much more prone to lens flare, and it’s not quite as sharp, as my 28mm prime. Yet it’s sharp enough, and from 35mm up not distorted. In fact, it’s a good bit lower distortion than the newer zooms that replaced it.
If I’m shooting only landscape at 28mm, I can grab that lens. but for random street shots, I’m sure not complaining much about something that only cost me $85. It’s truly a bang for the buck bargain.
Velvia is the standard for landscape photography. Or at least it was when I was taking pictures on film in the ’90s. I seldom used it as much of my photography was out the window of a glider and the combination of low speed and dynamic range made shooting slides a fraught endeavor. But since I’m always on a tripod these days, why not try?
Well, I’ll tell you why not. Medium format is expensive. It’ll cost me $4 a shot for film, develop, and scan, so I practiced with more forgiving negative film stock before I tried the slide film. Velvia is 50 speed, has significantly less exposure latitude than negative film and digital, and is prone to reciprocity failure on longer exposure shots. You have to nail the exposure, and either have a lower contrast scene or be fine with certain shadows going pure black or highlights pure white.
I have two backs for the GX680, so I loaded one with Velvia, the other with Portra 400 (it was in the back already, else I would have shot Ektar as my comparison negative stock) and went to the village for some experiments.
First, here are the scans straight up. Minimal editing makes a better comparison. Note, the liquor store I took from the middle of the street, so I was running into the street, snapping the shot, then scurrying out of the way of the cars, so the unedited scans needed a little rotation and composition hygiene.
And edited comparisons below. Note, these are minimal edits, just a touch of optimization and a little rotation and cropping for the most part on the liquor store. It was a perfect scene for this test being well lit with a variety of interesting colors, and shows how much warmer Portra is, as well as how much the blues and greens pop on Velvia. The Village Kitchen and Pie Shoppe with extra Ps and Es to make it fancy I chose for the opposite reason, the light was washed out and there were some shadows and bright clouds so I could see the dynamic range. This isn’t the raw scan, I pulled the sky back about 1/4 to 1/3 of a stop in editing to see what there was to be found in those highlights, and it has a little dynamic contrast boost, too. You can see the sky is blown out on the Velvia in the lower right corner where there’s detail to be pulled out on the Portra.
I don’t have any direct comparisons from later in the day. Instead I was just trying much more challenging shots. The clouds turned a crazy pink and red after the sun set and, though I understand that Velvia is not a high contrast film, I tried some high contrast shots. The blacks are black. I mean, there’s NOTHING to be pulled up there. But I was shooting for the sky and the highlights, so I expected that. These long exposure shots really show the weirdness of Velvia. The sky was blue and pink, and it did hint toward purple, though the Velvia just made everything… extra. A digital shot of the same scene is below to compare to the Velvia version.
I am also including a few other shots I got back. The sunsets and pictures of the Village are from a roll of Ektar I ran through the F6. I am shooting most everything up 2/3 of a stop and the scans seem to come back better. I’m also pretty darned happy with the sunset scenes, considering how contrasty the exposures are. You can definitely see the grain with the tiny little baby negatives, but it’s not distracting in these shots.
The train was with the GX680. I’d lost the light so the bush wasn’t as bright as it had been, but I like the composition. I converted it to black and white because, if I like B&W, then the composition feels good to me. The last image is a from the same roll of Portra 400, and I liked it so I thought I might as well share.
So… Velvia. It’s something. I’ll have to shoot more of it, maybe find some other fun colors. And if in town, I should bring the 100mm or 135mm so I don’t have to stand in the street to take a picture. I love that 50mm lens for landscapes, the view is expansive, but it’s about the equivalent of a 22mm lens on digital as far as field of view. I could definitely use more reach for a walking around lens.
