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Chris Klug

Delta 400 and a cloudy day

Posted by Chris Klug – June 18, 2010

Delta 400, FG7, N-1 development

One of the challenges I have taken on with my ‘hybrid’ process (it has a name now, it does, this film-to-digital process) is that the guidelines for film development are all written assuming that your end goal is to get yourself a negative that prints well in a traditional darkroom. Contrast, sharpness, density, etc. All these things are, in large measure, determined by a) the film, b) the exposure, c) the developer, d) the strength of the developer, e) the time in the ‘soup,’ f) the temp of the solution, and g) the agitation sequence/frequency.

Phew. Lots of variables. But it is in those variables (call them the details) that the art resides.

Then you add to that all the software manipulation possible.

Scanning: many of the people I learned from (Matt Alofs, mainly) scan the negative as if it was a positive, so that the image looks just like the neg when you save it. Then, you open it in PS, invert the image through Curves (making the neg a pos). This extra step, in the opinion of many, preserves the most detail and dynamic range. Then you add a Levels layer, adjust black and white point, Gamma level to taste, and then save it out.

So, in this process, getting really dense highlights (in the negative world, that means a LOT of silver on thre film) is harder to scan. Thus, you want to control development so you DON’T block highlights. And so, also, sincde in software you can always add contrast, you don’t want an overly contrasty negative either.

What that all means is that the time/temp guidelines that you can find are almost always too contrasty and too dense for proper scanning.

Which also, incidentally, means that in the search for proper scanning density, I might be screwing myself for using these negs in the wet darkroom, but I digress.

The point here is that this roll of Delta 400 I recently shot was developed at ‘N-1′ time so as to get negs easier to scan. The two images I present todsay were from that roll, and I think the combo of cloudy, low-contrast day plus N-1 development was too much a swing to the other side. But these images were pretty nice, although very different.

Just to add some sauce, I was shooting in ‘matrix mode’ on my Nikon F100, a mode which I haven’t shot in much. Summary is that I’m pretty sure that the combo of N-1 development on a cloudy day ion FG7 = not what I want. But I did learn something. Also in that session was a roll of Delta 400 that wasn’t exposed on a cloudy day, so when I scan them I can compare and contrast.

Enjoy.

As Kevin Requests . . .

Posted by Chris Klug – June 12, 2010

This is the RAW file as I captured it.

I exposed for the brightest spot in the sky, aiming to make that middle grey. This meant that the scene, as observed on the spot, was much brighter than this looks, as that spot was probably, in a balanced exposure, Zone IX. I knew I wanted the scene to be dark.

EV +2

This is that raw file bumped about two stops, probably closer to the way it looked when I stood there.

Capture One Red Filter

I’ve been preprocessing almost all of my 5D files of late in Capture One first (doing any exposure balancing and such there, and then outputting a TIF). I just like the way that Capture One sharpens better than Lightroom 2 (of course, Lightroom 3 was just released, so I’m not sure yet what I’m gonna do there). This version had a Red b&w filter applied in Capture One, then output to TIF, as a sort of test of the idea. All final processing was done in Nik.

North Hills

Posted by Chris Klug – June 11, 2010

5D with the help of Nik Silver Efex

This afternoon Peg and I were wandering around a newly discovered cemetery (new for us) and this image kinda presented itself to me. While the ‘real life’ version was far less dramatic, this version was what I saw in my mind’s eye when I looked up that hill.

The inclination to explore that place came as Peg and I discussed what we might do for SoFoBoMo. Peg’s inclined to participate, she has a pretty interesting idea (much more fully formed than mine). We were looking at the SoFoBoMo site because one of their featured books from last year was a book with infrared images captured in cemeteries. Peg was looking through the book and mentioned how some of the shots were clearly captured in Allegheny Cemetery, a place we had visited a few times. I emailed the photographer, asking him if he had indeed gone to that cemetery and where else he had shot. He told us about this other cemetery in the North Hills near where we lived, one we had never visited.

I debated whether to push this image as far as I did, but it kept wanting to go there as I worked on it.

Famous Blue Raincoat

Posted by Chris Klug – June 7, 2010

Delta 400 pushed to 800 in Rodinal

It’s four in the morning, the end of December
I’m writing you now just to see if you’re better
New York is cold, but I like where I’m living
There’s music on Clinton Street all through the evening.

I hear that you’re building your little house deep in the desert
You’re living for nothing now, I hope you’re keeping some kind of record.

Yes, and Jane came by with a lock of your hair
She said that you gave it to her
That night that you planned to go clear
Did you ever go clear?

Ah, the last time we saw you you looked so much older
Your famous blue raincoat was torn at the shoulder
You’d been to the station to meet every train
And you came home without Lili Marlene

And you treated my woman to a flake of your life
And when she came back she was nobody’s wife.

Well I see you there with the rose in your teeth
One more thin gypsy thief
Well I see Jane’s awake –

She sends her regards.
And what can I tell you my brother, my killer
What can I possibly say?
I guess that I miss you, I guess I forgive you
I’m glad you stood in my way.

If you ever come by here, for Jane or for me
Your enemy is sleeping, and his woman is free.

Yes, and thanks, for the trouble you took from her eyes
I thought it was there for good so I never tried.

And Jane came by with a lock of your hair
She said that you gave it to her
That night that you planned to go clear

– Sincerely, L. Cohen

When I recently visited New York I stayed at the Chelsea Hotel, where Leonard Cohen lived for a number of years. After I checked in I was told that my room, 424, was where he had lived those years. I am a big Leonard Cohen fan (his most well-known song is possibly ‘Suzanne,’ if you don’t know his work, you most certainly have heard that song, and American Idol has recently made ‘Hallelujah’ sorta well-known as well). After I found out I was staying in his room, I wondered what songs had been written while he stayed there. My favorite Cohen song is the one I quoted above.

I love NYC. When I lived in Phoenix we would often sit around and talk about where we would like to live (almost everyone I worked with had moved from someplace else to work at the company). I would most often say when asked ‘New York.’ I would get stares when I said this, because most people, even those who LIKE New York, wouldn’t want to live there, necessarily.

At the 23rd Street stop on the 'E' train line

I grew up in NJ, 13 miles from downtown by car, and loved living there. I loved going into NY. We lived so close that if it was, say, Saturday night and we felt like having Chinese food, and it was 10:30 at night, we’d think nothing of jumping in the car and heading into the city, ’cause we could be standing in line at Wo Hop’s on Mott Street in less than an hour from that moment.

When I worked at SPI in 1981, I lived in a sublet on the corner of Waverly and Gay street for about six months. Loved it then. I don’t know whether I could take living in NY today (aside, of course, from the cost of rent and such-like) but it’s a great place.

Interesting technical info about this roll. It’s Delta 400 pushed to 800, and developed in Rodinal. I really like the look. The combination of t-grain Delta 400 and Rodinal seems to work quite nicely. Additionally, I actually UNDER developed it by a stop. I read the wrong time on the Dev Chart, so these images are underdeveloped a stop, or, put another way, underexposed a stop. They came out a bit thin, but still scanned quite nicely.

Take a look at this one. Underexposed a stop, a little grainy, but still quite nice.

Neopan 400

Posted by Chris Klug – June 5, 2010

Just some nice dappled morning light

This week I scanned in some negs I had developed in February. Film is Neopan 400, developed in Rodinal. The entire roll had a very nice texture to it, and these three images were my favorites.

These images were captured some time in the fall, so the overall delay from capture to scan was about six months. I develop film when I can, and I pretty much shoot more often than I develop and develop more often than I scan, so I always have a backlog of film to show to you guys. Just the other day I developed a couple rolls of Delta 3200 I shot back in Phoenix, and I’ve been back in Pittsburgh almost a year now.

Toned in Photoshop

The neopan had quite a lovely quality to it, especially these low contrast images. Really lovely to my eye.

Have a good weekend, everyone.

Visit to NYC via the Train

Posted by Chris Klug – May 31, 2010

We changed crews in Harrisburg

So all the images in this post are taken with the Bessa/Zeiss Biogon 35/Tmax, and all from the first roll of the trip.

I traveled to NYC via Amtrak, just for the fun of it. I carried my camera along the way, and grabbed a few images. Harrisburg is about 1/2 the distance from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia, we stopped there for about 20 minutes to change crews.

While we made stops all along the route, the next major stop was 30th Street Station Philly, where we changed crews and engines for the last leg through NJ to NYC.

The light inside these stations was very dark, and I was shooting hand-held at about a 1/15th of a second at f/2.

Notice in this frame gent to my left is moving a bit. I was really surprised I could get this close to a crucial operation (de-coupling the engine) without someone telling me to either back off or put away the camera.

After I got to the hotel, I wandered around the Village and grabbed some shots.

This was the first time I shot Tmax and developed it in FG7. Learned a big lesson. When you develop in FG7 what you are supposed to do (with traditional grain films, anyway) is to rate it slower (I shot it at 250) and expose for the shadows. FG7 is a compensating developer and it will hold the highlights while it keeps the shadow detail. If you think about it, by exposing for the shadows and down-rating it, I effectively shot Tmax 400 as if it was ISO 125. While this process really worked for a number of the dark-ish images, the images I grabbed in broad daylight had a bit of an overdeveloped look to them. Tmax had a very broad latitude by reputation, and I think this combo was too much. So, next time I use this film, I’ll either develop it much less or rate it at 400.

Clearly Tmax has a look of its own; not quite as biting as HP5 and mot quite as smooth as Tri-X.

Visit to NYC

Posted by Chris Klug – May 31, 2010

42nd Street Library Lion

Developed and Scanned first rolls from NYC visit, more to come. This is just a teaser. For those of you just dying to know, Tmax 400 developed in FG7, exposed at ISO 250, captured with the Bessa.

Velvia vs. Portra

Posted by Chris Klug – May 30, 2010

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.

The Cartier-Bresson Show at MoMA

Posted by Chris Klug – May 30, 2010

This is obviously not my photograph

Kevin Lee Allen and I attended the Cartier-Bresson show at MoMA on Thursday. Not that the work of the outstanding photographer needs any commentary from me, mind, but I thought I’d share some of my reactions.

First of all, the sheer volume of outstanding work was just staggering. While certain periods of his work impress me more than others (more on that below) the show was huge with wall after wall of amazing images. It was hard for me to take it all in. I was just stunned.

Second, the quality of the prints themselves was wonderful. I have mentioned in previous posts that while I was in San Francisco in March, I saw some of Edward Weston’s prints at the SF MoMA and was underwhelmed. In fact, I believe I mentioned at the time that the best prints in that show were those of his son, Brett. This comment is separate from any commentary on the images themselves, but just a commentary on the quality of the prints. Here, in this show, every print I saw was wonderful in the craftsmanship displayed. It is known (and in one part of the show, openly acknowledged) that Cartier-Bresson didn’t do his own printing for the majority of his career. I’m sure that students of Henri would know the name of that gent who actually did the printing, but his skill certainly adds to the overall impression of the images themselves. The printing was glorious.

That being said, the images looked pretty much like all the high-quality reproductions I’ve seen in photo books. They were, as a rule, larger in real-life than I’d seen them before, which increased their impression, but from a tonality point of view, they matched my memory of them. This was very different from my visit to Chicago’s Art Institute where I saw William Eggleston’s work. There, in that case seeing the original dye transfer prints far exceeded any reproduction I’d ever seen, and, I believe, part of what makes Eggleston’s work well worth seeing in person is that very aspect. The color is just so intense in person.

I had read online that the lighting of the show was poor; I disagree. I thought the lighting was perfect.

Certain periods of Cartier-Bresson’s career in which his work appeared in print were nicely called out by placing the print of the image on the wall and the magazine in which the image appeared in a case below the image. I thought that worked very well.

While Cartier-Bresson’s reportage work is iconic (Ghandi’s funeral, for instance) I personally prefer two periods of his work: his early images, inspired mainly by the Surrealists, and his later portraits. His work in those two periods, for me, are just beyond compare, and are a constant source of inspiration.

Kevin and I arrived just as the museum opened at 10:30 Thursday, and we went right upstairs. They were already filling with visitors by that hour. By 11:30 the rooms were very, very crowded and any reflective time with the images was impossible. If you get a chance to see the exhibit (which I heartily recommend) try to go on a day when you can spend some time with the images. They are just amazing.

Summertime

Posted by Chris Klug – May 29, 2010

Bessa, Biogon, Fuji color film

Back from my trip to NYC. I didn’t do much posting (in fact, none at all) but did a lot of shooting. Took an Amtrak train from Pittsburgh to NYC (took some images on that leg, all film), then walked around NYC on the day after (took both film and digital), then more walk-around images during the week (all film). On Thursday I visited the Cartier-Bresson exhibit at the MoMA (more on that later).

Also while I was away I received back in the mail some color film images that I sent away for scanning. Above is an image from the Rio trip (the only roll of color film I shot on that trip). Sort of thought it would be appropriate for this first semi-official weekend of summer.