janne_moren

@Philip, if the image is too big, try simply cropping it. The cropped part would still be the same size as the corresponding area in the previous shot so it'd still be informative.

I scan the negative. That's the normal way to do it. The scanning software can turn the image into a positive image for you. For black and white it's easy of course, while for negative color film the software first has to subtract the orange mask in the film, then invert the colors. It's doable in photoshop if you absolutely want to, but really, why go to the extra trouble?

 

Scanning is a skill in itself, and you'll probably find it pretty frustrating the first couple of times. I use Vuescan, which does a very good job with the scanning part, but like most scanning software it can be pretty unfriendly to use. Generally I just use the scanning software to get the image off the film and reversing it into a positive. I save that as a DNG, then use the same RAW converter I use for digital cameras (UFRaw in my case) to continue the processing just like it was a digital image.

1) I would not worry too much about digital capability. Just get something for film that fits you and your budget now. Even if MF digital prices drop dramatically the cost of a body alone will probably dwarf what you spend on used MF equipment now. And used film equipment tends to hold its value fairly well, so you'll recoup a fair amount of your money if/when you resell it again.

 

Also, digital systems have sensor sizes that differ from their film counterparts, and lenses are better designed for the kind of sensor they are used with. So if you get the funds to buy a digital MF camera, chances are you'll want to buy lenses specifically for that camera anyway.

 

For film use you're really better off with larger formats - 6x6 or 6x7 or so, rather than 6x4.5. Larger formats are easier to scan with good quality even using inexpensive scanners. Digital MF, on the other hand, is all 6x4.5 or smaller. So lenses really act differently.

 

That said, Mamiya 645 and Hasselblad both have digital backs, though I don't know about specific compatibility issues between their film and digital gear. Pentax is supposed to release a digital 645 camera this spring, which will take the same lenses and stuff as the Pentax 645 film system. Larger format cameras, like the Pentax 67 that I use, don't have digital backs (and never will), but the lenses can generally be used on smaller formats with adapters.

 

Again, don't worry about a digital future. Pick an MF camera you're happy with now.

 

For scanning MF, especially larger MF, the Epson V500, V600 or V700 are good options. They're not all that expensive and they'll do both MF negatives and prints if you want. The V700 (which is what I have experience with) will do really nice 6x6 and 6x7 scans, and will do LF as well if you ever get into that. I use it for 35mm film too, but it's kind of marginal for that; if you ever want to do good-quality film 35mm you're probably better off with another scanning solution for that.

 

For the occasional shot you can have the film scanned of course, but it does add to the cost. The cheapest way is probably to have the lab do only development (for color) or develop yourself (for BW), scan at home using a decent flatbed scanner, and only have the lab do high-quality scans of those frames you decide you need to print big.

Just be aware that adding sound is a great way to chase away visitors. You have to decide that you really, _really_ need the sound for it to be worth the loss of traffic.

The Bronica 645RF is underrated. Has the wide lens you need along with a normal. Should be able to find in new or near-new condition for not that much money (my local store has a new kit with flash unit and everything for 100k yen).

Peter, you mention that your focusing screen in the camera is off. It shouldn't be. In fact, it should normally be very precise; certainly good enough to nail the focus at f/2 or even wider open. If it's off, then there's something wrong. It could be that the mirror needs adjustment, but it could also be misaligned optics in the lens or any number of other issues that will end up giving you overall soft pictures as a result. I'd really have a camera place look over the camera before trying to figure out the scanning bit.

 

BTW, the V700 is no dedicated film scanner, but it does give me 35mm scans that are good enough for the web or for printing small. For medium format it's really good. But if you aren't going to use medium format, then a good dedicated 35mm film scanner doesn't cost any more than the V700 does.

@Peter, flatbed scanners (the V700, which I have, included) generally don't give you more than about 2500dpi, no matter what the stated resolution is. Stuarts examples above look better because he's scanned or downscaled his shots to 2400 dpi while you're looking at your scans at 3200dpi. Scale down your image and you'll see an immediate improvement.

 

Also, sources of blur add up. So a somewhat low resolution scan of a slow shutter-speed indoor scene won't win the Crispily Sharp Picture Of The Year award.

The K10D won't net you very much by now, and you'll likely miss having a digital option as well. MF gear can still be had quite cheaply so you could pick a lens or two that you don't normally use much, sell those and get a basic MF kit. I like the Pentax 67 myself but a used Hasselblad, Mamiya RZ or similar are just as good. The Mamiya 7 - or the Rolleiflex TLR, another high-quality option - is in a different league, budget-wise, and while the Mamiya 7 is optically excellent they do have a reputation for being fragile. Exactly which camera depends a fair bit on how you want to use it. The relatively light and compact Pentax 67 and Hasselblad are good cameras in the field, while the RZ (or the Fuji MF SLR) really are at their best in a studio setting, for instance.

HS, if you decide to use UFRaw (and do consider it), know that DNG format is fine for color scans, but there's some weirdness with black and white images. Either Vuescan or UFRaw are not handling monochrome DNG files well. Instead, you save BW files as tif, with no compression or anything, and UFRaw can open that just fine.

I like Vuescan. I use it as my preferred scanner software of choice. But I am convinced that the batch scanning function was designed and implemented during an office Christmas party when everybody had drunk way too much eggnog and whisky sour's and thought it was a great idea to play a little practical joke on their customers. Then everybody sobered up, forgot all about the joke part and shipped it in the actual software. Now they're too embarrassed about that party to admit they should have included the real batch scanning system instead.

 

However, it does allow you to adjust on a per-frame basis. Set up batch scanning (have fun! Don't break anything in a fit of frustrated rage), then select that multiple scan thing in the first screen, with the slider you can use to go through the frames. At that point, most settings you change apply only to the frame you have selected. Though there is some checkbox and other settings that appears to prevent that sometimes.

 

I just use Vuescan to get a straight scan, with no color correction, film profiling or brightness or anything, then run UFRaw as a postprocessor instead. Works way better and my blood pressure thanks me for it.

@rick, I think that's key. Digital is quick and easy and you get instant feedback. It's a gateway drug for image making. It certainly was for me. Once you get hooked on the image creation process, you start getting curious about other ways of creating images, and will start experimenting. Perhaps mix digital and film in their hobby, or in a few cases even go over to the real hard stuff - view cameras, wet darkrooms, alternative processes - altogether.

"Songsten, I'm talking about people who try to claim that they NEVER even used a film camera. Like they never touched film or laid eyes on film in their lives. Are you saying that you NEVER took any pictures at all when you were a kid? Really?"

 

I'm forty. The first time I held a film camera in my hands was just about two years ago.

 

My parents had a camera, and so did my grandparents, and they used them now and again. I never cared, and I never took an interest. To me, the camera meant long, boring slide sessions with our summer holiday snapshots. It didn't seem fun to use, and the results where associated with the sleep-inducing tedium I guess some religious people associate with church.

 

When I got a digital point and shoot camera around 2003 it was for work, not play. A colleague had one and it looked really useful to bring on conferences to shoot posters and robot prototypes, and to use at the lab for things like documenting how some assembly was put together before you tear it down. A visual memory tool, not a means of expression.

 

Turned out, taking pictures was really fun. So I started caring about existing photography, reading up on the technology, and onto the slippery slope that's now led me to having a Pentax 67 with me on daytrips and photo walks.

 

But again, no, I never used a camera before 30.

Fuji Neopan 1600 is not available in 120. Not really an option for the OP.

I was never into photography when young, and never used film. It took forever to see the results and it was just a big hassle. When I did get a digital camera I got caught in the photography hobby. But I'd notice how many of the great images I see on exhibition walls and books were shot on MF film. So, about two years ago I got myself a cheap used MF TLR, just to see what using film would be like. I could just keep it as a decoration and conversation piece if I ended up never using it.

 

Turns out, using film is even more fun than digital for me. I use an old 35mm film P&S as my coat-pocket cam (needs no batteries so nothing to worry about), and a Pentax 67 as my main camera. The DSLR I mostly use for flash photography, for throwaway tests and when I need a picture fast for some reason.

 

Other people I've come in contact with seem to say much the same thing: they got into photography with the ease of digital camera, tried film just for fun ("the first one is free!") and got hooked on the process and the results.

It depends on the demosaic'ing algorithm. A converter like UFRaw lets you choose which converter to use, and there some method can give you maze-like patterns like this in some situations. All methods are compromises between conflicting goals of accurate color rendition with no bleeding, low noise, high detail and lack of artefacts like this. The best solution is of course to have an alternate method or two available and let the user switch in those cases the default method is unsatisfactory.

FYI, almost a third of the Pentax 67 weight is in the prism finder. If you use a waist-level finder the weight drops quite a lot. If I remember correctly it will not be any heavier than the Bronica when they're similarly equipped.

 

For handheld use you can in practice get away with the 1/focal length rule: with the wide lenses you can use 1/60, and 1/30 in a pinch, especially if you use the mirror lock-up, which is doable handheld too.

People use film cameras in cold winter temperatures all the time, and the film is as cold as the ambient temperature. If film couldn't handle being frozen you'd never have any winter shots on film.

 

Your only concern is when you take your equipment (and equipment, not just film cameras, or cameras) from freezing temperatures to warm indoor temps. A cold surface will cause condensation of any humidity in the air and end up getting wet. You can get around it by not exposing it directly to the warm air; leave the camera in the bag for a while, or put it in a plastic bag before you take it inside. Failing that, just not use it until it's warm and the water has evaporated again.

 

Again, remember that this is not camera-specific. Anything with a decent thermal conductance will gather moisture. You take any electronics or metal tools or similar inside they'll get wet as well. And of course, not everything will handle it well; some electronic components can actually rust over time for instance. Paper is usually fine, but I once saw what happens when you use a metal clipboard; the clipboard got wet and the papers on it turned into a soggy lump.

<i>I agree with most of what Janne writes, except for MS. Why is Apple less problematic then? Do their third parties always write better drivers etc for Apple than for MS?</i>

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Off topic, but no, Apple isn't inherently better. Their systems aren't as stable and trouble-free as their fans would like to think. They mostly get into less trouble by having less third-party stuff installed on the system by default. Your mac, when you buy it, is all Apple hardware, with Apple-written or tweaked drivers, tested to work well together. Your typical PC is a mix of drivers and stuff from various sources right out of the box, with much less testing for problems.

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The iPhone, Android phones and the like are not a good comparison - they all run a real OS with proper sandboxing of apps from the underlying hardware, rather like the Buffalo routers I mentioned above. They can absorb the extra cost of the software and the hardware needed because downloading and running stuff on them is a large part of the user expectation for those devices.

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A camera doesn't have the hardware or software needed to support that kind of thing. To do it they need real OS's with much more complex system development - any guess how many software developers works on Android at Google versus camera software at Pentax? The complex software needs stronger CPU's, much more memory, more power consumption (you want a camera that loses power after a day?), cooling and so on, making it bigger, more expensive or both.

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Which is fine if it ends up selling enough extra cameras. But unlike smartphones, most users have no interest in downloading apps to their camera (and remember, forget about controlling the camera hardware directly; that's the road to broken cameras and class-action lawsuits), and will simply shun the more expensive camera with the lousy battery time for the competitors.

There are two reasons electronic devices don't generally support this kind of thing.

 

First, support. You buy the camera from Pentax, and you (as in the public "you") will expect Pentax to support it. And that is even if you've downloaded dozens of third-party plugins and enhancements to your camera that ends up making it unstable and buggy. Yes, it is unreasonable to expect Pentax to guarantee the camera in such a case, and no, it's not reasonable to expect Pentax to be able to "fix" it when things go south, but you <i>know</i> that most camera buyers will not make that distinction and fully expect that support. It's a big, major support headache for any company.

 

Even for PC's where people really should know better by now, people are frequently blaming Microsoft for their unstable OS when it's some third-party driver or install that's causing the problem. I dislike MS as much as the next person, but they are getting a raw deal on this front.

 

Second, hardware. The camera software is driving the hardware directly. Software at that level can and will break things if written even a little wrong. I've once set fire to a robot with a software bug so I know what I'm talking about. You can set voltages and currents to components, you can make mechanical components collide by timing errors, you can regulate motor speeds past their design limits and and drive them past safe endpoints.

 

And there's more subtle things to go wrong too. What would happen if, say, you tried to increase frame rate by pulling down the mirror again a little earlier, so that the down solenoid is working against the upwards momentum of the mirror? Is the solenoid rated to handle that extra load or not? How do you find out without the data sheets, the precise mechanical design parameters of the construction, and the knowledge to read and understand it? If you test it, it may seem just fine one time, or ten times - or a hundred times - but end up reducing the lifetime of the mirror assembly by half or more.

 

Now, there are companies that do this. Buffalo, for instance, does allow you to replace the firmware in their routers and network drives. That situation is a little different though, as those things basically are small computers with no specialized electromechanical subsystems, and they run Linux internally already so it's already more akin to working with a PC than with a gadget. Even then, they're really careful to distance themselves from the DIY crowd; they help people play with their hardware, but being very careful never to have any kind of official endorsement of it. You won't find anything about this on their official website for instance.

Not a recommendation to you, but to note that a bag doesn't have to be all that big for the P67. I use a Lowepro Nova 2 bag for my P67 kit. I have the 90mm and 45mm and I mostly use the waist-level finder, and for that kit the camera and lenses fit quite nicely, with filters, cable release, odds and ends and all.

 

So why don't I recommend it? It's a little narrow for three lenses - the P67 lenses are fairly big diameter and it'd get cramped. And with the prism finder and tripod shoe it's also a tight fit in "depth". Also, with the P67 we often carry a tripod and this bag doesn't have any outside loops or anything for it so I have to carry it separately (I usually have some kind of general bag or backpack with me for other stuff).

 

So something a little bigger than the Nova 2 would actually be a very nice fit. The "Stealth Reporter" 300 or 400 are similar to the old Nova 2 but a little bigger, and look like they'd be good candidates. About the only thing I'd be concerned about is the tripod thing, but that may be more comfortable to carry separately in any case.

 

Oh, one thing about the Lowepro bags: they have this rain cover thing sown into a pocket and tucked away. It's pretty much useless, and it takes up a surprising amount of space folded up. I finally removed it (cut it away with scissors) and got a roomier front pocket as a result.

Sounds like a short in the shutter button. Perhaps a bit of grit has found its way inside and is jamming the button contact? You almost certainly need to have somebody look at it.

I had a LaCie Big disk. After about a year it failed; when I tried to start it up it'd just do this faint *tock* *tock* sound. It was still under warranty so I turned it in for repairs. They insisted it was the power supply that was at fault (sounded kind of unlikely though, as the initial boot seemed to work), and I got it back with wiped or new drives inside. After less than another year it failed again, in the exact same way.

 

Since a backup unit that fails every year is about as useful as a bowling ball made of tofu I just got a Buffalo network disk unit instead. Haven't had a problem since.

Make a scan/crop of the Hasselblad image at a resolution where it just starts to go fuzzy. Make a crop of the same area from the Nikon and enlarge it in PS to the same pixel dimensions. Compare. In other words, scale to the better image and see how the worse one fares by comparison.

I've found that Vuescan is great at the scanning part, but not so much for the postprocessing. I tend to get the best results just locking film base color and image color - no setting black or white point, no color balance tweaking, except that I set the brightness gamma setting (1.3 - 1.6 is fine there; you get blocked shadows at the default 1.0 setting) and just scan the whole roll like that. Save in 16 bit, then use a separate app (I use UFRaw) to do all brightness, color and contrast work.

If I may interrupt the surely new, fresh and fascinating film vs. digital discussion, can I go back to one thing the OP said: "I was amazed at how hard it was to focus. "

 

You have a Hasselblad and you imply that you used it well before you got started on digital. Which likely makes you not quite a spring chicken any more. And one thing I just learned by my own experience is that presbyopia - age-related inability to focus close - really does creep up on you without you noticing, and can do so at a much younger age than many people perhaps believe.

 

I recently got my first pair of progressive glasses, after probably a year or more of worsening near eyesight. The two things that really hit me was 1) hey, I can read in dim light again! and 2) wow, manual focus suddenly got a whole lot easier. And not just a plain ground glass like on my Pentax 67 either; a split image prism isn't nearly as useful as it can be when the edge you try to line up is blurry.

 

So no matter what else you try, do take the time to check your eyes. Changes creep up on us without us noticing, and life is too short to run around getting unfocused shots when we don't have to.