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AJG

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  1. It is minor stuff, just ineptly done. If the royal family wasn't on the one hand so public but on the other hand so secretive about things, nobody would care. But there have been lots of internet conspiracy theories about why she hasn't been seen in public for a couple of months and details like this are catnip for conspiracy buffs. I would be embarrassed to put something like this out in public, but people do pay me to do this work and have reasonable expectations for better quality.
  2. Thanks for the kind words... It is difficult to shoot her work, but it is good enough to be worth the effort.
  3. Trust me, the fruit is all glass. The stem on the grapes is translucent as are the stems on the pear and the apple. The bodies of the fruit start out as clear borosilicate glass tubing before being cased with colored glass (both rods and powdered glass frit). This happens over a 3000° propane-oxygen flame. Since the artist's goal is the utmost in realism within the possibilities of the glass medium, the lighting that I do is intended to enhance that realism. My wife had used other photographers before we met and was frequently frustrated with their results since most of them started out wanting to backlight her work to avoid glare.
  4. I read recently about this question with regard to old movies, both theatrical prints and original negatives and some archivists are beginning to have second thoughts about digital copying and destroying originals due to the necessity of transferring digital copies repeatedly to new materials and formats to avoid obsolescence that could lead to these materials no longer being possible to see and use. In my lifetime I've seen a lot of digital storage formats come and go--anybody else remember 5 1/2 " floppies? Good luck playing any of those back now, although I'm sure somebody somewhere probably still has a functioning drive with the appropriately old computer/operating system that can play back the floppy if it hasn't deteriorated beyond use. Projecting nitrate 35 mm movies (which I have done) does require specialized equipment for safety--fully enclosed projectors of the kind that every commercial theater in the US routinely had from the 1920's through the 1950's, but storage isn't as difficult as that and probably isn't that much of a risk. William Michael's advice is probably the best way to go, especially the editing part. Only save and/or copy the good stuff and get rid of the rest.
  5. My wife, an award winning glass artist would disagree--one light from above the camera position with a 20 ° honeycomb.
  6. One week later, we have crocuses out: Pentax K 5 w/50-200 Pentax zoom
  7. Snowdrops today--Pentax K 5 w/50-200 Pentax zoom:
  8. When I shot a fair amount of 35 mm Fuji 800 color negative back in the day I never had an issue with light fogging when loading into various Pentax SLRs. I would suspect that this film isn't wound tightly enough around the take up spool or some other issue if you haven't had this problem with slower film in the same camera when working outdoors in bright daylight.
  9. Fill flash could be a good way to shoot this, but the OP did mention that his subject was translucent, which could be a problem if the level of flash lighting isn't carefully controlled. And fill flash could have caused some problems with the images that Jose Angel shared--glare on the window behind the brushes could have been distracting and a big problem to deal with in a conventional darkroom print.
  10. I would use a spot meter on the translucent objects and pick what Zone you want them to wind up as in your prints. The spot meter could also give you an idea as to how bright the background will be. Remember that the spot meter will give you a reading to give you middle grey in the print, so if you want the translucent object to be lighter you will have to give it more exposure.
  11. Glad that helped--I never knew about the Kodak filter you've shown, but I did use the Kodak gel for a long time and still have it.
  12. Kodak used to sell a Wratten # 90 gel (B&W viewing filter) that was made for the same purpose--a filter that would help a photographer to visualize how a photograph would look in black and white. I used to use one of these quite a bit when I shot a lot of 4x5 B&W. I bought the gel and mounted a piece of it in a 35 mm Gepe glass slide mount, which I also masked off to fit the 4x5 aspect ratio. I also drilled a hole in a corner of it to allow a neckstrap so I didn't have too go digging for it when I was out with my 4x5. With practice it also helped me to select which lens to use by holding it closer or further from my eye. The downside to this filter was that if you held it up to your eye for very long your eye adjusts to the filter and it no longer helps to visualize how the scene will look in B&W.
  13. Several of my Manfrotto tripods had the option of a carrying strap that screwed in to a hole in the tripod yoke and had another strap at the other end that wraps around the ends of the tripod legs so they don't go every which way when you pick the tripod up. I always found this to be very useful and wondered why other brands didn't do the same thing.
  14. Equipment questions like this always come back to personal taste. Once you get past a certain level of reasonable technical quality and reliability, the differences between competing brands really come down to whether or not a particular camera and lens(es) make sense to the photographer. For most of my life for practical reasons my cameras have all been reflex (35 mm or Rolleiflex) or 4x5 view cameras. I did own a Mamiya Universal with three lenses and multiple backs including Polaroid that I used for certain assignments but never really loved, despite the quality of the images I made with it. Over the last ten years I have gotten into Contax RF cameras and lenses from the 1930's and 1950's for my own personal work. I have enjoyed the change from my commercial work which has been done with DSLRs both for the use of B&W film and the change to old time metal construction from the plasticky feel of most modern digital cameras, no matter how much better they really are in terms of sharpness and color accuracy. I still own two Rolleiflexes--a 3.5 E and a 2.8 D. The 3.5 E fits my hands perfectly and it is the most intuitive camera that I have ever owned. Image quality from its Zeiss Planar lens has always been superb, and I would use it more now if 120 film hadn't gone up so much in price. So if the Rollei works for you, don't feel the least bit guilty about moving the Mamiya 6 on to someone else who will really appreciate it.
  15. Unfortunately, I think the answer is to find a different lab. I don't know if you have access to any "dip and dunk" labs, but when film was still the professional medium of choice that was the way to go.
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