uncle_ziba

I also was getting low contrast scans before I learned how to set black and white points in the scanning software. This turned out to be a very important setting.

There is at least one product whose manufacturer specifically asks not to pre-soak before development.

1. A 1/2 liter and a 30ml (1oz) measures from your nearest food store.

2. Binder clips from staples work ok.

3. Tap water

4. ... oh that's a tough one

5. Tap water

6. Non hardening rapid fixer

7. Kodak or make your own. Use it, it helps to conserve water!

8. I don't know :)

9. Yes, a 16oz bottle will last a lifetime

1/15 is not "too slow" for a 75mm TLR on a neck strap. You may have to practice the steady stance technique like suggested above.

Light leak means that some extra (unwanted) light gets inside the camera and onto the film. This light causes overexposure - bright areas on a print or slide and dark areas on a negative.

 

Now, if the light was leaking *out* of the camera before reaching the film, that would be another story, but I don't think it's very common :)

I have some sparkling stars on a brand new prime Canon L lens and on a Zeiss Planar 80. Both lenses make razor sharp and conrasty photos. Don't even think about disassembling a lens! You'll get more dirt inside than was there before, not to mention you can misallign it. If you are lucky enough you will be unable to put the thing back together.

 

Shining a bright light through the lens is a pretty revealing test, but all the "suspicious" stuff inside unlikely has any effect on photos.

There are endless possibilities to adapt larger format lenses to SL66 (e.g. from 4x5 cameras). You need to buy a blank SL66 lensboard (~$40) and drill a correct size hole in it. That's said, see if you can get an SL66 150 leaf shutter lens. The way it works is fascinating. The following sequence happens in about 1/4 sec (the actual order may be a bit different):

 

1. You push shutter release.

2. Mirror goes up

3. Leaf shutter closes

4. Focal plane shutter opens

5. Aperture closes

6. Leaf shutter opens for a specified time

7. Leaf shutter closes

8. Focal plane shutter closes

9. Aperture opens

10. Leaf shutter opens

11. Mirror returns

 

I don't think there is another 100% mechanical camera that achieved this level of complexity!

J, no matter what your decision will be (Minolta vs Canon) you will benefit greatly from learning the very basics of exposure. No camera or lens will automatically give you technically flawless pictures. For example lets say you get f1.4 lens and you use it wide open. You may already know this, but at f1.4 setting the lens will have a very limited depth of field (i.e. area of sharp focus) and if you don't take this into account when taking a picture you may end up with an important part of the frame not being sharp. To increase the depth of field you have to stop down to a smaller aperture, say f5.6, but you also have to reduce the shutter speed (or the camera will do it for you). At a lower shutter speed you again may get an unsharp image due to camera shake. So you kinda have to make a compromise when choosing aperture and shutter speed. There are some lighting situations where you just can't make a "nice" picture. Talk more with your FiL, it sounds like he knows some stuff about photography because he followed the right philosophy of picking up an inexpensive body and a very good lens!!!

>The index must be stored somewhere (i.e., requires disk space)

 

A good point, but even if you allow a generous 1Kb of text to be indexed per image that will add a small fraction to the disk space already used by that image. That would be 400 Mb for 400,000 images, but in practice the index will be smaller than that. I guess you can have a rough estimate by looking at how much space is taken by the current outdated index for 100,000 photos.

 

 

> , needs to be updated for every insert/edit/delete of a photo (i.e., > requires Oracle power several thousand times each day)

 

several thousand per day translates to a few times per minute - no sweat for Oracle engine.

 

> and will be used (duhh!) by the members (i.e., requires even more >

> Oracle power each day).

 

"featuring 430,853 images" is in the photo.net headline. I suggest adding "(but you can't search them)"</sarcasm>.

 

> One could argue that a working search index would increase the use of > the gallery, resulting in more subscriptions, but I'm not too sure > about that.

 

I agree. It's kinda disappointing when there is a great site like photo.net that doesn't have a good search engine.

Brian, indexing 400,000 images may be resource intensive on the first run, but after that the index will be updated only for new/changed images. The indexing engine will not need to rebuild the entire index every time. And instead of using a kind of fascist policy to exlude lower rated images, is it such a big deal to index all images and add an option to sort by rating?

 

I really do appreciate what you have done for this site, but I think you should make a higher priority to fix the search button.

 

Thank you.

I once forgot to switch from 220 to 120 on my SL66 magazine and that resulted in larger space between frames and I got only 11 frames on that roll.

Sounds like you want a darkslide with a CCD or CMOS sensor. The darkslide would have a connector on the edge (similar to PC cards) to transfer data to the lcd screen attached on the back of a regular film magazine. I see at least two major problems with this approach though: one the sensor will not be exactly at film plane, two there are no sensors yet as large as a MF frame.

Remember to use exposures of 1/60 or more to average out color and brightness variations of fluorescent light during an AC cycle. Shorter that 1/60 exposures may cause inconsistent color cast from frame to frame even in the same setting. regards

I'm not going to kiss you in the ass just to have a free print. Otherwise I would have said string quintet is my favorite.

It will ruin your photos if you use the M with electronic flash, and it's easy to flip the switch by accident (I've done that). Consider using a drop of epoxy to glue the switch to the X position.

> If you buy an older lens and shoot color then make sure it is a T*.

 

What T* has to do with color rendition? All lenses, even the oldest ones, are color corrected. Why re-distribute the myth? :-)

Couldn't find an answer, huh? <a href="http://www.photo.net/search/search?search_type=rest&sections=static_pages&sections=bboard&sections=comments&query_string=rc+vs+fiber"> look here </a>.

There's a darkroom tutorial right here on this site. Look in the "Learn" section. "Mastering Black-And-White Photography" book by Bernhard J. Suess is the best I've read on the subject, although any darkroom book should be ok. As far as mushrooms....

For color slides 3-bath Tetenal 500 ml kit is great ($15 capacity for six rolls of 35mm or 120). B&W chemistry is VERY cheap, like mushrooms.

I think it depends on a relative distance between the subject and background. 150 f 5.6 gives a nice out of focus blur in many cases when shooting 6x6 portraits. regards

400 is a true speed of HP5+ and Ilford does not recommend overexposure. This film is best at 400-1600. Do you have a good reason for rating it at 200 or even 160?

a - yes<br>b - yes<br>c - because<br>d - yes 1:1<br>e - no<br>f - generally yes but sometimes not<br>

g - maybe <br>

h - possibly<br>

Robert, Vuk's bird is not dead. It's actually in flight (sorry, no scientific proof). If you do not perceive a distinct character of a lens that doesn't mean it does not exist. Silly A/B tests are not going to help you see better, I'm afraid.

Mike, your development time is what I would use (assuming EI 400) but I'm not sure about three inversions per minute. May be one inversion then pause was not enough for good supply of fresh developer and the negatives turned out underdeveloped? I was doing 3-4 quick inversions every 30 seconds like Kodak recommended (I'm too beginner to come up with my own patterns yet). I also tried to match the developer and washing temperature to within 1-2 degrees to avoid "shocking" the film. My 11x14 print had a "creamy" look, not quite as good as it would be from a 4x5 negative, but there was negligeble grain. It was visible only if I looked on the print through a 4x loupe. Attached is a small fragment of hi-res scan that should give an idea about grain (you can see the whole image in my photo uploads)

This is funny because I asked an opposite question a few days ago why there was so little grain on my HP5+ EI 800 in XTOL 1:1. I have shot more 6x6 HP5+ since than and again I found almost no grain on 11x14 prints. So if I were you I would check everything from film exposure to developer freshness, development time, agitatation pattern, etc. I too used Rodinal before (1:25 and 1:50) and it produced more sharp grain than XTOL.