Annular Eclipse Tokyo
Taken from my balcony at about 7:30am this morning.
Polaroid Fun
Was shooting a bit of retro/old skool ish and took a few polaroids.
Think the polaroids might end up coming out better than the shots on digi ;o
Darkroom Coat
So yeah I was talking about getting a lab coat for going to the darkroom when Joanne offered to get me one :D (she works as a mad scientist).
We discussed colours and I said that blue would be good. However, no blue was available. She said she would dye a white one blue for me. However, it didnt quite turn out blue, ended up purple…
But its all good, purple is rapidly becoming one of my favorite colours.
The day we met to exchange the goods I was expecting some lighting stuff so I asked her if she wouldnt mind helping me test it out. Waited till 9 o’clock but the delivery didnt come. Checked the internet and it was actually due to come the next day .. doh
Figured since she was here anyway i would try using some lights I hadnt used before and try experiment a little, and also get her to take a pic of me in my new pimp lab coat.
Pretty abc lighting, but I liked this pic:
Thinking of going to the darkroom this Sunday maybe, gonna have chicks all over me….
Portra 400 shot at 100
Picked up some film last night which was a mixed bag of this weekend and a shoot from 2 weeks ago.
I shot two rolls of portra400 on my pentax67 with Adriana, reason being was after shooting the first I realized I adjusted my f-stop in the wrong direction and exposed for iso 100 instead of 400…
Shot another roll straight after at the correct setting. Sent that roll to the local near my house, comparing what he did to what the people at Ebisu did is pretty crazy, results are like night and day. I already knew the local guy sucked as he has ruined a few rolls of my film, but I was feeling lazy and impatient. I think Ill make a bet with myself and start setting 1000 yen notes on fire anytime I drop film off to him to get developed….
So yeah dropped the roll to Ebisu and they said they can only pull one stop (needs to two stops) and it will cost twice the price. I was like wtf?? Told them to put the order on ice till I get back to them. Did some research and heard people talking about shooting portra at 1600 and developing it normally and getting good results.
Decided to just dev it normal. Results are interesting. Looks slightly on the washed out side, but might be able to fix it in the scanner or lightroom.
Also picked up a large format shot too. Not sure if my eyes are getting bad or the focusing screen sucks but seems like im unable to see stuff in the background too well…
Quality is pretty nuts, although you cant tell on by looking at it at this size. Shot with porta400 slightly overexposed.
Learning Post Processing
Ugh, I think I bought my first camera, a d70, in like June 2010. After shooting for a few months I realized that I wasnt happy with the way the photos looked and to make things worse had no idea how to fix them…
The escape route was to start shooting film :D. With film you can more or less just use whatever u get out of the cam and still get decent results.
But the side effects of doing that is that I only really know what I want/like from an abstract point of view (composition, colour scheme) but havent really got a clue on a more detailed level.
For example, I spent a bit of time on the above image but got to a point where its like, do I keep her eyes the same or make them brighter? Do I find some tutorial and find a way to make her skin super duper magazine smooth or is it cool like this, do I brighten the shadow, completely remove it, leave it as it is? Try and dodge and burn to add more dimensional? Am I happy with the way it looks or can I make it better? haha the list goes on… And unfortunately the answer to most of these questions is a shoulder shrug…
I guess the only way to find the answer is to face my demons and actually try spending time with a lot of my images and trying to figure out what I like and what I can do in camera and with lights to try and get better results in camera.
Should be interesting hitting the darkroom again after processing a bunch of photos. I might actually be able to save myself some paper.
If anybody is using GIMP and knows any cool plugins, let me know :D
Print Giveaway
Gonna be giving away some test prints that I make since they are probably gonna pile up and end up going to waste or getting thrown away (some old street stuff and maybe some newer portraits I take).
Check out my FB page if interested:
FB Page
Peace
Darkroom Round 2
Warning, long rant, read at your own peril :p
Went darkroom Saturday night for a 6 hour session, was planning on making a few medium format prints, one of them being this one above (scanned negative).
Got to the darkroom, made myself comfortable and got ready for a productive 6 hour session.
Loaded the 6x7 film holder and started trying to adjust the enlarger to display the image on the easel.
(if you move it up it crops and shows less of the whole image, move it down it shows the whole image but at a smaller size)
I was noticing I couldnt get the image to display the way I wanted to. It was either too big or too small. The only way I could get it to be framed at the right ratio was to make it out of focus. I started trying to think back, what am I doing wrong?
Fiddled around with it for a while then stopped and gave up for a second. The darkroom is really hot, and I had to keep turning the light on next to me to check what I was doing. Trying to troubleshoot in a room with a high temperature is pretty stressful and can tire you out pretty quickly.
I had some 35mm negatives with me so I popped it in the 35mm holder and tried. It framed perfectly… Okay, so I know I haven’t done anything wrong, must be some special way to deal with medium format.
I look at the clock its 6:45 zzzz just wasted an hour. The chick told me she was leaving at 7, so I quickly ran around the building looking for her.
Found her and she showed me that lens are interchangeable and that you need a different one for 6x6 or bigger zzzzz.
Thanked her and started going at it again. Got the image framed the way I wanted it and pulled out my 8x10 guide to setup the easel (use it to decide the size of the borders on the photo).
It was a plastic one I got with my scanner, by putting it in my bag it had snapped and became unsable. Decided to forget about it and just sort the borders after.
Test strip time, decided to make some test strips and print the above photo.
Set the lens to F8 and made six 2 second exposures (expose the photo paper for 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12 seconds and see which portion I think works best).
Put it in the developer and it turned pure black…
WTF? Did I accidentally expose the strip to some light or something? Ugh.. Try again and the same thing happens.
I look at the clock and laugh to myself and think maybe ill just go home and come back tomorrow.
Always sucks when you try to start something and everything seems to go wrong, soul crushing and pretty off putting.
Go outside get some air, go back in decide to make a test strip of a 35mm shot to make sure it wasnt the paper.
The 35mm test sheet is fine… Light bulb goes off and I realize what the problem is. Given the F stop you set the enlarger at the intensity of the light gets stronger or weaker, if its too dark I need to either expose it at a shorter time (0.1 seconds) or make the light weaker.
I set the camera to F16 and try again, bingo it works. I look at the 2 second test strips and realize I need to make it 1 second for more accuracy.
I find the best exposure and make a print.
Looking at the negative I realize that this is an example of what people call a thin negative (a negative is thin so it lets light in easier/faster).
Look at the picture and its kinda weird, exposed right but not how it should look.
Give up for a bit listen to some music, decide to print something else. Pull out a shot and try a F16 2 seconds test strip but the strip ends up being blank….
Try again at 5 seconds, its blank but with the faintest bit of grey at the end.
Eventually try at 40 second intervals, and the last strip 240 seconds is still underexposed.
I shake my head and laugh, how ridiculous is this. I got one negative thats so thin that at F8 it went pitch black in 2 seconds, and another negative that so thick (doesnt let light through easily/fast) that after 240 seconds its still underexposed.
I normally hear all these terms get thrown around, but its not till you do it with your own hands that you really build intuition for it.
Decide to go back to the Lareina print since I cant be bothered to do a print that that takes forever just to make test strips (was taking long even at F5.6).
I look at the print and look at the scanned version on my phone and ask myself why are they different? Light bulb goes off, the dark blacks and the bright whites aren’t in the picture.
I remembered what Ayako told me about the contrast filters and instead of using number 2 I put on number 5 and made this:
Problem is that it has a lot scratches on the bottom and a few blemishes here and there. Heard that there is a thing called spotting to fix dust and scratches, but not sure to what extent it can be done and how hard it is…
Oh well, pretty frustrating day but learnt a lot. Ill be back…
Darkroom Field Report
Thought I would write up some random thoughts on doing some darkroom stuff for the first time.
First thing, time flies. Booked 4 hours but barely had enough time to make 2 prints, seriously might need to go in 6+ hour blocks.
Thinking of maybe getting a setup in my house, but gotta work out the logistics.
Greatest Fear: Opening 100 sheets of photo paper with the light on and ruining them all lol.
Thoughts on Contact sheets: I think if you shoot 35mm and you actually take care in what you shoot they might be worth it.
But for me I guess I see contact sheets as a waste of time. I more or less only want to print shots I think are good, and at best most rolls have 1 or maybe 2 good shots on them. Also, I have a scanner so I can just check at home anyway.
I made the most epic contact sheet ever though.
This contact sheet has 2 strips of delta 400, 1 strip of delta FP4, 1 strip of trix 400 and 1 strip of neopan 400 LOL
Nobody does it like me :D
Made the first print after printing once and making a number of test strips. However, the shot is pretty hard to get a perfect print from. Basically it has a lot of highlights and shadows (high mix of really bright and dark spots). Would probably take a ridic amount of time for me to make it perfect.
In the end I printed out these two, the beach shot and a shot of my chick.
Quick run through of how to print for those interested (not too accurate)
You have a thing called an enlarger that more or less is going to take a photo of your negative and make a bigger version of it onto photographic paper (shines light down on it).
You set the timer which says how long the enlarger is going to spend taking the photo.
Depending on your negative there is going to be some optimal time that gives you a photo that is not too dark not too bright, just right.
Once you do that you use 3 chemicals, throw the photo paper in the developer for a while then you see the picture appear, put it in stop bath that stops the developer from developing, then put it in fixer that probably makes sure the image stays on the paper.
So once you have the optimal time for a good photo (lets say its 10 seconds). You might notice that the top half is too bright, so in that case you might do the photo for 10 seconds, then block the bottom half and do the top half only for an extra 2 seconds.
That way you end up with a photo that has the top half done for 12 seconds and the bottom for 10 which would make the top darker.
You can find your optimal time by cutting small strips of photo paper and maybe developing each one at a different time (10 secs, 11 secs, 12, 13 etc.) You then look at these strips and see which one you think gives you the result you like best.
Conclusion?
Printing is easy. What I think is this, if you went to a shop with a negative that is black and white and ask them to make a print from the negative and gave them no instructions on what to make lighter or darker, what they would give you is something you could probably learn to make from scratch in a few hours in a darkroom by yourself.
The actual science behind making a well exposed print is easy, its just a question of how long you wanna play around with it to make it perfect or trying to find your preference/style which is probably more time consuming than actually hard.
There probably are some advanced techniques or whatever and obviously if you wanna become a master printer or try to make money offering print services its a completely different story. But yeah I guess for what I am trying to do I dont need to worry about such things.
But yeah fun stuff, defo gonna try keep up the momentum and go again within the next week or so.
Paper used: Ilford multigrade RC pearl paper.
Mrs Portraitist
Recently I have been randomly buying/collecting prints and paintings from people both online and offline. I bought a few paintings from Estetika Exposure a few weeks ago and they arrived this week. Two of the paintings were from her portfolio and the one below is one she made from scratch as a surprise.
Really happy with this, love the use of the browns and the faint blue in the sky :D
Follow her on twitter -> https://twitter.com/#!/estetikaexposr
Check out her work at -> http://www.wix.com/estetikaartbyamw/estetika-exposure
Feeling inspired to go shoot, lets see what the weekend brings ;D
Have a nice one folks.
Current Film Selection
Oh well, hopefully weather improves soon and I can actually get around to using it :D
Need large format colour film though :( only have 4 Portra 160 sheets left..
bottom shelf all medium format film
middle shelf is large format with some loose medium format and 35mm film
top shelf is all medium format with some large format loaded in holders
Polaroid
Suffering from mild exhaustion, spent the majority of the past two days sleeping. A quick Polaroid of the GF. I am getting faster at setting up and tearing down down the Large Format camera. Might attempt to shoot some color for the first time next week Saturday.
Have a nice day folks.
Large Format + Self Dev Training
Yesterday I took my first real shots using negative film on large format (I took a shot of a giant carebare in my apartment and of my balcony prior).
I went out to meet Irwin to hang while he did a project and eventually ended up meeting twocutedogs.
While out I remembered that my GF’s mum was in the same area I would be in so I contacted her and asked her if she wants to come hang and ill take a few pics of her.
So we found a little park area and ended up staying there taking some photos. Irwins project involved stopping people for photos, and even though my GF’s mum and her sister didnt know Irwin they started stopping strangers with him so he could take their photos (also it was pretty cold).
They are really great people, really happy that I know them.
(GF mum on the left, sis on the right)
It was actually pretty amazing watching them at work. They seemed to have a 100% success rate when stopping people. Also they were doing the opposite of what I do, stopping people who are on the move…
I need to kidnap one of them and take them with me next time I go out shooting street portraits :D
After they left it got pretty cold, me and Irwin took a shot of each other then retreated for shelter.
(Shot I took of Irwin. Slightly out of focus since he lacks the “keep still, dont move!!” skills)
(Shot Irwin took of me)
So yeah, gonna try shoot a bit more stuff so I can get some film loading and development practice. Once I get those two things down “Basic Season” will be over, and I will start trying to see what this bad boy can really do!
Technical Mumbo Jumbo
Shout out to Photographer John Sypal for helping me buy my dev kit and sending me info on how he does it.
So I used a Patterson 3 reel tank and the 4x5 taco method. I used a good tip from Macberns and put a reel on top of the film to stop it from moving around after.
Developer HC-110 with Diultion H 1:63
Fix = KodaFix 1:3 (one bottle is 1 litre. to make 1000ml u use 250ml which means one bottle only lasts 4 times… Apparently u can reuse, need to learn to reuse or fix is gonna burn a hole in my pockets lol.)
Driwel
Develop for anything from 13-20mins depending on water temperature.
Use the turn the tank upside down agitation method (agitating a 1000ml tank = no need to go gym anymore).
So thats about it. Need to learn to insert films into film holders better. Loaded one wrong on and put scratches on another. Anyway, more to come soon.
Catch me on twitter mrportraitist
Astia
There is a film called Astia (has been discontinued) that I always wanted to test out. It is a slow film that can only really be used in the daytime so I never get the chance to use it.
Last Saturday on my crazy adventure (met maybe 6 people that day, write up soon to come) one of the people I met was kind enough to let me fire off a test roll on her.
Here are 2 of the pics I liked:
Pretty sad this film is discontinued… would have turned it into my main film :(
American Gangsta
I was out with Irwin this weekend doing a bit of shooting. The plan was to get a space and do a sort of story/editorial type thing. Was pretty fun, I saw some crazy gear that I had never seen in real life before (Profoto lights, massive octabank) and some crazy lighting setups.
Was pretty inspiring, got some ideas and stuff I defo wanna try out in the future. I made up a little 8 shot series I wanted to do, but due to delays, and a bunch of other stuff didnt shoot them all.
Tried to use the Pentax67 but couldnt get it to work and wasted a roll of film (got it to work when I got home though).
The above shot was the third look. Was funny because I had an idea, sat the guy down then changed my mind. Tried to do a different shot but couldn’t pull it off (I suck at lighting) then went for another shot (the shot in this post). I was gonna try and get the shot I couldnt pull off but ended up running out of time.
Oh well, gotta just keep on keeping on.
