graeme_mitchell

Well, it's the simple answer, but it's whatever equipment I know well enough that I don't think about it: so the camera works for me and I don't work for it. So I admire the equipment that simply works and that can be transcended.

I use primarily 4x5 and 2 1/4. Some 35mm. They all have there place and their personalities. I will say that one of my goals is to have enough maturity in my work that I can just have on format, a handful of lenses, and a few films. This I think would be admiral.

I've been using a little pump spray bottle. It just puts out a mist. It works, maybe it's a bit heavy with the fluid, but I don't know.

I'll mess with it all some more this weekend and see what comes of it.

Thanks for helping.

Joe,

Thanks. You're curiousity is well founded. I actually didn't get much from the instructions. Whether, it's me or them, I don't know, but they weren't very helpful.

I wasn't sure if taping was necessary, but I assumed since the tape came and you tape with drum scanning, that it was the thing to do. I'm glad you say it isn't necessary. I'll try some scans sans tape.

Do you have any method of cleaning the Kami residue off the film after it dries?

Also any tips on cleaning the film afterwords. To get the dried Kami residue off?

I've tried pec film cleaning solution and pads, but they don't seem to be very effective...

I posted this question in a previous thread: I recently recieved the

Aztek oil mounting kit for a Nikon 8000 and am wondering if anyone has

mounting tips?

Right now I'm cleaning everything up. Spraying the glass with oil.

Putting the film down. Spraying the top of the film. Putting the

mylar film down. Taping off the sides. The using a cloth to remove

air bubbles.

I'm unable to get rid of all the air bubbles and there's a good bit of

dust that still needs to be cloned out. Plus, over all it's clumsy.

Wondering if anyone has any tips ora system they use to make it

easier, faster, cleaner, etc? (The scans look great btw, much much

improvement over the stock holder...)

Thanks in advance.

Not sure if anyone's still watching this thread, but I recieved the Aztek kit and am wondering about a basic mounting question. After applying oil and the top overlay film, do you tape off all four edges of the overlay film?? To seal everything in?

I've never oil mounted before. Any other tips are also appreciated.

Yashica-C and a Canon AE-1 with a 28mm 2.8. I wore the lens mount off the Canon. The Yashica still goes strong. Ten years later.

Both are sitting on my desk beside me right now.

I assisted for a excellent product shooter and it is really helpful to assist. Now I'm not talking about large studio/catalog/knock-out work. I'm talking more about high end, advertising, concept work. I learned more about lighting and little tricks while assisting him then I ever would have learned shooting with a fashion guy, it was invaluable (I cosidered it my photo undergrad work). So try and get on board with a shooter. Try and learn as much as you can about professional digital workflow (sell your self as a digital tech/camera operator). Learn hotlights (mini-moles!). Just think lighting lighting lighting.

Product photogrpahy is actually a lot of fun. Sometimes when I trying to organize people for shoots or tests, I dream about the good old times of just loafing around the studio figuring out how to light a shoe. Especially these days when so much art direction is done via e-mail, you're left tou your own clever devices and can play the music as loud as you want.

For inspiration visit Mark Laita's site, http://www.marklaita.com/. He's not who I worked with, but his work is clean.

Odd, those actually look more digital then like Portra NC to me. As Scott said, lack of red saturation and higher contrast. If anything I would have guessed they were Provia, if not digital.

I know this doesn't help much, but I always think of Portra as warm and lower in contrast.

David,

I try and think of it more in terms of quality of workflow vs actual dpi, within reason. So say you're going for the sharpest, cleanest 60x60" you can: It'll be dependant on film choice (say Astia), a really good scan (drum), proper post and uprezzing, and then proper output (probably Lightjet). This or a very very talented optical printer and a great neg. Moreover, and this is often the first thing that is overlooked, good tripod, mirror lock up, cable release, proper exposure, and good glass on the camera will be necessary.

With this a 6x6 neg can go to 60x60" with little worries and be a beautiful thing.

Does anyone have any experience in the quality difference between the

Nikon glass holder (approx $350) vs. the Kami oil mounted holder unit

(approx. $570)

The Kami is a chunk more expensive, but if it scans that much better I

figure it'd be worth it, so I'm looking for any opinions.

Visit www.woostercollective.com for some really brilliant sticker and graff art.

I support it fully. But that's not to say it should be legal. Part of my support of it is that as a medium it relies some what on subversion to be effective, and, if properly done, on subtelties that poor graff art and tagging lack.

I appreciate the anti-retouching/in camera setiment well. I also live by it, for the most part. But when shooting neg film, as you know, for output you either need to print optically or you need to scan in the negs and convert to postives. In either case you will be making interpratations and manipulations of the film, optically or digitally. A good printer isn't much different than a digital retoucher, and a raw scan from a neg almost always needs to be retouched.

It sounds like your client wants slide film (an maybe that's how your examples were shot). And then it is true, what is on the film can be considered the final image, since the pre-press can match the scan to the film. If you give pre-press neg film, usually you have to give them a print to match to.

If you have to deliver perfect film, and this may seem odd, but shoot neg film, scan it, retough it, and then have it outputed again as a 4x5 trany on a lightjet. Viola, a perfect 4x5 chrome.

I agree on a neg film like portra 160NC. Probably 6x7. A warming filter. Overcast day. Reflectors. To me looks like there is some magenta in the highlights, which Photoshop would help with. The desaturation here looks like film and photoshop. A really good printer could do it though, assuming you exp and proc your film spot on. (Another often overlooked way of milking everything out is hitting the lens with a little too much light).

If you have to shoot E-6 I don't know. Just test lots until you get it. Maybe Astia or EPN with some processing and exposure tweaks. I'd be impressed to see a slide that matched these images.

Good luck.

Wondering if the type 55/type 665 neg is cleared, washed, photo-flod,

and dried, if it is considered "archival" or if accelerated

deterioration is expected (say, in comparison to regularly processed

silver films). I remember reading about getting archival negs by

hardening, hypo-clearing with a touch of selenium, fixing, and what

such. But I'm only prepared to clear it in S.S., wash it properly,

and dip it in photo-flo. Wondering what the truth of it is.

I'll just shoot regular film, opposed to , hardening, fixing,

clearing/toning. And on that note: Has anyone experimented with a

film and developer (pref d-76 of HC-110) that offeres similar tonal

charecteristics of Type 55 and 665. If so I'd really appreciate

hearing about it and your findings (E.I.s and dev. times). I've being

plugging away with TXP in sheet and 120 rolls, but alas it's always to

"hard" looking. Pan F can come close, but for me has been hit and

miss in regards to contrast (though I've not really played with

tweaking dev times). I'm cursed with FP-4, and I'm working with

Plus-X but finding this far it has kind of been like TXP, to hard

looking. Honestly, closest I've come is XP-2, but I prefer a

traditional emulsion, amybe erronously.

Thanks in advance.

Defenitly Coscto. You can get the profiles for most of their Frontiers free online at dry creek photo. I get spot on prints all the time when I do prints there for my portfolios. You'll have to size the canvas to whatever size you want though, as the printers will stretch it.

Both U-develop/Digicraft and Pro Photo are also running frontiers now at reasonable rates (although not Costco cheap). Much more professional though, closer in, and often a bit less time consuming.

You can light a whole person easily with a beauty dish. They are a hard light source, but very very even. At least the broncolor ones are. A beauty dish with diffuser and also a few grids is great to have around. Opposed to getting the $300 manufacturers diffuser or a diffuser sock, just find some of the sheets of Rosco diffusion material. Then you can just tape on a layer or two. It's a much nicer material, and cheaper.

Another note, a dish is a huge jump from a box. A dish is, obviously, much closer to a small standard reflector. The snappy look you're talking about is probably less an issue with the light modifiers than you think.

A large gridded box is nice for shooting people. They are expensive, but hard to replicate. There used to be a commercial airline part wharehouse in Seattle (which I believe is long gone) that sold great grids, better than photographic grids in some situations. What it was was the material they used in plane tanks to stop fuel sloshing, it was really really cheap too.

For product shooting I'd suggest gobos. Or skip the box and use a screen with heads behind it. This is far more adjustable, since you can adjust the qualities of the light by altering the distance of the heads to the screen, and you can easily mask the screen with an opaque material to further adjust light.

Very sweet. They are what they are though, a hard strip light. So the light they put out is as you'd imagine (which is a good thing) and not really usable for a ton of stuff (maybe I just have a limited imagination though). Great to have around for fashion work.

1200 Euros actually isn't that much, considering.

Well, it's probably a lame answer, but I think it's done in camera. Reminds me a lot of the Victorias Secret look. Maybe one of the Marios shot it, maybe not though. Soft direct light, maybe a gridded box w/ no fill, maybe a diffused globe, maybe cine lights. Shot hand held, not wide open, but a longer lens. Really really really good make-up. Think, it's Nicole Kidman's and probably a $5000 a day make-up crew...photoshop can't touch that. So I think the skin is as shot. There's always a bit of post work for anything, but I bet the film looks close to the add. You can get tweaks like that in processing too, like by pushing the bleach bath. I think it's gorgeous work.

With that, you're bride is very pretty. And I don't have a clue how to mimic the look in PS. I'd probably start in LAB and tweaking saturation and contrasts and just keep fiddling.

A 16-22MP really is not huge. It's big, but it's not like working with a 250mb film scan. The big hang up with the backs can be, say if you're shooting with an Imacon, processiing the files from the native FFF file format to TIFFs. And this I think is actually processer intensive. I work regularaly with 22mp files on a slower G4 and it's fast enough in PS, but slow with the TIFF conversion...

Regardless, I do well with a P4 3.06 hyperthreading, 2 GB of fast RAM, a big HD and a smaller, faster HD, a good video card, a 19" calibrated CRT, and a 15" LCD for pallets. It's only slow with 1gb+ files, but that's expected.

I just realized I answered the wrong question.

In the case of exposed film, I have no clue, never done it.

I've shot Provia 100f that was 2 years expired and had been stored in a garage in Santa Barbara. I saw no obvious difference let alone problems. Actually, if for work, I'm more wary of noticable color shifts between different 'batches' of the same film, which can be suprisingly severe with pro films such as provia and astia and etc.

But to be safe, if it's more than a year or 2 expired, have the lab snip test to see how to process it, and maybe have them push it +1/3 to compensate for aging.