I went hiking with my Mamiya, and surprisingly it didn't break my back. Will have to play with it more and don't use fast film with Rodinal stand development to see how much resolution I can get from it.
Thanks, @muninn! I had a lot of different versions but this seemed the truest to me. Very drastic curve layer, though. Need to experiment more with exposure / developing.
I like your shot a lot -- the foreground especially is very well done. How heavy is the Mamiya? I know the RB67 is heavy as hell, but the Press looks positively svelte in comparison.
Mamiya isn't too bad, if you have a small lens attached. The camera itself is just an empty metal box with a rangefinder on top, so the weight mostly depends on the glass you use.
Never used the RB67 but considering that it contains a mirror, I would guess that it might be heavier than the Universal.
I'm not getting the bench/rocks shot, Baron. I see that muninn likes the tonality and I can sort of see what he means. You've produced tones that draw the eye to the bench and distinguish it in an interesting way from the rocks. I like the way the background is split into three "layers" (sky, rocks, ground). That's a good bit of composition.
It's just that the bench doesn't fit into it somehow. There's visual contrast between the round rocks and the long, horizontal planks of the bench, but that contrast isn't the subject of the image. If this shot was much tighter, so that the bench was captured and the entire background was JUST the rocks, I think that might have grabbed me more.
Despite crooked horizon I really like that shot munnin. Great framing, and butter-smooth values. Crooked Horizon.
@electricmeat I don't remember tweaking the colors on that photo, the green really was green as all get out when I took the shot though (colorado gets rain just about every day this time of year ). Also, I'll be damned if I didn't notice the magenta until you pointed it out, so thank you for that.
Split by Prospicience 101, on Flickr
Was really tempted to go black and white on this one, I really like the colors though.
I'm not getting the bench/rocks shot, Baron. I see that muninn likes the tonality and I can sort of see what he means. You've produced tones that draw the eye to the bench and distinguish it in an interesting way from the rocks. I like the way the background is split into three "layers" (sky, rocks, ground). That's a good bit of composition.
It's just that the bench doesn't fit into it somehow. There's visual contrast between the round rocks and the long, horizontal planks of the bench, but that contrast isn't the subject of the image. If this shot was much tighter, so that the bench was captured and the entire background was JUST the rocks, I think that might have grabbed me more.
Thanks @electricmeat, I appreciate the thoughts. Amusingly, I'd originally composed the image to be much wider, and to capture both the sculpture thing on the far right of the frame, and also a second bench above the rocks on the left. Something about the tiered approach appealed to me. Unfortunately, that exposure turned out badly, as -- like an idiot -- I forgot to step the lens down, so the image was both over-exposed and poorly focused. This was my back-up attempt at a different composition, which I'd envisaged as the tighter crop, but clearly it needs to be tighter again. (And probably from a lower angle, now I look at it.)
I'll probably be back there soon enough to give it a second shot.
@soggybiscut its definitely darker. A bit too dark for my tastes. I think I get what you are trying to do here, create a mysterious atmosphere produced by the light streaming through the trees, but I don't think it work too well in this instance. You have two huge pools of darkness in upper left and lower right quadrants, and there isn't much for the eye to concentrate on. Whats really cool, is the shadows cast on the grass on the lower left. You have some nice texture there, and the elongated shadows look kinda spooky and visually interesting. There just isn't enough of it there to make a picture. Maybe you could explore that more, while still incorporating your nebulous ball of light. The warmer color temp works much better, as well as making sure that the trees are just silhouettes. You just need more pools of light around your subject. You are on the right track! Just my two pesos.
@prospicience your vanishing point isn't centered in the frame, so the picture looks a bit off. A bit of a crop from top and right side would fix that. I think the shot would also look pretty cool in landscape orientation, if you chopped off the top and bottom 1/3 of the photo, if you get what I mean.
Here is some digital camera photo shot with an old manual lens.
I think the point I'm making is that film is higher fidelity than digital. I enjoy post processing on film, but the fact is that film provides a greater deal of latitude and beauty and information that digital just hasn't been able to replicate.
...The fact that post has become a norm in a DSLR workflow is just indicative of this. A great deal of the craft of film photography before software was a part of the artistic process was choosing a stock, exposing for what you want done in the lab, whether push/pull, etc., all done in camera....
Post was the norm for film long before post was the norm for digital.
The argument for film being higher fidelity is also largely untrue in any meaningful sense. Yes you can get a high res scan from a $60,000 film scanner, and some aspects of that scan likely look better (reds for instance, although that can have as much to do with the software you're processing with as anything) will, but on the downside you're now getting digital sensors that have 12-16 stops of range to somewhere around 11, and a much longer workflow. RAW obviously also retains a hell of a lot of info that film can't replicate. Hell, there are even sensors (I'm thinking dragon) that produce noise that isn't incredibly ugly (although I admit film wins that one, albeit with the caveat that we are also beginning to see sensors with a native ISO of 800+.
The major upside of film now is spending 2 hours at the pub midday whilst you wait for it to come back from the lab.
Scanning really is a limiting factor on film. I'd love to get some of my negs professionally scanned, but I barely have enough time to scan my own stuff, let alone leg it halfway across town and back again. That said, there are some good pubs around there...
Why not get a C-41 press kit? You've obviously got a handle on home developing.
And why does it have to be same day? I really enjoy your colour shots, rare as they are, and there'd better be a damned good reason we're not seeing more of them!
It would have to be same day because I doubt that any bar I hang out in, while I wait for my stuff to be processed, would let me sleep in their establishment.
(And you can always go back another day to pick up the film! Drop a roll off, pick a roll up. Easy!)
Here's me experimenting with close-up photography on expired film. Will pick a more interesting subject next time -- this was more a test of texture and detail.
(At what point does something become "macro"? The second shot is definitely above a 1:1 reproduction.)
I've always thought of it as "if the subject is larger than the sensor", with 35mm film as the baseline to avoid reproduction sizes / sensor crop / etc -- so anything where the subject is smaller than 36x24mm.
Best camera I ever had for actual practical macro (and potentially that there ever will be) was the old split-body Coolpix 4500 -- small sensor so lots of usable DoF, and a lens that focuses up close. Sure, low res by modern standards, and it's slow to use and noisy, but as far as making pictures goes, nothing beats it.
Daaaang, that last shot is awesome. I love the concept of infrared, but I'm not 100% certain on what it entails -- partly because I know if I read up on it too much, I'll want to massacre my digital camera to achieve it. Am I right that it's just removing a layer from the sensor to increase light sensitivity? Also, do you need a special filter over the lens?
As far as _impractical_ macro goes, there's the old OM macro lenses. The E-330 happened to have a popup flash and general physical geometry that made it easy to get fairly close with the old 20/3.5:
gives me
and you can also do more typical subjects like:
Then things start to get silly when you reverse lenses -- I made a super low-end mount for a reversed 7mm 8mm-cine-lens, but it gets you very close:
In practise, it's too close to be much use -- sure, the field of view is a couple of millimetres across, but the DoF is so small:
For comparison with the shots above, needle eye and pollen again:
Also, you start to get really weird optical effects; below is a hair, and while you can see the scales and whatnot on hairs, I have no idea where the second "hair" in the shot came from.
Daaaang, that last shot is awesome. I love the concept of infrared, but I'm not 100% certain on what it entails -- partly because I know if I read up on it too much, I'll want to massacre my digital camera to achieve it. Am I right that it's just removing a layer from the sensor to increase light sensitivity? Also, do you need a special filter over the lens?
It depends on how much IR filtering is already on the sensor; the CP4500 didn't have much, so potentially gets worse images when there's actual IR in the scene (so on a hot day, I guess). And yes, you need a filter -- conveniently, though, a processed-but-unexposed bit of film does the trick, so I just took some 120, didn't expose it, processed it, and made a mount. (as I understand it: unexposed film will be entirely black, so no visible light gets through -- but it lets all the IR through, because when you're making prints the enlarger bulb is sending a lot of heat around so the film lets it all through to avoid warping or whatever).
I actually have photos of that process, coincidentally; the 4500 had a tiny front element so it was easy enough to just get a step-up ring and trim some 120 to fit in:
Daaaang, that last shot is awesome. I love the concept of infrared, but I'm not 100% certain on what it entails -- partly because I know if I read up on it too much, I'll want to massacre my digital camera to achieve it. Am I right that it's just removing a layer from the sensor to increase light sensitivity? Also, do you need a special filter over the lens?
It depends on how much IR filtering is already on the sensor; the CP4500 didn't have much, so potentially gets worse images when there's actual IR in the scene (so on a hot day, I guess). And yes, you need a filter -- conveniently, though, a processed-but-unexposed bit of film does the trick, so I just took some 120, didn't expose it, processed it, and made a mount. (as I understand it: unexposed film will be entirely black, so no visible light gets through -- but it lets all the IR through, because when you're making prints the enlarger bulb is sending a lot of heat around so the film lets it all through to avoid warping or whatever).
I actually have photos of that process, coincidentally; the 4500 had a tiny front element so it was easy enough to just get a step-up ring and trim some 120 to fit in:
couple more shots:
Man, those IR shots make me sad that they put most of the IR filter on the sensor instead of incorporating it in the lenses. I guess they didn't have to worry about that with film, right?
I modified my first digital camera (from back around 2002) to shoot IR and it was a blast while it worked. I had to open it up and use a razor blade to scrape the IR filter off of the lens.
man that reminds me i need to buy more film. how about you just send me all that @muninn and i'll pay you back by showing you all the good photos i take with it? fair deal?
I seem to be on a vertical photo kick... even making my horizontals vertical.
@prospicience your vanishing point isn't centered in the frame, so the picture looks a bit off. A bit of a crop from top and right side would fix that. I think the shot would also look pretty cool in landscape orientation, if you chopped off the top and bottom 1/3 of the photo, if you get what I mean
Bah, thanks for that. I actually have a horizontal, will take a look at it and see if I captured it a little better.
I'm with Digible, the contrast and variance in values is great in Sailin' Shoes.
@Soggybiscuit both of those have some great potential - and also in both of those I think some sort of gradient filter would help a lot. Lighten the bottom of the first shot, the tree is a bit dark. Darken the top half of the second shot, as it's a bit washed out.
Your photos fill me with great deal of unease and existential dread. All of your recent photos have strong leading lines, placed just off center. They make my brain cry.
I feel like you might have a really cool series going.
Prosp, try cropping the bottom third so the white lines at the edge of the road are at the bottom corners. That would be more visually pleasing at least to me.
No, I am not really communist. Yes, it is weird that I use this name.
Thanks guys, gonna give that a shot tonight @CommunistCow
Ugh didn't mean to post yet.
@munnin I actually thought about what you said with the off center one last page when I took the photo below. I made sure that horizon was centered, but I didn't want to lose the green mished mashed with the wheat. I also aligned one of the slits in the boards to line up with the horizon.
i really like "it takes two" and don't think it needs cropping, certainly not as dramatically as CC suggested, unless maybe you wanted to try a square crop. i am sort of obsessed by ratios and frame sizes, though; i don't like to fuck with 'em.
I'm with @bsjezz on It Takes Two. Cropping it closer to the white lines would unbalance the picture further as the lines on the right sit higher on the frame than the lines on the left. All I'd suggest is cloning out the spots of cloud on the very top of the shot.
I also really love the colours in Line Up -- I don't know what kind of post you've done on it, but I'm getting a real Portra vibe from the shot. My only criticism is I'd love more space above the house. The top half of the image feels very heavy, right now.
[edit: I'll just drop these in here, in lieu of a double post
I'll just leave these here for your viewing pleasure!
Today is the first day in a whole week when it didn't rain a single drop. First day in a week I could take any photos. I really feel like I could've had more sky in the second one. Oh well, hindsight is 20/20.
Steam - Synthetic Violence | XBOX Live - Cannonfuse | PSN - CastleBravo | Twitch - SoggybiscuitPA
Thanks guys, I messed with the crop a bit, definitely think it doesn't feel quite as balanced. But I'm probably going to do a bunch more with roads in similar compositions so I'll take the crop into mind when shooting.
@Baron Dirigible Appreciate it, I don't think I did a whole lot of post. I know I boosted the blues a bit and just tapped the contrast up as well. I'll have to go back and check out how I did it again because I really dig how it turned out too. *edit* Looks like I also boosted the saturation of the reds, upped the light in the shadows, and then lowered the luminosity of said reds as well.
Soggy, getting better for sure. That second one's got some great balance; I really love the solid black on bottom, great use of long exposure.
Just picked up the Canon 100m 2.8L to shoot a friend's wedding. I don't really know what else to say but, Goddamn. Incredible macro lens, incredible portrait lens, I even got some great landscapes with it. And balls this thing is sharp as all get out. I would totally recommend this thing to anyone and everyone who owns a canon. It's not even that expensive (for an L lens and what you get at least), got it for $875 with a mail in rebate, originally $1045. Sharper than the 70-200 2.8L in my opinion. Granted I've only shot with it for 2 days, I'm in love.
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I went hiking with my Mamiya, and surprisingly it didn't break my back. Will have to play with it more and don't use fast film with Rodinal stand development to see how much resolution I can get from it.
Crooked horizon warning:
I like your shot a lot -- the foreground especially is very well done. How heavy is the Mamiya? I know the RB67 is heavy as hell, but the Press looks positively svelte in comparison.
Never used the RB67 but considering that it contains a mirror, I would guess that it might be heavier than the Universal.
It's just that the bench doesn't fit into it somehow. There's visual contrast between the round rocks and the long, horizontal planks of the bench, but that contrast isn't the subject of the image. If this shot was much tighter, so that the bench was captured and the entire background was JUST the rocks, I think that might have grabbed me more.
@electricmeat I don't remember tweaking the colors on that photo, the green really was green as all get out when I took the shot though (colorado gets rain just about every day this time of year ). Also, I'll be damned if I didn't notice the magenta until you pointed it out, so thank you for that.
Was really tempted to go black and white on this one, I really like the colors though.
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I'll probably be back there soon enough to give it a second shot.
Invaders II by synthetic_violence, on Flickr
What do you folks think, esp. compared to the previous shot?
@prospicience your vanishing point isn't centered in the frame, so the picture looks a bit off. A bit of a crop from top and right side would fix that. I think the shot would also look pretty cool in landscape orientation, if you chopped off the top and bottom 1/3 of the photo, if you get what I mean.
Here is some digital camera photo shot with an old manual lens.
Post was the norm for film long before post was the norm for digital.
The argument for film being higher fidelity is also largely untrue in any meaningful sense. Yes you can get a high res scan from a $60,000 film scanner, and some aspects of that scan likely look better (reds for instance, although that can have as much to do with the software you're processing with as anything) will, but on the downside you're now getting digital sensors that have 12-16 stops of range to somewhere around 11, and a much longer workflow. RAW obviously also retains a hell of a lot of info that film can't replicate. Hell, there are even sensors (I'm thinking dragon) that produce noise that isn't incredibly ugly (although I admit film wins that one, albeit with the caveat that we are also beginning to see sensors with a native ISO of 800+.
The major upside of film now is spending 2 hours at the pub midday whilst you wait for it to come back from the lab.
Anyway, have some medium format Ektar!
Vending Machines, Matsumoto Castle by rstop bstop, on Flickr
If my lab could process my stuff same day, I would actually be shooting color.
I'm a sad panda now.
And why does it have to be same day? I really enjoy your colour shots, rare as they are, and there'd better be a damned good reason we're not seeing more of them!
And I don't do color because color is hard.
(And you can always go back another day to pick up the film! Drop a roll off, pick a roll up. Easy!)
Here's me experimenting with close-up photography on expired film. Will pick a more interesting subject next time -- this was more a test of texture and detail.
Fifteen by rstop bstop, on Flickr
Maker's Mark by rstop bstop, on Flickr
(At what point does something become "macro"? The second shot is definitely above a 1:1 reproduction.)
I've always thought of it as "if the subject is larger than the sensor", with 35mm film as the baseline to avoid reproduction sizes / sensor crop / etc -- so anything where the subject is smaller than 36x24mm.
Best camera I ever had for actual practical macro (and potentially that there ever will be) was the old split-body Coolpix 4500 -- small sensor so lots of usable DoF, and a lens that focuses up close. Sure, low res by modern standards, and it's slow to use and noisy, but as far as making pictures goes, nothing beats it.
(also, it was super easy to make it do infrared)
gives me
and you can also do more typical subjects like:
Then things start to get silly when you reverse lenses -- I made a super low-end mount for a reversed 7mm 8mm-cine-lens, but it gets you very close:
In practise, it's too close to be much use -- sure, the field of view is a couple of millimetres across, but the DoF is so small:
For comparison with the shots above, needle eye and pollen again:
Also, you start to get really weird optical effects; below is a hair, and while you can see the scales and whatnot on hairs, I have no idea where the second "hair" in the shot came from.
It depends on how much IR filtering is already on the sensor; the CP4500 didn't have much, so potentially gets worse images when there's actual IR in the scene (so on a hot day, I guess). And yes, you need a filter -- conveniently, though, a processed-but-unexposed bit of film does the trick, so I just took some 120, didn't expose it, processed it, and made a mount. (as I understand it: unexposed film will be entirely black, so no visible light gets through -- but it lets all the IR through, because when you're making prints the enlarger bulb is sending a lot of heat around so the film lets it all through to avoid warping or whatever).
I actually have photos of that process, coincidentally; the 4500 had a tiny front element so it was easy enough to just get a step-up ring and trim some 120 to fit in:
couple more shots:
Man, those IR shots make me sad that they put most of the IR filter on the sensor instead of incorporating it in the lenses. I guess they didn't have to worry about that with film, right?
I modified my first digital camera (from back around 2002) to shoot IR and it was a blast while it worked. I had to open it up and use a razor blade to scrape the IR filter off of the lens.
It was a HP C215.
http://iso.500px.com/luminosity-masks-in-digital-blending/?utm_campaign=may222014digest&utm_content=link&utm_medium=email&utm_source=500px
Bloom by jeremy-o, on Flickr
Spider and Fly by jeremy-o, on Flickr
Phat loot!
Surfer / Car by jeremy-o, on Flickr
A Nothern Beach by jeremy-o, on Flickr
Love Sailin' Shoes, @bsjezz. Great stuff.
Moar things.
Tubbin - how it was meant to be by Prospicience 101, on Flickr
Sideways-Web by Prospicience 101, on Flickr
I seem to be on a vertical photo kick... even making my horizontals vertical.
Bah, thanks for that. I actually have a horizontal, will take a look at it and see if I captured it a little better.
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Crabwood by jeremy-o, on Flickr
The Yawn by jeremy-o, on Flickr
and since @Baron Dirigible mentioned it
Sailin' Shoes by jeremy-o, on Flickr
A Small Dot by synthetic_violence, on Flickr
Boone County by synthetic_violence, on Flickr
@Soggybiscuit both of those have some great potential - and also in both of those I think some sort of gradient filter would help a lot. Lighten the bottom of the first shot, the tree is a bit dark. Darken the top half of the second shot, as it's a bit washed out.
Another shot from on the road.
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Portrait of a Vocalist by jeremy-o, on Flickr
Slivers by jeremy-o, on Flickr
Happy, Youthful New Sounds of by jeremy-o, on Flickr
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Your photos fill me with great deal of unease and existential dread. All of your recent photos have strong leading lines, placed just off center. They make my brain cry.
I feel like you might have a really cool series going.
Ugh didn't mean to post yet.
@munnin I actually thought about what you said with the off center one last page when I took the photo below. I made sure that horizon was centered, but I didn't want to lose the green mished mashed with the wheat. I also aligned one of the slits in the boards to line up with the horizon.
Also glad these have been giving you a sense of unease, I've been pretty dang uneasy since I got this new job and started this series.
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I also really love the colours in Line Up -- I don't know what kind of post you've done on it, but I'm getting a real Portra vibe from the shot. My only criticism is I'd love more space above the house. The top half of the image feels very heavy, right now.
[edit: I'll just drop these in here, in lieu of a double post
Okunoin by rstop bstop, on Flickr
Okunoin III by rstop bstop, on Flickr
Fun With Filters by synthetic_violence, on Flickr
I'll just leave these here for your viewing pleasure!
@Baron Dirigible Appreciate it, I don't think I did a whole lot of post. I know I boosted the blues a bit and just tapped the contrast up as well. I'll have to go back and check out how I did it again because I really dig how it turned out too. *edit* Looks like I also boosted the saturation of the reds, upped the light in the shadows, and then lowered the luminosity of said reds as well.
Soggy, getting better for sure. That second one's got some great balance; I really love the solid black on bottom, great use of long exposure.
Just picked up the Canon 100m 2.8L to shoot a friend's wedding. I don't really know what else to say but, Goddamn. Incredible macro lens, incredible portrait lens, I even got some great landscapes with it. And balls this thing is sharp as all get out. I would totally recommend this thing to anyone and everyone who owns a canon. It's not even that expensive (for an L lens and what you get at least), got it for $875 with a mail in rebate, originally $1045. Sharper than the 70-200 2.8L in my opinion. Granted I've only shot with it for 2 days, I'm in love.
My Portfolio Site
Vaseline-vision!