Archive for Photography

Adventures in Filmland

// March 10th, 2010 // No Comments » // Photography

My foray into photography began simply. I wanted to have a “decent” camera to take better pictures of my as-of-yet unborn daughter. So I found my dad’s old Canon EF in the back of a closet somewhere, got it cleaned up, and was on my way. Then I bought another camera, this time it was a Holga. Then I graduated from grad school and as a gift I found myself the pleasant owner of a Canon Rebel XSI dSLR. And even thought I can take some good pictures with the dSLR, I always find myself looking for good deals on film and film cameras (especially this one). So as an adventure I decided to try my hand on developing my own film. I bought a used developing tank and reel off craigslist and a bunch of chemicals (listed below) from B&H. As a typical biochemist, I wrote out how everything went down:

Developing Neopan 400 using HC-110 and Ilford Rapid Fix

  1. Get chemicals ready
    • Initial Rinse: 500ml dH20 in Beaker
    • Developer: HC-110 Dilution B (One shot developer)
      • To make 500ml mix 16ml concentration + 484ml dH20
      • To make Dilution H : 8ml + 492ml dH20
    • Stop Bath: 1L dH20 in beaker
    • Fixer: Ilford Rapid Fix (Reuse?)
      • Mix 1:4 in black 500ml bottle (100ml Rapid Mixer concentrate + 400ml dH20)
    • Wash: 1.5L dH20
  2. Put film on Reel
  3. Initial rinse with dH20 – 5 minutes with some inverting at the beginning and some stamping to remove any air bubbles – after 5 minutes dump out water
  4. Developer
    • Fill quickly
    • Develop for 9min. 15sec in Dilution H in 22°C water
    • Agitation: First 30 seconds and then the first 15 seconds of every minute starting at 1:00 – 1:15, then 2:00-2:15, and so forth.
  5. Dump developer down the drain
  6. Stop bath with dH20 at roughly the same temp as the developer. Pour stop bath in, invert for 30 seconds. Pour it out. Pour in another 500ml, agitate for 30 seconds, then pour out.
  7. Fixer – 7 minutes?
    • Pour in quickly
    • Agitate for 30 seconds and stamp it a couple times to remove air bubbles
    • Agitate as you would with developer every minute
    • After 7 minutes pour back into bottle. After 4-5 uses, dump or save in a larger gallon milk jug labeled “exhausted fixer”
  8. Wash
    • Fill with tap water invert 5 times and dump
    • Fill with tap water invert 10 times and dump
    • Fill with tap water invert 20 times and dump
    • Fill with Tap water plus 1ml Photoflo and invert

Hope this helps someone out there trying their own hand at developing their own film.

Fotographia

// December 17th, 2009 // No Comments » // Art, Photography

A year ago I had my first camera CLA’d (Cleaned, Lubed, and Adjusted). That Canon EF continues to serve me well. Today, one year later, I have 6 cameras, a deli drawer in our fridge full of film, and an unabashed love of photography. I would never say that I am actually a photographer, but I’ll always say that I have had a great amount of fun taking pictures or snapshots of my life over the last year. I have found myself becoming increasingly frustrated though. Frustrated with my lack of creativity, my lack of vision, my lack of…something. While this sometimes is apparent to me in when I have a vision of how a photograph should look but I can’t get it just right, most of the time it’s more apparent when I can’t get a vision of how the photograph should be at all. I told my wife one time that I was frustrated because I felt like all my pictures looked like snapshots. She replied, “but they are snapshots” and she’s exactly right. Maybe, for now, that’s my photographic “style.” The problem is that I don’t necessarily like that style, it’s just easier for me than to carefully plan out every picture on every roll of film or memory card. My goal for the next year is to plan more carefully when I shoot pictures. My wife will love this idea because it means I’ll take fewer pictures and develop less film. I think it will be more effective for me than the “spray and pray” technique practiced by so many, including myself. My other goal is to develop a real “vision” or “style” for my photography over the next year.

Here two photographers that, IMO, have an incredible photographic vision or style (is it a coincidence they both shoot mostly film?):

Zeb Andrews: This guy takes great shots using all (or mostly?) film cameras. Beyond his amazing photos, I think he also has a great philosophy on photography in general.

Wallace Billingham: Incredible long exposure Holga nature photography mostly taken in northwestern PA close to my hometown.

Resolutions

// January 9th, 2009 // No Comments » // Dog, Personal, Photography

JillOne of my resolutions this year was to blog more. Yes I know – that’s a lot of people’s resolution and so in the month of January the internet gets clogged with extra resolution posts. Part of this blogging resolution was also to take more photographs. Recently, I re-found my dad’s old Canon EF in the back of a closet in our house and had some work done on it in order for the camera to be functional. While I probably spent too much money on an old Canon camera, it has sentimental meaning to me and I wasn’t ever going to sell it so I figured I might as well put some money into in and resurrect the thing from the back of my closet.

The Canon EF was made from 1973-1976 and this particular EF was purchased in Japan when my dad was stationed there in the Air Force. It’s a great camera. But there’s so much I realize now that I just don’t know about it and using an SLR to take pictures.

I’m sure if you’re interested in the EF you can find some more information about it elsewhere on the internet, but I’ll give you my impressions.

First, it’s heavy. I mean everything in this thing is mechanical, so you are hauling around this camera with all these mechanical parts made of metal. There isn’t much plastic here. I actually like this. It feels more substantial than alot of the lightweight dSLRs I’ve handled and therefore I just think it feels better in my hands. I love the fact that I have to manually wind the film. This seems like an annoyance at first, but part of me just loves the noises it produces. The sturdy click of the shutter moving when you depress the shutter release button, the film winder, it all makes for a great experience.

EllieI also didn’t realize there are such differences in film. Obviously there’s the speed differences, but even from one company to the next, people love or hate these different films. I can’t really throw my hat into this ring yet since I haven’t shot enough to really say one way or the other on anything.

Enough words. For a couple pics from the EF using Kodak 400TX film, check out my photoblog. I’ve also put some pics in this post just to check them out in this format.

Let me know what you think – good or bad.

Photoblog update

// September 3rd, 2008 // No Comments » // Europe, Photography

It’s been some time now since I regularly updated my photoblog but since I’ve got a bunch of new pictures from Europe, I’ll be putting some of them up there in the next couple days/weeks as I get some time. Please take a look if you have a minute or two and feel free to leave a comment. 

I recently posted this one from a cemetery on a hillside above Monterosso al Mar. Hopefully I’ll have more time in the near future to put up some pictures from the beautiful Cinque Terra region in Italy we visited last month.

Photoblog update

// March 17th, 2008 // No Comments » // Design, Photography, Web

I recently switched to a new blogging platform for running my photoblog called pixelpost . It’s been remarkably easy to switch over to using this software to run the photoblog and furthermore I’ve found it remarkably customizable. I’ve updated one of the stock themes to my own design and added a cool feature that some of you might enjoy. I usually doctor most of my images, at least a little bit, in GIMP (an open-source version of Adobe’s Photoshop). Images in the photoblog that contain the leaf logo below and to the right of the image contain a secret “before processing” image. If you place your mouse over that leaf, the “before processing” image will appear. If you remove your mouse cursor from the leaf, the real image will return. This will give you a little idea of what kind of post-processing I do for each image.

I should also mention that if you click on the “Image info and comments” link under the main image, a pop-up will appear showing you the comment area and a little description of the picture. Hope you all enjoy it!