lukpac

Any other thoughts?

I've placed a few orders with The Darkroom, getting processing and hi-res scanning. I've mostly been happy with the results (the biggest issue being some crinkles in the uncut film when it's returned), but the cost adds up fast. I just placed an order for 3 rolls (2 B&W and 1 E-6), and it was just shy of $70. Looking at some of the other recommendations, it seems like Dwayne's is probably the only place that's less expensive (it wasn't clear if LTI-Lightside offers E-6 processing or scans without prints, or what their scan resolution is).

I haven't placed any orders directly with Dwayne's, but I had a roll of B&W get sent to them when I dropped it off at a local camera store that doesn't process B&W in-house. The negs came back unsleeved, dirty, and scratched. Needless to say, I'm somewhat reluctant to use them again.

Unfortunately, the camera stores around here only process C-41 in-house (one did B&W until I complained that my film kept coming back scratched and/or dirty), and I've had less than great luck with one of those. Plus they don't offer high resolution scanning.

Thoughts?

A 75 or 80mm lens would be bang in the middle of your estimated focal lengths. And using a zoom lens is going to both introduce some distortion and only give you an approximate indication of true focal length.

 

BTW, 6x6cm negatives aren't 60mm wide/tall. They vary between 54 and 56mm square. So you probably need to factor a multiplier of 3.5 into your calculations. Giving you equivalent focal lengths of 77 and 63mm for those shots above.

 

A 75mm TLR lens would be closest to those two estimates.

 

I think your modern pictures only confirm that a TLR was used. Whether it had a 75mm or 80mm lens could help narrow down the model, or maybe not.

Revisiting the photos, and using 56mm for the negative size instead of 60mm, 75-80mm seems correct. It still seems like the focal length may have varied slightly from shot to shot, but I haven't had the chance to experiment any more yet. If I end up doing more shooting on 35mm, I may just go with a 28mm lens and crop as appropriate in post, rather than be a little too tight with a 35mm lens.

As a side note, last night I started going through more negatives that were not part of this set. At least some were taken with a different camera. The shots I posted above had the film moving up through the camera, while some of these other negs have it moving down. A quick search suggests most/all TLRs moved the film from bottom to top, while box cameras moved it from top to bottom.

Blad magazines have little V-notches that leave a tell-tale on the negative. If there are no notches, then the camera wasn't a 'blad.

 

Not sure that applies to the old 1000F though.

It appears the 1000F did as well, based on these images:

大埔龍尾

Untitled

mercy mercy mercy

I guess it was just a page somebody had around then.

Something I just noticed that I hadn't really thought about before: the first roll of film in this series is stored in a Hasselblad negative page. Is that something that was common for the time or perhaps something that Hasselblad would have included with a camera?

For what it's worth that's the only roll stored that way. Everything else is stored in individual sleeves by strip.

The 1961 Riverside building copy looks pretty good, love the old cars, lots of sharp detail throughout the image, I'm shocked, I hadn't realized camera copying could be that good. The bounce flash must be the ideal illumination method. I think Joe is right, they're as good as a scanner can do

 

I've picked up more in the "selfie" of your dad, but first a question, does it get cold in Milwaukee ? He appears to be wearing ear muffs, I can see a round white object on the left side of his head, right where his ear would be

 

Also, with his face buried so far down in the finder, he may have been using the magnifier. If he used it often, that would explain the sharpness in every shot you've posted to date. The developing of the film is superb as well, whoever did it. You're only left with some levels adjusting to do in the darker copies, then you'll be sweet

FWIW, I've been using an LED light table, not a bounce flash. It's possible that a bounce flash would be better, but this still seems pretty good, and certainly good enough for what I've been doing. It's looking more like I may send them to get professionally scanned for further projects. Any recommendations would be appreciated.

Yes, it definitely gets cold in Milwaukee. I haven't looked up the weather for December 1961, but I would guess it was around freezing if not colder. It was pretty chilly as I was taking shots.

A complete tangent to the original topic, but since we were talking about what camera these may have been taken on, these may or may not offer some clues. I took a walk today and tried to reproduce some of the photos using my D7200. I tried to frame the shots vertically, knowing I'd crop the sides to be square to match later. I tried to match the shots as best I could, but having a viewfinder that is both not square and not waist-level was tough. Not sure if he actually had a camera where he could switch lenses, since it seems like some may have been taken with a ~70mm lens and others an ~85mm lens, or if I was just off that much in my locations. Although I think the photos below were taken in *almost* exactly the same positions, based on how the buildings line up.

I thought it was a cool comparison regardless.

1961:

2018, shot at 22mm (equivalent to about 85mm on 6x6):

1961:

2018, shot at 18mm (equivalent to about 70mm on 6x6):

Dredging up and old post:

Here's a handy memory jog, not sure where I got it from (either my calculator and pencil or 'swiped'). It's not 100% precise, but very close. My 2 cents. Jim M.<div>[ATTACH=full]924980[/ATTACH]</div>

I think the big point is, it depends on your end goal. To get a generally similar feel? Or to recreate something? Irrelevant if the aspect ratios are the same, but important if they're not. For example, I'd like to try to recreate some old photos that my dad took in 6x6. If I use that chart, I'll get about the same visual information from side to side, but the top and bottom will be cut off due to the wider aspect ratio of 35mm. So to recreate something shot on an 80mm lens, I'd have to use a 32mm lens (and crop the sides to match) rather than a 48mm lens (and have the top and bottom cropped for me).

The inverse would be true if you were trying to recreate a 35mm shot using 6x6.

I don't think this answers anything, but for the sake of trying, here's about as close as I can get with my lens.

Do the corners look similar to the scan(of the tulips) that I posted on Page 4 of this thread?

 

As I mentioned, that was taken either with a Rolleiflex Automat III or a Rolleicord Va. Both the ones that I was using had coated 75mm Schneider Xenar f/3.5 lenses(a Tessar clone). I'm GUESSING it was taken with the former, as when I bought the 'Cord it had a factory 645 kit and it took me a while to find the parts(specifically the frame counter-I ended up robbing one off a parts body I bought just to get it) to take it back to 6x6. I'm pretty sure, though, that both gave the same look to the corners.

Similar, yes. Almost like devil's horns. Alas, I did a bit of searching online, and it seems like a number of TLRs, including the Yashicamat, produced similar looking corners (why?). So I may never be able to narrow it down to a specific model. But it was almost certainly one that's been mentioned. Unfortunately, I don't remember any specific mention of such a camera by my dad, and I'm not finding any mention in old e-mails.

Would an Automat with only a Tessar lens fit in with your Dad's circumstances at the time ? It was a cheaper Rollei, even cheaper second hand

I honestly don't know, but it sounds plausible. My *guess* is my grandparents wouldn't have bought a camera for him, so it would have been up to him to get one. And as a college (or maybe even high school) student, he probably couldn't have afforded a ton.

Am I correct that the Automat had the capability of switching taking lenses, but the only options were 75mm f/3.5? How different were the available lenses?

I doubt there's enough detail in the "selfie" shot to glean any more details about the camera, but I may try capturing just the center of the image to get more detail. I'll need to figure out a way to adjust my setup to do that.

Here are a couple of more I captured last night that I particularly like.

Re the camera he might have used: probably a Rolleicord or Rolleiflex with f/3.5 Tessar lens, possibly borrowed from the art school for this project. These images have a "look" to them that seem more suggestive of Rollei TLR than a folding eye-level camera, and its doubtful he used some junky box-Brownie for them. Of course there were cheaper budget Japanese TLRs like Yashica and Minolta in that era, but I don't think they were common in areas like Milwaukee (and an art school would almost certainly have chosen Rollei, since that was the standard "portable" photojournalist camera of the time before 35mm took over). The Mamiya TLRs had not quite gained a foothold yet. The Hasselblad SLR was still new, outrageously expensive, and not conducive to street shooting (and cheaper clones of it like Bronica were not yet common). So I'd put the odds at 50/50 he used either a Rolleiflex/Rolleicord or 6x6 folder from Kodak/Zeiss Ikon/Agfa. Not that it matters in the end: what most makes these photos pop is his assured eye for composition and detail (surprising in someone so young), and technique at getting sharp depth of focus.

He did take one selfie, 1961 style, but alas I don't think there's enough detail to make anything out, other than it definitely had some sort of waist level finder.

That's the center crop of a larger photo.

The only other things I can gather from the negatives are the film moved vertically through the camera, not horizontally, and the exposed images have funny, non-square corners in the top left and top right, as seen in this photo. I have no idea if that's at all helpful in IDing a model, but it's something I noticed. As you say, though, it definitely seems like it was something of fairly good quality. The only thing I'm not certain about is if he used the same lens for everything or used a few different focal lengths.

Back on topic, my digitizing setup is a bit clunky, but I think it's producing pretty nice results for online viewing, so I'm going to go through do the rest of these negs that way so I at least have *something*. At some point in the future I may have some or all professionally scanned if I end up doing more with them.

A bit of history behind the photos I've been posting, for anyone interested:

Stunning Pacholski photos offer a snapshot of Milwaukee in December '61

How are you capturing and processing the files? Automatic processing usually gives acceptable, but not optimal results. And if you're not shooting RAW with the camera, then the amount of correction possible is going to be severely limited.

 

I suggest you get to know your way around the curves tool, and not rely on auto-everything post processing.

Generally I've been letting the camera handle the exposure automatically. I've toyed with compensation a few times, but I don't think I've tried it for the above photo. Yet.

I've never done much with curves, but all of these have had manual levels adjustments, first on the separate R, G, and B channels, and then on the overall levels after converting to grayscale. Nothing has been automatic in that regard.

As a tangent, I wish I knew what camera my dad had used to take these. Unfortunately, I think whatever it was he must have gotten rid of it after getting a Nikon F.

BTW, the shadow detail in the example above looks fine. What do you expect to see under the wheelarch of a car that's of any interest?

Picture looks great. WHo cares about the shadows?

I wasn't referring to that photo. More about photos like this:

Honestly, the OP could probably have copied a couple of hundred negatives with his digital camera, and processed them, in the time spent posting and reading this thread. And got results no worse than any dedicated scanner bought for under $500.

I honestly haven't had that much time. But I did make it through almost 40 photos last night, over the course of a few hours. They look pretty good, although shadow details are tough.

But lukpac, this is one of those technical questions where you SERIOUSLY need to take a moment, decide what your most probable endgame is for these images, then tell us so we can give targeted suggestions. Otherwise none of this meandering will prove useful to you in the long run. Making grain-sharp large exhibition prints (bigger than 16x16) or publishing a coffee table book will require a dedicated film scanner, Nikon CoolScan minimum. Casual, non-insanely-critical prints, up to 16x16 or perhaps larger, can be made from careful scans via Epson flatbed or DSLR. Ditto for web use. BTW, I wouldn't spend $1000 for a new Epson: pick up a nice used v700 for around $400, or v500/600 new for much less.

At this point, my goal is, while arguably vague, to get the best captures reasonably possible with the caveat that I can't really justify spending thousands of dollars, which basically leaves out dedicated film scanners. So the question is: current DSLR setup vs a flatbed. There's been a lot of discussion about one or the other, but not much directly comparing the two. If a flatbed would give results about the same or perhaps worse than my DSLR, I'm not about to spend the money on one. However, if a flatbed is likely to produce better results, I may consider one.

My two cents. I have scanned 6x7 & 35mm film using a D850 DSLR, Nikon Super Coolscan 9000ED, Epson V850, and Imacon. My purpose was to achieve the best image quality that would allow me to make the largest possible print (limited by grain and the image). A DSLR with the best macro does not cut it. It's OK for putting an image on Facebook, not much more There is no Digital ICE, you will spend hours in Photoshop spotting dust and scratches. My favorite choice was my Nikon 9000ED, with the multi-scan option and digital ICE, It was fine ten years ago and I archived thousands of images at high res. For 24x36" prints it was every bit as good as the Imacon we have at work. A few years ago Nikon chose not to service these anymore and parts became scarce. Requiring Firewire was a pain as well. I sold it while it worked and bought a Epson V850 flatbed. It is OK, it takes quite a but of setup and testing to get the focus right and the results that I'm looking for. It is capable of doing an excellent job. For the price I'd recommend this over a DSLR.

Digital ICE is unfortunately not an option for B&W, which is 99.9% of what I'll be scanning.

I agree that something like the 9000 would be preferred, but that seems to be beyond my level for money and headaches.

There seems to be some disagreement whether something like the V850 would produce better results than a DSLR or not. I'm not sure I want to spend $1000 to find out.

continuous source lightboxes need exposures long enough that any vibration will degrade definition.

Even with a remote release and tripod?

I thought we were still limited (or at least encouraged) to make the longest side 1000 pixels.

I'm not sure if that's encouraged or not, but there definitely isn't a hard limit.

Another shot from around the same time...possibly with a different camera? Unfortunately the neg wasn't totally flat when I captured it, so the right side isn't totally sharp.

Being realistic; what's the quality of the pictures you want to scan like?

 

There's no point in spending several hundred on a scanner if the original camera was a Box Brownie or similar.

The best I can say is see the photos I posted. Unfortunately I have no idea what camera he was using at the time (I know he got a Nikon F not long after), just that he was in art school at the time.

By the way, your Dad did a nice job capturing that newsstand. It brings back memories of the shops in practically every large building here in NYC. Do you know where he took it?

Both photos were taken at the Federal Building in Milwaukee, December 1961. The mailroom photo is the US Post Office that was located there at the time. We recently discovered he created a book, presumably as a school project, documenting downtown Milwaukee. These were taken for that (the newsstand photo made it in, albeit cropped, while a different mailroom shot made it in). There are at least 140 more photos from that project I want to capture.

It's downsized for posting here at the 1000ppi limit on posts.

The original scan is 1200ppi for 2365x2401 pixels and the saved file (jpg) is 864KB in size

There's a limit? My images are about 3900x3900, and about 6.5MB.

Regardless, your original is about 66% the size of mine, once cropping is taken into account. I have to wonder how the scan quality compares beyond pure file resolution. Both in terms of dynamic range and optical quality.

Some flatbeds are better than other, although the claimed ppi is often far more than you can actually get.

 

A Canon 9000F or the older 9950F are what I use -- good enough for web use, at least:

[ATTACH=full]1272810[/ATTACH]

Rescue testing of bull-dozed area of site Rolleiflex 6x6 cm- scan Canon 9950F

Is that full resolution, or scaled down?

Here's the next shot on the roll for another example.