Posts tagged ‘Velvia 50’
More color for Earl and Anita
Velvia
Hey, Earl & Anita, I had this color roll lurking and was planning to bring it out and post some. This was the last useable roll from the half-dozen rolls I sent off to North Coast. Glad you like my color. I may have to trot out my 5D and shoot some more in the upcoming weeks.
Ohiopyle State Park
One of the disadvantages of time and schedule is that I tend to hold on to rolls of film long after I’ve shot them before I get to develop them at North Coast. These images were all captured on a trip Peg and I took to Ohiopyle State Park last October. If you want to see other images from that trip, go here.
It is probably hard to see in these JPEGs, but the trees above and the red wagon at the top have almost a 3D quality to them.
Another casualty of the time was I’ve forgotten what camera I shot these with. I was carrying two cameras with me that day, the FTb and the EOS 3. My guess is this is the FTb with the 50mm 1.4, but I’m just not sure.
I had always wanted to shoot fall color with Velvia, and I was happy with the images from that day.
That’s all that day was about, just finding the color and capturing it. I had also shot a roll of Ektar that day, but the Velvia beat the Ektar hands down.
ISO 50 film with gentle overcast light = narrow DOF.
Fall in SW Pennsylvania is perhaps thew prettiest season.
Vancouver through the Eyes of Velvia
Velvia 50, Zeiss Biogon, North Coast Scans
So, in the set of rolls I sent off to North Coast was the last color roll I shot on my trip to Vancouver last November (good thing Vancouver is a fertile ground for photos, because I’m scheduled for THREE trips to Vancouver during the rest of this year — August, October, and November). As I looked over these images, that Zeiss and Velvia combo is quite magical.
The lens is contrasty and lord knows the film is contrasty, so sometimes the combination can be a bit much, but not so much if you really like contrast. Here’s an image shot on an overcast day, which mitigated the effect a bit:
Those colors still pop, which I certainly like, but. to my eye, not as harshly as Ektar. It is interesting to me how my tastes are changing.
Two years ago, I would have said that my favorite b&w film was HP-5 and my favorite color film was Ektar. Today, I’d say that my favorite b&w film was Tri-X and my favorite color film was Fuji 400H. How that happens’ I have no idea.
All I can say for sure is that, until the days comes where I can’t get my hands on the materials any longer, film is still my medium of choice.
For the right subject, Velvia really is hard to beat!
Cross Processed
Velvia 50 Cross Processed
As I mentioned the other day, here are more images from that cross-processed roll of expired Velvia I shot while in Vegas. Throughout this post I’ll talk about what I was thinking while I gathered this whole roll. I had gone back to shooting color film after a long period of shooting nothing but black & white film. I did this intentionally, for a couple of reasons.
First, to enhance my eye for color. To separate the seeing of color from the seeing of black and white. On this trip, I took no b&w film at all, and in all the images I captured, intentionally looked for as much color as I could possibly get into the frame.
Second, I wanted to shoot wide-open with my Biogon as often as I could, playing with out-of-focus areas. It was Vegas, after all, and I knew it was gonna be bright outside.
Third, with this expired roll of Velvia, I was getting a roll of freedom, in that I knew from the start I was going to cross process it, so it felt more like shooting with a Holga than anything else. I was letting go of any attempt to control things, and I was just kind of looking for interesting content and firing away.
I had played with cross-processed presets in Lightroom before, but had never actually used actual film and developed it that way. And I was hoping (and, as you’ll see later, got) some element of randomness. That excited me.
One of the things I don’t know is how the film was scanned. What I mean by that is this: when you scan color film, you have to color-correct. Each film has its own color curve and color cast, and you know that when you scan Velvia as opposed to Portra NC, for example. But when you cross-process, all that goes out the window. Do you look for grey or white and then color balance, like you do when you correct for white balance issues in digital?
I wasn’t sure, and I’m going to send my lab an email asking what they did. This was indeed an experimental trip; I sent off four rolls to North Coast, all shot on the same trip, with the same lens and same camera. The first roll as you see it, Velvia. All the images in this post were from that one roll. There’s also a roll of Fuji 200 , Fuji 400H Pro, and a roll of Provia 400 VC. Over the next few days I’ll be posting images from all four rolls, so we can all compare and contrast.
I really love the images from this experiment, and I’m going to be doing more work like this.
The next two images illustrate the experimental nature of this roll. I don’t know whether the two images below came about as the scanner tech did a different color adjust on the scans, or because I rotated the camera 90 degrees, or what. Take a look:
Shot #1
I love this shot, but then the next frame on the roll is this:
What the hey . . .
Same tree, 15 seconds later. I don’t know how this happened.
Anyhoo, I hope you enjoyed these images. I’ll be cross-processing more rolls in the future.
More from North Coast
Velvia 50, Cross-processed, Bessa, Biogon
Back to posting regularly, things have been developing . . .
Just received four rolls of color film I shot while on my West Coast Trip in early September, developed and scanned by North Coast. I’ll post a bunch of images tomorrow, but this is the first image from the first roll, Velvia 50 cross-processed. The reason I cross-processed it was that I inherited the roll from a gent I received some darkroom equipment from last fall. The roll had been sitting in his garage for years, so I didn’t know what kind of shape it was in. I figured that roll was ideal for some experimentation. Indeed it was, and the roll is filled with very interesting images, this being just the first. I shot four rolls of color film on that trip, and I’ll be posting images from each roll, one after the other. The rest of the rolls were processed normally. (The building in the image above is gold in real life, btw)
Travel
I just received word I’ll be traveling again the first week of December, traveling through some cities in Europe (none near you, Ove, unfortunately (unless you want to travel a little and meet me on Saturday of that trip). I’ll be loading up on film for those days, as I need to travel as light as I can, and the Bessa is the lightest camera I own. More on that trip to come.
Portraits
A couple weekends ago I shot some senior portraits for the daughter of a friend, and they came out quite nice. I’ll see if I can get permission to post an image or two.
Books
I’m in the middle of reading Beyond Monochrome. A very interesting and dense book. I’ll write up a review soon.
Schedule
The semester is almost done, and I’ll get back on a more normal schedule. It’s just been crazy this fall.
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 on the Beach
FTb, Velvia 50 North Coast
Here’s a nice little image of sun and beach on this snowy day. Captured the day Colin and I shot the sunset in Pacific Grove. While my 5D was on the tripod, I walked around with the FTb and the 28mm FD lens, loaded with Velvia 50. The gent had a camera in his hand, capturing close-up images of the rock, or his foot, or something.
