The latest feature on Pictory is worth a few moments of your time.
Just updated my online gallery with February’s new images. Pretty busy month overall, but not for photography. Managed to shoot a few rolls of 35mm, which I have yet to process, most likely in caffenol. I did get out for a walk in the post icefog glory one day and got some good stuff to post. 2 of which I’m particularly fond of. Can you guess which 2 they are?
January’s images are now posted to my gallery on Smugmug. January was another slow month photographically speaking but I’m getting lots done around the house. Most of what you see here is 35mm film photography, developed in a home made developer made of water, instant coffee, vitamin C and washing soda. Where you see sprocket holes these are a result of scanning the negatives wrong side up and not completely flat. edit
Remember how much fun you had as a kid doing “art”. Playing with brushes and paints. Making cool stuff with your hands. Well if you’re one of those lucky people who never grew out of that stage and if photographic based art is your medium then alternativephotography.com is probably where you hang out.
“Continuous partial attention” and “email apnea” from the CBC’s “Spark” podcast • Tiffany B. Brown »
Method or mistake? Only the artist knows.
Following the last post and subsequent to posting some of my Caff-C experiments to Flickr it was suggested to me by another flickie that perhaps the sprocket marks on my images were a result of something that I was doing when scanning the negatives rather than anything actually on the negatives themselves. I had another, (and another, and another) look and just couldn’t see these marks on the film so I set the scanner back up and did a few tests. As it turns out this is a scanning artifact and I can reproduce it if I want to.
The negative strips are very curved and there was no way the negative carrier that ships with the V500 was going to keep these flat. Since I scan 4x5 under a sheet of glass I thought I’d do the same with these. Going against common wisdom I have been scanning with the emulsion side up thinking that since the scanner is shining light down through the film that having the matte, emulsion side facing the light source would give better results than having the reflective side of the film face the light. For today’s test I scanned the negs between 2 sheets of glass and with just a piece of glass on top. The 2 pieces of glass produced a fine scan. Emulsion side down with one glass was no problem. The single sheet scenario with the emulsion side up reproduced the sprocket pattern.
It seems that the edges of the negatives resting against my piece of glass at a slight angle rather than sitting flat against it was causing the light to bounce around and bend in such a way as to create this effect. Technically the scan with the negatives produced the “best quality” scan but I still like these ones the best.
Well, I’ve scanned some of the 35mm film that I processed in Caffenol-C and I’ve posted a few shots to my Flickr site at http://www.flickr.com/photos/peterhovestad/ . As you’ll see on the image posted here and some of the ones on Flickr as well, there is some major sprocket action going on and I can’t say as I know why. Not that I mind when the “Angel of Uncertainty” strikes this way but I’d still like to know what caused this. The film is old Kodak Max400 C-41 process colour film. I had 2 rolls sitting in a dresser for 5 years or so. The roll that this image is from had been in a camera once before, had 2 exposures taken, then rolled back into the cartridge for future use. Both rolls were processed simultaneously in stainless reels in the same 2 reel stainless tank. Caff-C was a 1/2/4/8 solution @ 68 for 18 minutes
I also did a roll of FP4 with a roll of home rolled TMax 400 as above in a double reel tank. Both rolls were of indeterminate age and history. The Ilford was totally botched, probably due to some misfortune in it’s past, and the TMax had it’s own issues which I’ll credit to the learning process, although for the most it part turned out okay.
2 @ rolls of Tri-X and 4 sheets of 4x5 Tri-x in HC-110 turned out pretty much as expected. That is to say predictably good.
The Bessa that I got myself for X-Mas has been a delight to use so far. It’s taken a little getting used to shooting with a rangefinder i.e, remembering to take the lens cap off. It’s amazing though how quickly you fall back into the film shooting mode once you start. Without all of the distractions afforded by a digital camera you can focus on taking the picture.
