borys_pomianek

May 20, 2015

To be perfectly honest I have a nagging feeling that the vitality and other such terms too often relate to an aging photographers or any artists need for connecting with their former attitudes and outlooks but with hopes of applying their acrued experience "this time around".

To this end I would think that terms like vitality are often psychologically connected with the idea and need for virility.

A photograph can depict a subject that symbolises vitality or expresses vitality either as a cultural archetype or a psychological archetype (ala Jung) of some type but as a universal property I cannot really find a place for the term vitality when it comes to photography as a whole.

A photographer can have vitality but can a photograph have vitality? Upon an additional separate ponder in between writing this, I have to still say no. My personal experience with other photographers, especially those older than me and even more so especially those who I had contact with at places of artistic learning so to speak, was that many of them where personally obsessed (that is their personal lives seemed to revolve around it more than their proffesional lives) with applying their control over the form to the goals of their youth and somewhat obsessed with youth in general.

I think photographers want to have vitality - that is they do not want their photographs to suffer from the lack of vitality in the author so to speak. I think it is more about the perception of getting weaker or older or less viral. Photography to some extent is a technological struggle so that pushes the scale towards the general feeling of becoming progressively more dead if one does not actively try to do something to balance it out.

In comparison in music I am experiencing something similar when it comes to sound engineering where it seems that everyday spent on it ages me a month so ever since I've been working in that field I suddenly feel the need to play an extended blues and crank up the amplifier while before that I felt plenty alive styding Charlie Parket transcriptions.

I appreciate Shakespear but I cannot shake the feeling as a reader that he is very much dead, even as I am fully trapped in the context of a given play. Considering the immense heft of the tomes collecting his work I would conclude that me not getting a sense of vitality from his work (even from Midsummer Night's Dream) does not damage his artistic stature. Shakespears voice on youth seems to come out of an old mans mouth to me while Jules Verne voice even on the topic of old age still seems to come out of a youthfull mans mouth to me.

So maybe there is some quality like vitality to be had but again I feel it's all about the author and what we can gleam of the authors attitude, not about the work itself.

Communicated through the work but about the author and on the side, not the main substence of the work itself. In my opinion it's not related to the work being great or not. Then again these days many people make the substence of their work to be about them and their own identity so achieving the desired perception in the viewer of who the artist is could be considered an artistic success.

As for my own goals I want to remove my self personally from the substance but impose my self on the eloquence aspect - To close a loop, I feel some older photographers are trying to add something fresh to how they work by inserting themselves into the substance more now that they have a handle on the eloquence or so it seems to me. I am not yet an older photographer yet so I personally do not want to go that way and do not strive for it - I feel it's not nessesary to produce good work either. I might change my mind as the technological struggle grinds me down further though.

Is this of any insight? Is it even relevant, I don't know - I think our global culture is obsessed with virility so because to me vitality connects in my laymans understanding of psychology with virility I feel constant sensory overload with images of virility and people striving to express all it's representations.

I suppose an artistic success could be had by expressing vitality in a very clever way by doing it in it's most typical way (ala Venus de Milo) but without people as subject matter, to express the same angular properties and the same proportions, the same balance of composition. If those chairs in that photograph posted would cleverly read with all the shapes and ratios of the classical world's idea of vitality then it would express eloquence I suppose - I'm just again very tired of this kind of thing because I think too many people in the higher structure of creative learning are using that as a gimmick in some form or other so I almost refuse to try to read these things out of a work.

May 15, 2015

Cheers guys - I almost forgot about this post - had some very busy time lately and was forced to put everything on the backburner - I will check your recommendations.

March 19, 2015

Hey Guys,

I am looking to buy a Phase One P25 or P25+ digital back in V mount and having a hard time finding any on ebay or other places in the specified mount - alternatively other backs with the same sensor such as a Sinar 54h provided the V mount plate is included.

I am not a commercial photographer so price is the main deciding factor in my current situation and I only need tethered operation - if you are interested in selling one of the above for a reasonable price (ie. I can't afford the speculative prices often seen on ebay - which btw almost never seem to sell) please let me know. I am currently located in Poland but if I could get to you cheaply enough I can also pay cash - otherwise I can do Paypal.

Rgds, BP

August 22, 2014

Hi peter, do you mean the enlarger mask or the enlarger desktop that holds the enlarger head itself? Maybe the holder that goes into the enlarger itself?

The mask is just an adjustable frame, at least those I used in school where so I think just making my own frame is better at the moment. The holder that goes into the head is not very precise and the ones I've seen at best feature an AN glass insert.

If you mean the desk/rail combination for mounting an enlarger head - I did consider this in order to avoid having both "planes" oscillating separately and some report to do it that way with good success however the holder itself has to go on something, legs or another table. Since I have a very good wooden tripod if I can solve the problem of a sturdy table I don't need to put the enlarger thingie on top, just the light table directly - it's really the light table mounting that is giving me 99% of the oscillations. I've just put together a DIY table real fast to fit nicely beside my tripod for the experimentation so I will replace it with something better and put it on more stable flooring later in the process.

As a side note I found out that AN glass can be acquired as an insert for the enlarger holders that go into the enlarger heads. A 100mmx70mm piece was available for about 17 quid including a metal 6x6 mask to go with it (free postage in my area too). Dedicated AN glass sites offered similar sizes for twenty something pounds (+expensive postage) without the metal mask. I am dedicated to wet mounting at this point but might fall back on using that if it all goes south.

So yeah I did consider the above enlarger related solutions Peter, I even considered using an enlarger inverted as a continuous light source instead of the light table. I might visit one of the darkrooms I used to have access to at one point and just experiment. At the moment I really am short on tools and bits and bobs to try such things as I don't have a darkroom setup - it was always someone else's back in my 35mm days.

August 21, 2014

I am actually "scanning" with a dslr Peter so for me it would go light source > plate > film > lens > bellows > dslr.

If I can get the film to just stay there nice and flat thanks to gravity without the acetate/mylar layer then my logic is why add yet another layer. I will try to grab some acetate/mylar but will experiment both ways just in case it's not necessary

One of the problems I am facing is that I am no longer located in the UK and local shops don't really have the true and tested ways the english speaking internet world is enjoying or they sell it under a different name - i've been explaining what I am trying to do to clueless clerks for a few days now.

For instance I found out that I may have a chance to grab a kerosane type liquid (called rectified naptha) in the form of a homeopathic medicine intended for drinking (can you believe it!?). I've been given an address for a local homeopathic pharmacy so I am making a tin foil hat as we speak before I brave it tomorrow.

The nasty naptha I bought in the first place is considered to be lamp fuel over here so I can't ask for that and get the right stuff either. There are literary no hardware shops left where I live right now, only the big soulless ones where it takes 3 hours to find someone to help you out and all they carry is cheapo crap sold at a large markup.

I've ordered an affordable 1L of film cleaning fluid just in case whatever I manage to find leaves reside ofter use.

Price is a big deal - the cleaning fluid I think is about 5quid/9dollars for 1L but say 110ml of PEC12 is more like 30 quid on ebay UK + expensive shipping. The same holds true for popular mounting fluids and other accessories so DIY is almost a must for me.

Even before starting this thread I scoured almost everything google would give me on the subject. I am dealing with a number of issues that where not mentioned by others trying to do a similar thing so that is why I am a bit reticent on some of these methods, at least until I figure out what is causing the problem. Light diffraction is an issue for instance - I have to do a lot of testing before I am convinced that the mylar would not cause a decrease in sharpness. If it has any visible texture at high magnifications then it will be impossible for me to focus on the film grain instead of that texture (i've already had that issue with the light table surface).

August 20, 2014

I might actually try the mylar then (but I am still worried about it having it's own texture at the magnification levels I go into), if I can get it in a physical shop in my area, I would rather avoid ordering it from afar and then realising I've been sent yet another optical layer that has it's own texture. I have a few days to meditate on the whole thing as I am waiting for a new light source to arrive. Plexiglass was surprisingly good material to work with though. I've made my "carrier plate" with it - just a couple of minutes with a cheap saw blade intended for cutting metal.

If I may share - I bought these sort of large soft rubber pads (intended for cutting to size and gluing under furniture legs) and those seem to not scratch the film so I've been using that to flatten the film and move the mounting liquid around to get the bubbles out. I also bought a few small pressure rollers but those where all bad for the job. Some of the sources recommend a microfibre cloth but the pads seem to be more delicate on the film as even when bent they always form a round surface on the edge. I form the shape according to how I want to move the fluid and then press down and avoid dragging anything across the film.

August 20, 2014

Hey guys,

Good stuff - I've been doing a ton of reading so I am trying out all the different approaches.

Kerosene is actually a rectified version of naptha according to the internet so I will try and get that next. Spray bottle is a good idea although I am slightly worried about it increasing the amount of bubbles to deal with and also about breathing in the fumes (even if odourless there can be fumes with these kind of chemicals). I think the rectified naptha is sold in pharmacies over in my area too - it might be the same thing but I don't know, some people call it medicinal naptha and reportedly use it for their hair.

I am not sold on the mylar - I think it makes a bit more sense to cut out the specific frame I want to work with (120 film btw.) and then liquid mount and tape down the edges. I've already tried this with baby oil and it seems with an improvement in technique (to make it less messy) it would be possible. For contact sheet type shots I just want to dry mount but for stuff that is going to be printed I will be working at high magnifications and using a slow manual process so I think cutting out the frames will have to be done even if I go with the mylar when liquid mounting.

The shots I want to liquid mount will be reproduced once and reproduced well so I plan to just cut them out and then just store them in an archive after the process. 120 film storage fits 3 frames per strip anyway so it's not hat big of a deal as with 35mm stuff. I was also considering storing the cut out negatives in slide holders.

Also alternatively to mylar I was thinking of just using clear plexi glass - it just seems easier to press down on it to get the film perfectly flat compared to mylar.

I would love to just gram Kami or something other of the sort but I found no supplier in the EU that would offer sensible prices. I'd rather use a DIY mounting approach and then shell out for PEC12 or some other film cleaner to clean it up since I've seen many people complaining that the commercial solutions often leave reside (for this or other reason) and it has to be cleaned anyway.

August 18, 2014

Hey Guys,

I am trying to wet mount modern colour negatives on my custom reproduction rig and I want to figure out the best way to go about doing so with baby oil.

I've already experimented with baby oil and while it's very messy and there are bubbles it is the only solution that does not stink to high heaven and is not toxic or volatile.

I've also bought some naptha but I can't work with it without thick gloves and forced ventilation - I really din't expect it to be that big of a deal but it's nasty stuff!

So i've already did some wet mounting badly with the baby oil and I have yet to figure out how to clean the negatives afterwards.

One way would be to wash it with some dish washing liquid diluted in a warm bath and then give it another wash with fotonal and hang it up to dry but I am worried this will destroy the negatives.

The other way that comes to mind is washing it with the naptha and then in clean water and then in the fotonal and hang up to dry.

Which one would make more sense? maybe a different idea altogether? I am located in europe so literary 99% of what people recommend to use for wet mounting is not available at all, can't be delivered and even if it could it is prohibitively expensive when you add up customs/postage and currency exchange.

I would prefer to wash the negatives in a way that does not require rubbing them with any sort of pads since the baby oil will in practice get onto both sides most likely and I don't want to rub the emulsion off.

Cheerio,

BP

August 18, 2014

Hey Guys,

I've been hitting this subject hard since my last post and I've been making slow progress in maniacal leaps of 8h shifts of researching, building and testing.

Some of the issues I need to resolve right now is a better light source, newton rings and oddly enough the biggest offender at the moment which is surprisingly PS photomerge. The blending is really bad and the alignment only gets within 90% so I get better results by hand atm as there is no easy way to fix the remaining 10% when done on auto. Minor things include support stability (vibrations) and dust which first require a better room and better tethered support for the dslr.

Issues I've already resolved to some degree is mounting the camera on a low vibration wooden tripod and mounting the light source on a table I've made to purpose, aligning the film plane with the focal plane of the digital sensor within the mechanical limitations of the mounts responsible for both planes with measurement, managed to setup tethered shooting for the d3200 (quality histogram) on my mac (a lot of lost hair) and managed to create an already very good preset in cameraraw for processing colour negatives.

I've bought a brand new nikon d3200 to work as my digital back since I was tired of waiting for a used D600 and I am determined to make the rig work first with that and then once the physical aspects are sorted I will choose the optimal digital element for the setup. I'm using a shitty hassel-nikon adapter and the rest is my hasselblad setup (which is good stuff imho). I am keen to buy an old digital back for the hasselblad rather than another small dslr - once the d3200 is no longer nessesary I will grab a cheap matte rig and turn it into a video camera.

For any one interested you can definitely make it work with a d3200 which is dirt cheap compared to say a Nikon d600/d800 or the comparable canon d5 mk II/mk III. Tethered shooting can be done but not with live view, you can hack your way into live view but it is at the lcd resolution of the camera itself so I'd rather do my initial focusing with the eyepiece. In practice tethered is downloading the RAW's in a few seconds so I just take say 20 shots and judge focus that way when setting up and then might correct focus for specific shots midway if I see it gets too far out of whack.

I take 9 shots at 24MP at the moment purely because I use my bellows accessory which starts at a pretty large magnification given the adapter + crop already present. I think the auto stitching would be better at 6 shots but for that I need some extension rings which I am trying to buy right now used. At the current magnification levels that requires the 9 shots minimum I get about 160 MP which is workable therefore I will try and make the rig work at those magnification levels and then at a 2shot stitch magnification level for general archival/selection tasks. The auto stitching should do fine with just 2 shots I hope.

According to my current experience the most important element is film flatness and newton rings - I have yet to get it flat enough so that the limitation is the lens. Light source heats up the film so I doubt anti newton glass would help unless the film is sandwiched in it which means another optical element besides air between the film and the lens. I am worried about trying to clean the anti newton side of the glass - any ideas wether this is possible to do with just a microfibre and zeiss cleaning fluid?

As for lens I am eager to use the 135mm zeiss for the hasselblad as it is dedicated to be used with the bellows for high magnification levels. Currently I'm using the good old 80mm one with the bellows and waiting for a good deal on the 135. I appreciate the recommendation for the specialised macro lenses - I suspect the 135mm would be better though since I do the shooting at higher magnifications than 1:1 - am I wrong here? I am relatively new to these kind of magnifications.

In regards to "you could send it off to drum scan" - the problem with drum scan is that very few places actually own top of the line drum scanners and have the staff to operate them. The best I can get in my area is a coolscan 9000 which is not a drum scanner at all and in such a case I’d rather buy the scanner for my self. If someone would scan my negatives with fluid mounting on a hundred thousand dollar worth of a drum scanner and do it expertly without destroying the negatives at less than 50 dollars a roll including postage then it would make sense but otherwise I am not convinced.

I don't see value in scanning a whole roll at high quality - I might have 5 rolls and want to extract just 1-2 frames from each of those 5 rolls due to my practice of shooting "safeties", some on different film, some bracketed positives etc. etc. I've spent 500 dollars till now including the nikon d3200, if I manage to get the shots sharp enough below 1000 dollars total cost I am beating the nikon coolscan 9000 by thousands of dollars for price of admission alone. For the extra 500 dollars I am sure I can at least fluid mount and improve the light source - I'm buying a kaiser one soon for about 80 dollars. I've made a lens shade out of ready made hydraulic tube with a rubber seal which had the ideal dimensions for the 80mm zeiss, it cost me about 2 dollars!

July 27, 2014

The lenses I have Brad are top of the line at 3000 dollars per new lens and that coupled with exactly the fact that most lenses are sharpest in the middle I just do not understand the logic behind thinking that a small frame medium price lens will top a 180 CF Zeiss. Sure a 3 grand worth of canon lens will be great but I can't see how a 800 dollar lens produced today in china will be somewhat better just because it is intended for digital. It is intended for digital and a legion of people who can't tell the difference too so there are statistical and market elements going against the possibility that these new sensibly priced lenses are better than the old top of the line ones.

The fact that there is cropping is only helping the MF lens as you have suggested. The detractors are just repeating marketing spiel - I mean no one beside you even understood the original question fully so I think you should not worry either about this silly 50MP limitation as that is purely conjecture as is the idea that digital lenses are better than film era lenses on a general basis. Whoever came with that should contact all those movie people who use all those old film lenses on their digital cameras.

50 MP is only 60x60 cm at 300 DPI or roughly 24”x24” and at these sizes it makes more sense to just buy a digital MF back that does 50MP natively or to use an enlarger and print in the darkroom if sticking with film. It is easier to print in the darkroom than to produce an excellent digital print, DTP is really difficult and really expensive. You need to do a lot of proofs if you are renting a facility before you can actually do the print and you need top of the line facility to get the same dynamic range as you get with a darkroom print and that same concise quality rather than ugly inkjet print. Quality printing paper costs a lot of money too. It is cheaper materials wise and faster to print in the darkroom, even on the most expensive photographic paper. The limitation of the darkroom is mainly print size and no digital post.

The only reason the limitation of film is 50MP according to so many people is because they own digital cameras that are about that resolution and read that idea or where told such a thing when buying their gear. The moment phaseone releases a 160 MP back, suddenly the limitation of film will be allowed to go to 80MP by the marketing people so that “twice as much as on film” can be used to sell more outsourced, automated camera kits.

People also own drum scanners worth tents of thousands and labs which did not get on with the times and offer below 30MP scans for hundreds of dollars so of course the status quo is that film has only as much resolution as whatever all these people offer to extract from it.

Photographers are also in my experience lazy when it comes to processing and are comfortable sending off their typical work load to be processed and printed by the same old people they used for the last 15 years and fear having to actually get up the sofa and do stuff themselves because the new age has dawned.

God forbid some guy gets 80MP-100MP of information for a few hundred dollars and has a bigger digital penis afterwards in the minds of those who paid 60k for the brand new digital backs.

All of those people sure about how they are getting 30 MP of information with a 30 MP small frame DSLR - have you considered that your photography does not warrant 30 MP at all and maybe in fact closer to 12-16? See this sword cuts both ways so how does that feel to be doubting your skills as a photographer? Having resolution to spare in digital is a must especially when doing post processing while in analog you can ride the event horizont of technical limitations at all stages without much issues. In the same sense in analog audio you can overdrive most devices while in digital you need to keep the levels controlled because any digital distortion is square wave clipping so sure digital audio also is amazing on paper but one third of the reported dynamic range of digital in practice has to be left alone in case there are spikes in the material unless you want to use brickwall limiters on your converters. Sure the end product can use most of that amazing dynamic range but that is the final product, not during the recording process in a typical creative situation in the studio. Similar thing applies to digital post production, different rules apply to the process than to the finished product.

Who is to say I am not getting 95% of what say an ektar 100 can offer or an ilford delta 100 in terms of resolution - that is purely in the hands of the photographer. If that would be even just 70MP - 80MP then getting 120MP is about having the necessary digital headroom and workflow so that each individual grain is resolved in a bunch of pixels rather than a single one which does not translate at all. A single grain or line of grains does not equate a single pixel or a single line of pixels. 720 worth of lines of grains projected from an analog projector would look stunning compared to 720 worth of lines of pixels projected from a digital projector. That is because it is harder to trick the eye with pixels for whatever reason, they are clearly defined while analog media is reliant on many variables also in the viewing stage. So to recreate that into a digital print I want to print film grain and let the film grain compose the picture with similar variable taking place - the eye sees the grain but the brain sees a picture.

That is the issue with pixels, a single grain is not limited to 255 values per colour channel and is not square but has an actual 3 dimensional structure so extra resolution is in my opinion anything but wasted. People are making 8k cameras and tv’s in japan while I am still watching 360p video on the web and only started thinking about moving to shooting 4k video in a many years once it is a standard. The trends are against the idea that we have enough resolution.

It is true that this grain structure is not always chemically formed to be all that we expect it to be but resolution is about covering the possible requirements of the material and not specific requirements for each shot or technique - there is just no need to limit resolution like that for post processing given todays computer hardware. If I can get 120MP and be covered from head to toe that I am getting enough information out, then why would I settle for 50MP and then upsample it to 120MP for printing?

July 27, 2014

Dear Brad, you are definitely on the same page as I am and yeah dynamic range is something that does worry me albeit it is possible in theory to do a HDR type of technique at the reproduction stage, it should at least in my minds eye look fine when tweaked manually. There is really just one picture (if done correctly) for the HDR software so it should come out looking a lot better than HDR from actuall multiple photographs where the micro movements and differences seem to be the sources of “that obvious HDR look” - I’ve never tried all that fancy stuff in software so maybe you can’t avoid it in the end, I can’t tell right now. I will experiment with all kinds of technique once I actually get down to it nitty gritty and will find out.

A possible solution for stitching troublesome shots is to simply stitch things by hand - you only need some sort of general marker for instance a tiny black paper marker you put on the film plane and then it ends up being in top right corner, top left corner, lower right, lower left of the respective shots you then put together based on that marker and then you also have a 5th shot without the market in the middle to replace the black spot. So if say you have 12 shots to composite together in the software, you could give the software 6 shots + 4(+middle) shots already composited into one where the big ambiguous area is located or just do all of it manually. In the end you have to judge by eye if the shots line up after its done anyway to some extent. The marker is just to help you get in the correct ballpark too, so it does not have to be pitch perfectly in the same spot on every shot. It is easier than it sounds - I’ve done similar stuff and it’s just a matter of patience and zooming in photoshop until you see nice big pixels. If the pixels colour data does not match 99% then it’s off, you move it, you check in a few places, you move again, check by eye how it looks in general and you finally get there after rinsing and repeating until it’s done.

I know close to nothing about digital slr’s so I will definitely check out the sony line as I’ve read most of those sensors are made by sony anyway so the cheapest camera with the correct sensor should be the way to go for this particular purpose. I am also keeping an eye open for the MK II canon but it seems nikons in general offer a bit more value for money. I was eying the Nikon D7000 too, what do you about those for this particular purpose?

Dear Rodeo, I respectfully disagree, I think that it is mostly marketing and I've been hearing that same spiel ever since ~9 MP was a big deal. Sure it ads up when we take the entry criteria chosen by the salespeople but the stitching (compositing) make it unnecessary to get specialty lenses or movements like some suggested - you don't need a technical camera, there is no perspective here to correct and the higher the magnification the less perspective there is really to worry about as the depth of field is down to millimetres anyway. If I can reach very high magnification levels and shoot a flies eye with my gear then why would I need a special lens to shoot a flies eye on a piece of film, the lens will see it almost the same if you set it up correctly - in theory, of course which is why I was asking about peoples experiences. This is even more so with medium format than large format as with a magnification of 2:1 which on large format would be a big pain in the ass, there is a lot less to correct optically as far as my limited knowledge goes at least. The marketing holds up when we take the requirements of yesteryear and the tech of today in a selective manner but if you are going digital there is no need to avoid excessive post production as that is inevitable at the DTP stage anyway. I can stitch and colour correct by hand on a 90ties era CRT and a low resolution mouse so I don't rely on a fully automated process with the much better tools I have today - the whole point of doing it all yourself makes sense really if you are in fact good in manual post because sure if you rely on everything being automatic it won’t work at all and you won’t get much information at all in there. Lens is not sharp anywhere outside the middle? You crop to where the sweet spot is and that is where you stitch. Colour reproduction is wonky? You colour grade it or whatever the english term for it would be - do it by eye if need be, do it separately for different parts of the shot. Difficulty getting proper focus? You focus in tethered view on a 27 inch screen and etc. etc.

It's not in the end about raw information for me but about reproducing the original so that each of the grains has a few pixels describing it and not having to up-sample for processing. All kind of downsampling or upsampling is imperfect and it will always be more comfortable for me to never have to do it rather than doing it with even the best gear out there.

120 MP is not too much, that is what you need to get 300 DPI when printing 1.2mx1.2m if memory serves me right - my philosophy is to never upsample, never downsample so I want to reproduce already at my output resolution. That is not the commercial approach but I am not a pro - my main arena is music but I did study photography in school and I did enough of it to know that there is a ton of things one can do technically and in post that has not been done yet to death or known to work or not work. Running around with a small frame digital and shooting stuff for private clients makes me want to hang my self - some of my friends do it right now but I got so burned out of photography after I got my diploma that it took me 7 years to even think about touching a camera again so screw that and the canon baseball cap to go with it, bleh. I have never seen a medium size digital print that impressed me as a print itself more than a mediocre enlargement from a typical darkroom - it’s like looking at a vinyl compared to a cd. Cd’s are dead ugly to me and I am trying to satisfy myself as the creator first if I am to try and push my stuff onto others next!

I want to excite people and small digital prints do not excite me - all of the painters I know paint enormous formats most of the time compared to what the photo world is doing so I am approaching this whole thing as a painter, painting with light. I am using modern tricks to avoid shooting with properly large large format which I do want to move into when I can afford someone to lug it for me :)

When all I had access to was a 35mm I stitched many photos by hand to make it look as if it was done on a medium format system so now I actually own one so why can’t I make things bigger than life with that too? While people are saying medium format is not large enough for this or that, they are using 35mm’s themselves and claiming that the results can beat film up to X sizes which is exactly the same mindset of getting big out of small I try and apply. It’s ok for digital people to fake shallow depth of field because hey it’s in fashion so why can’t I do optical tricks to make you see 120 MP worth of picture on there? Just a while ago 10 MP was too much for some people - I won’t be satisfied until digital backs can do 160 MP at which point I will say “ok that is enough for me” - most companies seem to share that with me as they keep releasing denser sensors by the year.

In the end I also have a pinhole and that is good enough for some of my needs - we reach for more because we choose to, not because it is necessary.

July 26, 2014

Hey guys,

I will have a look at that automated rig but just to clarify the hasselblad bellows are not intended for movements but for macro work. I do not need movements to reproduce flat materials at these magnification levels, there is no visible perspective to flatten out.

The reason I want to use my medium format rig to scan medium format film but with a 35mm dslr at the end of it rather than a dedicated dslr rig is to simply save money as I have no desire to shoot small frame digital. So I already know the dedicated rig solution works so I just want to figure out if there are any issues with just using the 35mm dslr body with my regular medium format system.

The problem is made worse by the fact that you can't just buy a digital camera without all the ruggedness and the multitude of completely pointless features like iso in the thousands, 10 frames per second or autofocus which I have absolutely no use for so I want to grab an older dslr for less money and make it work for me by using high magnifications. 12 shots stitched at 10 MP of useful information per shot is 120 mp end result which gets me in the ballpark of what I need for my prints. So a 12 mp small frame dslr would be enough in this case.

Ofcourse I'd rather use a Nikon d800 and grab 4 shots instead of 12 but I just hate having to spend money on something I just will never, ever use and it will just sit there and deprecate in value on the shelf. Therefore I want to figure out if the specific lenses for the specific setup I mentioned will work well enough before I actually commit to buying an older dslr because if there is some issue after the fact and I need to go dedicated dslr rig then buying accessories for an old digital camera seems like a really bad idea.

All I need is raw pixels and a tethered view on my macbook for easier focusing - I will be using all the stuff from my medium format system and just attaching the digital bit to it via one of those adapters they make in china.

Also to clarify, I already own a V system with a set of lenses and accessories so I need something that works with that. 99% of solutions out there are for thousands of pounds which is silly in my opinion in this day and age just as scanners are silly. Everybody mentions printing these small prints but what do people do with small prints?

If I'm making an exhibition I need large prints, not A3 size stuff. For small prints it's easiest and cheapest still for me to just use an enlarger. All of this digital go around is to print big and to resolve grain in the digital domain. Grain is integral. If you zoom in and you see pixels instead of grain then to me that is not a scan worth of a print.

I want to extend my current gear list into the large format domain rather than smaller formats than what I actually have. I don't do commercial photography so I don't really care about all these "pro" features as I can't pay the bills using them thus I am reticent about spending all this money on a current dslr. 1.5k quid is a lot of money guys for what is basically a single body and a single lens both used. I can grab two lenses for my hasselblad and at least three additional backs for the same money.

Digital is not cheaper than film when you look closely, it is way more expensive and all this gear is loosing in value like crazy it seems.

July 25, 2014

The problem is that I need 120 MP and up to make it worth my while to do it this way at all, otherwise it makes more sense to send it off for scanning on a drum scanner.

The idea is to have a composite image so the area of the sensor is not important as that would be offset by the magnification and the amount of individual shots taken to arrive at a composite with enough resolution.

I did inquire about renting gear but that is about 40 quid for a day so if I can pay 200 quid and have something that will work just as good but use my own lenses and have it for a few years then it is a lot more affordable.

The problem is that with renting I would need to buy a cheap scanner for proofs and then rent and do my proper to be printed run in one day with the rented gear which is in terms of time more of it spent than making a more time consuming composite with an older dslr.

Oh and just for clarification, I want to use a 35mm dslr with a mounting convertor on my regular medium format rig - not a medium format dslr. The crop would be big but that is not an issue as most lenses are sharpest in the middle so I would be shooting with the sharpest part of the glass anyway.

July 25, 2014

I would like to ask for a little bit of wisdom guys as I find myself yet again in a pickle.

I wish to reproduce film using a digital slr however I have been unable for the past month to find an affordable setup (body, lens, extension tubes) to do so that would give me the quality i require.

The problem is that I require very high pixel counts on the final composite image so with just extension tubes on a DSLR setup I can get at most 1.5:1 magnification so after all the math I would need at least 20 MP digital slr for my purposes. There are bellows for dslrs but it's yet another expense for a piece of kit that will not be used for any actual photography.

So since I already own high quality zeiss lenses (50mm, 60mm, 80mm, 180mm) for my hasselblad V system and a bellows I would like to pick the lens that is sharpest out of my current set in the cropped area that would be picked up by the DSLR for the given task and shoot away on an old DSLR (that offers say 12MP - enough when shooting at 2:1 magnification for instance and just compositing more images together for the final product) mounted via a 3rd party watchyacallit on my old style hasselblad bellows

Are there any issues that come to mind with this idea? It is a pain in the ass to composite ~12 images into a single medium format "scan" but this is only for final printing mind you. For proofs and the web I would just composite out of 4 images.

I could just get a Nikon D800 and a 1:1 lens and a single extension tube but that is 1500 pounds cost and for that money I could get an older digital back for the hasselblad over the next two years so not being a fan of these modern DSLRS and not needing any kind of automated features I just don't want to sink all that money and then see it depreciate in value as I use it only for reproductions.

Would it be sensible sharpness wise to do 12 images at 2:1 magnification using the bellows and say the standard 80mm? I do not have the 135mm at the moment but I do have the 180mm so maybe the 180 would be even better? At 2:1 it is close to the subject enough that it is not a big deal but will I see any more sharpness from the 180 to warrant the extra distance (longer masking for straylight required) to the light table? Will the 135 being optimised for proper macro work blow me away compared to an 80 on the bellows for this purpose?

Being dedicated to the hasselblad system I do not want to split the budget in the middle for yet another system so if I can make this work I will just throw away the "just for a year or two" old dslr and replace it with a digital back eventually for composite reproductions.

I have no idea how it will work sharpness and colour wise given the long bellows extension and the crop factor and etc. so I would dig it if you guys could tell me how it is out there in the digital world so that I can waste less money trying out the wrong bits and pieces. I'd much rather get a beautifull sinar setup for 8x10 for the cost of a dedicated modern dslr setup than a digital slr and avoid the inevitable hair loss when in 3 years I see people take 36 mp shots with their phones.

16mp DSLR can be had for a couple hundred quid - also any recommendations on that front if my idea is in fact not that crazy? Canon or Nikon? Maybe another brand? If the hassy bellows idea is workable then colour reproduction and the possibility to see a live tethered view on the laptop takes precedence over pixel count.

I would also be building my own rig for mounting of it all above the light table but have a large vintage berlebach that could also do the trick for the time being. I mostly want to go this way because I already have everything that it would require apart from the digital body and the mounting converter to start experimenting right away and since film is waiting to be scanned time is pressing for me at the moment.

Much high fives, BP

April 27, 2014

That is a lot of excellent information over here guys so a big thank you to you all!

Fortunately the friend in question works relatively close by so I would probably just have him use the lens as part of his setup day to day and keep my scanning rig at his studio rather than mine and just come over with my laptop and reproduce away. If the workflow does indeed flow I would grab my own body after I buy things higher up on the list.

I am, unfortunately working on a "shoestring budget" but in the sense that my "studio" is more of a music studio with some design capability that I am equipping now for photography as I am no longer affiliated in anyway with any institution that used to offer me such facilities in the past. It all ads up very quickly and none of the bits and pieces I had left from when I studied photography seem to satisfy my current thirst for quality. A flatbed might be convenient but is a very specialised piece of gear and cannot offer me enough resolution for what I want to do at the prices asked - I'd rather shell out that kind of money for an older phase one digital back.

I want to stitch many shots together, partially because as I will be printing large sizes for exhibiting and I only have contact with relatively small galleries thus people will be nose up close to it at times - but mainly because I want to resolve the grain with a lot of resolution to spare and grain will be small too given spot metering, analog filtering and slow speed film. So I wish see the limit of the film on the print rather than of the digital reproduction.

While larger prints should be viewed from further apart I find it artistically important to make it hold out close by - especially when I am trying to make it work the same way a painting does without making it obvious that there was post production (a layman nowadays can tell a print is pixelated when up close). So ideally I would like to be able to go with ~72x72” at 200 DPI which is 14400x14400 pixels (~207MP) so with careful technique, 9 shots at 24MP stitched together should give me the raw resolution necessary. Now I am not worried about having too much resolution as again the grain is an integral part of what I plan to do with these prints and the post processing will be rendered natively at this resolution.

I will try and see what I can buy out of the lenses recommended and will probably need to grab some extension tubes to get the necessary reproduction - any particular recommendation regarding this? I am not worried too much about colour correction as my digifoo used to be up to scratch when it comes to post processing last time it mattered and I will have to spend a lot of time doing DTP anyway as I will probably rent a day at a facility rather then trust the printing to someone else.

Again guys, a lot of excellent information in this thread so I have high hopes for making this work for me too!

I will make sure to share some results - might take me a month or more still since I am servicing my gear at the moment and still waiting for orders and buying bits and pieces.

Crumpets and tea,

BP

April 26, 2014

Hey Guys,

A while ago, I found this excellent article and I have high hopes of using it for myself:

http://petapixel.com/2012/12/24/how-to-scan-your-film-using-a-digital-camera-and-macro-lens/

As I am not much of a digital guy as far as cameras go and I don't know much about what is available for the nikon mount - Can anybody recommend an economically sound lens choice to be used with a Nikon D600 in order to scan 120 film?

The D600 belongs to a friend of mine so I'd rather not shell out for a specialised macro lens that everybody covets just to scan film if I can make do with a cheaper one as outside of scanning film it will sit in a cupboard.

I will be scanning square format so ideally I would like to get a lens/lenshood combination that has the correct reproduction ratio and distance from film combination to divide a square 120 cell into 9 shots with the D600.

Alternatively I would be happy to buy a more expensive Hasselblad V mount lens to use with an adapter with the Nikon although I have no idea off the top of my head if the "focus included" 120 macro for the hasselblad can get sharp at the distance afforded by a lens hood as I do not own one at the moment. I do have a bellows so I could get the more macro of the macro offering for the Hasselblad but making a tower out of the bellows extended seems like a PITA. Also those lenses seem to be a bit overpriced when sold without the bellows at the moment.

Big cheers for any ideas!

Crumpets,

BP

April 18, 2014

I understand a seller not knowing wether the speeds are accurate but one should know wether they are consistent as you can test that by just listening to the shutter. Also unless you dug the lens out of your attic you should know wether you where able to shoot with it properly or not. A lens that is 1.5s now and then 0.5s on the same 1s setting won’t produce the same results.

The least honest sellers both in shops and in auction I found to be those selling photography gear. The worst of these are shop runners and not private people in my experience - if someone runs a shop and in this day and age can’t tell what makes a working V series body and what makes a completely broken one then that person is a liar - how can it be a honest mistake? That seller is a liar even if they accept returns.

A workaround to common issues as well as servicing gear yourself is the best way to avoid hair loss in my opinion. With say studio gear, a guitar, a piano, a used car… I can grab a soldering gun, I can grab a spare string, I can grab a schematic from the net and order some parts online. I can also test most of those things and tell wether they are good or not at the shop with my ears and eyes alone.

With photo gear if you are buying a CFI to get colour reproduction and you want the used lens to be performing in the high 90% compared to a new one in that regard - buying it for almost 2 grand is not an option since sellers don’t know what they are selling and can’t test the lens so you might as well buy it for half that money or less. Only once did I find a seller who had some testing gear to provide some numbers.

So what I am trying to say is that, just spending more money at a more expensive seller is not a solution given the nature of the equipment and how sellers know nothing it seems and use that as an excuse when you come back. So you are always lost for time and more or less money and angry in the end. Therefore I think it is a real issue rather than just a factor of having too little money. Sure one can buy new lenses but that is just crazy with the V system unless you have some client already waiting for results by the end of the month, at least for someone like me and everyone I know personally.

In the end once you are in the money would you really rather buy a used lens for 2k from an expensive used gear shop or a new one for 3k? If I can drive to the shop in a brand new sports car I would just grab the new one and a sushi on the way back. I think most of those interested in the V system are in the same boat and if you paid extra at a more expensive seller and din’t get a dud then that is luck my friends - I’ve found money on the street in the past and I know that streets are not made of money.

I will try and ask some local technicians about an external shutter timer - there must be a workaround or at least a possibility of servicing the thing yourself (as in, doing the lube and clean part of the CLA). If I have to spend 300 dollars on shipping + the lubing up of an old spring then maybe I should spend that money on getting the necessary tools and the know how to lubing it up my self?

April 16, 2014

Where can I fix it for a 100$ though without having to ship to the US? Is there any sensibly priced service of the sort available in the EU?

April 16, 2014

Hey there,

I have this issue with a recently bought 60mm C T* and slower times:

1 is never accurate and sometimes jams temporarily,

2 and 4 does not sound accurate to me most of the times and also does jam rarely

8 does not jam but sound inaccurate and the rest seems more or less fine thought I would not count on it in a life or death situation - thank Charlie Parker it’s a lens and not a rifle, right guys?

I had a big delay with my return to photography due to being jerked around by so called "pro" used gear shops from Germany which made me lose not only time and hair but also money and a lot of creative energy. I was sent not only broken items but it took forever and some never came.

Therefore I want to keep this lens as it was part of a set I bought from an actual person for a reasonable sum, not a bargain given the above issues but the optical quality is good on this one and the second lens in the set (which seem to have accurate times) and I want to shoot fine art too, without studio lights and other gizmos and without a client so I have some leeway in method and speed of work. If I can't get out there soon and be loading a tank once again by the end of the month I will tear my hair out and then make a rope out of it - with which I will strangle all of these so called "pro" sellers running their "pro" shops, only after I beat them half dead with the leicas they keep pimping.

I know a CLA is what would be recommended but I had this idea of using some sort of timer coupled with a cable release to simply run the lens on B when I need to go slower than 1/15th.

The timer idea appeals to me as it would also be good for longer exposures eliminating the need for doing it manually and also be good for many lenses where slow times are an issue. I often see lenses sold as having times unchecked by seller (obvious indication that they are not accurate indeed) or as just 1s not being correct (which does spill into faster times being less dependable even if they work like with the lens I want to sort out). With such a whatyoucallit at my disposal I could potentially buy such lenses at a sane price where the dishonesty of the sellers would be offset by the price itself and I could make it work in the end too.

What do you guys and gals think about this idea? Is there any product out there for the V system that would work? If not, is there a known DIY way of making one?

Maybe a small darkroom timer retrofitted to work with a cable release in some way?

How about accuracy - I would expect an external cable release could manage the good ol’ trio of 1, 2, 4 and maybe even the 1/8?

For now I will check the times and just use the lens on faster ones if they are dependable enough - it's not that easy to find a lens without fungus or major scratches or ending up waiting for godot when buying used online, regardless of whom from in my experience so having a workaround for such a common issue with older lenses seem like a good idea to me. Or is it? Let me know, please!

Cheerio.

BP

February 22, 2014

Dear Q.G. you share an interesting view however I just wanted to correct a few things:

I did not say that I plan to use B50 or B60 filters with the 40 mm as I'm aware what size they take - the mistake with the sizes was made once by me since I din't check the mount info on the lenses promo pages. Thus my conclusion that getting B60 is a bit pointless since it's no good in my case (using many filters at the same time) with wide angles anyway and the narrower lenses are fine with a step up ring apparently. I did not say that a perfect composition is getting everything in there - what I said is that I'd rather have a perfect composition than get everything in there (which I see people grabbing wide angles for most of the time) meaning that I care about the inner shapes so to speak of bigger things and them balancing out more than getting the whole big thing in the frame - that is simply an artistic choice rather than a matter of nomenclature. Framing or cropping or however we want to call is directly tied to composition imho, especially with B/W where we can't count on colour for softening or strengthening something in a scene - what I called intensity. That is why I used to prefer zoom lenses in the past as that was the most economic way of arriving at a workflow that would actually result in pictures rather than a bunch of might haves and should haves. Many people are really colour photographers (who do B/W occasionally) and that is what they have an eye for - I do find that many if not most contemporary B/W photographs look like they where shot by someone looking at a colour image in their minds eye.

I used to go in the middle of the road but that was with a small handheld pentax, I dare not do that with a hasselblad just yet :)

The comment about "the right amount of tele" was about anticipating that I might have a lack for "the right amount of tele" more than “the right amount of wide” and you do have to anticipate things since you can't just buy a lens on the spot if you are lacking one - that mindset is not an artistic one, it just comes from not being able to own many lenses. My anticipation given my planned subjects and past experiences with the same type of subjects is that I often can't get close enough for one reason or the other and that it spoils what I had in my minds eye. So in that case grabbing a specific lens is less about the artistic choice for a given perspective and more about exactly, framing - especially if you do not want to frame in post.

Being able to choose between lenses purely or mostly for the artistic effect of different perspectives is an unobtainable luxury to many around the world however I do plan to enjoy some of that too, even if in increments. Also It’s great to have many tools in the toolbox but what improvising music has taught me is that I’d rather have a couple of things I can do a lot with than a lot of things that I struggle to all do something with.

So yeah even filters and spot meters are a luxury in my opinion. With so many things being random in photography especially in the digital age I understand the need to assert that conscious choices where made either to oneself or others. Maybe I have a subconscious aversion to falling into gearism - something that happened to me with recording gear.

In school I always where hassled that I shoot often on auto and how random that is yet every next roll was getting better and better and I had one camera through the whole of it. It was also reaffirming to find that with all that “randomness” I could get a good picture and someone else with all these conscious choices could not get one being in the same exact spot at the same time. For me it was two things, focus and again framing and everything else I just din’t care about.

My main interest in medium format is to get more information in there so that I can enlarge it up to bigger sizes and "paint" with textures in B/W. That might sound like I am missing the artistic importance of certain choices but I think that very rarely do contemporary photographers actually make such artistic choices they claim to make afterwards and in fact are simply trying to awe with sharp images and wide angles, that choice actually being set on “auto” just in their minds. I still remember when digital was making a big wave when I was in school and many people where doing nothing but obsessing about sharp edges at big zooms in photoshop. None of those edges ever mattered since the school was not equipped to print in high enough quality and large enough too.

I do wonder about the whole proshade approach - are all of you guys really getting the same quality as with the bayonet filters? My intuition is telling me that the filters when bent would act as another element messing around with the lens.

Good stuff - can’t wait till I get my hands on the actual camera. Getting back to filters, they are really beautiful compared to what I had in the past. Hasselblad is best for actually trying to care about the gear itself it seems for me.

February 21, 2014

I did find a hasselblad step down ring but was not sure wether that was in true form a "step down" rather than a step up that the seller improperly described.

I suppose with the amount of B50 filters I already have, it makes sense to spend 20 quid on a step down filter and see how that works out seeing how some of you managed to do that with success with an 80mm - I just hope my gear comes soon enough so that I can shoot a couple of test rolls before my scheduled shooting trip. I'm jumping right into the deep side of the pool with MF as I've not been excited about photography in 6 years at least so I want to use the mind momentum while it's there.

Big problem with B60 filters is that people sell them one by one or if in a set, it's not really a set, just whatever spares someone had and also big cheers for mentioning that the 50mm CF vignettes with more than one B60 filter! That makes it pointless for me to get B60 filters at all since I might end up with only one wide angle lens for the time being given the prices and I could not really count on filtering with it anyway.

I would of course love to have the 30,40,50, and 60 as my wide lens set but prices on the 30 are prohibitive - If I get a nice 40 first then there might not be an immediate need for a 50 and so on...

I did not intend to say that I would sell my CF stuff just so I can use B50 filters. Just that right now I only bought an 80mm CF and a 150mm CF so given that C lenses are cheaper by far I could get say a 250mm C and an 180 mm C for the price of one bargain 40mm CF and then would already have all the filters I need for those two lenses save for a cross filter and a pol. - otherwise I would get say a 40mm CF and then for the price I could sell my whole set of filters would probably get just a couple of filters that would either fit my 80 and 150 or the 40 mm. So either end up with 4 lenses and a whole set of filters for two of those or get 3 lenses and 2 filters for just some of them. If the step down filter idea is indeed workable then that would mean 4 lenses and filters for all of the lenses I have with a mix of CF and C!

Money wise it does make sense as wide angle is not as necessary in my experience as a tele lens despite the fashion to shoot everything with wide angles nowadays. In practice when you are out in the field it’s more at least to me about getting the perfect composition rather than getting everything in there and that is easier when you can choose the right amount of tele so that you don’t have to move the tripod and your bag and everything else say to the middle of the road.

Also with B/W it is even more important to have a very strong composition as you have mostly shapes to balance and less so intensity - this can be done with post of course but I want to avoid cropping.

I will be going on a sort of small tour soon so with a limited budget I really just want to get as much of a complete setup as I can. I prefer CF lenses in principle just as you guys do but if I can get more out of buying C lenses and using those with the CF I already have then I am keeping that open as an option. In a similar fashion I’m getting a berlebach tripod with a gitzo head rather than a whole gitzo set as it’s just too expensive otherwise. Something like a minolta spot meter and then some old incident meter combo rather than a brand new all in one and etc.

Another example is a CLA can cost as much as a used lens so in such a case I’d rather get another lens and keep the old one or sell the old one for spares and repairs. If I paid 2 grand for a lens it would make sense to CLA but if it’s more like 200-300 quid then it’s a bit crazy to then pay 150 for a CLA!

I doubt that at the places that would exhibit my work locally anybody would actually buy prints as I’m not currently located somewhere where people have money to spend like that. It’s not a matter of what you are selling, people just don’t have money for anything lofty like that nowadays. Much more sensible to spend more time assembling gear than hoping for an out of towner to wander into some small gallery and have the money to spend. I was even thinking about doing some hyper realist paintings from the photographs and try and sell that. Does anybody pay for fine art photography anymore anyway?

None of that matters for now though, there is a bit of will and there is some way and this year I will be getting some good shots!

February 20, 2014

Hi Kevin,

Thank you for the help.

I do know about the Hasselblad Historical - was of great help when figuring out the different lens generations.

I am wondering wether it would be worthwhile to get some C T* lenses instead of B60 filters. I mean for what they can go for I could probably get about 5 filters or a C T* lens for the same price.

I do like the hasselblad made filters and it feels a shame to adapter up to using regular ones so I guess it's back to auction hunting for me.

Cheerio, BP

February 20, 2014

Hey Guys and Gals, I've not been able to find anybody asking this particular question before so thought I'd give it a shot - please excuse me if this was already discussed before.

Is it possible to use B50 filters on CF lenses with the 500 series Hasselblads without vignetting and if so which lenses won't vignette?

See, the dummy I was, I bought a set of 10 Hasselblad made B50 filters without waiting for my CF lenses to come in the mail and I din't realise that B60 was not just a newer mount from B50 but a completely different size! I can't send them back because that would be a dick move on my part and It was not a bad deal either as I have a whole range of red and blue now with an orange and two diffusors (sic?) complementing the set and collecting those one by one would be a huge PITA.

Would it be ok to just get a B60 to B50 adaptor so that I can use these filters with some of my lenses? I don't really get why the new lenses need bigger filters as they seem to be the same size more or less internally, even more so the new wide angle CF lenses seem to be designed to be smaller at the end of the barrel, for instance with the 50mm one so what gives?

I plan to mostly use 40, 50, 80, 150, 250 mm lenses so if the colour filters I already have can work with at least 80 mm and up that would make it worthwhile to keep the colour set I have for shooting landscapes with those lenses and an adaptor. I would then add a separate and large enough orange, polarising and gradient set for the 40 mm and 50 mm and hopefully that would be enough to not fall short in the field.

I assume that even if it does work I would be limited as to how many filters I can use so is it, for instance sensible to go 80mm into B60>B50 adaptor into 1 Colour into gradient filter? That is 2 filters but with the adaptor it's 3 filters worth of length added and then the filters are smaller than they "should" be in the first place.

Any hope at all? I am new to 6x6 and still waiting on all my gear to come in the mail so can't do any testing at the moment. In all honesty with the way I used to shoot (scanning + post) I only need gradients for landscapes and a pol. for working from behind windows but I was having high hopes for mastering these colour filters to really tame the skies as part of my return to photography and also a new approach and attitude.

Much crumpets, BP

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Posts posted by borys_pomianek