Tag: FTb

A walk towards the light

Posted by Chris Klug – July 23, 2010

Toned in PS, HP5 pulled in Xtol

So, these are really my first posted images on my journey towards a film ‘look’ that is ‘me.’ First off, I’m

  • Developing in a way that tries to not just use the film in a normal way
  • Play to film’s strengths (emphasizing the shadow tones)
  • Uses a lens that draws in a certain way
  • Processing the image in LR and PS in a way that appeals to me.

I’ll expound a little bit about all those elements below.

When I exposed/developed this roll (all these images are from one roll of HP5) I pulled it. Instead of exposing the film at 400, I exposed it at 200 and then reduced development by about 20% or so. What this does is emphasize the shadows through exposure and control the highlights by lessening development. These images weren’t an ideal test, because their contrast range was not very broad. But it was a look I wanted to experiment with. The one thing it did do for me was control the ‘sky through trees’ issue than can bedevil work captured in forests in daytime. The image below is a decent example, where the places in the image the sky poked through were not any trouble to scan in.

Toned in PS

So, the lens is a 35 year old Canon FD, and it was used in these images as wide open as I could (it helped that it was dark in the woods that day). Thus, the flaws of the lens are emphasized. Check out the falloff in the lower corners of the image above. That’s not done in LR, that was in the original image. I emphasized it in PS, but it is not as if the exposure is linear all the way to the corner (the top of the image was cropped a bit here).

I also used a yellow filter, which has a subtle effect.

It increased the contrast between this leaf and the surrounding leaves.

Tried to get the bug

Here is was trying to get the bug in focus. He kept moving around the leaf. I had three images of him, but none of them captured him quite right. And after this last one, he was gone. The perils of f/2.

The last part of this formula was to scan and process the film differently than I used to, and leverage the increase in shadow detail and compensate for the decrease in contrast that pulling tends to bring.

So, really, all these images are the first steps towards a look using film that I have in my mind’s eye.

Which way?

Posted by Chris Klug – July 21, 2010

A real intersection in Pittsburgh

So this post isn’t about the image, rather the image serves as a humorous counterpoint to this discussion.

After publishing the second experiment, where I compared Tri-X developed in Xtol to digital converted in Nik, a reader of the blog began an off-line discussion with me. This reader had engaged in a similar series of tests a few years ago and, apparently, reached similar conclusions to those I stated in that post.

But the reader also gently pointed out some flaws in my process and thinking, and we began to discuss one of those, to wit:

Comparing the two mediums to a common denominator (metaphorically) is potentially flawed way of looking at the problem.

Specifically, in both of my tests, I used a common exposure (the first time, to the 5D’s exposure; the second time, to the Bessa’s exposure). Why not expose the two images to the strength of each medium (when using film, expose for the shadows and develop for the highlights, while, with digital, expose for the highlights – being careful not to clip them – and then get as much info into the shadows as possible).

And then, when both captures are at their optimal, compare them.

What I had done was, essentially, expose how they differ. Which, you know, is fine, but in the real world I wouldn’t shoot in either medium using that method (emphasis mine).

With film, I’d expose to the right without clipping and with film, I’d point my FTb’s meter at the shadows and expose at that reading.

So, that’s what I’m gonna do.

The other thing that I thought of as I developed this roll (image below) last night was this: yeah, okay, I started out seeing if the Nik HP5 conversion could emulate HP5. Well, that was the thought that spurred that process in the beginning. But that film isn’t really a great film to compare, say, sharpness to digital. I should be shooting PanF to do that comparison and make it worth anything at all.

HP5 Pulled to ISO 200 in Xtol

And one last thought. I started out to compare film to digital to see which was better. I didn’t mean to try that avenue or imply that’s what I was up to. But I think when I showed the detailed crops that’s what I implied. Instead, I always wanted to embrace the difference, and to find things film can do that digital can’t or shouldn’t even try. Mark Olwick does this with his brilliant Holga photography. I think older lenses ‘draw’ differently than modern lenses, not better perhaps, but different. And maybe the combination of those older technologies can help us. As we search for a style, for a look that we can call our own, for some it will be digital, for others it will be film; for others it will be wet plate collodion, for others HDR. Whatever floats your boat.

Xtol and HP5

Posted by Chris Klug – July 15, 2010

So, one of the big variables with film development is agitation. How often, how long. It affects contrast, sharpness, grain etc. I had suspected looking at the Tri-X images in the test that I might not have agitated enough, so I developed a couple rolls of HP5 last night, cut fresh off the 100ft bulk roll I had purchased. I agitated for longer at the beginning and more enthusiastically every time the clock came around than I had with Tri-X.

These two images are from the first six frames on that roll.

Its a different film, yeah, but a worse lens than the Zeiss (Canon FD 50mm 1.4, NOT the S.S.C. version) but the grain is really lovely, the best grain I’ve seen from HP5, and the images are certainly sharp enough.

FG7 is great, but it’s not very flexible. You can’t really push film too much, nor can you pull it. I really want to do both of those things after I narrow down my film choices. Xtol can pull and push, and depending on the dilution you can increase sharpness. It’s a very flexible developer, and because it came along in 1995 or thereabouts, I didn’t know about it when I learned film development.

I may be stocking up on Xtol.

147 years ago

Posted by Chris Klug – July 6, 2010

The Wheat Field from Devil's Den

147 years ago the past weekend the battle of Gettysburg was fought. This image was on the roll of Acros 100 I developed over the weekend, and I didn’t even think of the connection until yesterday. Shot last November, on a trip to Gettysburg Peg and I took on a glorious Indian summer Sunday. In three years the battle’s 150th anniversary will occur. I wonder what our country will do to remember those terrible three days in July, 1863.

Welcome, Mr. Xtol, care for a sparkling beverage?

Posted by Chris Klug – July 4, 2010

Dec '09, Acros 100, Xtol

So I’m kinda catching up. In a couple ways. First off, this is from Christmas last year, just developed last night in a freshly-brewed batch of Xtol. So, that’s one way of catching up.

But the other way I’m catching up is in, um, perhaps a weirder way, that of film technology. I was taught one film, one developer (Ilford FP4, Edwal FG7). This is a smart way to teach, because otherwise the student spins their wheels experimenting and doesn’t get beyond the tools to the art. Now, in my case that means that when I returned to photography, I didn’t know anything about T-Grain film (Tmax, Delta) nor about developers that came along post-1980. Like Xtol.

So, part of my journey in the last two years has been to re-learn what I used to know but also experiment with the new stuff. Like, for instance, Xtol.

I used FG7 because I knew it. It is a compensating developer which means that you expose for the shadows and don’t ‘blow’ the highlights because the developer slows down the development highlights and they don’t block up (this is a simplified explanation). But in this process you lost a little film speed (example: you expose Tri-X at 320 when you develop in FG7).

But as I read more about developers, Xtol seemed to possess some of FG7′s qualities but didn’t lose film speed. One Xtol combo that people seemed to like was Acros 100 in Xtol. So, last fall I bought four rolls of Acros and some Xtol.

I shot the Acros (in fact, I shot a lot of it when I went to Point Lobos) but hadn’t mixed the Xtol until recently.

This image was from the first roll. Thought I’d share it. One of the advantages of Xtol is that you can push the film, and you can dilute the Xtol to get greater sharpness. So it’s a multi-tasker. And in my search for ‘one film and developer’ to rule them all, I had to use it to see.

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.

New York, New York

Posted by Chris Klug – May 21, 2010

FTb, IR transparency film of some sort, 1979 or so

I’m leaving tomorrow for a few days in NYC to attend a conference. I was reminded of the image above when I posted the ladder shot the other day, and then though “well, how fitting that I’ll be in NYC soon.” While there I hope to meet up with Dave Beckerman as well as Kevin Lee Allen, and perhaps take in the Cartier-Bresson show. I’m sure I’ll be checking out B&H as well.

I took this image with my old FTb on some kind of IR transparency film (I don’t remember what, exactly). I’m pretty certain it was IR film, and I’m also pretty certain that it was the only roll of that kind of film I ever shot. There’s a portrait of my dad on that roll that was the best image I ever took of him. I was living at my parent’s house at that point and I vividly remember grabbing a ‘snap’ of him sitting at the kitchen table in a very typical dad pose, heading out to get in the car and driving into the Village and wondering the streets, snapping away. You may recognize that the image is my gravatar image.

It’s partly because when I see the image I remember that day so vividly, and partly because I know that a few frames before this image is an image of my dad that I chose this to by me gravatar. It’s also obvious, if you look at the ladder image, that I am drawn to this kind of vertically segmented composition. It doesn’t shock me that I kind of replicated it with the ladder.

You’ll have to pardon me, as all this talk has made me want to post that picture of my dad.

Gerard Alfred Klug

Both of these images were posted on the original version of this blog, which existed on my iWeb site.

If anyone remembers what that film might have been, let me know. The next images will be from my NYC trip.

What’s Old is New

Posted by Chris Klug – May 12, 2010

Dreamy Tri-X

A while back (over a year, to be exact) I posted some color digital images I captured with my 10D when I visited a construction site in Phoenix where the architect had erected some tent-like structures as thematic accents. Veteran readers might remember those images. That same day I also had with me my trusty Ftb loaded with Tri-X. That roll sat undeveloped until mid-February of this year, and those negs sat unscanned until this weekend. Phew! Long time coming, but I’ll be posting some of them in the upcoming week or so.

Tomorrow I travel to Seattle for business and come the weekend, I’ll be visiting my friend Ray and his home city of Port Townsend, WA. Looking forward to that. I plan during that trip to run a digital/film experiment. We’ll see how that goes.

Passing By

Posted by Chris Klug – April 27, 2010

HP5 in FG7

Been a bit busy at work, so for the time being I’m just going to try going through the archives and posting images I missed without much commentary. Even though I am aware that longer posts generate more comments, I also know that the images get viewed anyway. These will all be images that intrigue me in one way or ‘tother.

Neopan 400 comes for a visit

Posted by Chris Klug – March 3, 2010

Various dog toys and a cat perch captured on Neopan 400

As I continue to experiment with films & developers, this one I like quite a bit. It’s Neopan 400 souped in Rodinal. For a 400 ISO film, there really isn’t much grain and the tones are quite nice. The pillow and bone belong to our lab, the perch belongs jointly to our two cats, and the sneaker is mine (but obviously the lab needed to borrow it for a time. Image captured in September 2009.

I think that HP5 in Rodinal is too harsh, but Neopan 400 is lovely. I know this experimenting seems like marking time, but it’s fun for me. Back in the day, I only shot FP4 and developed in FG7. I still like that combo, but I never got the experimenting out of my system back them.