janne_moren

That chunky advance lever is pretty cool, actually; if it works fine I'd just keep it that way.

 

The 35S is my constant take-along camera; it pretty much lives in my coat pocket or in my bag. Scale focusing takes a little getting used to, but it's not a big problem. Just go for smaller apertures when you can so you have some margin for error. One thing: they (or at least my unit) tend to be prone to flare. If you're not a fan of the "dreamscape" look you may want to keep strong lights out of the frame when you can.

Thanks for bringing this up. I received a Canon Autoboy 2 QD from a relative some time ago, and always meant to look it up. That Canon site link was perfect. I have to take it out for a spin one of these days.

Here (Osaka) slide film is more expensive than negative in 120 format, but processing is cheaper. For professional film the total difference is quite small.

I used to do 5-6 minutes of fixing, based on doubling the clearing time that Alan mentions above, but had this kind of problem now and again. Rarely with HP5, but much more often with Delta films and with Neopan 400. Now I always do 10 minutes and I check my fixer frequently, and the problem seems to be gone. I do the Ilford wash and have never had a problem with that.

 

I'd try refixing the negatives if I were you. You can try with just one piece at first - fix for ten minutes, then wash and dry. If it cleared up, then do the rest.

Good news, Fuji does have documentation comparing all their films.

 

Not so good news, it's Japanese only: http://fujifilm.jp/support/pdf/filmandcamera/handbook/filmguide_vol14.pdf

 

On page 9 you have a couple of charts placing their reversal films along three dimensions. The left chart has contrast on the vertical axis and saturation on the horisontal. The right chart has color fidelity on the vertical axis and, again, saturation on the horizontal. So, Velvia 100F is high contrast, high saturation and high fidelity. Astia is low contrast, low saturation and high fidelity. Provia 100F is neutral in all three dimensions.

 

There's also a large chart on page 46 that shows the applicability of each film to various use cases, but of course you need Japanese to read it.

Fuji still makes film cameras.

 

At the very cheapest end you have disposable cameras - shoot one roll then turn in the entire camera for development.

 

They have a couple of low-end point and shoots, a few instant-film camera models and they still make the Klasse S and Klasse W 35mm compacts. Towards the high end you have the GF670 medium-format folder.

 

Their 35mm cameras: http://fujifilm.jp/personal/filmcamera/35mm/index.html

 

Instant film cameras: http://fujifilm.jp/personal/filmcamera/instant/index.html

 

The GF670: http://fujifilm.jp/personal/filmcamera/mediumformat/gf670/index.html

Rollei 35 is a good choice. Very small and well built, and the compact, blocky format without protruding stuff makes it really easy to keep in your coat pocket or bag. Scale focusing only, but in practice I have not found it to be a problem.

"Why is it when I come over to photo.net,someone always wants to reinvent something?"

 

Because reinventing stuff and building your own things is fun? And fun is why we're here after all, right? I mean, if all I wanted was decent pictures of scenery I would do much better by selling my camera gear and buy postcards instead.

I'm considering a project like this, with green and blue LEDs (a mix of blue and UV might be a good idea), controlled by a microcontroller. It'd have a front panel where I could directly dial in the grade and set the timer.

 

However, the enlarger bits I have (have the head, without the ligthsource part) is a condenser enlarger, not a diffuse one. What are the requirements for a condenser light source? Can it be a point light source or does it need to be diffused too, and does it need to be at a specific distance from the condenser lenses? I'm having a surprisingly hard time finding this info online.

I get much the same thing with my Rollei 35 with back light, though the edge is at the top and fairly close to the edge so I can crop it out. I'm pretty sure the cause is internal reflections/flare that is stopped by a baffle near the edge before it can reach the film, giving a visible edge.

"But the big issue, to me, is that if the camera is doing its job of determining proper white balance, and gray and white cards are valid ways of determining proper white balance, shouldn't they all look the same?"

 

 

No. Here's the thing: We humans are not great at white balancing. Our vision system tries to correct for changes in overall luminance, but it does an imperfect job. So a technically correct white balance (as determined by gray cards) can look off when it doesn't match the expected color tone. Usually, daylight situations will work OK with WB cards - sunlight, shade, cloudy and so on. But the more extreme the situation the more off it will be.

 

So, for instance, nighttime incandescent light balanced with a WB card will look much too blue - our vision is unable to completely compensate for the very reddish light, so we expect such scenes to be very warm-toned. On the opposite end, we expect anything under water to be bluish.

 

A WB card is a great way to get in the ballpark (and for technical photography it is sufficient and correct), but then you do need to adjust for our expectations and visual failings as well. The camera WB settings basically tries do do this, with varying amount of success. The real problem is, we can't just replicate human vision either, since our expected color tone for a picture is influenced by the brightness and tone of the room and surroundings we're in when viewing the picture too. The same print may look perfect outside on a cloudy day and completely off indoors at night.

 

BTW: No, I don't find any of the reds in the second image oversaturated, using two different monitors.

You may take a look at your monitor. To me the first one is too cold, while the second is well balanced. The third looks good too, if just a little green.

 

First, are these real grey and white cards, or just something grey and white you picked up around home? White, especially, tends to have a color cast of its own; if the "white" is really very lightly red-toned, the resulting white balance will be shifted like this. Get real white and grey swatches from an art store or similar to make sure you have neutral sources.

 

Second, you're standing in shade, with a bluish sky and greenish surroundings. Which is the light that the grey card sees, and will compensate for. That will result in a fairly warm cast - if you set your camera WB to "shadow" or "cloudy" you'll get a similar warm cast to your images.

 

And lastly, again, the second image is the one that looks most right to me - I would perhaps cool it just a touch, or keep as it is. The first one looks the most wrong, with a cold, blue tone.

About the simplest camera I own is the Handybox:

 

The complete manual - overview, exposure control and general photography tips:

Changing film (a picture could really have shortened this a lot):

 

I take it out when I really, truly don't want to care about the technology. The amazing thing is that this actually gives usable, occasionally beautiful images.

As someone who is considering 4x5 now and again, Charles brings up a point I've been wondering about: Why the obsession with very small apertures? I mean, a lens of a given focal length will give the same depth of field no matter what the size of the negative at the back. A wide lens for 4x5 is 90mm and a normal is around 150mm - but I use my 90mm and 165mm lenses for my Pentax 67 at f/5.6 to f/4 now and again, and, very occasionally, even down to f/2.8 if I need to. For urban settings you don't need the entire image to be in focus, and the potential for subject separation is often an advantage. And with camera movements to move the focus plane around I would expect larger depth of field to be even less important with a field camera than with a fixed MF camera, given the same focal length.

 

So am I missing something, or is the preoccupation with large DOF mainly critical for LF landscape photographers, and I've simply managed to only stumble on people writing about LF photography from that particular perspective? Is there any practical considerations as to why I couldn't get a 90mm or 135mm/5.6 lens and use it near wide open?

Doesn't the V600 have an LED light source? That's a decent improvement, with no warmup time and a more stable light source over time.

If I were you I'd first ask myself exactly how I was going to get that A0 print done and how much it's allowed to cost. Once you've found a print shop that can do it to your budget, look at what practical resolution you can make use of with that printer and then take it from there.

 

But yes, 6x7 is going to give you a lot more to work with - and the larger negative over 6x4.5 means you'll need less expensive scanning for the same result. You'll certainly need a tripod as well, as any movement is going to degrade your image. Don't get hung up on having autofocus. For reasonably static or slow-moving targets manual focus is quite easy with the large focusing aids you have with 6x7 cameras. If you intend to shoot fast-moving stuff, then you're not going to get really sharp images at that size without a very involved setup (strobe-only lighting to freeze movement for instance), with or without autofocus.

 

I'd look at a Pentax 67 or a Mamiya rather than the smaller format if I were you. I met a photographer working on an exhibition project two years ago. He was doing life-size and larger than life prints (2 meters vertical) of research robots. His tool of choice was a Mamiya 7, but any of the large MF cameras should be able to give you what you need.

It's the other way around; it's not worth making a bellows setup for a lens that is quite short already. I guess a collapsible lens mechanism would have been more doable, but they probably skipped that in the interest of keeping the cost down.

Shorter point: resolution is one factor of image quality, but not the only one; nor, necessarily, the most important one. Tonal range, the combined effect of focal length and angle of view, the extra possibilities inherent in a camera with movement as well as any number of other subtle factors all influence the image as much as the resolution.

The second. F-stop values (and focal lengths) are generally only approximate, and you also have varying amount of light absorption happening in the lens itself. Both of these factors are worse for zoom lenses, where the actual aperture will vary with the focal length, and that has more elements and surfaces to attenuate the light.

 

This is noticeable enough that film (as in movie) cameras use "T-stop", which is F-stops calibrated for these and other factors. If they did not, you'd get noticeable difference in brightness of a scene when you cut from one camera to another.

I came back from Paris a few weeks ago, with shots from my Yashica Mat, including a few taken at night. I use HP5 at iso800, developed in D76 1:1 dilution. It's roll-film of course, not 4x5 but it should work fine. If anything, you'd have even less of an issue with grain than I do with 6x6 format.

 

I'm still in the process of uploading stuff, but here's most night-time shots:

 

Notre Dame:

 

Street in Quartier Latin:

 

Hotel Observatoire Luxenbourg:

Richard, I don't mind at all. It's always fun when someone finds a use for a picture of mine. Strictly speaking you'd need to state my name to follow the license, but linking back to the image is fine.

 

Do keep in mind what I wrote about there being smaller lugs out there that look almost like the Pentax ones. Side by side it's obvious which is which, but standing in a store or looking at an online picture it's easy to be fooled.

Um $19!?

 

That's my picture and my camera above, and I got those lugs for 100 yen (less than a dollar) at a camera shop. I went in and asked about lugs for a P67, and the shop assistant brought out a big box with assorted second-hand straps. A bit of brief digging later we found some old strap with the lugs attached. 100 yen poorer I left the shop with the lugs.

 

Be a bit careful if you buy online: some 35mm cameras also used very similar lugs, but smaller. You can end up with a set of lugs that don't fit.

I have the just slightly newer model, still not a rangefinder, but with a very similar top plate to the rangefinder version. The lens and shutter is the same as yours, and I suspect pretty much all mechanics are too. I have the original 6x45 mask too ^_^.

 

It's a fairly good camera, though the lens and the scale focusing conspire to make the results just a little soft. Of course, with a 6x9 size negative, even "a little soft" is still more detail than my DSLR gives me. It's easy to use, but if you can find an accessory rangefinder it really helps quite a lot. The 6x4.5 mask is a little frustrating, as the finder framelines don't actually match up well in my camera, so it's pretty much hit and miss if you get the image you thought you took.

 

When I first got hold of it, I wrote up my initial impressions here: http://janneinosaka.blogspot.com/2008/08/voigtlnder-bessa.html

 

Here's the latest roll I've taken with it, earlier this summer:

Remember that pixel numbers don't really tell you what resolution you actually get. The whole chain, from subject and forward, matters - and that goes for the digital camera as much as for scanned film. Saying that "this scan gives me X times Y" or "this camera gives me X times Y" is really a little misleading. Unless you're using high quality lenses properly stopped down to their optimal aperture, on a tripod, with still subjects, you are going to have a somewhat degraded image before it's ever recorded on the film or sensor. Then, if you have high iso sensor or film you're losing detail; and of course with the film you need to worry about film flatness whereas the digital sensor has an AA filter and Bayer grid that both reduce your real resolution down from the nominal one.

 

The best way forward for you is really to go the other way: determine what level of detail you really need, and then - and only then - go backwards along the chain of influences to determine what you need to do to achieve that resolution. Chances are that you don't need nearly as much detail as you think, and other image quality characteristics are actually more important (color fidelity, dynamic range, depth of field and so on).

It needs 89mm to cover 6x7 (actually 56x70mm), so anything below 89mm is pretty unlikely. If you have a lens, it should be fairly straightforward to measure it yourself.