James Markus wrote:
I think I found my film spirit animal - the Nikon F4S. It is all dials, and locks for those dials. Little switches, buttons, and steampunk good looks. I experienced the absolute best green dot auto focus confirmation dot I have ever seen. Bright, backlit - with red arrows indicating the direction for correct focus.. I put non-ai to afs, dx, lenses, - and they all work. The little lens mount flip tab for non-ai lenses even has a lock button. So I loaded up a roll of Ultrafine eXtreme 400 and slapped on the Nikkor-O.C 35mm f2 souped the film in Rodinal-1:25-8.25min-at-70-degrees. It is heavy, but a pleasure to shoot....Show more →
I really like this set, especially the closeup of the F4 and lens, and all the hanging pots and pans and stuff.
You are making me want to put film in my Nikkormat!
But I keep bumping into the same conundrum - what film type? If any sort of print film I have no setup (or skill) to develop it, and prints themselves are inconvenient to share, handle, store. Slides? I haven't pulled out the projector and screen for decades; it's a cumbersome process. I do have a nice scanning rig, but if the end result is to produce digital pics then I might as well just use the Z5-II.
Still, I hate the thought of a great piece of equipment, any sort of equipment, sitting idle in a cabinet.
kwoodard wrote:
How are you scanning these in? I’m enjoying your film tangent.
The Nikon LS-5000 with a modified SA-21 film strip attachment (it now thinks it is a SA-30) 3D printed canisters (off etsy) to hold the film and catch it. Software is Vuescan. Once I start the first scan it steps through the entire roll one frame at a time 24-38+ frames. I'm still working on a Nikon SF-200 slide scanner attachment that does 50 slide batches (jams too often), Most of the slides I have were shot by my dad on Kodachrome. The attachment doesn't like paper slide mounts.
jimmuller wrote:
I really like this set, especially the closeup of the F4 and lens, and all the hanging pots and pans and stuff.
You are making me want to put film in my Nikkormat!
But I keep bumping into the same conundrum - what film type? If any sort of print film I have no setup (or skill) to develop it, and prints themselves are inconvenient to share, handle, store. Slides? I haven't pulled out the projector and screen for decades; it's a cumbersome process. I do have a nice scanning rig, but if the end result is to produce digital pics then I might as well just use the Z5-II.
Still, I hate the thought of a great piece of equipment, and sort of equipment, sitting idle in a cabinet....Show more →
Jim, Souping film is like following a cooking recipe. I have no intention of printing 99.99% of these even though I own multiple photo printers. I'm filling shoe boxes with exposed color negative and transparency film until I have about 15 of each. I'll develop them all at once in old style tanks since that is the capacity of the c41 and e6 kits I purchased. I then will scan therm and store in archival sleeves. For over ten years I had a Wing-Lynch film processor in the basement always at the ready. I purchased two broken ones from my employer for $10 and signed a waiver. Plus enough chemistry to fill a swimming pool. Built one working processor out of the two broken ones. The chemistry is really nasty, and with seven kids - I felt I had to get it out of the house, and to disassemble and clean the processors so the landfill could accept them. The unmixed chemistry was really the hardest part, but the federally funded recycle center spent about two weeks getting ready to receive the chemicals. Now I'm using 500ml kits - quite a change.
James Markus wrote:
Jim, Souping film is like following a cooking recipe. I have no intention of printing 99.99% of these even though I own multiple photo printers. I'm filling shoe boxes with exposed color negative and transparency film until I have about 15 of each...
Whew. Far more work and muddling around than I want to think about! Plus I have no space for that. And no patience for cooking!
As for scanning, I bought from my local Hunts a Pro Master scanning rig and for $75 a nice Tamron 90mm F-mount macro lens (which I used for dragonflies last autumn but can't post here). The rig includes a tripod attachment to hold my Z camera and mounts on a tripod for convenience. Its film holder does only 35mm film but a colleague at work used his 3-d printer to make a holder for two slides, paper or plastic. Scanning is a slow contemplative process but it forces me to consider whether each slide is worth scanning. (Most aren't.)
So the result of shooting film, besides just using the Nikkormat, would be to produce digital pics with subtle film-ic features. I don't have enough experience or judgment to go there , and anyway the subject matter is usually what interests me, not the image per se. Hence the conundrum: I might as well just start with Z pics. I can cook them with my computer, no soup involved, and I rarely do any significant cooking except occasional resize/resharpen/crop.
Speaking of cropping, I have to say that 105mm f/2.5 you folks recommended has been impressive at pulling in detail. A mildly telephoto lens which doesn't know its own limitations.
jimmuller wrote:
Speaking of cropping, I have to say that 105mm f/2.5 you folks recommended has been impressive at pulling in detail. A mildly telephoto lens which doesn't know its own limitations.
Yes, the focal-length of the 105mm is a bit of a forgotten classic. Nifty-fifties have of course ALWAYS been "the norm", but these days you mostly see very fast (f/1.2) 85mm and 135mm lenses, with a moderate-speed 105mm completely unavailable. I find the 105mm focal-length like a warm-bath: Just comforting. When I got my first Nikon setup (on an FE body), it was a 24/2.8 NC and 105/2.5 AiS, with about 70% of my shots on the 24mm. The 105/2.5 was/is just such a great walking-around lens, compact while still giving a reasonable max aperture, and the built-in hood is convenient (if flawed). To this day it remains one of my favourite Nikkors: Enjoy yours!
Speaking of the 105/2.5, I have the original Sonnar version of that lens (in LTM mount, from the mid 1950s) and it's one of my all-time favourite lenses for portraits. I took these with it last month.
bjhurley wrote:
Speaking of the 105/2.5, I have the original Sonnar version of that lens (in LTM mount, from the mid 1950s) and it's one of my all-time favourite lenses for portraits. I took these with it last month.
Brad, Love the light on her face in the first one. Musical portraits can be such a challenge. - particularly when the instrument amounts to a curved stick. I love what you got - just wondering aloud if there could be anyway to pose her with similar shape to the sax - like it was an extension of her being.
James Markus wrote:
Brad, Love the light on her face in the first one. Musical portraits can be such a challenge. - particularly when the instrument amounts to a curved stick. I love what you got - just wondering aloud if there could be anyway to pose her with similar shape to the sax - like it was an extension of her being.
We did try a few different poses with the sax (see one below), but I like your idea. I recently did some portraits of a flute player and that's even harder...basically just a stick. I'm a flute player myself so I've had plenty of opportunities to experiment...my favourite flute pose is to disassemble the flute, hold the head joint up to one ear and the rest of the flute to the other so it looks like the flute is passing through my head. Which is sort of how I feel about the flute. :-)
bjhurley wrote:
We did try a few different poses with the sax (see one below), but I like your idea. I recently did some portraits of a flute player and that's even harder...basically just a stick. I'm a flute player myself so I've had plenty of opportunities to experiment...my favourite flute pose is to disassemble the flute, hold the head joint up to one ear and the rest of the flute to the other so it looks like the flute is passing through my head. Which is sort of how I feel about the flute. :-)
I was always impressed with how Ian Anderson (Jethro Tull) performed with the flute, including his canonical "standing on one leg" pose. Musical instrument portraits are indeed a challenging scneario!
AdaptedLenses wrote:
Couple 300mm f/4.5 ED-IF shots to move things along. I’ve been using non NMFG recently so less to post but my Nikkors aren’t going anywhere.
I got a lens that comes with a story. I found it on that famous auction site, and it described everything except the optics. It looked good so i wrote the owner to ask about their condition - which were fine. The box finally arrived, but while tracking it I noticed it came from Hurricane, Utah (locally pronounced hurr-kin) How'd it get that name? I asked and here is the google response.
"Hurricane, Utah, was named in the 1860s after a strong whirlwind blew the top off a carriage being driven by Mormon leader Erastus Snow. Upon witnessing the event, Snow reportedly exclaimed, "Well, that was a hurricane," which led to the area being named Hurricane Hill, later shortened to Hurricane."
All of these Nikkor-S-auto_5.8cm-f1.4-Non-ai were shot wide open on a Canon 5D Mark III. I've named the lens "The Hurricane"
About 7 months ago I sold both of my 5000ED scanners to a guy that lost everything in the Southern California wildfires. The only thing he was able to recover was film, slides and negatives that were in a garage refrigerator. I’ve been thinking of using my bellows and slide adapter.
You are right about the slide adapter being finicky with the cardboard holders. I found loading them in batches with the same thickness slides helped a lot. I had to do a project where I was scanning an old film archive for the school. 25k slides from a 50 year span of time.
James Markus wrote:
The Nikon LS-5000 with a modified SA-21 film strip attachment (it now thinks it is a SA-30) 3D printed canisters (off etsy) to hold the film and catch it. Software is Vuescan. Once I start the first scan it steps through the entire roll one frame at a time 24-38+ frames. I'm still working on a Nikon SF-200 slide scanner attachment that does 50 slide batches (jams too often), Most of the slides I have were shot by my dad on Kodachrome. The attachment doesn't like paper slide mounts.
AdaptedLenses wrote:
Couple 300mm f/4.5 ED-IF shots to move things along. I’ve been using non NMFG recently so less to post but my Nikkors aren’t going anywhere.
Very nice! B&W of course. Around here everything is G&W (gray and white), with a bit of DB (dark brown) and the occasional VDG (very dark green). No other color. Might as well set Picture Control to B&W. My pics would look the same!
bjhurley wrote:
Speaking of the 105/2.5, I have the original Sonnar version of that lens (in LTM mount, from the mid 1950s) and it's one of my all-time favourite lenses for portraits. I took these with it last month.
Oh my, those are lovely! Being a musician myself I like just about all musician pics. It doesn't hurt that the sax is a beautiful piece of detailed brass, and that player is, well, let's just say rather saxy herself!
My 105 is the version just before they gave it the built-in hood. I found a like-new condition H8 hood for $5 on "that auction site". Since it is detachable I can remove it, making the lens smaller.
, and anyway the subject matter is usually what interests me, not the image per se. Hence the conundrum: I might as well just start with Z pics. I can cook them with my computer, no soup involved, and I rarely do any significant cooking except occasional resize/resharpen/crop.
