paul_miller10

In the dark--

Water pre-soak the film on the reel in one tank. Have the Technidol in another tank ready to go. Take the reel out of the pre-soak and drop it into the developer tank and cover. You can now work in the light.

Technidol developer should never be poured into the tank through the lid--the risk of uneven development is too great.

I used to run a photolab and would get rolls people would find in a dead relatives drawer and wanted to know what is on them.

I would generally overdevelop 200% and then reduce the density back with Potassium Ferricyanide and fixer, going back and forth until I got a good negative.

I've done some film a guy shot in 1946 while he was in the army of occupation in Japan and a MASH hospital in the Korean war with very good success.

Tray develop one sheet at a time.

I'm using an 87 filter with Rollei IR, so my exposure times are quite long. I'm shooting 120 format, and on a sunny day I'm shooting 4 minutes at f11 on a Yashicamat 124G or a Mamiyaflex, neither of which have IR focusing reference marks.

I process in Diafine, so I'm essentially push-processing 1 stop.

If you refer to the manual you will learn that at 15 fps the resolution is 1.2 megapixels

Years ago I put in my time on minilabs before it all went digital.

If you are using a Frontier, there isn't too much you can do to screw up the chemicals and calibration. The machine is smarter than most of the people using it in terms of process control. before Frontiers Walmarts were notorious for letting their processes get out of control because nobody--not even the lab managers--knew what was going on. We had a Walmart near our lab and we could tell their prints from any others just by looking at the navy blue blacks.

 

If you want to turn out quality work, keep your fingers off that NORMAL button and don't be afraid of the extreme ends of the density scale buttons--especially with indoors flash photography.

 

You also have to learn to out-think the printer in the minilab. You always have to add cyan to airshow shots because the printer will try to compensate for the blue. If you have a yellow cab taking up a lot of an image the printer will make everything else blue because of the predominance of yellow. A picture of a child on a green lawn will end up with a magenta skin tone because the printer will compensate for the abundance of green. A master printer will learn to judge how to compensate by the subject matter as he or she becomes more experienced.

I always tell people that if you see NNNN on the back of all of your prints, it's time to find a different lab.

Jack up the alkalai in your developer with Sodium Hydroxide--you'll have to tinker with the ISO and developing time using test rolls.

The toughest part is maintaining 100 degrees Fahrenheit plus or minus 1/2 degree through the length of the first step. It requires a HUGE water bath around the processing tank. It is very difficult to maintain quality control and chemical replenishment is beyond the capabilities of novices. just have your local one-hour lab process your film. They only charge a couple of bucks.

Drum processing of B&W film has the same problem as machine processing--over-agitation. You end up with blocked highlights. For the last 15 years I have been agitating the same way and get superb negatives. It's kind of a simplified Zone System/ water bath technique. This is for film on reels in tanks.

The Zone System part is that I always overexpose my negative film a full stop. This gives me better shadow detail. Then I underdevelop 30%. Pull processing keeps the highlights from blocking due to the overexposure. An added benefit is finer grain.

Water bath development isn't practical anymore because film emulsions are too thin to load with developer. Developing with less agitation accomplishes the same thing water bath development does--it allows the developer in the highlights to exhaust itself faster than the developer in the shadows. My technique is:

Water pre-soak of one minute with lots of agitation. Side benefit--washes the anti-halation coating off. Drain.

Pour in developer. Agitate tank by inverting back and forth for the first 30 seconds.

One inversion every 30 seconds for the first three minutes.

Thereafter, one inversion every 60 seconds until development is completed.

The result is negatives with a full tonal scale and lots of printable information.

www.donwiss.com/pictures/BrooklynStores/

 

Don Wiss tracks down the physical address of online dealers. He's had his life threatened. A lot of these places are mail drops. Spread this URL around--tell your friends.

I use the Promaster 5750 on my E-10 and E-500s. The issue yopu are probably dealing with is due to the OM module mounted on the flash. The early version of the module was originally designed to work with the E-10 and E-20, but I never could get it to work with E-Volts or the E-1. Last year I bought the newer module and it works very well with my E-500s. They look the same and have the same I.D., so I put tape labels on the bottom of the modules so i know which is which. Go back to the store and try other OM modules from Promaster.

I use the Promaster 5750 on my E-10 and E-500s. The issue yopu are probably dealing with is due to the OM module mounted on the flash. The early version of the module was originally designed to work with the E-10 and E-20, but I never could get it to work with E-Volts or the E-1. Last year I bought the newer module and it works very well with my E-500s. They look the same and have the same I.D., so I put tape labels on the bottom of the modules so i know which is which. Go back to the store and try other OM modules from Promaster.

Accessory lenses such as WCONs and TCONs shouldn't be mounted on DSLR lenses--the weight will put strain on the autfocus motr and gears and eventually the lens will fail.

Also, accessory lenses are designed to work with specific optics. Mounting one on a really great lens is the best way to make it into a phenomenally crappy lens. If you're ever in New York you'll see these cheapo accessory lenses mounted on everything in sight in the windows of those electronics stores that seem to be on every block. What a laugh.

I asked Oly tech support about the max sync voltage last year--it's 6 VDC on EVOLTS, the E-10 and the E-20. I use the Safe Sync hot shoe adapter with my Excalibers.

The E-10 has two shutters--the shutter in front of the sensor and the shutter in the viewfinder. Since the viewfinder system uses a beam splitter, it is necessary to blackout the viewfinder during exposure to keep light from entering the image path. Your viewfinder shutter may have failed.

You may also have inadvertently closed the eyepiece shutter--if you're lucky.

Olympus stopped repairing E-10s in 2006.

10X? Zowie!

These generic closeup diopters are guaranteed to make a great lens a miserable lens. They aren't designed for any specific lens and the edge to edge sharpness will probably be questionable. I found a 58mm HOYA 4X in my filters drawer and gave it a shot on my 14-45 and 40-150 Oly kit lenses and it was pretty bad--and it was a HOYA!

I'd say get the EX-25 extension tube, which won't reduce the optical quality of your lenses as the diopters will.

Anybody ever use the Lens Flare Filter in Photoshop? Its under Filters>Render.

That's not ghosting--it's lens flare. You're pointing the lens into backlight and the lens is picking up the sun. Use the lens shade. If the lens shade isn't shielding the lens, reach your hand out to block the sun and see if the effect disappears. Even with multi-coating, you will get flare in these situations. Without the coating it would be far worse.

You might have a corrupted image on the memory card. If it is a corrupted image, the camera can't get past it because it can't read the data. The image can be corrupted by pulling the card out of a card reader with the file open, or by returning an edited image to the memory card through a card reader. You may have to use media recovery software to restore the card.

Darcy,

 

Congratulations on the Olympus 2500L. That's an older camera but it has many merits.

 

I suggest you use an external card reader and Olympus Master 2 with your camera / XP machine. OM2 is too new to work with your camera, but memory cards are memory cards. Pop one in a card reader, and you'll be able to work with the files in OM2. This is the newest software package from Olympus, you can download it from their website and it's free.

 

Take care.

 

PJM

Monitesh,

 

That looks like some kind of service technician code or something. Did you try calling Olympus about it? What did they say? It probably needs to go to their service center.

 

PJM

Geoff,

 

It sounds like an issue with the CCD to me. Your best bets might be to either take it back to the dealer where you bought it from and do an exchange or send it to the Olympus service center.

 

PJM

Bryan,

 

Sorry to hear about all the trouble. I have a trick in mind that may help you in the situation.

 

Try cleaning the contacts for the batteries inside the camera with the eraser of a pencil. Sometimes dirt and such gets on the contacts and the eraser technique has been successful for me in the past. If this doesn't work, then I'd suggest getting your camera looked at by the Olympus repair people.

 

PJM

Tim

 

I appreciate your input. Could you please clarify a few things for me?

 

Which specific lens hood are you talking about? I know there are two general types of lens hood bodies you can get: tulip-shaped and cylinder-shaped. Which hood shape did you own at the time? Did you use it strictly with the 14-45mm lens? Any others? At which focal length were you experiencing vignetting?

 

The LH-61 lens hood that I own is tulip-shaped and doesn?t give me any vignetting unless I have it mounted incorrectly. Its absolutely vital to turn that hood until you hear the *click* noise.

 

In my opinion, I dont see how or why Olympus would manufacture a lens kit with a hood that is too large for its respective lens. I?m afraid I cant subscribe to your interpretation.

Manu -

 

Greg is entirely correct. The relationship between the lens hood and the flash is this: The hood cuts into the light path the pop-up flash creates when firing. An external flash has greater distance between the bulb and the camera body so it?s unlikely there will be vignetting at all.

 

Since you mentioned you ?don?t use and was not using the pop up flash?, I?m not clear what you are actually using. Are you using an external flash or no flash at all?

 

In my experience, if you're using an external flash like the FL-36, it?s a matter of properly aligning the lens hood on the lens itself. When you place it on the lens and rotate it, you must rotate until you hear the *click*. If you don't hear it, then it's not properly aligned and you'll get vignetting. If you don?t know what vignetting is, I know you can find a wealth of information on the subject by checking the Internet.

 

In my opinion, if you ever use a pop-up flash, then don't use a lens hood. The hood is made for use with external flashes, not pop-ups. Furthermore, like Greg said, this is something that will happen to any SLR/DSLR camera under similar circumstances.

 

I hope that clears it up.