TLR – it’s new to me

[XenPix]

Elsinore – This is going to be fun 🙂

I’m carefully reading the manual before I put my first film in. I figured I’d ruin at least one if I didn’t!

[Elsinore]

The manual on mine is the front and back of a big sheet of paper 😆 Somehow when I loaded the first roll, it rolled a bit uneven along the spool, so it was hitting the top of the spool and bending/crimping the top edge of the film. Not sure how it happened, but the second roll went in just fine.

[Curious]

let me say it once more. shot some chrome once you have a feel for the camera. it’s a hoot.

[sleeping]

let me say it once more. shot some chrome once you have a feel for the camera. it’s a hoot.

Yup 😀

[Elsinore]

Oh I intend to, believe me. Just looking down the viewfinder at the fields and clear blue sky made me want some slide film in a bad way….

sleeping: those are GORGEOUS!

[Curious]

i can see my work here is done.

wanders off whistling into sleeping‘s sunsets.

[Elsinore]

Curious: You’ll please pleased to know that I ordered some Fujichrome Provia the other day when I was dropping off my first two rolls of b/w. I got the replacement camera last week (actualyl ended up being the step up for the same price!), and shot a b/w roll through it. Might have the negatives developed and the slide film for this weekend–w00t!

[Elsinore]

Ok, so I picked up my film today, and my observations are thus: 1) It’s good that I sent back the first camera–not only was the self-timer fubar, but it had a light leak as well. 2) my pictures in general suck ass, mostly due to under exposure and 3) having shot color almost exclusively my whole life, I think I have to think differently to see scenes that would work well in b/w and 4) I need to pay more attention to high contrast scenes that probably won’t work as well.

I’m not sure I like b/w in general. I still have another roll of Ilford 400 in addition to a roll of Kodak TriX, then the Fujichrome Provia 100 that I picked up today. I think I need a real light meter, not just my Canon A620 pulling double duty as one…

[Curious]

2) my pictures in general suck ass, mostly due to under exposure and 3) having shot color almost exclusively my whole life, I think I have to think differently to see scenes that would work well in b/w and 4) I need to pay more attention to high contrast scenes that probably won’t work as well.

re #2 – are they flat? and re the A620 as meter which setting are you using? i’m thinking center weighted would be best but have never used that camera am not sure. my hand held meters (pilot brand, see the link provided earlier) are area meters and worked ok for most shots. if you remember the glamor shoot photos one sees the meter is held right at the subject and usually has the hood/cover on. you can get the same effect with a reflective meter if you get close to what you want to expose for. that isn’t practical in most situations. and color or b/w learning the limits of your meter will take a while. as you already know this isn’t TTL metering and therefore is subject to a bit of kentucky windage.

re # 3 – b/w is different but not so much on exposure as how your eye and brain will process the resulting image. you DO need to develop a b/w eye. the row houses in charleston need a different interruption in b/w than they do in color. with color it does the work of making the houses seperate and stand out from each other. b/w not so much. on the other hand a shot for the bugs contest could be done well (if not better) in b/w if one shoots a dark bug against a light background. i’ve got some moth shots in b/w that are much better than they would have been in color.

re # 4 – high contrast can be used effectively if you do the zone method thing and think about the finished print. again it’s a matter of using the good parts of b/w well. if you can get a true white and a true black your golden. well if you can do that with out completely losing the mid tones. one of the tricks to b/w is keeping the shadow detail. when i was printing b/w it wasn’t too often that i could just put the neg in and print. a real good print usually required a bit of dodge and burn.

try some building shots and some of your kids. and when doing the kids think portrait not snap shot for grandma.

[Elsinore]

Thanks for the tips, Curious. Going back over things, I think I didn’t use the A620 for metering as often as I thought. After giving it some thought, I think I took a number of the pictures just going off the exposure chart on the back of the camera. On the ones I did use it on, I think those were the higher contrast ones where I ended up exposing for the highlights instead of the shadows. Might have been ok for slide film, but not negative film, right? I’m not giving up, though I think I want to shoot some chrome before going back to b/w…

[Curious]

i was taught to shot tri-x at 250 and under develop slightly. that was supposed to bring out detail without blowing out the highlights. overall it worked but unless you are processing and printing your stuff it’s not practical. and with the labs now processing b/w in color chemistry — who knows. supposedly the film is set for that. maybe this weekend i’ll shot some tri-x and have it processed and see what develops.

turns out the last roll of 120 i had processed was blank. may explain why i couldn’t remember what was on it. i’ve got several days off around the forth so that may be a good tome for a photo project.

in any case shot the chrome using the A620’s meter. it will slow down your shooting some but for now you need to do that. and probably the log sheet/notebook thing too. you won’t be getting EXIF data now.

[Elsinore]

I’ve shot some of that colorgenic b/w stuff in 35mm, and on those rolls it specifically says C-41 chemistry. The Tri-X I have says specifically b/w negative film, so it probably could be pushed (pulled?) like that. But no, I’m not developing myself, and I’m not sure the camera shop I’m having process my film would mess with things that much. Thankfully, they’re willing to develop the negatives only without printing them, so my 2 rolls of crappy pictures didn’t carry the cost of printing all of them on top of things 😉

I know slide film is more finicky about exposure–expose for highlights to avoid blowing them out like with digital, right?

[Curious]

in a word – yes. it’s not so much finicky as reduced latitude. Color slide films, for example, usually produce the best results when they are within a 1/2 stop over or under the correct exposure. But you will have somewhat more latitude–often two-stops or more–with black-and-white and color negative (print) films.

that was from this old kodak metering article from 1998 that has a lot of good info. several of their suggestions re bracketing and learning your particular meter are now much easier to do in digital. for one thing the EXIF data precludes having to keep notes.

[sleeping]

I know slide film is more finicky about exposure–expose for highlights to avoid blowing them out like with digital, right?

Only if what’s in the highlights is important, IMO – you can’t pull extra detail out of the shadows nearly as easily as you can with digital, so you really want to make sure the *subject* is exposed correctly, even if that means blocked up shadows or blown highlights.

[Elsinore]

I meant to say thank you to the both of you for the film tips! I haven’t had a chance to break out the chrome yet, but hopefully in the next couple weeks.

Curious that article was a good read. Also found this gem: How do you determine the correct exposure for a high-contrast scene, one that has both large light and dark areas? If the highlight of shadow areas are more important, take a close-up reading of the important area to set the exposure. With color slide film, keep in mind that you will get more acceptable results if you bias the exposure for the highlights, losing the detail in the shadows. In a slide, the lack of detail in the shadows is not as distracting as overexposed highlights that project as washed-out color and bright spots on the screen. If you are working with black-and-white film, you can adjust the development for better reproduction of the scene contrast, particularly in highlights.

Will probably have to go back and review it some more and digest the info further. Might also have to order up some 35mm slide film and play with it in Dad’s AE-1P.

[Author]

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