ham_london

Thanks everyone for the suggestions. Part of me says don't be silly - just get a better scanner. And the other part of me wants to play.

The neg holder should be easy(ish) - I'm thinking of making up channels to slide them into (with shim brass), fixed to the new glass. Then, I could shim the glass up and down to get the best point. The reflection off the neg might be an issue, but matt side down should help. Then, it's all down to the strength of light shining down, and trying to make that even.

I probably will just end up buying the 8800f, but I find it difficult to understand the prices some people pay for secondhand goods on fleabay, so I doubt I'll be going down that road.

Jack, I've worked out how to shift the heat - vents and a pair of pancake fans. The neg holder sounds an interesting challenge - I would have thought crafting a spacer from shim brass should lift the neg off the glass to avoid the dread newton rings. And yes, a purpose built scanner is likely to be better, but not nearly as much fun.

Louise - excellent idea, but as I've already had my knuckles rapped by the The Administration for cross posting (and the MF forum message deleted with three helpful responses) I think I'll stay hunkered down here. But thanks for the pointer, I found lots of useful discussion.

Excuse the cross posting - this question is also posted on MF forum.

I'm contemplating making an adapter to scan MF negs for my Canoscan 4400 flatbed scanner, and wondered if anyone

else has tried this.

It already has a 35mm neg adapter built in, and looking at it, I think it should be (har har) fairly straightforward.

The way I see it working is like this:

I'm going to use a sheet of frosted glass, to place over the platten. By sticking on thin strips of film I can

make locating tracks for the negs. They are now flat and square to the platten. Over the top of this, I imagine

creating a pyramid sort of affair, about 18 inches tall, with a number of 12v halogens in the apex. As I have no

idea what the right number of lumens is needed on the neg, I'm going to use a dimmer to achieve the balance. My

initial experiments, putting a neg under glass and messing around with mains voltage lights shows that the amount

of light is the most critical thing. After that, of course, there is the diffusion to get even light. For that, I

see either multiple layers of translucent perspex, or swinging the lights through 90 degrees and angling the

light down the pyramid using crinkled foil or both.

So .... any thoughts, experience to share would be welcome. Of course I could always buy the Canoscan 8800, but I

suspect that a) the neg carriers mean that medium format negs won't be flat, and b) the extra cost for

effectively the same scanner won't be that good.

I also keep both in the camera, it's a bit of a shame Olympus didn't implement an auto changeover - there is auto switch when you switch on, if only one card is in the camera.

It's worth noting that the transfer speed depends on the camera and the card. I did these tests some time ago, so I may have forgotten the detail, but in an E500 I seem to remember that a type H XD card is pretty much as fast as CF, and there was little benefit in going from type 2 to type 3 CF but in the E510, the type 3 CF is noticeably faster. I've not tried out type 4 - I suspect there may be little benefit. Type M XD cards are slow by any comparison. Data transfer speeds are higher with type H XD than a "standard" SD. XD cards also have the capability of recording additional data for panoramic mode that can be read by Oly Master software, but I've never othered finding out anything about that.

Thanks for the suggestions, Greg. Release priority S was on, and C off (and I confess I hadn't paid any attention to it previously)

I was using the E510 with FL50 and 12-60. And tried MF and fixed WB. The only symptom I could see was the WB light in the viewfinder flashing. Maybe setting the Release Priority S to on will fix it. The 12-60 could focus in the low light, but yes, you are right the issue was with more distant subjects. I wonder if the FL50 has something to do with it? TTL Auto mode was what I used. Curious.

Shooting indoors in low light with flash, I found on occasion that the shutter would refuse to fire, and the WB

light in the viewfinder would flash. "Right" I thought "Switch into fixed WB mode" but it STILL refused to fire.

Any thoughts anyone?

As a recent addict, I don't have as much knowledge as others here, but I'm quite fond of a cheap and cheerful Franka Solida. Also, the Voigtlander Perkeo appeals to me for its size.

It appears to me that there is a general rule that performance improves as the years go by, and that generally the price increases in proportion to its desirability (although I've watched some cameras go for much more than I would have imagined reasonable). But, for me, character is more important than performance. If I want performance in 6x6, I turn to my Bronica SQA

Fettling is also the act of cleaning up a casting, and used colloquially (by me, anyway) to mean sorting something out, often by bashing with a hammer.

And David, you are right, it is a contrasty shot that is a perfect example of one that is aching for photographic printing. It's straight off the scanner (scanned at my friendly local photo bureau) and resampled down, the original looks good on my Eizo but fairly naff on my laptop, this small image looks more like soot and chalk on anything, and is little more than a contact print.

Contrast is inevitable (or at least what I wanted) with the very strong sunlight and heavy shadows - I took the exposure, stopped to f8 for maximum DoF, and slowed the shutter to overexpose highlights, and provide some detail in the shadows. For the hell of it, I've uploaded the full scan (5mb) if you want to look at it. Take it to 100% and have a look at the detail on the faces of the people in the shadows, and the leaves, and the writing on the road signs a the back. It's not the best photo in the world by a long chalk, but I am happy with it, basically coz I did it with the Bessa. Oh yes, and depending on the monitor, you may not be able to see the subtleties of tone, anyway.

here's the big file: http://www.londondailyphoto.com/images/Photo06_7.jpg

Ummmm.... David......"You don't need to go digital to 'work outside the darkroom' you just scan your negatives" ---- you just went digital :-)

(One of) The advantage of the wet darkroom is that it gives you access to monotone printing with a subtlety of tone that is very difficult to achieve without a lot of time, effort and cash (for kit) in the digital lightroom, and is entirely impossible to reproduce on a monitor.

I'm not denigrating digital - I'm more digital than film, but there is a difference between them that all too frequently gets overlooked and very rarely demonstrated; illustrated very well by your comment. (And I'd hate for you to imagine I spend my time in front of an enlarger - in practice I do exactly what you do, most of the time)

That's a great image. Speaking for myself, it's so easy to get wound up into the excitement of the modern digital

compact and ignore the pain resulting from the sensor size which always nags. But then I realized that my Olympus

Trip - not that dissimilar, not as well specified as your Ricoh, but no battery needed - was a) smaller than my

Canon A650 b) had a full frame sensor c) had a sensor cleaning system and I haven't looked back.

Enriq, thanks for that - your efforts are very illuminating. To be honest I hadn't looked at the "lightmeter" properly, but having seen your pages, now it is cleaned and (cough cough) fully functional. I just don't understand it ;-)

Peter, the one I have is the second from the left in your (impressive) lineup. I've stumbled into rollfilm folders recently, after handling a Perkeo (not yet back in working order) - which has to qualify as one of the most compact folders out. The Agifold is an ....interesting ... contrast.

Curiously, I found the experience working on it very different from the other, German, folders I've poked around at over the last few weeks - rather similar to working on a side valve Ford, against a twin overhead camshaft Alfa of similar vintage.

I did wonder about the back - I'd imagined it was an alternative way to form a light trap avoiding the use of a hinge. There seems some evidence of light leakage at the bottom of the shots (top of the camera) and I can't work out why (or if, indeed, that's what it is) The pressure plate _must_ be OK, although it only has about 2mm of travel, as it holds the film tight enough against some corrosion spots on the body mask to scratch it all the way. I'm deciding whether to try to polish those out with metal polish or a light garnet paper. I'll probably try a buffing wheel on the Dremel first.

The other issue is with the shutter slow speeds, below 1/10 especially at the 1s. The escapement pawl sometimes seems to get stuck somewhere. But given that I'm unlikely to need 1s, and I've managed to bring all speeds 300 - 25 into around 10% of nominal speed, I'm quite happy. I say that but because of the way I time 'em - with my laptop microphone - and the way the two leaf shutter operates, I can't be sure, but the exposures seem consistent, using a Sekonic meter and varying shutter speed from 300 - 50.

It's curious how they downgraded the aperture of the lens by restricting the diaphragm opening. Do you know why? The lens certainly seems sharp enough to open up a bit more.

And this isn't aimed at anyone. Instead, it's a little explanation of how I've turned up here recently and my

current obsession with folding rolllfilm cameras.

I was, and still am, an enthusiastic digital person. I'd come back to photography about seven years ago after

many years away. I left my OM1's to one side and picked up an EOS30 - I was captivated. It was some time before I

went digital and made the jump to the Olympus E-system (E500). One of the main reasons behind my decision was

the fact that I knew I wouldn't have been able to afford the glass I wanted for a Canon & Nikon, and as I was

going to be "making do" with kit lenses, there was no reason not to change systems.

To be honest, there is not that much difference in my view between film in my EOS30 and a memory card in the

Olympus. I appreciated the ability to work from RAW outside of the darkroom and think that as a result, I

probably made more of my images than I would have done shooting colour in the EOS.

But then, my daughter took up photography for A Level, and as part of her work had to do an in depth analysis of

a famous photographer, focussing in on their style and technique. She chose David Bailey, and his iconic 60's

portraits. I told her that the only was to reproduce that was by film in a studio. That was a PERFECT excuse for

me to buy a Bronica SQA (I couldn't believe how cheap they had got). We went in the studio, shot digital and film

and the results were excellent. And yes, you can approximate the film print in digital, but the quality and

(comparative) ease of wet darkroom was an eye opener for her. Not that she will be doing anything other than

digital, but at least she understands the difference.

As for me, my interest in B&W film has been revitalised, and I now have the Bronica, the OM's, an Oly Trip, and

now to satisfy a growing addiction, three folding 120. Making them work is good clean fun. For me it is simple:

one isn't better than the other, they are different. I look at things differently with a film camera in my hand,

and I use it differently. As for teaching the young, what is there to teach them? Show them and they understand.

I suspect I am becoming addicted. Another ﾣ5 on eBay ,although admittedly with ﾣ8 postage :-( , and I have an

Agifold. Interesting camera, British, they made it all themselves, fairly simple shutter which I managed to clean

comparatively easily. The build appears tougher than the German cameras I've handled thus far (in all my 3 weeks

of experience) and so easier to work with. An uncoupled rangefinder is useful as the lens has a course focus

pitch (ie, it moves quite a bit) and there are distance markings up to 60ft before it hits hyperfocal.

Anyhow, here are the results off the camera. I was thinking of selling it, but having seen the results I will

probably keep it now. (And yes, I need to polish out something that's scratching the film, I know)

http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/londondailyphoto/AgifoldTestFilm<div></div>

Well, I poked at the Bessa with a stick and managed to sort the focus issue. Turned out there were two things.

One - my attempt to compensate for what I thought was a shift in focus was wrong. Simply, the Bessa doesn't have

any way of fine tuning the focus, you just have to trust in German engineering. Second, I fettled the mechanism

and got rid of slight tilt.

You can't see from this image, because of its size, but the focus is pin sharp, edge to edge, and resolution of

the lens stopped to f8 is impressive. The second lot of photos are in the same album as the first

http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/londondailyphoto/BessaTestReel<div></div>

Russ,

I did try to set up the infinity focus, but there is no way to adjust the scale against the point where it needs to stop. But, I think the problem is that the lens isn't being held parallel to the film plane.

Isn't that a corgi in shot? maybe there's a royal connection ;-)

There was a film in my Bessa, too - Barnet Sensichrome - I couldn't find out much about it so I tried 6 minutes in ID-11 but nothing visible was developed. I wonder if there is a different technique for processing old film? Longer or shorter, maybe.

Ham

Well, I've got the Bessa up and running now, having stripped the shutter. The test reel suggests that I have a

problem with focus, but at least I have one OK photo in the bunch

<p>

<A

href="http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/londondailyphoto/BessaTestReel">http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/londondailyphoto/Tempstuff/photo?authkey=w1lRr8w0jZM#5216979177937632066</a>

<p>

For what it's worth, the reel is here <a

href="http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/londondailyphoto/BessaTestReel">http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/londondailyphoto/BessaTestReel</a>

- it didn't

help that the frame viewfinder jammed down, either ;-)<p>

Ham<div></div>