tariq_gibran

The 6 is a great camera and with the unbelievable 50 can't be

beat in my book. That said, I love the full frame, uncropped

square format...and I get 12 on a roll of 120. BUT, If you know

that you will end up cropping later, then get the 7. The Mamiya 6

is still supported as far as repair goes by Mamiya. The

Viewfinder is super bright and contrasty - so I don't buy that it's

that less desirable than the one in the 7. A mint 6 can be bought

for a fraction of the cost of a new 7. Also, with the 6 being square,

you don't have to worry about turning the camera for Verticla vs

Horizontal shooting.

I shoot a lot of Environmental Portrait type work. The Mamiya 6

and the lens choices are perfect. You might want to move up to

the Metz 60 CT 1 seeing how you will be bouncing it into the

large umbrella and loosing a lot of power - depends on your

chosen F-stop and how far away the light is of course. Just do

some tests to see if it works for you. I'm a natural light freak so I

only use flash when the light sucks. When I do use Flash, I use

an on camera rig with either a small soft box or a home made

super large bounce card off to one side. This allows me to move

around a lot and be more spontaneous. But that's just me. I

don't shoot color neg that often - I shoot mostly B&W and Color

Trans. most likely either film would work if you are just printing

up to 15" My limited experience shooting Color neg though

always was to overexpose the rated film speed by a stop. So

your Portra 400 would be shot at ASA 200. Scanning wise, it

depends on your scanner and your scanning experience. If you

know what you are doing, then you should have no problems

scanning at 2700 and having prints made from digital files.

dave t,

HC110 is Hydroquinone based and also has something called

2-aminoethanol in it. Ilfosol-s looks great with Ilford

Pan-Fplus(120). I mostly use HC110B with KodakTMY(120) with

added Sodium Sulfite, Kodak infrared(35mm), and the new Fuji

Acros. Never Tried Xtol but perhaps I should give it a try.

Well, I have used HC110 constantly for the past 15 years. Works

with all films as mentioned and it's keeping qualities are tops.

Rodianl is great for certain films but does not keep. Ilfosol S

seems to be good as well but again does not keep as well as

HC110. So, If I were stranded on a desert Island with a truckload

of film and HC110, I could stay forever and my developer would

still work. But then again, I would have some issues with

pouring the exhausted developer out on my island. Hmm! Wish

I could comment on the "rumored" Ecco Paterson FX-50 but the

darn stuff is not available anywhere.

Hi Mendel,

You may want to take a look at the September Shutterbug if only for a good description of using the Curves in Photoshop. Sorry, I thought surely Silverfast would be available. Strange they don't support Minolta scanners. Just for Info, The grain reduction and dust and scratches removal in SilverFast 6 is software based and does not require special hardware. On the issue of scanning in GreyScale VS. Color, as others have said, it probably depends on your particular scanner. Perhaps you could do a comparison test using both menthods and see if you find any differences. Yet another Advantage to scanning in RGB would be that you could use the Channel mixer in Photoshop to simulate the effect of using red, green or yellow filters in B&W before converting to greyscale. You can also de-emphasis the color channel which has the most grain aliasing or noise in it when converting to greyscale for a smoother image. Yet more stuff to study and learn. Have fun.

Tariq

Tariq

An article in the September Shutterbug covers Scanning B&W Negs and uses a similar approach to you in that the Author Scans as if the film was a Transparency. He uses the highest bit Greyscale(not color) scanning mode and leaves all scanner settings at their default settings. Personally, I think you may want to experiment with NOT using the Auto Levels at all. After the Scan, Invert(although in the Shutterbug Article, the Author does not invert before his first levels adjustment), then do a manual levels where the triangles just touch the data on the left and right sides. Don't worry to much about how the image looks at this point. Then, I would use curves to get the desired overall and local contrast where you like it. I have a few Suspicions or doubts about the integrity of the procedure used in the Shutterbug Article as the Author uses many small adjustments such as going into levels twice. I wonder if this might degrade the data instead of just doing levels once. Anyway, Since you are scanning so many images, it might pay you to get some decent software. You may want to see if LaserSofts SilverFast is available for your scanner. I feel sure it is. Their scanning software is really the best(but expensive) and now includes NegaFix which has profiles for most B&W and Color Negative film and gives great scans from Negs. I find it better(and much, much faster!) than using the old Transparency trick myself. Their site is at WWW.Silverfast.com The newest Version 6(which I don't have) also includes Grain reduction as well as dust and Scratches removal. They offer a free demo version I think so you could see if it would be worth it or not to you. Hope this helps.

Tariq

I'm really curious to try this Developer as well and would love to hear from people who have used it as well. This Developer sounds great if the claims in Shutterbug and on Patterson's site are to be beleived. An environmentally friendly(good enough reason to try it in itself!), Vitamin C based Developer which gives you fine grain with both high accutance and full film speed, sounds unbeleivable. I love to stick with what works as much as the next person. In fact, I have been using HC110 for 15 years myself but I think if something does come along which could be better, why not give it a try? Just another tool at your disposal. That does not mean you have to spend the next month locked up doing tests instead of taking "real" photographs. Perhaps that's part of what this Forum will help us avoid. Incidentally, I tried the new Fuji Acros 100 and was impressed enough to consider shooting it full time. Supposedly, this developer works great with Acros.

Tariq

I have been using Kodak T400CN 120 exposed at ASA 200 now for at least the past 4 years and love the stuff. Unfortunately, many of the places that I had previously puchased it at locally replaced it with the Portra B&W. Someone even sold this to me once claiming it was the same as T400CN renamed! Of course, it is not. Kodak seems to really be poor at keeping their retailers informed. I even feared that T400CN had been discontinued altogether and have had retailers tell me that it had or that they did not know! Kodak, get it together. By the way, I find the T400CN to print beautifully on traditional B&W papers - not difficult if exposed correctly as someone suggested above. It also scans great as well.

Tariq<div></div>

Short Answear to your question is Human Nature: Familiarity

Breeds Contempt! Most Hassie shooters have an 80 by default

and so are always wanting something different - and most pro

shooters really require something wider. For a while, the 80 was

all I had(an older, more compact C version). I must say I really

love this lens. Extremely sharp, nice 2.8 f stop, light and

compact. This lens on a hassie(or perhaps the 60CF(i) is just

about as small a medium format SLR you can get. Very easy to

carry around. One day, I convinced myself I needed the 50, so I

picked up a 50 CF FLE. This lens forced me to change my

shooting style. No longer could I carry the Hassie easily with this

lens attached(too big and heavy!) and I found a tripod absolutely

neccesary unless shooting at like 1/250 sec. I routinely am able

to shoot the 80 handheld even at 1/30 with good results!

Consequently, I really don't use the 50 much for my personal

shooting(though it is a necessity for my commercial work). Way

back in photo school when all I shot with was a Rolleicord with a

75mm Xenar lens, I would say to my teacher, "You know, I really

want to go wider" and he told me to experiment more with the

normal lens, move around, change your angle a little and you

can get the feeling of being wider. He was so right. I have since

shot with very wide Medium Format Cameras such as the famed

Brooks VeriWide 100(100 degree, 47mm Schneider lens

covering 6x9!). Truth is, I really like "pushing" the 75mm and

80mm lenses on the 6x6 format. I think far too many peoplel just

don't move around enough when they shoot and convince

themeselves they must have a wider lens. Just my 2 cents

though.

I think that $490 is high. You could buy 3 or 4 nice Rolleicords

for that amount with the same Tessar lens. I have carried a

xenar lensed Rolleicord with me for the past 15 years. During

that time, I have also had a Rolleiflex 3.5 F with the Planar lens

and also a Hasselblad system as well as many other cameras.

The Rolleiflex with the Planar was very sharp but so is my

Rolleicord with the xenar. One thing I really did not like about the

Rolleiflex was that it just Weighed too much - much more than

the Rolleicord and probably the same as the Hassie with an 80

Planar attached. This made me less likely to carry it around

everywhere I went - which I do with the Cord. I also must say that

while the Planar is sharp, I did not like the look of the out of focus

areas compared to the xenar. The Xenar has that soft, warm out

of focus quality but is still very sharp where it should be. The

Planar had more of a cold, hard point like out of focus quality.

This is something I noticed right off when printing. I think the

Xenar(and probably Tessars) were indeed some of the best

lenses made.