400bpm

Might it be that the shutter curtain is old and slow, perhaps sticking at the end of it's cycle and causing nonexposure at one end of the frame? Take two shots of the same scene with the same lighting, one portrait and one in landscape orientation. If you have that black bar at the top or bottom of the portrait oriented shot and on the left or right (correspondingly, of course) of the landscape oriented shot, you've got a bad shutter. Just an idea.

Have you considered giving him "points" or royalties for the revenue produced in lieu of an outright up front buy out? Secondly, 50,000 slides is a lot to do by hand. Look into finding a service to do them for you.

Brian, I think your best course would be to use Photoshop's Channel Mixer adjustment layers to create two different monochrome layers (one for the subject matter/foreground and the second for the sky) and then use a gradient on the sky's layer mask to blend the two pieces together.

Thanks for the post Murray. I'll probably be doing this in the near future "just for fun" so thanks for providing a roadmap for me. I took the back off of an 800 recently just to see what was going on in there. Took a sec to clean the lens but was mostly just impressed by all the little springs and stuff back there. I'd never taken apart a shutter or lens assembly before. I remember seeing the ugly jagged thing, too, on my 800.

Can't tell too well from the resolution of the scan and without a hardcopy in front of me, but it looks homemade. I don't suppose it's too difficult to make a U-shaped track out of cardboard and line it with mylar or reflective foil to sort-of get that effect. I must confess I've considered doing this sort of thing before. The Vivitar 6000AF I have didn't quite yeld the effect I was hoping for, and it's lack of compatability with my 20D has limited its output to full-power at all times.

Thanks for the correction. I have no idea where that "34 seconds" came from :(

 

Self-processing isn't that difficult, or at least I didn't think it was. Loading the 50' reel on the spiral is really the only challenging part and you get quite adept at it after a few reels. The developing procedure is quite controllable and you'll be able to choose your own effects from developer choice, flash exposure, and push- or pull-processing times. I found it all to be quite fun.

Sounds quite interesting. Let's see the shots!

 

Interesting note about overpacking your gear. I'm going to Italy for the first time on my honeymoon this summer and I'm weary of overpacking!

Super 8 filmmaking can be an expensive hobby. $15 per roll for the film, and another $15 for processing is pretty standard these days, and for all that you get ~34 seconds of end product. However the whole shooting-processing-editing-viewing procedure was always rewarding for me.<p>

 

If you plan on really doing a lot of Super 8 work, I suggest you buy your own processing gear and mix up your own chemistry. It's the only way you're going to be able to circumvent the $15+ processing fee for every reel you shoot.<p>

 

Locate and purchase a Lomo spiral reel tank. There's one <a href="http://member.melbpc.org.au/~cksm/projector6.htm">on this website</a> for you to get a look at, but finding one seems to be rather difficult. You may catch one on an auction site if you're lucky.<p>

 

The <a href="http://lavender.fortunecity.com/lavender/569/">Super 8 Metadirectory</a> has archives of posts by Martin Baumgarten that contain great formulae for mixing your own B&W reversal chemistry, and color reversal is done the same as any E6 process.<p>

 

Good luck! It's great fun once you get the hang of it!

Hey Minh, I recognize that location in your attached photo - where have I seen photos from this perspective before?

About 6.5 minutes at 20C is what the Massive Dev Chart has for Tri-X at ISO200 if I recall correctly. That would give you negs overexposed by one stop, which is not too bad. It's chancey, but you could dump your developer a half-mintute or more early and try to get it closer to ISO100. Whatever the case, you're attempting pull-processing two stops so your negs are going to be low-contrast. Best luck.

Amy, all I can offer is an insight or two. It's not something I can easily distill into words.<p>

 

Technique: 2nd Curtain shutter will cap your subject at the end of the exposure, making your subject appear to be in "normal" motion, while 1st curtain shutter fires the flash at the beginning of the shot exposing the remainder of the scene - thus you get a "backward" motion appearance. It often doesn't matter as the aesthetics of the photograph are subjective. Heck, I've done without a sync cord often enough to shoot in Bulb mode and fire my strobe manually in the middle of the exposure. It's a cliche, but this technique is more of an art than a science. And that reminds me - don't shoot with your on-camera flash! Get your light source off of the camera; I shoot handheld with mu strobe usually around arm's length away from the lens.<p>

 

Exposure: set your aperture to give you correct exposure based on the flash's output and then set your shutter exposure accordingly. Often setting the shutter to give you normal ambient exposure will overexpose the scene and give you a muddy shot, so adjust your shutter time to underexpose ambient light by a stop or two. You'll still get good motion trails and a solid subject exposed by the strobe. Be careful that you don't allow light sources or bright background objects to draw over or bisect your subject when the flash exposes him/her and renders the shot.<p>

 

Good luck. Experience and experimentation will eventually yield predictable and consistent results in your photographs. Play with Bulb exposure to get a good estimate on your shutter times (this is easy to say if you've got a DSLR). I've had bad luck with sync cords so I've been forced to use Bulb exposure in critical situations and I find it's an excellent learning tool. Most of all, have fun!

Hey Hans, I'm a music photographer and I'm interested in how your group is organized and for what purpose. It sounds like an interesting conglomerate.<p>

 

I switched to DSLR a year ago, but before then I was shooting concerts on film and doing all processing individually with a variety of developers alone in my bathroom or kitchen. I use a Nikon 35mm film scanner as my enlarger since my access to a wet darkroom was limited. I got excellent results from Tri-X (pushed to 1600) and TMZ3200 in Acufine. That was my favorite developer for a long time, that is until I discovered Diafine. I dumped TMZ3200 around the time that Kodak changed the emulsion, mostly because I wasn't getting good tones and I started acquiring a distaste for so much grain.<p>

<center><img src="http://www.400bpm.com/images/02-ATP-MeltBanana006.jpg"><br>

<i>Melt Banana (2002) - �2002 Brian McCall - <a href="http://www.400bpm.com">400bpm.com</a><br>

TMZ3200 in Acufine</i></center>

<p>

Diafine allowed me to push Tri-X to 1250 or 1600 with better tonality and less grain. Diafine is particularly suited for high-contrast environments, and I can't think of a higher-contrast environment than a concert stage. If you switched to shooting 1250 or 1600 from 3200, you should probably look into acquiring faster lenses for your group. I find f/1.4 is a little too wide, but f/1.8 - f/2.8 should be fast enough for just about any stage light situation.<p>

 

Diafine holds very well after multiple uses, so it may be a good developer for your group. Acufine has a very long shelf life as well. I can't say I've had any experience with D-76, but D-19 makes for a good high-contrast developer for Super8 reversal films. Good luck!<p>

<center><img src="http://www.400bpm.com/BadlyDrawnBoy/BadlyDrawnBoy032.jpg"><br>

<i>Badly Drawn Boy (2004) - �2004 Brian McCall - <a href="http://www.400bpm.com">400bpm.com</a><br>

Tri-X ISO1250 in Diafine</i></center>

I'm with Jeff on this. They may not have been moving dynamically enough to register motion well on film at those shutter speeds.<p>

 

You can also go the flash route and use bulb exposure. The long Bulb shutter will get you a lot of "motion" blur and the flash will stop the subject for a clear exposure. Just make sure you don't overexpose the ambient light to the point that the flash exposure gets overwhelmed by it.<p>

<center>

<img src="http://www.400bpm.com/Cinemechanica/IMG_5603-Joel-Bryant.jpg"><br>

<i>Cinemechanica @ 40 Watt - <a href="http://www.400bpm.com">400bpm.com</a></i>

</center>

Get the cheapest one you can find. A big part of peoples' fondness for the Holga look comes from the soft abberrations made with that dinky plastic lens. Don't waste money on the built-in flash - the lowest-end model has a hotshoe that works well and any $2 junk-bin Speedlite will work better than the in-camera flash.<p>

 

I love mine, and even though I rarely use it anymore, it's a great little camera. I fully recommend hacking up the mask to make a 6x6, and don't recommend omitting the mask altogether. Enjoy!

Ah, I see the ring with the little post (marked "feet" below). Missed it at first glance.

These old rollfilm bodies aren't so heavy when you thoroughly gut them.<p>

Nice work, Minh. I really appreciate the work you do on these cameras and the aid you offer on this forum. Is the focus on the camera Gene reviewed fixed? The "bellows" piece looks like it's from a Super Shooter - am I right?

Hi Dean, thanks for your response. We've actually corresponded via email before. I really admire your talent and intend to support your work and efforts by purchasing your Disorder product as soon as I have the funds available for disposal (difficult to do when trying to save up for a summer honeymoon to Italy! As an aside, how nice would it be to shoot 4x5s in Tuscany and Rome!?). Cheers!

You know, I've got the same lens and when I first got it I never noticed any problems with focus. Over time, I've become more observant and sensitive to focus issues. I've also dropped the lens from waist-level onto a concrete floor and had the thing repaired at Canon. Ouch.<p>

 

I've wondered if my lens has been properly repaired, or if this lot is just plain unreliable and suffers from astigmatism at apertures wider than f/3.2 - so here's to you Mohammad and best wishes on good responses to your inquiry!

I've read reports that the BG-E2 doesn't attach firmly to the 20D and that to get a good fit you need to add a shim here or there. Have I been misinformed?

David, check out the Lego conversion link in my original post for an idea.

I've identified the locations of each of those fasteners. Thanks Franklin!

I just got a Polaroid 900 in the mail from a seller on Ebay. The lens

is clean and the shutter functions well, but all the glass in the

rangefinder is foggy and appears to be infected with fungus.

Unfortunately, since I know that a byproduct of fungus metabolism is

formulaic acid which etches glass, it may be a lost cause.

Nonetheless, I was hoping that some of the experienced Land Camera

hackers here would be able to tell me how to go about taking this

rangefinder apart so I can get at the interior surfaces of these

cloudy elements. Thanks in advance!<p>

 

ps. <a

href="http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00Dp2q">This

conversion with Legos</a> is so awesome it's worth another mention.

<a href="http://images.google.com/images?q=foam%20core">http://images.google.com/images?q=foam%20core</a>

I can't say how well that would work, but if you were to do so I'd recommend marqueeing the gray card and applying a heavy blur to the area to mix all the RGB noise together to get yourself one solid hue, otherwise every pixel in the gray card's area is going to have subtle differences in individual RGB values.

Chris, I'm sorry to report that I've experienced similar disappointing results from Canon. I dropped my 50mm f/1.4 USM at a concert and sent parts across the floor. Canon got it working again -- all the elements appear to be scratch-free and the thing focuses normally -- however it appears to suffer severe astigmatism at wide apertures.<p>

 

What can be done when you've already had the factory work on your glass and do an insufficient job with it?