marco_buonocore

John,

Thanks for the reply. I've been in touch with a fellow from Mediaphot in Franklin, CT.

He's identified my machine as being made in 1975, and is trying to track down a manual from a warehouse in Austria.

I'm sort of boggled by how little information there is on the web for this machine. *nothing* comes up. In this day and age, that's pretty weird, all things considered.

I'm still dying to get going with it. Someone just gave me 50 rolls of 35mm Provia, which I will take as a sign. If I don't get an e6 run happening in the next month, I'll be gutted!

I've gotten my hands on a Colenta 30 AT processor. Now I need to figure out how to use it!

It's not shown on the Colenta website, and is old enough to say "made in West Germany". The fellow who used it

before me was processing cibachromes and e6 in it. I've written Colenta, but have so far not gotten any joy from

them.

Does anyone have working experience with these Colenta units? It's a rotary system, and not a paper processor

with roller transport.

Any help would be fantastic. I'm dreaming of 8x10 colour pinholes. Help me achieve that dream :)

Thanks!

Tom,

I think the SB800 would overkill for what I'm doing; it would be utterly wasted, in fact. I'd appreciate the

fast recycling time, no doubt, but would rather resent the $300 I spent to get it.

I'm certainly not fussed about how I look in the field, but if I can use something less cumbersome than a potato

masher then I certainly will. I think something like the Vivitar 2800 that Henry Posner suggested represents a

good middle ground. The Sunpak 383 has also been suggested, which seems to fit the bill.

And for the record, I pick up girls with nothing more than my good looks and charm. I happen to be blessed with

both.

Thanks!

Henry,

Thanks ever so much. That seems pretty much exactly what I'm after. The gels can help me bring down the output if it's a bit to strong. Perfect!

Hello,

The subject title sort of says it all. I've not had much experience with using flash, but understand the

principles. I'm searching for a small flash to go on my Olympus 35 SP rangefinder camera. Right now I'm using

my father's old Maxwell 303-H, which is okay insofar as the GN is concerned (I get a GN of about 16m at ISO 100),

but it's very slow recycling. Can't fault it, as it's only using 2 x AA batteries.

Is there anything on the market that fits the following criteria:

- Can dial the output down to a GN of 10m or less

- very fast recycling time; ie: 3s or less

- smallish size (I've got a Metz 45 somewhere, but it's ridiculous on the little Olympus!)

The lens on the Olympus 35 SP is fixed at 42mm. My goal is to use the flash at night, shooting subjects fairly

close up (1.5m- 2m) getting a fairly wide aperture and dragging the shutter to 1/30 or 1/15 to get some of the

background detail. I reckon I'll use Kodak Tri-X in a developer like Harvey's 777 (I get ISO 200).

Any ideas? I see a lot of Vivitar 283's on the local craigslist - any chance that they fit the bill?

I appreciate all your help!

Thanks,

Eugene, Edward - I see what you guys are saying, but I'm still a bit puzzled. I do in fact use the advanced setting, and go through all the steps, setting contrast, brightness, etc... And at the end of it, I do meet all my targets almost perfectly.

Thinking about it more, one of the issues I have always had with my monitor (a Viewsonic P95F+), has been that I cannot control the green channel - only the red and blue ones. In order to get my green channel in line, I use the brightness to bump it up and down. Perhaps it's just gotten out of wack over the last year or so of calibrating monthly.

Still - I always reckoned that if I met the targets everything must have been all right.

Appreciate the insight, and I'll see how it plays out.

So I've got, at least in my opinion, a weird situation after calibrating my monitor.

I use the gretag-macbeth eye-one display system. On my last calibration, I

noticed that the curve applied on the summary screen seemed out of wack. I'll

post it below.

To be honest, I've never really paid too much attention to this screen before.

If I met my targets (Color Temp, Gamma and Luminence) I was happy. But I

actually noticed the curve this time round, and saw the entire 'toe' was rather

wacked, if you see what I mean. It shoots straight up, then starts it's line.

I'm wondering if anyone can explain what's going on here, and what I might be

able to do to remedy it. I've got a show to print for the 10th, and would love

to get it sorted ASAP! Who knows!

Any help would be wildly appreciated.

Thanks,

Scott,

Firstly, sorry for the late reply - been looking for a new flat, and I've been thinking about precious little else.

Secondly, I think you've nailed the problem - that's exactly what I did, and I reckon it shouldn't be to tricky to sort out. I was afraid there may have been something wrong with the bulb. If I can salvage that pack of film, I will make an effort to send you and transfer once I get the hang of it.

Thanks heaps!

Hello all,

I found a vivitar slide printer at a Salvation Army, and wanted to try

using it for transfers. I cleaned the rollers and everything seemed

to be fine - the flash works, etc etc...

Anyways, I loaded some 690 film in it, and gave it a test run. This

is what came out. Anyone care to diagnose what may be wrong?

<a href="http://imageshack.us"><img

src="http://img331.imageshack.us/img331/115/polaroidproblem6cr.jpg"

border="0" width="500" alt="Image Hosted by ImageShack.us" /></a>

Any input much appreciated!

Thanks,

<p>I find it's a heck of a lot easier when they're caught taking a wee nap.</P>

<a href="http://www.imageshack.us"><img src="http://img229.echo.cx/img229/179/metallicbee511px1iy.jpg" border="0" width="511" alt="Image Hosted by ImageShack.us" /></a>

<p>I like your 2nd picture the best, as it were.</P>

Eric,

I believe the straight answer to the Pride parade is, at least in Toronto, the Caribana festival. I'd say there's almost the exact same amount of booty shaking, only it's of the man on woman variety. There tends to be more gun violence than there is at Pride, however.

Oh - Richard: I did thank the fellow yesterday. Quite profusely, if my mojito clouded memory recalls correctly. I just felt like reiterating the fact. You don't get many spontaneous acts of generosity in this God awful city.

To the ridiculously kind Leica photographer who I met briefly this

afternoon during Toronto's Pride Parade:

You had five (five!!) marvellous Leica's in your photo bag, and I had

but a sad little Olympus 35 SP. I asked you if I could purchase a

roll of B&W film off you, and you said you had none, but in turn threw

me a roll of Kodachrome 25 to shoot with.

Thank you ever so much; what a bloody lovely gesture. It certainly

made an already lovely day that much better.

I hope your photos came out beautifully, and I wish you all the best.

Cheers!

David,

Yeah, it's not a true spot (6 degree, I think?) - similar to my Mamiya 645 w/ Prism. It's certainly helpful though; I've never been a big fan of averaging.

I just can't understand how the sensitivity of it could be moved from the center of the finder to somewhere off-center. I would have thought that the selenium cell would have been rather fixed.

As for the battery, it'll be replaced with an alkaline and then re-calibrated. I was under the impression this was a pretty common procedure.

We'll see how it turns out, I suppose!

Thanks,

I recently picked up an Olympus 35 SP from a Goodwill auction. The

lens seemed to be in great condition, and the case and manual were

like new. More importantly, the camera felt great in my hands and

I've always wanted a nice little rangefinder.

I took it down to the local camera repair shop, which has a good

reputation in the city. I got a message from one of the technicians

at the shop, and he quoted me a fair price to get it up to speed.

What puzzled me was that he said that he couldn't '100% guarantee that

the spot metering would be in the center of the frame'

Does this make sense? I'm a big fan of spot metering, and use it

pretty regularly. I guess there weren't too many cameras from that

period with spot metering, but would this be a common problem when

repairing a 35 SP or any older spot meter?

If anyone's got experience with this sort of thing, I'd appreciate

your thoughts. I suppose I could live with it being off center, if

that's the case, but would like to avoid it if possible.

Thanks!

<p>Hello all,</p>

<p>I've got a problem with an image I'm working on. I've scanned a

4x5 velvia transparency on an Imacon 848, and although the tranny is a

bit dark (it was expired) I was happy with it.</p>

<p>The situation is, after working on the file in Adobe RGB, I've

decided I'm going to print this as an 11x14 on the Agfa Dlab2 at my

lab. I guess the glossy paper is Agfa Sensatis. Well, when I convert

to the lab's profile, my red channel gets eaten alive. </p>

<p>Here are 3 photos. The first is the full colour shot in Adobe RGB.

The second is the red channel in Adobe RGB. The third is the red

channel after converting to the lab's profile:</p>

<a href="http://www.imageshack.us"><img

src="http://img188.echo.cx/img188/440/mcdonaldredchannel5ej.jpg"

border="0" width="395" alt="Image Hosted by ImageShack.us" /></a>

<p>Needless to say, it just isn't good enough, IMHO. All the detail is

blown right out. We all know what the 'McDonald's Red' looks like;

it's like 'Blue Sky' and 'Green Grass'. When it's 'off' it registers

immediately in any viewer's eyes. So how would I go about doing this?

Is there any paper that can handle bright, saturated reds like this?

Out of curiosity, I plugged in a few of the lambda profiles I've got,

and it was the same story. Kodak's Metallic fared slightly better.</p>

<p>Any ideas or insights? It's be much appreciated!</p>

<p>Thanks!</p>

Julia,

As beepy? mentioned, turning sharpening off is important. I find the flextight software a bit arcane, and finding out how to turn in the sharpening off is controlled by clicking on a green arrow and then on the on/off symbol. Ask someone at the shop if it doesn't jump out at you.

Also note that every time you switch film profiles, the sharpening is reset to 'on'. I guess the resolution is also reset back to 300dpi.

Other advice would be to ensure you don't clip the shadows or highlights. Adjust the histogram sliders so you get all the detail. For me the goal is to grab as much information as possible, and then adjust contrast, etc... in Photoshop at home.

Take the time to dust your negs/slides. I use compressed air, but do whatever works. It pays to be thorough. I'm in the middle of an epic healing brush campaign on a 3200dpi scan on a 645 neg right now, and it's god awful. It'll save you heaps of time if you're careful when you scan.

Consider at what resolution you want to scan at. I routinely scan my personal work at the highest resolution, as I like to make big prints. But if I'm doing headshots, do they need more than 11x14? Probably not. Also, do you need to scan 16bit? For my own work, it's a resounding yes, but for an 8x10 headshot? Up to you, I suppose.

I rent by the hour as well, and I'm pretty broke all the time, so I want to maximize my time. I have my negs organized in a binder before heading off to the shop, in order of importance. Every time I have a full CD worth, I'll burn it while I'm waiting for a scan to finish. Make sure you've got enough storage media with you. It doesn't hurt to open up important scans in photoshop before assuming the scan went swimmingly. Make sure you're scanning at the resolution you think you are.

Anyways - sorry for the blathering nature of this post, but my head is fried from photoshop at the moment. Kind of wish I was in the darkroom, as a matter of fact.

Good luck!

It's at the Stephen Bulger Gallery on Queen W, and it runs to the 25th of June, which is nice.

I saw the Phantom Shanghai exhibit at Monte Clark, and I agree, it was pretty amazing. Certainly some of the better prints I've seen the festival this year.

Now that Contact is winding up, I'm in a mad rush to see as many exhibits as I can. Any suggestions?

Jan,

I've always found that the actual photographic content on photo.net is... umm... pretty lousy. It's a wonderful place for written content, no doubt - one of the best. But for nice B&W pics I've always found <a href="http://www.altphotos.com/">altphotos.com</a> to be a much better option. It's a slow site, but I've often marvelled at the quality of the images that are posted. Have a look.

I've been doing a lot of scanning of old negs recently. I shot HP5, TriX, PanF+, TMAX 400 and APX 100. Without a doubt, the PanF+ negs produce the best scans. When I look at the 12x18 prints, it's amazing how they still keep their smoothness. The grain on the 400 ISO films gets quite noisy, by my standards, and I find they print heaps better in the darkroom.

Scans are done on a Coolscan 9000 and Imacon 848 and 2200 and 3200 dpi respectively. Pretty much everything developed in Rodinal.

Vuk,

Nice shots - quite a few keepers, for sure.

It's so hard to tell film qualities on the web; you can never get a feel for grain or tones to a lesser extent. In my head I *know* panF is 'smoother' than trix, and I find myself almost automatically assigning this quality to the images. Problem is, when I split the screen and look at both sets, the main difference in quality seem to stem from lighting and composition.

This assigning of film qualities is something photographers do almost automatically, whereas the normal viewing audience don't pick up on unless really pressed. I reckon it's similar to the way a musician listens to a record; 'listen to the [insert esoteric comment here] on those drums!'. To which my response is invariably, 'just sounds like effin drums to me, mate.'

But I'm blathering. The main quality I like about the panf shots is the lack of DOF, which would go hand in hand with the film speed. I think it conveys all the right signals, and draws me to her eyes. Skin tones on the tri-x seem slightly shinier in some shots.

Again - nice work.

Oh, and BTW, Joseph: interesting to know about this GIGO business. I'd be very keen in trying out the Microtek and see how it compares. As I said, I've not done any scans of original reflective images, and I'm sure I could have gotten a better initial scan to work with.

Cheers,

Thanks to all for your thoughts - much appreciated.

John, and others - I don't find the texture on the original print unsightly, but it's the paper texture - on the 'outside'. When I print it on the dlab, it'll be on the 'inside'. Don't know if that makes sense, but it's tricky to put into words. (I'm an Italian - it'd make perfect sense if I could talk with my hands :)

Mind you, it might not be as obtrusive as I think once it's printed. I'll run off an 11x14 and see what I think. I don't want to sacrifice any sharpness by despeckling, or a similar method, because it's not very sharp to begin with. I may try what Emre has done on a seperate level and tweak the opacity to get a happy medium.

I won't bother linking an copy of the original, as I think it's about a 50mb greyscale flattened.

Again, thanks for your help.

<p>I'm in the middle of touching up an old family photo. It's hung on

the wall for ages, and is on its last legs. It's a nice 11x14 print

on some sort of matte or slightly textured paper.</p>

<p>I scanned it on an Epson 1250 flatbed at 400 dpi for output, and

have just finished getting rid of dust and scratches. One thing

that's bugging me is the pattern of the matte paper that the scanner

has picked up. I'm used to scanning negs, not originals, so I'm not

familiar with this problem.</p>

<p>Does anyone know of a technique in photoshop to sample a pattern

and remove it from the image? Does this sort of thing exist? I'd

love to hear anyones thoughts. I'll attach the full image and a

cropped 100% chunk with the pattern if it helps anyone.</p>

<p>Cheers!</p><div></div>

Ricardo,

I'd agree with you that the Kiev might be a good choice. You've already got a couple of good SLRs and a decent little digital camera, something a bit less conventional might get you shooting in a new way. I shoot 35mm, 645 and 4x5 and really wish I had a square format camera instead of the 645.

I'm with you on the lenses as well. I stick with my 80mm and 45mm, although I've got others, these are what I find myself using.

Other things to consider would be a cheaper Hassy with one nice lens, or a TLR camera. With all that said, 4x5 is an absolute pleasure, and if you can develop your own B&W, it's not such a great expense. Looking at your photos (love the fence shots, BTW) I think some sort of 4x5 field camera would compliment your style.

Good luck,