nathan_bonsal

June 12, 2012

Look, lots of people on this forum are going to tell you that there's hardly any point to 645 systems. I'm going to tell you they're all bonkers. Film even in the 1970s and 1980s does not compare to modern emulsions at all. 645 is plenty for 90 percent of all you're ever going to do. It's still well over twice the surface area of 35mm film, which is used professionally for prints up to 16X20 quite regularly.

But you asked about digital backs. If you truly want to go that route, get a Mamiya 645AFD or similar. It is a great camera, and you'll learn a lot from it. Since you didn't ask about camera movements or architectural photography, I'm assuming you aren't really interested in spending the insane amount of money needed to do that right, just as I'm assuming you aren't shooting birds in medium format at 1100mm at f5.6 with a 26,000 dollar lens that there's only one of in the entire world.

EXPECT to spend 5-10 thousand for the camera and lenses, and 22 to 40 thousand for the digital back. That's what that path costs. If you don't have that, then you probably don't want to go digital medium format.

May 10, 2012

Portra 800 can be pushed a stop without too much odd behavior. Portra 400 can be pushed as well, to quite good results.

Superia 1600 is a bit grainy, but still gives decent results. Personally, I would use Portra 800 and shoot it wide open before going to 1600. If it's so dark that you need 1600, perhaps the venue needs more light. Since that's not an option available to you, and you need to shoot color, I'd go with the Portra, as it's low contrast and very forgiving WRT exposure.

May 4, 2012

If you want plenty of OOMPH, try a roll of Fuji Provia 400x slide film, or Velvia 100f. Slide film might be just what you're looking for. Kodak E100G is nice too, and though it's discontinued, some places still have a bit in stock. Fuji Superia Reala is also nice, but grainy and not loaded with much in the way of saturation. The Velvia 100f is not as color-accurate as Portra, but not as ruddy as Velvia 50. Provia is a very acceptable film.

The fashion guys you're probably talking about shot on slide film. Wedding guys only do that if they're a bit touched in the head. For weddings, it's a bit safer to shoot negs.

May 1, 2012

Shooting wide open or shooting at low apertures requires either very low power settings on your strobes, highly modified light from your strobes, or a ND filter on your lens.

The easiest thing is to modify the strobes. Adding filters to the lens while shooting indoors can lead to difficulty with autofocus, difficulty with the dimness of the viewfinder, and all manner of other annoyances related to the lack of light while focusing and composing.

A cheater method-

If you use a reflector on your monolight, you can make some aperture cards to put over the opening of the 7 or 8 inch reflector. Then, aim at a silver or white umbrella, and BOOM, lower power.

Or shoot into a larger umbrella that's farther away. If using a softbox, get a bigger one and move it farther back.

April 24, 2012

Film is not so terribly difficult to produce that a startup with several million dollars could not begin to produce film even if Kodak and Fuji both stopped producing. Moreover, if that unlikely scenario were to occur, it would be nearly guaranteed that someone would feel compelled to produce film, provided that there were several thousand people worldwide willing to pay 12.00 US per roll. Certainly, the business units producing film within Kodak and Fuji would be sold, not dismantled. Some of these film factories would end up turnkey businesses for investment groups.

I think there are that many people willing to pay that price. Not all of us are, and to be sure, if the price increased that drastically, many of us would bow out of color film. Certainly not all of us would, though. For the right emulsion, like Kodak Portra, if I had to, I would pay 11 or 12 dollars a roll, but it would hurt, and I'd use it a lot less. Processing and scanning costs me 20 dollars a roll already.

April 17, 2012

I'm in Rio Rancho and I send my film away. I haven't found any labs in Albuqerque that can handle 120. They all send it out, so I'm sending my 120 to North Coast Photographic Services in CA.

April 11, 2012

In the near term, you can temporarily fix it by putting some black tape around the film back and over the dark slide slot, and slitting the dark slide slot with a razor. It'll be a heck of an inconvenience until you send it in, though.

April 3, 2012

Inside the mirror box of the RB, you can add some pieces of scotch tape, or even paper held down with same. Don't destroy the blacking, defeat it. Another thing you can do is to modify a film back with a paper cutout of whatever reflectance you want so that behind the film, there's a white surface- but not everywhere. You can even add a little foil tape to the lens mount from the back (inside the camera). You can add a piece of cellophane over the lens with a round hole cut in it. There are a million creative things you can do to create artifacts or intentional defects. To get some idea, just remember what a perfect camera has to have- you can defeat any combination of them and end up with interesting results:

Light tight box

nonreflective interior (dull blackness)

unobstructed light path

well ground lenses that are clean and color-corrected

lens axis perpendicular to film plane and centered

black behind the film so that light only gets one shot at absorbtion

film is held flat

aperture is round

aperture is centered with respect to lens axis

the entire exposure is made with the same aperture- ie the aperture blades are held immobile during exposure

one exposure per frame of film followed by isolation from additional illumination

process chemistry is proper for film type and agitation is consistent with all areas of film receiving the same process

film is not scratched or damaged and the film has not passed its expiration date

March 20, 2012

Wait, you want to deliberately brute-force a camera housing? A vintage camera housing? Something about that just seems to give me the heeby-jeebies.

March 20, 2012

In simplest terms, temperature is a rate of vibration. Warmer things vibrate more, and faster. This influences chemicals' rate of reaction because elevated temperature increases the rate at which one chemical's molecules contact other chemicals' molecules. This principle exists for all chemical reactions. So, since film processing is the careful control of chemical reactions, which we stop at some predetermined point deliberately to preserve the image-holding ability of silver compounds, we must take temperature into account in order to stop the reaction at a similar point each time.

So, since you're initiating a reaction and then interrupting it somewhere between "nothing has happened yet" and "everything that can happen has happened", we need to control the reaction for temperature, meaning that if temperature is a variable in the equation, it influences the time portion of the equation.

March 16, 2012

The black tab is NOT a latch. Do not push it. The silver peg is the latch. Move it and the black tab will provide a good handle for lifting the focusing screen.

March 16, 2012

If the battery is dead, or no battery is installed, (4LR44 or A23), your shutter speed will be 1/500th of a second regardless of the shutter setting. Be sure a proper battery is installed. The shutter will NOT work unless you have a properly advanced film back with film in it. This is because the body can detect whether the film is past the wind-on section of film. An empty back will not cause this advance signal.

So, if you've only tried it with no film, this behavior is entirely normal.

March 7, 2012

Instead of shooting black and white as suggested, go ahead and shoot your Portra. If you have color balance issues that can't be corrected in post, convert to black and white at that point. Preserve your options for using color, don't limit your output by bringing a limited medium with you- especially if it's a limitation that can be imposed later and voluntarily.

February 20, 2012

That is quite possibly the filthiest lens for any purpose that I've ever seen anyone willingly sell.

Find a new vendor.

February 14, 2012

I hope you have a professional engineer who owes you 4 months of his time at 40 hours per week. At a minimum. Seriously, this is a fool's errand.

Just buy a Pentax. Seriously. It is ALWAYS more expensive and difficult to reinvent a thing in order to build one than it is to initially invent it with the intention of selling tens of thousands.

Unless you have the practical skills to actually DIY (you don't). your results will always be kludgy, will lack essential features, and be too fragile for practical use. Just aligning the two sensors such that they are in the same plane, while having them both soldered to circuits without ruining them is going to be a total pain.

The physical work, while finicky, is nothing compared to the circuit layout and assembly. You will NEED a professional circuit board, the ability to work with BGAs, and some technique to not melt the AA filter and IR cut filters that were glued onto your sensors after they were installed. It's going to be messy, and you'll be risking the entire project and all funds involved at every step of the operation. You'll have no spares. If anything goes even slightly wrong, you will have nothing to show for your money or have an aborted or hopelessly inferior output for similar money to the professional rig.

February 10, 2012

I have a mint T70 and a mint T90 I got for a song because of the issues Dave Sims mentioned. both are great cameras.

February 9, 2012

Bronica ETRS and ETRSi work fine with silver oxide or alkaline, but lithium batteries don't work as well in those bodies. In the ETRS manual, it advises against the use of lithium batteries.

January 30, 2012

I use version 10 quite regularly- it's very useful, but the default settings are TOO good. I dial it back a bit on the face sculpting controls and the skin controls- otherwise it looks too artificial to me. The relight function can also trip you up. I disable that about half the time, and turn it way down the other half of the time.

The nice thing is that you can dial it way back and save a preset, and then it's very useful.

January 30, 2012

Purist? As in someone who intentionally limits himself? Yuck. Who'd want to do that?

I love film, and I love digital, but I use them in different situations. Many times, I shoot both in one shoot.

For me, a purist is a snob who's gotten stuck in a rut, and damns others for not doing as they do. I can respect someone who wants to master just one medium, but for me a purist is someone who thinks they are actually better than others because he is "pure" to some ridiculous standard that he made up for himself.

January 27, 2012

I got my first test roll of 120 back, enhanced scans are highly aliased. At 100 percent, they look like they are shot through a screen door. Compression artifacts abound. Going back to North Coast Photo. They're slightly less expensive and scan to four times the resolution, and the resolution is real. Actual usable resolution is about 50 percent of stated, so "enhanced" scans are good for 4x6 maybe, if you don't mind looking at visible vertical and horizontal line artifacts and absolutely zero detail.

2048X1536 vs 4824X3533 for 645 format. I would not waste my time again with thedarkroom.com.

January 26, 2012

FFS don't get a holga. Extremely limited exposure controls, meaning that you won't learn anything. Choosing between F11 and the OTHER F11 is not photography.

Also, don't Holgas even lack shutter speed controls? Aren't their aperture controls a lie?

If you absolutely MUST get a plastic camera, get a lubitel.

I bring my ETRS system to quite a few places. It's huge but NOTHING compared to the RZ67 and GS-1.

January 25, 2012

Bronica ETRSi, Mamiya RZ67, Bronica GS-1, Mamiya 645. Leaf shutter is better than focal plane shutter for many things including balancing flash with natural light (faster synch speeds).

The Pentax 645 is a pretty nice camera, but the Mamiya is basically equivalent.

January 18, 2012

The "film is dead" argument is ridiculous when one considers what they would pay to whoever bought the film production facility from Kodak for a roll of 120 film.

Seriously, I wouldn't have any problem with 8 bucks a roll as long as they keep making it.

January 18, 2012

I tend to shoot a tiny bit loose with medium format, with my Four Thirds camera I am less likely to do that, though. The E-30 has a 96% viewfinder, so I tend to tighten up knowing that what I see is actually already cropped in a little.

With medium format film cameras, though, since I only have primes it can be difficult to get the exact composition I want using only my feet. In that case, I crop a bit as needed. Usually, I have some idea of what I'll do later at the time I press the shutter.

January 18, 2012

The truly fantastic thing about copycats is how amazingly easy it is to stay ahead of a competitor who insists on following you.

If you have a style that can be easily copied, refine your style, vary your technique, get good at different things. Don't post technical details about how anything was accomplished- that would be like Nabisco posting the recipe for fig newtons online for their fans.

Sign In

Profiles

Forums

Blogs

Events

Downloads

Gallery

Store

Posts posted by nathan_bonsal