brit

<p>Although it makes no odds which way your emulsion is I would advocate loading all film sheets the same way around, simply to know which side you really really really need to take care of.</p>

<p>Also you should read your developer's instructions as they can differ in their agitation recommendations from lots of agitation with PMK Pyro to pretty much nothing with others (GOOG 'stand development' because thats all you do for most of the dev time...let the film stand still in the dev). </p>

<p>Another thing to be aware of is that not all instructions are on the box. Go to your manufacturers web and search for a leaflet on it. Eg ID11 from Ilford have a good leaflet with lots more info than on the box...well about 5 years ago they did! </p>

<p>Tilting L to R to L when draining also would tends to lessen the chance of streaking, as chemicals would not always run off the same way.</p>

<p>Likelihood is that you'd have to go to silverprint for your equip/chemics. Give them a call IMO to get you off on the right foot.</p>

<p>For me you are over analysing things. A camera is a light proof box with a shutter and lens. <em>Thats what it is to me anyway. </em>I once got in a debate about which EOS was the better camera and my opponent was coming out with shooting rate, the exposure modes etc. I was not interested at all in that...I just wanted the best image. Incident meter, best 'sensor', manual focus. So wood v metal etc is irrelevent, for me.</p>

<p>So for me it would be a ultra large format camera. Sensor? Its not even available on 5x4 but I'd like Pan F+. Thinking PMK Pyro.</p>

<p>Lens? Well I remember really liking the Zeiss Jena 120mm on 35mm so (somebody) do the math to keep that ratio true for whatever ultra larger format I'd be using. OK I've spec'd the focal length but what of the lens' descriptive qualities. Well I wouldn't go for a portrait lens. I'd go for the sharpest. On what basis? Simply because you can get all that info from shooting. If you went portrait you couldn't go and get all that info back into your shot. Aperture? Likely the best resing but that needs to have wiggel room for centre mid edge and image placement on the sensor. </p>

<p>So now we have a very high res nicely proportioned image. Digitise it and fiddle until the desired 'softness' is achieved. Alt and the way I'd be going first would be a traditional contact.</p>

<p>See here:<br>

<a href="00VrpA">http://www.photo.net/large-format-photography-forum/00VrpA</a></p>

 

<p>OP has an interesting history of posts. I won't be contributing further.</p>

<p>Slight mod to make this easier to use under various setups is to have your target not a square but a circle, so any angle you view it, its diameter will be accurate.</p>

<p>1 You must have a colour head (is yours?)<br />2 No need for listing chemicals as everything is pretty standardised and in kits. Dev of colour negs is called C41 process. Deving colour paper is the RA4 process.<br />3 Its tricky to do the RA4 bit without good hardware (temp control/in darkness) so be warned if there is much going on in that way with your drum setup.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Is it a matter of the whole tripod moving or just the head?</p>

<p>Crossed posts. See above. Flashbulbs use a metal in an atmosphere of oxygen (from memory). The reaction takes its time to bulid up compared to an electronic flash so thats why the shutter opens much later for flashbulb.</p>

<p>I'm with Dan, likely you have misplaced the flash sync lever.</p>

<p>"M" is for flashbulbs and "X" is for electronic flash. "M" fires the flash an instant before the shutter opens to allow the flashbulb to be at the best brightness. "X" sync triggers the flash the instant the shutter is completely open, since electronic flash fires instantly.</p>

<p>I still find it slightly amazing everytime I look at Sinar items on the worlds biggest auction site for buy it now items. Sometimes it looks like the sellers are trying to out do each other in a competition to put the highest prices on their stuff!</p>

<p>Sorry I can't really add anything so maybe I souldn't be posting but just to say Kent this sounds fascinating and I wish you all the best. If you can get yourself sorted in the manner you want and if you can remember come tap on my shoulder if you upload any to photo.net. </p>

<p>On the subject of lightmeters I read their readings can drift from true over time and I've noticed M. Axel above keeps upgrading...is that to avoid having a meter that has drifted from true? Can anyone say how old meters are when drifting starts to occurr...is it use dependent?</p>

<p>Useful info for me sure but also for the OP if he intends getting a second hand one.</p>

<p>Beat me to it Tim!</p>

<p>#1 Get the evidence from the restaurant bathrooms</p>

 

<p>C41 easily doable, but RA4 harder.</p>

<p>One hell of a question buddy a bit like how do I pass my driving test and what car is best.</p>

<p>I've been spending some time on the Silver Fast web and they do actually have a whole book (think over 400 pages) you can download when you find the right page. Also try looking at sites like Epson for user guides for say the V700. These sources will tell you how and why you do XYZ.</p>

<p>And I'm speaking from experience having just started on this road myself...there's lots and lots of information to take in and understand.</p>

<p>Also, here is a decent site to learn the basics</p>

<p><a href="http://www.largeformatphotography.info/">http://www.largeformatphotography.info/</a></p>

<p><em> I would hate to jam up this site with question after question.</em><br>

<em> </em><br>

You may well be surprised what Google can bring up. Even Youtube has large format tutorials. Its all beeen done before.</p>

<p>I would go 5x4 too.</p>

<p>Wow Scott I nearly missed this reply.</p>

<p>Would you believe I've only just got around to trying to use the scanner properly. I'm quitepeeved off at my first attempts with colour negative. For instance I generally get a setup and do a couple of shots at different apertures one after the other (= no great differences between then other than dof) and two 6x9 negs side by side on the scanner are hugey different. I mean I know I did them all on a certain colour background but one is sort of that colour whilst the other looks like its been shot against a grey background. Wild. I was hoping for better.</p>

<p>So far the Dual core laptop is managing ok but I've been looking at newer PC's since my 1Gb 1.5GHz single core PC is suffering. Even the dual core (2Gb) has run out of memory and refused some Photoshop edits on me. You can get hex cores now, overclocked ones at that. They must be amazing on 64 bit systems ... the ones I were looking at (but can't afford) can take 16Mb of memory on their MoBo's. I have yet to get to a 5x4 scan but I'm confident I can do it with my current line up it can do it considering it did OK with the 6x9's (taking about 5mins).</p>

<p>The thing I do need and soonish is more HDD space. Right now 1Tb external HDD are coming in at about 50UKP which is amazingly cheap IMO.</p>

<p>Hi Jospeph,</p>

<p>Thank you for your reply :) I am a bit confused now. So are you still saying the left hand image is black and white and the right is colour and now the difference is down to software, not as I'd thought, hardware?? [You see I thought I used the same scanning settings and save settings for both and that a true bw image was just shades of grey (the K of CMYK). On the two recent scans I did try scanning as colour (rather than bw) but got a result I think I would have remembered as the scans had a real strong colour cast and not the kind of thing I knew how to cancel easily, so reverted to selecting bw for them. I am sure I didn't move any curves or anything when initially scanning the refernce frame].</p>

<p>Taking the old line from Kodak...get it right first time...I was hoping there would be a way to get rid of this misalighnment at scan rather than having to do as you had done (push channels around) or use the lens filter (that didn't seem to work very well when I tried it yesterday).</p>

<p>And what is it that you saw initially that told you one was bw and one was not? I am just trying to learn. And what is it that you see than tells you this is software not hardware. I'm no longer a bit confused. but very confused! :-\</p>

<p>Hi,</p>

<p>I am a bit of a newbie when it comes to digital things so I'll have to ask what makes you think only one scan is colour?</p>

<p>When I started today to replicate the reference scan I checked its mode and CS4 says its RGB @8bits per channel. Windows Explorer agrees and has them as 24 bits. So both those scan crops are RGB @ 8 bits per channel hence my pleasure at seeing the first one (really good neutrality) and constanation with the second one (CA).</p>

<p> </p>

<p>When I got my V700 earlier this year I checked it out briefly. All seemed OK and I think I got a good example. At that time I also scanned a bw 35mm neg to keep as a refernce for later comparisons.</p>

<p>This weekend I was going to try out some different scanning software but first of all I decided to refamiliarise myself with the way I initially got that reference scan with Epson Scan. I saw straight away some unwanted colours in the detail of a sweater in the neg's image. I rescanned and got the same.</p>

<p>I found an area of the neg that shows the CA at its best and I am posting it here. So this is an enlargement of a b/w 35mm neg scanned at 2400 with the original refernce to the left and today's scan to the right.</p>

<p>Clickable link thumbnail.... <a href="http://www.imagebam.com/image/e2540d97308114" target="_blank"><img src="http://thumbnails27.imagebam.com/9731/e2540d97308114.jpg" alt="imagebam.com" /></a></p>

<p>Is this normal? I have to admit I am seriously disheartened having moved from a scanner that almost made me jump for joy to one that now exhibits CA of this degree. Would anyone consider this to be an unacceptable level? Is there a way to get the scanner to calibrate itself out of this?</p>

<p>(Between the two scans I mentioned today I shut the scanner down, reapplied all locks and released them thinking they might have realigned something internal).</p>

<p>Thanks Paul.</p>

<p>So is that 4 frames for the crop I asked about or four frames for this cross shaped panorama?</p>