As you saw in a previous post, I broke out the GX680III (not S) to practice with tilting the lens. I got that roll of film back yesterday. It was Fuji Provia 100F.
You remember that I began in the yard with the stump in the foreground and the palm trees in the background. I think I tilted it slightly too much, in the full sized scan the telephone pole is tack sharp about to the crossbar, then rapidly becomes blurred above that. I took a second and it’s sharp top to bottom, but I had lost the light even before the first exposure, so the second is even more bland. I won’t share.
The second test was to haul it to the lagoon trail, where I took pictures of the flowers with the train in the background. That worked out well, the telephone poles in the distance are also perfectly sharp and the shrubbery just a couple of feet in front of the camera are in focus. I purposely wanted to get 1/30 or 1/60 to get a sense of movement on the train and would not have been able to get those near flowers and leaves in focus at that speed without the tilt. I’m starting to understand how it works in real life.
The others were just DoF tests, but I’ll post them because they’re nice scans. Have I mentioned how much I love slides?
Trying to get pictures of trains today. I dragged the Fuji out, with the goal of practicing with the tilt to get flowers in the foreground and a 1/30 shutter speed on Velvia to get a slightly blurred train in the background with sharp surroundings. It all sounds like a lot of work for two frames, and it is, but I also caught a freight train that I didn’t realize was coming, so I climbed out onto a rock in the lagoon to get a perspective that’s hard to nab with the giant camera.
There was a nice lady on a paddleboard in the water just to my right who was chatting with me while I was climbing down the rocks. She caught my attention as I was hiking out and told me she hoped the pics come out — she had counted the cars on the train and everything. Nice to know someone was pulling for me.
The setup, I was looking for flowers in the foreground:
The train tracks run across a bridge. I took one less florid train shot from the trail, but the best digital shots were from along the lagoon, or perched on a rock a couple feet out into the water.
And, since I have nowhere else to put them, here are some random pics from along the trail, and a couple from Terramar that I took over the weekend. I had the Z6 set up for landscape, but the reflections on the water were so amazing I really wished I had the long lens to get some shots of the egrets. Another day.
This is mostly another image dump. I’ve just been taking pics of random stuff. Birdies, kitties, dragons, flowers, and the like. The dragons were actually taken while I was shooting video, since they were fighting and vying for territory so I thought it might be a fun challenge. And I was stalking Lucy as well, hoping to test the pet face/eye detect I have programmed into a user setting. It seems to work, even in the shade, though exposing a black cat properly is still difficult.
The camera shots are a GX680III (non-S) with the tilt and shift adjustments. I just got it and decided to try and focus on the stump and the telephone poles at the same time. We’ll see how it came out when I get those slides processed. My goal was to get a shot just as a crow jumped off the telephone pole and swooped down to the trees below, which they were doing every few minutes. If such a picture doesn’t appear here in the next couple weeks, you’ll know it didn’t work out. Until then, enjoy the setup and pics of the new camera.
135 is a special challenge to me. The grain is enough that it bothers me in a lot of situations. I found the Portra 400 tests I did unsatisfying, even though I really like the film in 120. But shooting 6×8 negatives gives me a lot more resolution, so I decided to give up on high speed (for the moment — I have a roll of cinestill 800 in the camera now) and try Portra 160.
All Kodak film is 2/3 of a stop slower than advertised. At least this is my rule
All Kodak film is 2/3 of a stop slower than advertised. At least this is my rule now, and since I’ve been following it I’ve been getting much better scans and more consistent results. In the F6 I just shoot +0.7, regardless. Medium format I set the meter for 100 instead of 160. To expand that rule, I shoot Kodak negatives +2/3 of a stop over, and always miss high. I find I can over expose a full stop from the box speed and the scan is still better than shooting at the speed published.
Since I’m bringing it up, I have experimented with Fuji, as well. Pro 160 NS I shoot exactly at box speed. If I miss, I can go down 1/3, or up 2/3, so I tend to miss high. Fuji slides are also exactly box speed. But don’t miss. At all. Velvia’s lovely, but exposure latitude is narrow.
Enough jibber jabber. Here are some samples, all just taken around town over a couple weekends. I am happy with the grain, and the not over saturated (like Ektar) colors. It’s not fast, but Portra works well enough in 135 for my tastes.
Driveway dragons are again prowling the pavement. They started appearing this month, and the last week or two they have been arguing about territory. These two bruisers were squabbling back and forth across the driveway, the dark male doing a lot of displays. The pasty yellow one is pretty brave, enough I can get closer than my lens will even focus, though I think the bruiser still has a bit of an advantage.
They were both displaying pretty heavily. I got no video of the blue belly and beard display because he runs around so much and is still skittish. I did get a breathing display from the pasty bellied one. I’ll add video of that when the you tubes is done processing it.
Yeah, yeah, I know it’s shaky. But it’s handheld at 500mm, so it’s not that bad, considering. Behold:
More shots from that card I left in the Z6 for a month. These were taken March 2nd and the rocks have now been completely covered by the dredging work going on in the lagoon, so it’ll be different next time I go there with a camera. Nothing interesting in a clear blue sky, so I spent time playing with reflections. Kind of wish I’d hauled the ND filters along so I could stop it down and get some long exposures of the water flowing around those rocks, but I was traveling light so I just went for the reflections.
Really nothing special here, but I bothered to pull them into the photo shops so I might as well share with the four people who have ever looked at this page.
I haven’t been using the digital much. I still take shots on occasion, but haven’t the patience to actually pull them into the photo editing software and upload them and all that. But this weekend on a walk I saw a graffito at a park where I occasionally take photos and play with dogs, so I went back the next day with the Z6 and did some studies on composition. Specifically Steelyard, which has been my composition study of choice the last few weeks. In these images there are three steelyards each: picnic tables, trash cans, and trees. Composition studies are a good use of digital, you can a bunch of perspectives quickly, and I kind of liked the angles on a couple of these. Plus, the irony of a nearly idyllic vista with that hidden message tickled me so I finally dug into what was on that memory card. I also got the dredge photos off the card — another steelyard study — and some random shots of other fun stuff.
First, those steelyards:
I also found some photos I took as the storms were blowing through a while back, the first set while taking slides of the dredge in Agua Hedionda, and the second set while braving an approaching storm. As you can see, I was definitely facing the wrong way for the storm clouds as to the east they were an otherworldly pink and purple, but my subject facing south never quite went off. The pelicans still made for a fun picture of the powerplant, though.
This one should be a direct comparison to the Ektar and Velvia shots, it was taken at the same time in the same light, using the same 1 stop GND filter — I actually took this then snatched the filter out of the holder and held it in front of the film camera. Thus one is using a 20mm lens, so slightly wider than the 50mm on the GX680, so I cropped it to be about the same perspective. In fact, I’m going to try the comparison tool, before is Z6, after is Velvia, and then I’ll put all of them in a gallery so you can see the Ektar too.
The Ektar shot below was with an 80mm lens, so that’s not a crop. Pretty sure I shot it, put the filter on the digital and let it fire on the timer (I have ten frames of this on the card) while I swapped a fresh roll of Velvia in the other film back, then shot the Vevia. I have a shot at 80mm and this at 50mm, which Is my favorite. It was the last one taken before the light subsided, and that was the perfect moment. It didn’t last more than 30 seconds before the sun went behind another cloud, and the light before was nice, but still a little subdued. The Ektar and Digital aren’t in as good a light, for certain. The difference two minutes makes.1
It amazes me how much both of the film types hype the magenta cast from that cheap ass formatt-hitech RGND filter. Also how vibrant they are, especially the slides. When editing the digital I kept thinking “I’m comparing this to film” so I didn’t hype the colors or anything, then when comparing it directly to the slides it feels like I could have boosted the vibrance all the way and never gotten close. I’d go back and play with the white balance, make it vivid, and all that, but I think I mentioned I don’t have the patience for that shit. If you want a print I’ll make you one of the Velvia shot. I ran a proof last week and it’s spectacular.
I also discovered some ladybugs I’d taken pictures of. There’s a bunch more on the card, but I’m bored of photo editing, so here’s a ladybug and I’ll call it a night.
Shots of the dredging in Agua Hedionda and afternoon at the park on Buena Vista. Can’t believe I didn’t notice the dredging barge had moved so far while I was swapping out film and I cut off the flagpole. Dammit! Someone was chatting with me while I was working and I wasn’t paying enough attention. I now know that she has a Mamiya and took photography classes in the 90s, and that I should recompose my damned shot when I look away from the scene for more than a few minutes.
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.
The same week as the previous post I took some shots with the GX680 using some Fuji films. This week I got a roll of Fujipro 160NS negatives and Provia 100F slides processed. The first scan had one a little wonky and I asked to get it rescanned, but they did all of both rolls a second time. I actually think they came out better the second time, and I don’t know why. Something to consider going forward, I guess.
I’ll just dump a few samples here. Look at the file names to see what film they were taken on.
I don’t mean to make too many conclusions just yet, but first impressions are that I LOVE Provia 100F. It isn’t over the top extra like the Velvia 50, which I also love, and the extra stop of speed is welcome. It’s not posted here, but I took a shot of sleeping tiger up one stop and it is very washed out with an ugly color shift, so Provia doesn’t have any better exposure lattitude than Velvia, but I expected that. The negatives are nice, too. I wasn’t sure the first time I tried 160NS, but it’s kind of growing on me. I’ll post more samples of it later.
And this afternoon I made the mistake of not going out with the camera. It was raining and DARK grey so I stayed at work, but minutes before the sunset the clouds cleared out. The sky was spectacular, I could have killed the roll of Velvia I am dying to get developed but still has 3 frames to go.
I did catch some shots of a rainbow that ran from end to end and was as intense as I’ve ever seen. I actually ran inside to grab my 20mm because I couldn’t get both ends in frame at 24mm, but it was dying out by then. Still fun, I go three or four years at a time not seeing one, and almost never as intense as this.
