Posts tagged ‘Mamiya 645e’
Hazy Summertime
Pan-F, HC-1120 (H)
Scanning away here and came across a roll I shot with my Mamiya around July or so. It might have been in August, I honestly can’t rermember. I’ll post a few images from that roll in the next day or so. That day was hot and hazy, humid in that Western-PA sort of way. This is the point at which the Beaver River flows into the Ohio. The railroad bridge crosses over the point.
I worked on the image to try and capture that feeling, but seeing it on the web page leaves me feeling I missed it somehow.
More to come.
Like Old Times
FG7, HP5, Mamiya
Those of you who have been reading the blog since ’09 might remember the color version of this image. Taken on the Salt River north-east of Mesa, Arizona, the day I captured this image I was swapping the 10D back and forth on the tripod with the Mamiya. I developed the roll on November 29th, 2008, but finally scanned it tonight.
These images were processed using Ken Bello’s tip of opening the TIFF as a Camera Raw image in Bridge. I really like that workflow. Thanks, Ken!
First Imacon Scans
Mamiya 645, HP5 pulled, Xtol
As some of you know, I recently began going to the school’s photo lab at night to access their two scanners, an Imacon Flextight and an Epson Pro 750. Since I am not a student, I don’t want to monopolize the time on the scanners too much. Being faculty is nice, but the equipment is really there for the students.
Scanners are like cameras, and as Ray has pointed out, you really are taking a ‘picture of a picture’ when you scan a negative. So, like any camera, you need to learn how to get the best out of the equipment, and these scans posted today are amongst the first set of images scanned on the Imacon, which, theoretically, is a better scanner than my Nikon 4000 at home and also better than the Epson Pro 750 sitting right beside it in my university’s lab.
Another variable in this equation is scanning software. One of the aspects of the Epson 750 I had looked forward to was using Lasersoft’s scanning tool which comes bundled with the scanner, but the lab either didn’t get a copy of that software with the scanner or chose not to install it, so on the Epson I use the Epson software. On the Imacon, however, I use their own software. So in addition to learning two new pieces of equipment, I also need to learn two new pieces of software. On my own scanner at home I use VueScan, and let me just say before I get into the images themselves I wish I had ViewScan at the lab, as so far I prefer it to both softwares for the two scanners.
All these images were captured with my Mamiya 645, using the 80mm f/2.8 ‘normal’ lens for that setup, a lens noted for its sharpness. I used a tripod with cable release for all the images. The film was HP5, pulled to an ISO of 200 (a look I am beginning to like quite a bit), done so to emphasize the shadow tones and control the splashes of sunlight so prevalent on a sunny day in a forest. All these images were captured at a park called MacConnell’s Mill, a 45 minute drive north of our house near Pittsburgh.
I was also intentionally playing around with shallow depth of field on these images. The day was sunny and not too windy, so I could have used slow shutter speeds for these shots along with f/11 or f/16, but I intentionally wanted to see how the lens handled the transition to OOF areas. All the images were scanned on the Imacon without any sharpening, using the Imacon software’s ‘auto’ exposure mode, where it looks at the density of the neg and comes up with its own interpretation of the best adjustments. That’s one of the variables I tend to control in VueScan when I use it on my Nikon 4000. Note, Mike, if you are reading this, I could not find the ‘sharpening’ setting in the software, so I don’t know how or how much it WAS sharpening, all I do know is that once I got the images into Lightroom, I did not ADD any sharpening, which I normally do add when I use my Nikon on 35mm negs. I added some vignetting in Lightroom for all these images, as I just thought they looked better with that. The images are certainly sharp enough.
As I mentioned, one of the reasons I pulled the film and also a reason I wanted to scan these negs with the Imacon was because of the dynamic range of dappled sunlight on a forest floor (an issue I have wrangled with in the past). The image above is an example of how the neg/scanner/scanner software dealt with the problem, and I can’t say I am very happy with the results. The sunlight on the rock just looks blocked up to me and unnatural. I am going to take the neg back to the lab and re-scan it, trying to adjust things by hand to see if I can nudge more detail out in the highlight areas. With the Nikon 4000 and 35mm film, there was a technique I learned where you scan the neg as a positive (which leaves the ‘highlight’ areas very dark, and then invert the neg in Photoshop. This always seemed to work for me, but I’m not sure whether this will work in the Imacon settings. I just went with the ‘Black and White negative’ settings.
80mm f/2.8 @ 2.8
Again, here I intentionally went with a very narrow DOF.
Mamiya 150mm f/3.5 with extension tube @ f/11
Recently I purchased some extension tubes for the Mamiya on ebay and experimented a bit with them during that shoot. Perhaps the most exciting aspect of having access to these scanners at school is that I can now really play with medium format and scan the negs myself, which I am sure will accelerate my learning with those possibilities.
Looking forward to your comments. I hope you enjoy the images.
Epson 750 Scanner
Mamiya 645e, HP5, Xtol
Tonight for the first time I got into the Digital Photo Lab on campus, and spent two hours working with the Epson 750 scanner. It is the first time I’ve been able to scan any of my medium format negs myself. This image is from a roll I shot back in February on a visit to San Francisco Bay. Not a perfect scan, by any means, nor quite the last word in processing the image. But it is much higher resolution that I’ve ever gotten from my service bureau in Calfornia for a 6×4.5 negative, and the difference is fairly astounding. I scanned some Pan F, some FP4, and some HP5, and they all looked just wonderful. I have to figure out the correct sharpening settings for the scanner, but I was very pleased. I don’t see how much better a Nikon 9000 could be than this.
Next week I’m going to put a few 35mm negatives through the Imacon. That will be fun!
Totems
Velvia 50, Mamiya 645e
As a counterpoint to my post on Brand Loyalty, I just wanted to say a few words on an ‘effect’ that I think contains reality, that of totems.
A totem can be defined as “in some societies, esp among North American Indians, an object, species of animal or plant, or natural phenomenon symbolizing a clan, family, etc., often having ritual associations.”
Now, if you remember, in my post about Brand Loyalty, I spoke at length implying pretty clearly that much of what we perceive as Brand Loyalty may, in effect, be the desire to belong to a certain tribe. That, in effect, this desire to be ‘like’ whatever we perceive as a Nikon shooter or a Leica shooter was the pull we found when we chose that brand. Below I’ll list some of those tribal attributes I know I feel when I think of certain brands.
- Canon shooters = great sports photographers and nature photographers
- Nikon shooters = more serious professionals than the Canon shooters (how much more professional can you be than a sports photographers, mind you, but that’s what comes up in my head when I think of the people who use Nikon)
- Leica shooters = photojournalists and candid portraits of people; all mainly in black & white
- Mamiya shooters = landscape and product photographers
- Hasselblad shooters = fashion photographers
Now, I can think of many exceptions to these stereotypes (Nachtwey for photojournalism — he uses Canon in the footage I’ve seen of him; Moose Peterson for landscapes — uses Nikon), but those stereotypes are what I think of when I think of the brand. So, my post was about being aware that if you choose Mamiya, you might also, on a deep level, be saying “I want to belong to the tribe that shoots medium format landscapes.”
This is, of course, in addition to the idea that, well, Mamiya medium format cameras might just indeed BE better for landscapes (grin).
But I also firmly believe in the power of your thoughts, both positive and negative. That is to say, if you think you can be a better photographer by possessing a certain piece of equipment, and the possession of that piece of equipment emboldens you to capture images you wouldn’t have otherwise or jogs you into thinking about a photo opportunity that you wouldn’t before you owned that piece of equipment, then indeed you just MIGHT get better images that way.
The piece of equipment didn’t make you a better photographer, your thoughts did that, but the piece of equipment triggered the thought in the first place.
An indian carrying a wolf’s claw as a totem was seeking to gain the wolf’s ability to move swiftly and silently and to find their way when lost. They believed the abilities of the wolf would meld with their own through their association with the totem.
So, if you believe that carrying a Leica M4 with a 28mm lens emboldens you to capture street photographs like Gary Winogrand, I say ‘go get yourself that M4!’ Get the tool that gives you the feeling of success, and you will be successful.
Velvia vs. Portra
Velvia 50, Mamiya 645 e w/80mm lens
While this image isn’t the actual experiment I alluded to last week, it is almost identical in its process. That should give you a bit of a hint as to what is coming shortly. Nonetheless, I’ll explain what is going on above and below.
Portra 160NC, Mamiya 645e, 80mm lens
I have often talked about how ‘this’ or ‘that’ looks in comparison to something else (example: HP5 as opposed to Tri-X). Well, I recently embarked on a journey to eliminate the back-and-forth experimentation I do and start to settle on my tools. Everything is on the table. Negative film vs. chrome, film vs. digital, HP5 vs. Tri-X vs. Tmax vs. Delta 400. Part of my goal here is to see what methods and materials suit my style and then stick with those choices in order to master them (at least a little).
The above two images were kind of an extreme beginning to that process. Both images are 120 film shot with my Mamiya 645e, and they sit at what are pretty much polar extremes in terms of approach. The top image is Velvia 50, a slide film that espouses contrast and color intensity. It is those qualities that have, for the last 20 years or so, made it the favorite of landscape photographers and inspired what some detractors call the ‘Velvia hyper-reality.’
The image below is Portra 160 from Kodak, a color negative film designed mainly for, well, portraits. The intense color rendition of Velvia makes humans look very un-human, and Portra is often used by wedding photographers for a more natural look.
The Velvia is shot pretty much as per spec, but the Portra is over-exposed by one stop so (ahem) as to increase the color density. The two images are exposed approximately the same (obviously the Portra was shot with a slightly wider f-stop as the DOF is different). No other processing of any kind has been done on the images; no sharpening, no Lightroom work, no Color Efex.
What interests me the most with this is the ‘feeling’ of the two images, rather than simply the color itself. When I bought the five-pack of Portra, I set out to discover whether I might sometimes choose Portra for landscapes (I don’t shoot weddings much – grin). I had, in recent years, backed off Velvia for landscapes because it sometimes was too intense, and had mainly shot landscapes with Provia, a Fuji slide film less contrasty and color-intense than Velvia. But I had never experimented at the other extreme, and wanted to give it a chance.
Lastly on this Sunday, one more version, this time using Velvia and under-exposing one stop (this technique is used to increase color intensity).
Velvia EV -1
I’d be curious what you think about these three.
Also, if anyone has experience with combining a blog with Pbase to link to larger versions of images, give me a shout. Enjoy your weekend.
Change of Pace from Heat & Humidity
Mamiya w/150mm lens
I returned from my trip Friday, rested yesterday, and thought I’d post to the blog today. There were some North Coast scans I had never gone through from the February snow storm, so even though these images aren’t Rio, I thought I’d post a couple.
The image above is 120 Velvia 50, captured with my Mamiya 645e, scanned at North Coast, and tweaked in Nik Silver Efex. When I examined these scans, I was reminded of a remark my friend Colin said when I started posting medium-format images on my blog, that he could immediately tell they weren’t digital. They were better than digital, or at least had a special quality of detail. That was my first thought when I looked at the images, they just leapt off the screen at me. The combination of Velvia and the Mamiya lenses with the larger neg size is hard to beat. If I only had a medium-format scanner in the house.
My only real complaint with North Coast is they really don’t take advantage of the increased 120 neg size with their scanning resolution as much as they might. They scan 35mm pretty close to the pixel resolution I use with my Nikon 4000. But they must scan 120 film at a different resolution to keep the file size down. The 35mm scans come in at 3339 x 5035 (which is roughly 3500 dpi — at home I scan at 4000 dpi), while the 120 negs come in at 3533 x 4824 (roughly 2200 dpi). So, I treat the North Coast scans as ‘rough print’ versions, and if there is an image I’m going to want to make a bigger print of [and there are a few] I’m going to have to send them out to be re-scanned. I also don’t feel as confident of my color correction skills scanning-wise, as I might, in addition to the medium format issue. A internet film-using photo acquaintance, Matt Alofs, recently bought a Nikon 9000 for that very purpose. Colin, I wonder how those 120 frames would look scanned at 4000 dpi, eh?
I know I’m cheating a bit with the image above as it’s originally color and I’ve processed it with Nik’s “-1 EV” preset to make it a bit more dramatic. Below is a second image from the roll pretty much as the chrome looked on the light table:
There were a couple of observations from these images. First, I hand-held the camera with the 150mm lens, and when I really look at the images close-up, I can see some camera shake. So, note to self: use the tripod with that lens. Second, the grain from Velvia 50 is almost non-existent. You can’t really see that so much in these JPEGs, but my goodness they are smooth and what grain is there I like quite a bit.
I have a number of rolls of b&w film I shot in Rio using my rangefinder, and I’m going to try and develop some of them tonight. That experience of working there in the streets and in markets with the Bessa brought some things into clarity for me regarding my shooting process, and I’ll talk more about that when I post some of those images later on.
Lastly, R.I.P. Jim Marshall. If you love photography and love rock n’ roll or jazz, you’ve seen his work, Give yourself a treat and go here and take a long look. That many if not all of these images were captured on manual focus film cameras that didn’t have an internal light meter should bring all of us who rely on such techno-tools to our collective knees.
Return of my Mamiya
Mamiya 645 w/80mm lens
Captured this on the beach in La Jolla with my Mamiya 645e, hand-held (and if you knew who clumsy that beastie can be at times, you’d understand why I added that phrase). Fuji Provia, with the color almost as rendered by the scan (I goosed the Vibrancy +5 to better reproduce the chrome as it appears on the light table to my eye). Great to have medium-format images back.
I had these processed and scanned at North Coast, along with a roll of 120 Velvia and two rolls of 35mm Ektar. The box with the CD and the developed film was waiting for me when I got back from the airport tonight. I’ll post more images from those rolls over the weekend.
Just for kicks, I took the image and loaded it into Nik Silver Efex. The image below is processed in NSE with the ‘underexposed 1 stop’ preset and using the FP4 film type. I also added a u-point towards the bottom of the frame to bring up the exposure there. I’ll be interested to see which of these two you like better.
As above with some Silver Efex thrown in.
Just like old Times
I did enjoy studies of this location
When I sent off the rolls to North Coast to develop and scan, I had a couple old rolls of B&W 120 that I had never developed while living in Mesa. This was mainly because I had no way to scan the negs. They had been in the fridge at least six months, so I figured it was time. One roll was just studies of the Lost Dutchman mine, shot on HP5 with my Mamiya (so that would put it in the February-March timeframe, probably).
HP5 in the desert on a sunny day.
I’d much rather be here, but it was convenient to just hop in the car and get someplace like this in 45 minutes.
My old Mamiya’s Last Stand
Sixty seconds later, ka-boom!
Readers of this blog know the sad, sad story (sniff) of my Mamiya, the 645e that fell over into concrete and was damaged beyond repair. Well, last week I sent out that roll of Provia to get developed and scanned, and this frame is literally the last shot on that roll. And, in reference to a discussion I was having with Ray Ketcham earlier in the week, after this shot, the sunset became more intense.
Here’s a shot I took earlier in the sequence, before the sun crept towards the horizon. One of the things that I liked about living in Mesa is that these kinds of sunsets were actually common. I didn’t have to drive very far to get this one; I’m literally 200 yards from my office and 1000 yards from my old apartment there. I know these are just sunsets, but I’m sure that Anita Jesse will like them.
Right behind me an hourly employee gathers abandoned shopping carts
