mikeseb

<p>The ergonomics are stellar, the glass superb. AF speed is fine as long as you never use a DSLR and learn what *truly* fast AF speed is like.<br>

I have loved my Contax.</p>

<p>The "new" Tmax 400 (400TMY2) has been "new" for a bit over a year (released fall 2007). Its processing times are the same or only slightly different from the "old" 400TMY, based on my testing; you can download the new information from Kodak, in publication F-4043.<br>

Tmax 100 (100TMX) has not been recently reformulated, at least since 400TMY2 was; it is a different film and its processing times are different from either variety of TMY (the "old" version is no longer sold so any TMY you buy today is the "new" stuff.)</p>

<p>Lynn has it exactly right. Keep things simple, work out your times for his simplified dilution, and go forward boldly.</p>

<p>Good lord people. Does this minor point really require this amount of verbiage?</p>

<p>It hardly makes any practical difference whether it's 1+10 or 1:10 or 1☆10. Just pick a mixture and use it consistently; you have to adjust your times anyway, so it REALLY DOESN'T MATTER.</p>

<p>Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. The intensity of these fights oft seems inversely proportional to their importance.</p>

<p>Sigh. One wonders how long a degenerate, formerly informative thread, will now drag on like two drunks scrapping in a parking lot.</p>

<p>In optical terms, <b>nearsighted</b> means that you can see objects closeup fairly well, but have difficulty with stuff far away. <b>Farsighted</b> means just the opposite. Nearsightedness results either from an eyeball that is slightly too long front to back, or a cornea or (less frequently) lens that is slightly too convex, so that the focus plane is slightly in front of the retina. Farsightedness, again just the opposite: the eyeball is too "short", or the cornea/lens not convex enough, and the focus plane is "behind" the retina. Makes sense, then, that nearsightedness is corrected by neutralizing some of the excessive refractive power of the cornea/lens with a "negative" or concave lens, while farsightness needs additional refractive power conferred by a "positive" or convex lens.</p>

<p>The <b>cornea</b> (the transparent bulge in front of the eye) is the primary refractive surface of the eye--it does most of the work of getting an image in focus. The lens is for finer adjustments.</p>

<p>Both of these conditions are distinguished from <b>presbyopia</b> (literally, <i>old vision</i>), which is an age-related loss of flexibility (if only increased stiffness affected <i>everything</i> as one ages! :) ) of the lens, so that when one tries to read something close, the lens cannot flex enough to refract the rays into focus.</p>

<p>Everyone seems to always list, or inquire about, the number of "actuations" a digital back has. This really doesn't make a lot of sense, because the image-capture chip has no moving parts to wear out. Maybe this number is used as a proxy for general age and wear, in the same way that a car's mileage is. We've all seen cars with 40,000 miles that are worn out, and cars with 150,000 that are in great shape.<br>

So no, the back doesn't just come to a certain number of exposures and then stop functioning. Take care of them, and they should give tens---if not hundreds---of thousands of exposures.<br>

I have a Kodak ProBack with probably 15k exposures on it; it works as new. I had a CLA done on it a year ago; the CF bay door latch had to be replaced. So any mechanical parts like latches and hinges could wear out. But not the chip itself.</p>

<p>Any way to get some doors open to let in more natural light, especially north or south facing doors/windows? Any way to move some interesting stuff over next to that open side? If you are going for a natural feel I think natural light is the way to go if at all possible.</p>

<p>It seems odd that the interior of a body shop would not be better lit---you'd think high visibility would be important for that work. Anyway....</p>

<p>Are you trying to illuminate the whole place for an overall scenic shot; or light details of things, closer to the subjects? If it's really dim, and you're after the overall scenics. you're going to need a lot of light, depending on the size of the place. It really depends on the look you're after. Blasting the place with light will make things look flat and uninteresting. One idea: use the light from directional worklights in interesting ways to show what's going on. You know, brightly lit hands holding a polishing buffer, with the light falling off away from the hands. Make sense?</p>

<p>I shot an ornamental iron foundry one time, using only natural light with 400 ISO film. It was lit by a few windows along the north wall, some dim fluorescent overhead strips (place was 40x40 feet inside at least), and a northwest facing service-bay door. I had exposures in the 1/2 to 1 sec range, but the light was soft yet directional in a way that would not have happened with me blasting light all over the place from strobes. Most of the shots were detail shots of the place, the presses, lathes, and other machinery; the light made them gleam and showed their contours beautifully. <a href="http://www.michaelsebastian.com/#/portfolio/Book%20Two/18">(Here's an example.)</a> I had a few overall shots; I simply tailored the exposure for whatever in those scenes I deemed to be most important to the composition, and let the rest fall where it would.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>You should taste new orleans water. Yuck. I lived there for four years, and thought it was awful, yet it kept winning awards for taste and quality. Drinking water from the Mississippi River, draining half the continental US. Egad.<br>

<br /> The joke used to be that you could tell a couple of days later when one of the upriver chemical plants had a benzene spill.</p>

<p>All other things equal, for a given film: the hotter the processing solutions, the more vigorous the agitation, and the longer the development time, the more apparent the grain will be.</p>

<p>Solvent developers reduce the appearance of grain, at the cost of sharpness.</p>

<p>Large temperature differences between processing solutions can also worsen grain.</p>

<p>If you have inadequate shadow detail, it means that the shadowed area in question was rendered at a lower Zone than desired; in other words, it was underexposed. In order to bring out more detail there it has to be given additional exposure.</p>

<p>You can accomplish this simply by increasing exposure on a per-image basis; but if you find that your shadows are consistently lacking in detail, then you need to shoot at a lower EI, which gives more exposure.</p>

<p>Bruce is correct. I've gone through the Zone System testing process; it's tedious, to say the least, but it gets you there. I think it's far more applicable in its entirety to sheet film, where each image can be processed individually. Nevertheless, understanding Zone System principles will help you even if you shoot roll film and have to process every image on the roll identically.</p>

<p>I think you can get most of the way there by starting with a few assumptions, keeping careful records, and changing only one variable at a time. For instance, start with an EI that is one-half to one stop slower than the box speed. Pick a good all-around developer like D-76 (use once and discard, whether straight or diluted), and develop for the time recommended for that film in D-76. Be careful to keep your temperature constant (use a water bath for your tanks and solutions) and use a consistent agitation method. Make your prints, whether you print optically or scan for digital output, and see what you get.</p>

<p>Inadequate shadow detail? You need a lower EI because you're underexposed. No really dense blacks even in areas you meant to be in deep shadow? Your EI is too LOW. (You'll get close to box speed with D=76 regardless of dilution.)</p>

<p>Now look at your highlights. Any detail in areas you wanted to have detail? If not, they're "blown" and you've overdeveloped. Reduce development time by 15% or so and see what happens, keeping other variables constant. (Suggest you keep temp and agitation constant and change only development times.)</p>

<p>You'll likely get usable negatives from the first roll, and within a few more rolls you'll have things fine tuned, with no more waste of film than if you shot up several rolls taking pictures of gray cards. Mind you, I'm not anti-Zone-System or against testing; I think in Zone System terms all the time. But, for roll-film shooters, the formal testing exercise may be overkill, if you're willing to be methodical about your ordinary shooting and processing until you get things locked.</p>

<p>If your histogram display was towards the right, then your images were OVERexposed, not underexposed. At your intial aperture of f/2.8 that is not entirely unexpected.</p>

<p>Agree completely with Jerry about the flashmeter, and the rest of his advice is spot on. And make sure you get around to reading your camera manual at some point! :)</p>

<p>Over the years I've developed TMY and TMY-2 in D-76, Xtol, TMAX, TMAX-RS, Diafine, divided D-76, 510 Pyro, and PMK Pyro. I think it looks best in either Xtol or D-76, either undiluted or diluted 1+1. It also looks good in TMAX and TMAX-RS, but there's nothing special about it.</p>

<p>Strangely, I seem to have overlooked trying TMY in HC-110. 100TMX, however, looks very good in dilute (1+40 or 1+50 from syrup) HC-110.</p>

<p>No less a photographer than John Sexton (reportedly) shoots only TMAX films and processes them only in D-76. Since it's the most popular, best-selling developer of all time, it makes sense that no one is going to design a film to look bad in D-76.</p>

<p>I am slowly learning the virtues of simplicity, especially when "simple" is accompanied by "cheap." When my current stocks of other developers are exhausted, it's back to D76H (homebrewed variant) for me. </p>

<p>Curtis, the more I think about it, the more I think having the "shells" rebuilt for use with a more readily-available charger is the way to go, if you plan on keeping the back a while. Even better, have the shells act as carriers for commonly available NiMH or Li batteries that can be recharged or replaced separately.<br>

<br /> Another option: Digital Camera Battery used to make a battery system, with voltage-regulating cables for a wide variety of camera, back, and flash systems. They did have a cable to fit the Contax 645 and the ProBack.</p>

<p>The <a href="http://www.goestores.com/catalog.aspx?storename=timdodgesalesn&DeptID=51022&ItemID=1448119&detail=1">cable for the ProBack is here</a> ; the <a href="http://www.goestores.com/catalog.aspx?storename=timdodgesalesn&DeptID=51022&ItemID=392792&detail=1">cable for the Contax 645 is here</a> . Granted, tethered shooting is a pain, but as a last resort at least there's still a source of power out there.</p>

<p>My experience mirrors Stephen's; I can also recommend Precision Camera Works. They did a RF adjustment and CLA for me a year ago and did a good job.</p>

<p>They are not interchangeable. Repeat, NOT interchangeable. The folks on eBay are either dishonest or ignorant.</p>

<p>The US version PW will not stop working when you step off the plane in Europe, or vice versa. I heard an interview with one of the originators of the PW; he said that they chose the US frequency by walking around new york city with a frequency-sniffing device, and chose the least crowded frequency. This does not mean a PW on a different frequency won't work; it just means that there's a somewhat higher chance of interference. The converse is true in Europe.</p>

<p>The PW guy further said that you cannot just buy a EU or FCC version of the Sekonic meter and simply exchange the transmitter module to the other version; the meters' circuitry itself is also different between the two versions. So in order to have EU-PW compatibility, you'd have to shell out another $500 to replace your US-version meter for a EU-version one.</p>

<p>I'd say your best bet is to keep your US meter, since it's more expensive than the PW's, and purchase the minimum number of PW's you need in the US version. When you return home, you may or may not experience interference problems; and it's unlikely the Radio Police are going to arrest you for having the wrong frequency model. If you have problems, sell your stuff and start over.</p>

<p>But I'm betting you won't.</p>

<p>@Jim, I usually use D-76H, which has slightly more metol and omits the HQ. It fixes the very problem you mention, and the results are identical to standard factory D76 as far as I can tell.</p>

<p>What do you guys usually do--leave flash reflectors attached or go bare bulb (if your flash head configuration allows it)? Nadine, I see you go bare bulb; is this due to the light quality produced or some other reason?<br>

<br /> I'm playing around with using the Softliter and Lumedyne head as my main location portraiture outfit.</p>

<p>Lex, goodness knows you know as much about this as anyone here---so I must be an outlier. I've never been thrilled with Tri-X in HC-110 (usually at 1+40 or 1+50 dilutions from syrup; any more concentrated gives me very short times at 24ºC in a Jobo) compared to Tri-X in either D-76 (good) or Xtol (very good) straight or 1+1.<br /> <br /> I must be doing something wrong; I find Tri-X in Xtol to be noticeably sharper than in HC-110, and with full film speed to boot.</p>

<p>Does it do something that TMax, DD-X, or HC-110 can't do?</p>

<p>Lynn, haven't you held forth here before on the evils of Xtol? You'd think the stuff had deflowered your daughter or something! :)<br>

Not sure what you mean by "test scientifically"; producing good looking negatives is my test, and Xtol does this easily and repeatably.<br>

<br /> Like others who don't disdain it, i store it in full glass bottles containing enough for one or two rolls; and mix with distilled or, at worst, 10-micron-filtered water (yes, I realize the latter doesn't remove minerals.) No problems ever with sudden death under those conditions.</p>

<p>If you do find one, I hope you at least attach it to the TAKING lens, rather than to the viewing lens, as appears to be the case in the linked image.</p>

<p>Denis, Jon Goodman sells directly, as well as on eBay as username "interslice". I've PM'd you his email address.</p>