harry_akiyoshi

Oh, sorry! The 80-<b>400</b> zoom is indeed better, although at a substantial cost.

The 80-200 f/4 isn't quite as sharp and takes 55mm filters.

 

I own an 80-200/4.5, and provided that you shoot good film and employ proper technique, it will make sharp 8x10s wide open and 11x14s from f/5.6 to f/11. Contrast isn't that great compared to modern lenses or good primes, but it's still a perfectly useable lens for general photography.

I use Provia 100F for long exposures in color. It's perfect out to two minutes, needs just a little filtration at four. Good stuff.

Press 800 doesn't respond terribly well to pushing in that it doesn't pick up any shadow detail to speak of. Pretty much all you get is increased contrast.

I ground my own glass a while ago. It came out quite a bit better than the original glass that came with my camera. I used a polishing compound, which is pretty fine -- maybe 5-10 microns? At any rate, it's pretty easy, just time-consuming.

Delta 3200 pic:<div></div>

I had the same problem a while ago. Here's what I ended up with, in case you find it helpful: <P>

 

Calumet Monorail w/ film holders, lensboard -- $150. <P>

Schneider G-Claron 150mm f/9 in Copal No. 0 shutter-- $300 <P>

Polaroid 545i back -- $50. <P>

 

I already had a heavy tripod and head for medium format stuff, which seems to work adequately with a 4x5 monorail. The ground glass that came with the camera was a bit dark, and I subsequently ground my own, which is a vast improvement. The G-Claron is quite sharp, and very small -- I recommend it. There's enough movement at infinity for most practical purposes if you stop down to f/22. They're designed for use in the neighborhood of 1:1, but they do all right at lower magnifications if you stop down a little. <P>

 

Stuff that I wish I'd done:<P>

I wish I'd bought a polariod back sooner. If you're just getting the hang of using a view camera, those things are a godsend. You can learn all you need to know about movements, bellows factors, lens coverage, and the like in about half an hour.

 

<P>

 

I wish that I had a good solid case to carry the monorail in. It's a huge pain to have to take it out of a bag and reassemble it every time I want to take a picture.

 

<P>

 

I wish that I'd been more careful about levelling the camera on the QR plate initially. With my tripod, the camera wouldn't sit quite level on the QR plate until I took the rubber matting off of the plate.

 

<P>

 

Well, I hope that was helpful. Good luck! <P>

 

Andrew

In DD-X, I'd put the speed of Delta 3200 closer to 1200 than 800.

 

Grain aside, I prefer it to Neopan 1600 for low-light shooting because it handles high-contrast situations so admirably. Neopan 1600 is great stuff for daylight street photography, though -- it looks a lot like Tri-X, with about another stop of useable speed. Nevertheless, for handheld photography at night, Delta 3200 is practically all I shoot; having tried the various high-speed films, nothing beats this stuff. It delivers terrific tonality even at EI 2000. I'm sure Neopan 1600 and TMAX p3200 are sharper, but I personally don't care, since sharpness has never been as important to me as other aesthetic qualities.

The 24mm 2.8 is kind of the standard Nikkor wide angle. It's light, solid, and optically excellent. Before the 20-35 and 17-35 zooms, this was the gold standard PJ wide angle -- glorious history and whatnot. Definitely a quality lens.

I have a few screwmount rangefinder bodies, and the best by far is the Canon P. You can find one for about as much as the Bessa-R, and it's a great camera. The VF isn't as bright, but it's got a more accurate rangefinder, it's quieter, and the build quality is superb. Also, you'll need to use a handheld meter; for me, that was never a problem, since I do anyway.

 

The CV 50/1.5 is an outstanding lens, but a little difficult to focus wide open with the Bessa-R.

 

The Bessa-R is a great platform for 35mm lenses -- the focal length just fits it, I guess, in terms of viewfinder magnification. The Canon P is more at home with a 50.

I buy FujiPress 800 in 20-roll packs and HP5+ in hundred-foot rolls.

I make 13x19" prints from scans made with mine. In practice, there's not much to gain by going from 3200 to 4000 dpi. If you've got the money, there are other reasons to buy the Coolscan V, like speed, build quality, and hardware dust removal -- but in terms of sharpness, I don't think the difference in price is worth it. It's still only 35mm.

Is your Ilfosol fresh? That stuff goes bad pretty quickly. It's a good developer for PanF+, though.

No, I haven't noticed any banding like that.

There have been a few questions about this scanner on the forum, so I

thought I'd post my initial reactions:

 

Optically, it's not bad. 3200 ppi on film isn't enough to lay down

300 ppi on a 13x19" print, but no one looks at 13x19s from five

inches away. Color fidelity is good, and it does a good job of

digging the shadows out of Velvia. The actual DMAX, although not the

4.8 Minolta claims, is surprising for a scanner so inexpensive ($280).

 

There are, however, a few problems. First, the thing is as noisy as

a modern washing machine (acoustically). It's also pretty noisy in

the shadows (electronically). You can reduce shadow noise with

multisampling up to 16x, which is a good idea but impractical as a

general solution because of the vast amount of time it would take to

scan a whole roll that way. It's surprisingly slow even without

multisampling.

 

The dust brush option doesn't seem to be worth messing with. It's

not ICE by any stretch of the imagination. I keep my slides/negs

scrupulously clean, so it hasn't mattered that much to me thus

far. "Digital Grain Dissolver" is actually semi-effective in some

cases, surprisingly, and doesn't seem to cause much loss in sharpness

if not over-applied.

 

I haven't messed with "Easy Scan" at all, but the TWAIN driver is

good. Autofocus is reliable, and the manual focus system is the best

I've seen. Installation was very straightforward, and it worked the

fist time (Win XP).

 

This scanner is a great value, offering unprecedented quality at this

price point. It does actually resolve detail (if it's there in the

original) to a full 3200 dpi, which is pretty damn good for something

that costs less than $300. If you're so inclined, you can pair it

with a good inkjet printer and make 13x19 prints that rival

traditional wet-prints for sharpness and tonal scale. The

disadvantages are that it's slow, made mostly of plastic, noisy, and

lacks hardware dust-removal. Basically, this is the scanner to get

for the very demanding user with more time than money.

Schneider's G-Clarons are pretty decent. I use a 150mm on my 4x5, and I'd recommend it highly if you're on a budget. Mint ones go for about $300. F/9 is a little on the slow side, but it does make for a very compact lens.

 

If you have a little more cash to throw around, there are some excellent large-format macro optics from the major manufacturers. They're all pretty much stunningly good, at least in the current generation, so don't worry too much about which one you buy.

Lyson makes profiles available at no charge for Lyson papers, which is a huge selling point as opposed to systems like Piezography. You don't need special software or any of that, just a free profile. The downside is that they don't provide profiles for printing on anything but Lyson papers, so I have to run a series of tests for any other paper I wish to use. It can take some minor adjustments to get consistent results, but it's not horrible.

I use Lyson's Quad Black inks on my s9000, and the quality is phenomenal once you get everything profiled adequately. Metamerism is a serious problem with some papers, but less apparent on matte-finish stock than glossy.

For $225 you can get a Canon s9000 and print up to 13x19". It's an old model (the current one is the i9000d), but it's still faster and quieter than the Epsons. Quality is comparable -- I think the s9000 has an edge over the 1280 on glossy paper. You won't be able to see the dots. Actually, if you want a more in-depth evaluation of the quality, you should look at www.luminous-landscape.com, which has a full review.

I think most "leica-style" photography can correctly be called "low art," if you're interested in making the division between fine arts and lower forms. I wouldn't go as far as Beckert in saying that photography CANNOT be art, but it certainly requires a different set of critical tools than, say, sculpture. I certainly don't think of myself as an artist as much as a documentarian.

Hans, what sort of testing made TMZ seem faster than Delta 3200? It seems to me to be slightly slower than Delta, although possibly sharper. The grain, at least, is more sharply-defined in the TMAX film.

Yeah, it looks pretty great at 1600 in DD-X. You can shoot up to 2000 without a really noticeable loss of shadow detail. Ilford's times do give you pretty thin negs; there are some pretty good suggestions at www.unblinkingeye.com that you might want to try.

Astia 100F is amazingly good stuff. Very good skin tones and very, very fine grain. It's also considerably more forgiving than Velvia in terms of exposure. I rate it at 100 with good results, but you may want to try a roll at 80 and see what works for you.

Rodinal will still work fine when it's so old it's black. It's kind of reknowned for its keeping properties, actually -- five years isn't even pushing it.

I think "excellent" is overstating things a smidge, but it's not bad. It's definitely a good value, and it's great for street shooting -- tabbed focus, good contrast, high resolution stopped down, and very compact.<div></div>