janne_moren

I sometimes do film clips from images as part of my job (rendered graphics from a simulator but the same principle applies). I use MEncoder for this; it is a command line application but I believe there's graphical frontends for it as well. The trick is not finding a piece of software that will do this for you, however, but to figure out what format and settings to use. It's like processing RAW or scanning stuff, only worse: it's easy enough to get so-so results, but to really get a high-quality clip - and one that will actually play on all the devices you want - you end up having to delve fairly deeply into a morass of codecs and parameters.

Interesting, thanks. How does this compare to or relate to gnome-color-manager? ( http://projects.gnome.org/gnome-color-manager/ )

Not quite what you look for perhaps, but here's a Flickr image showing the same scene shot at +3 to -2 on negative film, then brightness adjusted. You can see what actually happens in the shadows and highlights as a result of various exposures.

 

 

Takeaway message, I think: If you use negative film then avoid too much underexposure, but other than that just don't worry about getting your exposure right.

"that is apps might work on 1.6 but not 2.1."

 

Nope. Everything is forward-compatible. You only need to write for newer versions if they have some feature lacking in the older OS. Same situation as for iPhone or any other platform really.

Vuescan's color balance, brightness and curve editing tools are pretty bad. There's every reason to get your image out of Vuescan and into a good editor as early as possible. And RAW converters are made to do exactly this initial editing so there's no reason not to use one if it's flexible enough. I use UFraw for this; any other modern converter would work nicely too.

I get a similar problem with Vuescan and the Epson V700. It seems some brightness adjustments aren't actually applied to the file you save, but only shown on-screen. It's not completely consistent, though, and I've yet to nail down exactly what the problem is. Nowadays I treat Vuescan as just a scanner - do straight scans with no adjustments other than the basic film color profile, then do all the brightness and other tweaking in other applications afterwards.

Can't you add a stabiliser on the top, just to stop the rocking? At least as a makeshift solution? Something like a light metal tube (~2mm or so), or even a flat strip of wood going from the body top to the front would do the trick. It doesn't need to be strong or anything. If you just want to try it out you could even fix the wood strip with gaffer's tape on both ends: set the camera, then add the wood strip to stabilize it. If it works you can do a somewhat more permanent variant with a metal tube and sliders with thumbscrews.

Why ABS, specifically? Any plastic tubing should be fine.

Of course, at about €1000, he could get a used Mamiya 7 and a lens. Since that level is out of the question, then so would a 5D.

Do realize that if price is important then you will have to look at cameras that are old, large and heavy, and/or optically less than great. It's like the old slogan: "Cheap! Fast! Good! Pick any two!".

 

For cheap and small, you'll have to look at old folders. The optics won't be up to today's standards, and they'll have planty of scope for problems with alignment, leaking bellows and so on. If you want cheap and good, then say hello to weight and bulk, with something like a Bronica or a press camera. For small and good you have the Mamiya 7 as well as the apparently excellent new Fuji 667 folder (which would make a near perfect travel camera), but those are going to eat a fairly big chunk of your money.

 

If there really were a camera that was cheap, small and good, I guess all of us would own it already.

Good idea. I made thin plastic insets that wedge in the holder edges for the same effect. I don't use them much though; I flatten my MF film in a book for a day instead and scan them.

Different demosaicing algorithms. Also, different default processing parameters. Remember, there is no such thing as "no manipulation"; it's the same as "I trust the software developers taste and use their default manipulation".

 

If you download UFRaw, another RAW converter, you can choose different demosaicing algorithms and see the difference directly. There is no one "best" method; if you want to preserve more detail, for instance, you generally end up with more color fringing and noise.

Ray, shutter vibration is caused by the whole camera and lens setup swinging like a pendulum (which is why shorter lenses are fine). So you'll probably have a problem with that for longer than 1 second as well. But again, only if you use long lenses, and only if you don't add an extra strut to stop the swinging. As an aside, I suspect a lot of cameras have the same issue with long lenses; it's just not as obvious there.

I like the slower process. It forces me to think and results in better pictures. I also like that I only get a dozen images or less on a roll - having a hundred or more digital images to go through after a trip is frankly a bit discouraging to me, especially as I end up with about as many pictures I'm happy with in either case.

 

There's also an intangible difference in look between film and digital, and between MF and smaller formats. A "stillness" or prescence or what have you - it's hard to put in words but it's there. I could take the same subject with a DSLR and the Pentax 67, approximating the same DOF (landscape with small aperture) and postprocess them to look similar and I still end up much happier with the MF shot.

 

Finally, I find the whole process, with loading rolls, developing and so on, to be fun. Which in the end is the whole point after all.

Shutter slap is a problem only for longer lenses (200mm or up) that unbalance the whole setup, and apparently resolved by adding weight on top of the camera or using a second tripod or an extra strut from the tripod so both lens and body are supported and can't start swinging. For what it's worth, I have had no such problem with a 165mm lens.

 

With shorter lenses, mirror slap and shutter slap is much less of a problem than you may think. In practice you can use the 1/focal length rule of thumb for handheld shots, with 1/60 for the wide lenses, 1/125 for normals and 1/250 for short teles. You can of course go another stop or two slower but your miss rate will increase.

 

Check this link for a table of available lenses and their filter sizes: http://web.mit.edu/dennis/www/pentax67/lens-info.html

I just built a pinhole camera and using paper negatives. Paper is not sensitive to red light, and of course indoor light tend to contain mostly red light. The rule of thumb I've heard for paper negatives is ISO 10 outdoors to ISO 2 for indoor use. This seems to fit my (very limited) experience using it. I guess that you could hold a blue filter in front of the light meter you use to compensate for this.

 

On a related issue: I used D76 at about 1:1 or so to develop the paper. It seems to give a pretty agreeable contrast (the real world is contrastier than a negative so film developer makes sense I guess). I suspect that I underdevelop the paper, though; when I develop the paper the highlights look plenty black, but during fixing (2 minutes or so) they look a little lighter and once they dry they're more like a dark grey. Should I simply leave them in developer for longer than seems appropriate or is there something else I'm missing?

In my experience HP5+ at 800 developed in D-76 1:1 is a great combination. But as you say, it may well get too contrasty if pushed even further. It'd be interesting to try.

The Fuji/Voigtlander 6x7 folder is probably the most portable high-quality option you can find. The Pentax 67 is actually pretty portable; it's no bigger than the current crop of high-end digital SLRs.

 

Just make sure you check the minimum focus distance if you plan to do tight portraits; the Mamiya 7, for instance, doesn't focus close enough for head shots.

It should work well enough for practical use, though you probably have to empirically measure the resulting light level for each cut-out aperture. As a bonus, you can change the shape of OOF highlights simply by cutting out other shapes in the cardboard.

Pentax 67 (with battery and fil) , WLF, 105/2.4 - 1973 grams

 

Ditto, with the 90/2.8 - 1863 grams

USB 2.0 can handle it. Firewire 400 is around 50% faster than USB 2.0, which makes them comparable in speed. And after all, most external hard drives use USB interfaces, transferring larger data sets than a scanner. Overall, Firewire is becoming a niche system, used only when you need high speed, low latency throughput - video cameras, mostly.

"I think used 4x5" view cameras and press cameras aren't that expensive.

The real difficulty is in learning to master them, I suppose."

 

And convincing other members of your household that yes, you really do need another half a cupboard of camera gear at home.

 

I'd love to have a view camera to play with; I just don't think I'd use it often enough to make it a reasonable purchase.

Or a toy camera like a Holga or Diana, perhaps, suitably modified? Or a home-built pinhole camera or the like?

I use both a Yashica Mat and a Pentax 67 with waislevel finder for street photography. If anything, the Yashica Mat, with its distinctive TLR design, draws more attention than the Pentax. Either is perfectly fine for the task, though.

Not quite....

 

Keep going; lots of us really want to see it :)