"I don't think that looks like an 81a . . ."
Heh, so sometimes I can get myself into trouble. Last fall, in the middle of fall foliage, Peg and I went to Allegheny Cemetery. I took the 5D with me as well as the F100 loaded with Ektar. Being a reader of Mr. Rockwell, I was taking his advice and put an 81a filter on the lens, hoping to add a little punch to the warm tones of the leaves. Ahem, warm indeed.
I sent the roll off to North Coast (this is the same roll that had the image taken on the street I posted a while back on the street of the South Side of Pittsburgh here). The first few frames of the roll were taken on the street, the rest in the cemetery with the filter.
The phone rings one day after I shipped off the film. On the line is the tech at North Coast who is doing the scanning. She telling me that the images display a large color shift, and asks whether I want her to color correct during the scanning. “They were taken with an 81a,” I tell her. “No, don’t correct.” “OK,” she replies. “Just checking.”
I get the roll back, and the cemetery shots all look like this. I’m flummoxed. I look through my filter kit, and can’t find a filter that would have given me this acid-yellow. I continue to be flummoxed until I pack the Mamiya 645 for the trip to California.
I put the 8mm lens on the camera and take the lens cap off. There, in all its glory, is a deep yellow b&w filter. The light bulb goes on (dim though it may be). THAT’s the filter I had obviously used on the F100 (either thinking it was an 81a by mistake) or had been left on for a roll of b&w I had shot.
I used an 81a on that same trip (a REAL 81a this time) and can’t wait to see the results.
But, can you imagine what that scanning tech thought as she got off the phone with me? “81a my a–.”
That’s pretty funny. She probably thought that you were totally clueless!
At least you figured it out … eventually.
Yeah, well, I still don’t really know how the dark yellow filter got on the camera in the first place, nor why, when I looked through the finder, I didn’t see how yellow it was. Unless, of course, what you see above IS what an 81a produces on Ektar. Sorta disturbing no matter how you look at it.
If the tech had color corrected at the lab you might never have figured out what happened. “Interesting results” to say the least.
well, it does seem to be a bit of a ‘happy accident.’
Really kind of wonderfully haunting.
Well, you know when I tried to color-correct the image in lightroom, is horrible blues that came to the fore were far worse than the filtration effects.
I don’t hate the images, necessarily, I do wish I had at least a couple images from that day where the leaves were natural.