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.
Walking around the Village on a bright, sunny afternoon, burning film just to see how the colors come out. Most of these were taken over the same wonderfully warm weekend, Friday and Sunday. This is all Portra 4001, 135, from the same roll.
My last attempt at Portra I shot +2/3 of a stop, but I accidentally forgot to set the camera to overexpose on Sunday, which I genuinely meant to do as my last experiment with that produced better scans than shooting at box speed. Especially on the more contrasty photos like the Cantina, where I could have used a little reach into those shadows. The picture of Fiesta Liquor taken on Friday is +0.7 and scanned nicely. I could have gotten away with more. The beach shots definitely would have benefited from a little extra, it’s easier and less grainy to pull back a highlight on Portra than to try and recover something in a shadow.
Speaking of… One thing I’m noticing in 135, the grain is a lot more apparent. I’m cool with it on the 6×8 negatives, but these tiny little baby negatives certainly suffer for the higher speed.
1. The B&W photo is from the same roll, I did it in the photo shops just to see how it compared to actual black and white film. I uploaded it by mistake but, what the heck. Might as well share.
One of those days. You know, the ones everyone not from here think happen every day. They don’t, and when you get a February day with warm sunshine, unlimited visibility, and a gentle breeze you go out and enjoy it. I parked along the coast highway, walked the seawall to the jetty then back to the village, then walked the bluff back to my truck.
I tried to hit the driving range, but it’s so popular with the ‘rona that Arturo and I couldn’t even get a single spot, much less two near each other, without a long wait. Walking along the beach is almost as good.
The pictures if Pig Liquor and Neimans are for comparison. I intend to shoot them with film as well, I’ll eventually see what Ektar looks like, at least in 135, but if I can get an afternoon like this during the week when there are fewer crowds I’ll give it a shot with Provia 100F and maybe Velvia 50.
North of the village is a little park on the Buena Vista lagoon. I was walking there just to get some exercise and see the view of the lagoon along the coast highway at the Oceanside border, but since I was there I decided to take some pictures of the dogs that people bring most evenings. I tried to take pictures of the labradoodle named Buddy, but getting down on the grass seemed to mean you wanted kisses, so he was too difficult. I’ll have to try again when he is a little calmer.1
I also took close ups of the doors in the tree. No place better to dump the photos than here.
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.
These are just snapshots I took with the Z6 while experimenting with the medium format camera. Was waiting for the sunset to turn colors, and the dogs I was playing with went home, so I had time to kill. Since I had the digital, I might as well put it to use.
Not much to say. These are only posted to share with a friend.
For context, I have a wild hair to get a good shot of the train on film. Tested it with digital to see if I liked the angle, but the light died on me before I got anything really good that day. The awkward angle on the shots across the water from the bushes were because I literally just spun the camera around on the tripod, which was at my knees, and took a few shots while waiting for the northbound train to arrive. That one wasn’t a winner, so I didn’t get the good film shot either as the clouds had blocked the golden hour by the time it arrived. I’ll have to try again.
I’ll get a good shot one day. Takes a little planning, though, as it necessitates hauling 30 pounds of camera gear and tripods a half mile to get to that spot.
The second sunset was this afternoon. The wind was blowing so no reflections, but it was a lovely evening to be outside and watch the clouds change color, so I’ve got that going for me, which is nice.
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.
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:
Ektar 100
Portra 160
Portra 400
Portra 800
Fuji Pro 160 NS
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.
Portra 800 — fast enough the birds are sharpFuji Pro 160NSPortra 400Ektar 100
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.
There was a substantial swell over the weekend. Head high waves with way bigger in some sets. It seemed like every surfer in Southern California was trying to get a piece of it. I knew the tide was high at 1PM, so I headed down a little after, and as I was driving down the coast highway there were absolute rocking monsters throwing spray off of every jetty.
Except, the tide was lower than I expected. Because high tide was two hours before. I looked at the tide tables, saw 11, and my pea brain registered 1. Dammit!
Oh well. Stopped at the first open spot, which was next to the cold water jetty, so I climbed out on the rocks until I was almost getting sprayed by the bigger waves and started playing with the gear.
I first used the time to work out my video tripod with the 300-500 lens. Alas, I took 30-40 minutes getting set up, learning how to make the tripod move properly, then learning how to make the VR1 on the camera work properly for what I was trying to do. By the time I got around to still photos the tide had ebbed too far and the waves were significantly smaller and choppier, losing their grandeur. They had so much power when I first arrived, it was disappointing to not get them a their largest.2 That’s what I get for misreading my tide chart. I still enjoyed the afternoon very much.
The surf, and the linup:
North of the Jetty. Before I sorted it I was using too slow a shutter speed and having focus issues. I later bumped the ISO and changed focus to wide area S and continuous and got much sharper results. Here’s the first burst I tried:
There was a guy on a standup catching some monsters north of the Jetty, and when I was first there a couple of folks were making the right as well as the left. But by the time I was done futzing with gear everything was farther north, left, and running behind the north jetty rocks.
South of the jetty was into the sun, so the light wasn’t as good. And the waves there weren’t as steep and were getting smaller as the tide ebbed. But it was less crowded and there were a few pretty good surfers there trying to avoid the mobs to the north and at Terramar.
Basically, I shoulda got there earlier. Next time I’ll have my camera set up right, and I have the tripod tuned now, so taking video will go more smoothly as well, if I feel the desire. Another swell mid week and over the weekend, with higher tides later in the day, so maybe I’ll get to try again.
I ended the day over the lagoon watching the sunset. Since I had the ginormous lens on, I gave it a go. Nothing extra special here, just playing with exposures.
1. Vibration Reductions. Nikon’s brand of in-lens image stabilization.
Note to self: For video go with Internal Stabilization OFF, lens VR ON, Sport mode. This seems to smooth out the minor jumblies, but doesn’t introduce weird artifacts or cause strange lags when trying to pan the camera.
This isn’t some introspective blog post or anything. You might get that from the title, but that’s not what it means. I literally was taking pictures of reflections a couple days ago, and then this afternoon at sunset.
The tide has been very low right at sunset this last week, and a low, ebbing tide tends to expose these shallow waves and wet sand flats that reflect the clouds. A couple days ago on my walk the clouds came out a wonderful stripey pattern that made blue and pink in the waves, and today it looked like it might do it again, but we ended up with nothing but cirrus. Still worth it, and I wasn’t the only one there to witness it. Hundreds of people lining the blufftops from the village to south of Terramar, where I decided to watch it myself.
First, the sunset from two days ago. I took a bunch, all handheld, at different exposures, to see what I would get. The tide had ebbed by this moment, and was beginning to turn, so it was a fun game of walking out to the waterline for a shot, then having to scramble back up when a wave came in. Like an enormous sandpiper.
Behold:
Today’s was far less colorful. And, frankly, I got there late. Probably had a lot of really good golden reflections half an hour earlier, but even the more sedate light was beautiful in person. Just far less spectacular than the clouds above. I’ll post them anyway, because it’s 2021 and these are the first photos of the year. Frankly, 2020 can just fuck right off. Good riddance.
My favorites are the single man standing in the reflections. The somehow reflect the mood of the season.
