Hybrid Workflow

While I do not shoot digital images these days, I do scan negatives and prints.  I believe most film photographers follow a hybrid workflow.  That is, shoot film, then digitize the film images for editing, sharing and printing.

Let's face it, optical printing from a photolab is a thing of the past.  Optical printing is where the minilab printer will feed in the negative and then expose the paper from a light source passing through the negative, then a lens will focus in on the paper.  The paper is then processed in standard RA-4 color paper chemicals and dried.  This was the minilab standard for 20 years.  Because these printers will not accept any digital formats, nearly all photolabs have replaced them with digital printers that scan the negative, or input the image from CD's and memory cards and more likely from internet servers.  The printers, such as the Fuji Frontier and the Noritsu series digital printers convert the images and output them to lasers which are then used to expose the traditional silver based RA-4 paper.

This method really has many advantages.  Dust is nearly eliminated with Digital Ice technology. Color correction is more accurate and images can be sharpened.  All of these features are unavailable on traditional optical printers. I printed color negatives for many years using mainly Noritsu and Fuji optical and digital printers.  Trust me when I say there is nothing as beautiful as an optical print made from a properly exposed and properly developed color negative.  Eliminating dust is near impossible without chemical film cleaners and compressed air.  The printer must be kept in top color balance and each film type programmed in by bar code and then color balanced for normal, under and over exposed negatives using a control negative.   The control print is processed in the printer and then is read on a colorimeter and those numbers will correlate with a color balance.  I used a control negative, called Nora, for many years.  This included a mannequin for skin tone reference and color patches as well as an 18% gray patch in the center for neutral reference.

My typical workflow today consists of shooting film and developing it at home.  That includes B&W and color, 110 up to 4x5.  I do not process E-6 slide film.  It has been many years.  The chemicals are fairly expensive and the low utilization (not much volume to process based on chemical quantity) will allow the efficacy of the developer to dwindle quickly.  After the film is processed, it is scanned on an Epson V500 with digital ice to remove dust.  Minimal color is corrected.  I will then take the images into photoshop for final color, density, contrast and cropping before sending to a professional lab for digital printing on traditional silver based Fuji crystal archive paper.

Pinhole Assist App - A Must Have

Even though the content of this blog revolves around film I am certainly not opposed to some digital technology when it comes down to complicated math.  I dabble with pinhole photography because its fun and doesn't require me to spend time with shutters and apertures.  However, doing the math required and finding a light meter that has an f-stop range above the 200's is near impossible.  Some will say it takes the fun out of pinhole, but I come from a generation of photo education where I find it more fun to nail my exposure than just shooting from the hip.

The Pinhole Assist app for Apple products came to my rescue.  This is absolute jewel of a tool.  Not only does it have the "canned" apertures for specific pinhole products it gives you the ability to pick the exact aperture for your pinhole.  Not sure what that is?  Even better, this app allows you put in the diameter of the aperture along with approximate millimeter of the "lens" (field of view) and it will calculate it for you.

A small image appears on the app screen of the "zone" you a metering, courtesy of the front camera.  In addition, you can save the image along with all the numerical data and email it to yourself as a reference so you can compare it to the processed film image.

But, there's more!  The app includes an algorithm to calculate the reciprocity error factor when exposing for more than 1 second, which is almost always likely with pinhole cameras.  You can save all your data and profiles for future use and retrieve that data the next time you're in the field without having to program in the aperture, film type, etc.

Have a view camera?  This app goes another step further by providing you with the additional exposure required for bellows compensation.  This is the additional amount of exposure required beyond the light reflective reading that is necessary when the bellows on the camera gets extended out for close up work.  Fire up the app, click on the bellows compensation icon and you "touch and drag" the slider and the bellows expands or contracts as the distance between lens and film plane gets calculated in millimeters or inches.  You can estimate this visually or take along a ruler for more precise numbers.  This app then calculates the additional exposure required.  For view camera users alone, the bellows compensation feature is worth the price of the app.

Film Developing - Pre-soak?

I am often asked if I pre-soak my film before the developer step. Here are my thoughts:

The idea is that putting your loaded reel of film in a water soak before the developing stage improves the quality of developing, by eliminating a couple of possible problems.  The pre-soak is mainly used when developing film with a less than 5 minute developer time.  Less than 5 minutes in the developer step, the film can experience a uniformity issue because the liquid has to be absorbed by the emulsion.  This takes a bit of time, depending upon the temperature.  By soaking in water first, this softens the emulsion and prepares it for the developer.  A water soak will also remove the anti-halation layer from the base of the film.  This layer is added to prevent light from reflecting off the pressure plate and back through the film twice creating a glowing effect on the highlights.   Polypan F film has no anti-halation layer and it will give you this effect intentionally. If you pre-soak your film, this layer will come off and you will see the water is stained when dumped out. I have seen greens, magentas and purples.  This is normal. 

Since most B&W film, processed at 68 degrees will not yield developer times less than 5 minutes, I do not include a water step. Color negative film on the other hand I do.  It certainly will not hurt the film to do it.   Here is the breakdown:


B&W Film (traditional, non-C-41) if the developer time is 5+ minutes:
No.  

If less than 5 minutes, I use a different dilution or lower temperature to increase the time.

C-41 Color Negative Film or C-41 B&W Chromogenic Film:

Yes!  Color Negative Film is processed at about 100 degrees +/-.  The developer step is 3:15.  as in 3 minutes, 15 seconds. That is awfully short.  I include a one minute water soak first, with water at 100 degrees to prepare the emulsion for the developer.  

The Kiev 60 - Camera Review!

This camera is a tank.  I weighs upwards of 5 pounds and almost requires two hands to carry it.  This camera is one of the few medium format SLR cameras ever made.  The Kiev 60 is a Russian/Ukrainian copy camera similar in style to a Pentax 6x7 although the Kiev 60 shots 6x6 square images  This is old school photography at it's best.  The camera is so large it attracts attention when taken out in public.  It's quite simple to use, with only shutter speed, aperture, stop down preview and film advance.  This model came with a waist level finder and a TTL eye level finder.  I opted not to put batteries in to use the TTL metering and simply use a hand held reflected meter for more accurate readings.  There is no self timer, although there is a tripod mount which really helps take the weight off.

There is a cold shoe, but no hot shoe.  Since the cold shoe simply holds the flash via the flash shoe you must use the PC sync socket on the front of the camera to connect the flash via cord.  Inconvenient yes, but this is an old camera from Russia. The flash sync speed is only 1/30.  This impedes things a bit as using flash outdoors forces you to maximum sync speed of 1/30, unless you are using 100 ASA film, you are not going to have much control over depth of field.  The focus is a bit slow, but that could be related to the fact that at 40 years old and looking through bifocals I have an inherently hard time anyway.  The lens is an 80mm 2.8 and provides beautiful bokeh when shot wide open. The camera makes an audible "clunk" at the shutter firing and often if your subject is human, a comment is made about the quality of the shutter sound.  The film is very easy to load with a red dot on the inside to indicate the start mark alignment on the film paper backing.  The transport is smooth and the roll is tight when removed from the exposed side of the camera. There are no visible light leaks on the film with this particular camera, which is always a concern with cameras of this age. This camera came with the original box and instruction manual all in Russian.

This camera only leaves a small gap between frames, around 1/8 of inch. After the 12th frame, it appears on the film itself [after processing] that there is room for one more frame. I tested this theory on a roll of film (not processed as of this post) by firing another shot off at the K mark on the frame counter which indicates the end has been reached. The camera does fire after the 12th frame so when I process the film I update this post at the bottom to indicate how that test went.

Here is the camera with a remote wireless flash transmitter attached to the cold shoe which is plugged into the X-sync.

Here is a shot taken with the Kiev.  1/30 @ 2.8  on Kodak Tri-X.  Processed in Sprint Standard developer.

This image taken on the Kiev 60. Available light. 1/30 @ 2.8. Processed in C-41 "hobby kit".

Ektar 100 - Expired Test

I tend to acquire a lot of old film.  Color film when expired is particularly fickle.  I shot of roll of Ektar 100 that expired in 2011.  I shot it at 80 ASA and developed it at home in a C-41 Unicolor Kit.  I will do a thorough review and how-to in a future post of developing color negative film at home.  Here is a shot taken with a Canon Elan and minimal color correction after scanning on an Epson V500.  Even with the film expired after nearly 3 years, the images still look great.

Formulary Warm Tone Paper Developer 106 - REVIEW

I found a half liter mix of this obscure paper developer sitting in a box at our local camera shop.  Wanting to do some darkroom printing I thought it would be fun to give it shot.

The paperwork promises warm blacks to an engraving brown on bromide papers.  I had a box of Ilford 5x7 pearl finish that worked nicely.

I mixed the developer per the enclosed instructions.  I have always had great results and found Formulary products easy to use and very consistent.  You can get this developer from Freestyle here.

The developer is dark muddy brown when mixed and smells similar to Caffenol. (more on caffenol in a later post).  The instructions recommend a 1:7 or 1:15 mixing ratio; the latter for greater brown tone. I opted for the 1:15 and the suggested per print developing time is 5-8 minutes.  I ran some tests with a projection print scale as to not waste paper.  The brown tone is quite nice and stains the white base as well.  These are 6x6 negatives shot on Acros 100 and printed on an Omega C700 which is only intended for 35mm, so hence the sloppy border.  I used a #3 polycontrast filter to punch it up a bit as this is a lower contrast developer.

Expired film - what you need to know

There is a lot of old film floating around.  Professionals would stock up on bricks of film to get a discount and stick it in the fridge for later use.  I recently acquired a stack of old film.  All of it 120 format and all of it expired in 1998-2001.

Provia 400 

T400CN

Ektachrome Plus

Fuji 800 NHG II

Portra 800

The challenge with expired film is that it loses "speed" with age and will develop base fog, especially if not refrigerated.  I find film this old needs to be exposed about 3 stops over the box speed.  I am testing a roll of the Fuji 800 that expired in 1999 and I shot it a 100.  The T400CN I will shoot at 50. Once I process the film, I will post the scans to show the quality.  

I friend recently gave me a 100 sheet box of TMAX 100 that expired in 2003. It had been cold stored.  I had just purchased a 1963 crown graphic and needed some film to play with and the TMAX dropped right into my lap.  My first tests were exposed at 50 ASA.  I processed in D-76 (more on developing 4x5 in a later post) with less than enthusiastic results.  The film showed no base fog and the images looked great at 50 ASA considering I didn't like the D-76.  

By contrast, I was also given a 100 foot roll of expired Eastman Double-X 5222 motion picture film.  This is also B&W. It expired in 1964. It came complete with rusted can and all!  I shot a test roll exposing the same image from 64 to 500 ASA with 200 giving the best results processed in D-76. There was significant base fog, more than I cared for. The Epson V500 scanner plowed right through that but the grain was more that I care for as well. However, a free 100 ft roll of film, who's complaining when you shoot for fun.