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skip_kempe

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  1. <p>I second the answer that a Contax 645 prints this data along the edge of the film. The "M" means manual exposure (as opposed to Av or Tv).</p> <div></div>
  2. <p><a href="http://www.ilfordlab-us.com">Ilford USA</a> has had a lab running for a few years now. It's a bit expensive, but obviously prints on Ilford silver gelatin paper, though I think from digital scans. <a href="https://thedarkroom.com">The Darkroom</a> prints on Ilford silver gelatin paper also, and I think North Coast too. There's bunches of places. But these are all from digital files. I'm sure you could find places that would print from negatives, but then you're asking someone else to make all the creative decisions regarding the print—exposure, contrast, etc. My decision a while ago was that if I'm sending film out to get printed—color, black and white, whatever—I might as well maintain as much creative control as possible, which means having all my negs scanned at development, paying a hundred bucks to get a USB monitor calibration setup so I can manipulate color, exposure, contrast, etc. in Lightroom, and having the files printed without the usual "enhancement" that most labs like mpix like to include automatically to make the garishly bright photos that stand out to the hoi polloi.</p> <p>So that's where I'd say an online quest for optical film enlargement services breaks down—not necessarily with the quality of the final product compared to a digital scan, but with the lack of creative control retained in that process.</p>
  3. <p>Your post was fun to read, Brad. Thanks!</p> <p>(And regarding Velvia, I once read somewhere on the internet a less kind description of its effect— "as if clowns vomited all over the negatives.")</p>
  4. <p>Please do yourself a favor and don't buy a new FM10. As everyone is noting, there are <em>so many</em> good used film cameras out there—in fact, I'd say that's one of the benefits of shooting film: you can buy a wicked-old camera, throw some fresh Portra 400 into it, and you're taking some seriously good pictures.</p> <p>I'll throw in a plug for the <a href="http://www.mir.com.my/rb/photography/hardwares/classics/nikkormat/index.htm">Nikkormat/Nikomat cameras</a> Nikon made from 1965-1977. These are rock-solid workhorses in my opinion. Manual focus, so if you're set on AF, never mind. Bodies are on KEH from $25 to $50 (at the high end—I know!). I used an FTn as old as me for ten years or so, then moved mainly to an EL five or so years ago to relax a bit with that modern convenience of auto exposure. These things are solid, reliable, indestructible. Lenses for these cameras can be especially cheap, since they can take NAI (non-exposure-indexing) lenses that have a limited market now as the FMs and beyond can't take them without possible damage. (There is a pin and horse-shoe type design that you have to manually set with two quick twists when mounting the lens to tell the camera meter the lens's aperture range.)</p> <p>That being said, I'll also add that you should ask your sister if she's actually using the Leica, and if not, offer to help keep it in good working condition by giving it some use.</p>
  5. <p>OK, now I have a question. If labs are requesting that I not embed my images with the ICC profiles (and I assume that by this they mean, for example, don't export from LR using the profile), I'm supposed to simply use the ICC profile for "soft proofing" which I didn't know about in LR before. According to this workflow, I'm supposed to edit my actual image specifically for the printer profile of a particular printer (say, Costco or North Coast Photo or Mpix or wherever). I had been operating under the assumption that I should use my calibrated monitor to get the photo to look exactly the way I wanted it to look, then output using the profile for the specific printer I was using.</p> <p>The problem with the soft proofing seems to be that I now have to specifically adjust my photo for each particular printer I might use, instead of doing it once on a calibrated monitor, getting it to look how I want, and then having the export/publish engine in LR apply whatever specific adjustments are necessary to keep the final print in gamut with whatever printer I'm aiming for at that time. Am I understanding this correctly? If so, this seems like a real problem, as it will require me to go back and readjust images anytime I want to print them based on new or updated profiles for whatever printers or output media I might use in the future.</p>
  6. <p>I use mpix.com for prints. They have an ICC profile hidden somewhere on the website that I probably couldn't find again if I needed to, but I saved the profile into Lightroom and export everything that I send to them using that. Then when I order, I make sure to check the box that says "Do not color correct" and then double-secret affirm that I really, really don't want any correction. You actually pay less for their "proof prints" this way.<br> The color has worked great for me this way so far.</p>
  7. <p>Hello film people!</p> <p>Here's <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/18/sports/ncaafootball/a-game-of-juxtaposition.html">a cool article</a> I'll point you to, by NY Times photographer Cooper Neill, in which he tells about bringing along (in addition to his digital kit) his Nikon 35mm film camera as the sole NYT photographer at the game. He used it to intentionally double-expose an entire roll of film, in the process hoping to</p> <blockquote> <p>juxtapose different aspects of an event in a single frame, hopefully enhancing for the viewer the sense of what it is like to be on the scene.</p> </blockquote> <p>Just kind of cool; that's all. There's a slide show accompanying the article with a few of the images.</p>
  8. <p>I'll agree that North Coast Photo is a fantastic place to have your film processed and scanned. I've tried probably a dozen or more different services over the past dozen years or so, and I settled on NCPS a while back. It comes down to the simple fact that I don't need to go through and spot out dust or hairs or pinholes on lots of frames in Lightroom. Scans are just perfect and sharp, which saves me time and worry. It's around $18-$20 for d&p and hi-res scans per roll, but in my opinion really worth it in the time and worry saved on my part. I mail my film from the east coast to NCPS in California; if you're looking for high quality scans, unless you live in a big city the only realistic option is to mail it wherever the best work is done.</p> <p>As far as the redundancy of shooting film and then scanning to digital is concerned, since I'm not personally printing in color chemistry and thus controlling all aspects of the final print, my feelings are that since I love shooting film, it makes more sense to scan to hi-res digital and adjust stuff in LR and print via electronic files. Yeah, shooting digital would allow that level of personal adjustment of the final image, but film is what I know and love for lots of reasons so it's actually pretty cool that digital technology lets me control my final film images in a way that I couldn't have done before, in the days of simply sending out negatives saying "print frame 13-A 8x12" and waiting to see what it looks like.</p>
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