a few shots from rome

[roger_michel]

a few shots from rome

[roger_michel]

another one:

[roger_michel]

last one for now:

[john_brewton]

Roger, how about some details, you know - camera, film, exposure? And also, what scanner? Seems, to me, rather dark (maybe under exposed one stop? I'm just guessing here. Perhaps this is what was intended and it's just my old eye balls!)

[roger_michel]

yes, these were very dark spaces, and i have preserved that quality.

[sam_portera]

I like it dark. Brings me in.

[richard s.]

Roger, some interesting photos, thanks for sharing them. They do have something

captivating about them.

 

What camera/lens combination did you use? Which film are they taken on?

[brett_davis1]

Roger, those are terrific. I especially like "pantheo." Reminds me of some very early photographs, like that famous one of the guy getting his boots polished in Paris. Very moody.

[roger_michel]

hi -- while i shot many rolls on my m4p, these shots were all taken with a heavily modifed graflex xlsw (crappo rubber helical replaced with CNC machined phosphor bronze helical, etc) with 47mm f5.6 super angulon (wide open) all on pola 665 p/n, negatives scanned on a 4870. i find that it is easy to use 665 as a travel medium. i merely stack the UNcleared negs (front to back) in my camera bag with a mylar sheet over the topmost one, then clear them with tap water and fotoflo in the evening. i soak them for three minutes to dissolve the developer. i will not go on and on about 665/55, but i have used it for years and think it is one of the five or six great film products. the contrast/tonality of the scans were optimized for 16x20 prints.

 

thanks for looking.

[ben z]

Roger, did you achieve the high-key effect in Photoshop from a RAW capture, or was it by setting the in-camera contrast parameter to its highest setting?

[david_bedell]

Very nice!

[nathaniel_pearson]

Roger, nice atmospherics. I've been playing around with Polaroid 665 recently (with

an old Polaroid 220 with a 100mm Ektar I put on it), and I have found the contrast a

little difficult to control -- which surprises me, as the emulsion is supposed to be

similar to Panatomic X, which I would have presumed to be quite forgiving. Any tips

drawn from your experience with it? Btw, I think of this setup as potentially ideal for

travel photography, as one can give a keepsake print immediately to human subjects

who might otherwise shy away from a tourist's lens.

[roger_michel]

i don't know what the "in camera contrast parameter" is?? there is just a shutter release and an aperture control. the high contrats effect is due largely to the fact that there was almost no light when i took these. they were all 1 second exposures.

[roger_michel]

hi -- under normal lighting conditions, the contrast IN THE NEGATIVES is very normal, on a par with any typical b&w emulsion (reminds me of plus x for some reason). the positives are always a little contrasty, and indeed SHOULD be contrasty, because overexposed positives go hand in hand with perfect negatives.

 

good metering is important, however, because there is little exposure latitude in either direction (though a lot more latitude in the neg than the pos). basically, don't judge the neg by the pos.

 

these three shots were NOT normal lighting scenes. all were very dark scenes with inevitable high key lighted areas. don't judge the contrast performance of the film based on these atypical shots.

 

i love the film both for its tonal qualities and the fact that you can quickly end up with a stack of (almost) 4x5 negs with no darkroom work.

[ben z]

Roger, I was composing my question while you were posting your list of what equipment you used. I thought perhaps you'd used a DSLR. They seemed to have a very high-key look even for extreme low-light shots, and I wondered if you had done anything to enhance that, such as in Photoshop. DSLRs have a way to set the contrast from high to low, for JPEGs, so I wondered if that had been utilized, but naturally not since you used film. I think possibly some of the effect comes also from the scanner, since it's a flatbed which has less dmax than film scanners. I've got a 2450 I use for my Rolleiflex negs and I find it doesn't pick up as much highlight or shadow detail as my Canon scanner I use for 35mm.

[derek_stanton2]

Fantastic, Roger.

[ben z]

Yes, pardon my impoliteness, I forgot to mention right off that I like the shots. Most of my recent Rome shots were done in daylight due to scheduling beyond my control, and so look a bit generic/touristy but next time I'm definitely going out when I choose.

[erik_jones]

i love these. i love that they're dark and mysterious. a good writer could craft a great story around any of these individual photos, or take them as a whole. very impressive. with so many people displaying photos from italy, this is a fresh perspective.

[roger_michel]

thank you for the many kind remarks. i hope i will find a few more decent shots as i go thru my negatives.

 

best regards, roger

[subpopstar]

Roger - Great shots!! I, too, especially like Pantheo, but Dome has some sort of allure as well. I also agree with Sam that the darkness draws one in and works very well. Finally, thanks for sharing technical details; probably gives some of us ideas for future things to try.

 

Finally, I'm really glad I clicked this thread. Things in the LF have been somewhat slow the last week or so and I haven't been too inspired. I almost skipped this, but I've very glad I didn't!!

[jim_mcbride]

Roger: your pictures and this whole thread have been instructional and even inspiring. I

haven't used my large format equipment and Polaroid equipment in quite some time. This

thread has inspired me to do so once it warms up a little more here in frigid New England.

[paul t]

Lovely shots of the Pantheon. It's a great, very beautiful work of engineering,

too. It took a thousand years or so before anyone else figured out how to

make a dome as big as that - the Romans had figured out how to make a

unique, light-weight concrete, using volcanic sand.

[Karim Ghantous]

Roger, I love 's. pietro'. The contrast between the tall, white pillars and the small, silhouetted people works very well.

 

Paul, it's true, you just have to hand it to the Romans. They thought of everything - almost! ;-)