The OCAU "film is not dead" club

[Athiril]

Tri-X
FP4+


Reala
Ektar
Pro 400H or Porta 400VC if you want stronger colour
Superia 1600

[jamiemao]

Originally Posted by Athiril

Tri-X
FP4+


Reala
Ektar
Pro 400H or Porta 400VC if you want stronger colour
Superia 1600

hey thanks!

so yeh as you said above, part of my question is also to ask what sort of iso would i want if i want to bring out better colours?
i'm looking to shoot colour cos if i want B & W i'll just convert it later.

i'm also looking to buy from B and H; are they any good? i'm looking at getting this; http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/produc...color_200.html

or should i get a higher iso? like 400?

[adam]

OK so to fill in some news:

1. Bought a 40/1.4 nokton, yet to shoot anything on it until I get the bessa repaired.

2. Almost bought an M3 but decided to hold off until I get the bessa back.

3. Picked up an olympus 35 RC which I have run it's first roll through and is now drying. (1+100 rodinal for about 1.5 hrs) - this is the first roll I have done all by my lonesome and I am pretty happy with how it's come out.

Rodinal is really some amazing stuff considering:

1. the bottle is ancient (5+ years, full of crystals and very murky)
2. how weak the dilution is;
3. how messy I measured the mixture (didn't have a measuring glass so guessed it)
4. how I didn't even bother testing temp or time.

Cannot beat that.

Just wish colour was just as easy!

Will post some pics when I get around to scanning the roll.

[adam]

Originally Posted by jamiemao

hey guys, i'll be going to india soon to finally put my film camera + 50mm 1.4 to use for some street photography. what films do you guys recommend? what iso?

For B/W - I love tri-x 400, you can push it hard and it's still quite low grain.

Google for 6400 tri-x

For colour - you might like kodak Ektar, it produces warm vivid colours - shame it's not cheap though!

[Athiril]

400.

Fujicolor 200's grain and sharpness isn't any better than 400+, makes 200 a waste of time, you can overexpose C-41 plenty without hurting it.

Fujicolor 100 is as good as as the more pro low speed colour stuff, in terms of grain and sharpness.


I suggest Tri-X, because it handles both extreme overexposure and underexposure extremely well, it is very flexible when you need it. It'll do 3200 and 6400 well, and better than Delta 3200 or TMZ can imho, grain will be finer and tighter. (though this depends on development, I do mine myself).

Here is some Tri-X I did in Rodinal @ 6400:


And a crop, that has had a reasonable amount of sharpening applied to it even, an out of focus area to show grain


While that is 6x7cm, ~4x bigger than 35mm, 35mm will have the same grain at the same amount of grain seen there at a 4.3 megapixel equiavalent, so it'd still have a potential for a higher res scan on a good scanner, or optical enlargement or larger lab print etc.

400 Speed will be good general speed film in C-41.

IE: In daylight situations, general exposure is going to be f/11 1/125th ISO 100 in most cases, f/16 when something brighter is in frame (I find even on digital or slide 1 stop over sunny 16 in most sunny 16 conditions doesnt blow anything out - and C-41 is difficult to blow out), so lots of ability to stop down and fast shutter for 400 speed.

But I would take an incident light meter reading (if you got one) of shadows in the scene (or just expose for the shady conditions in general), ie: in the shade of a market stall and expose for that on C-41 film.

If you wan more/stronger colour, then get some Ektar, Astia and Provia would be good as well (wouldnt recommend Velvia because of its narrower dynamic range), but processing is harder to find and more expensive.

Higher ISO film for lower light conditions. Even in daytime under the canopy of any kind of forest or jungle you'll often find you need high ISO and fast lens opening for any handheld photography, etc.

800 and 1600 will do well for sunset and dusk when the street is cast in dark shade with no more direct light.


B&H is good, I normally get all my stuff off ebay though.

[myoheddie]

Originally Posted by adam

OK so to fill in some news:

1. Bought a 40/1.4 nokton, yet to shoot anything on it until I get the bessa repaired.

2. Almost bought an M3 but decided to hold off until I get the bessa back.

out of curiosity - what happend to the bessa? I'm thinking of getting one soon so...

[adam]

Originally Posted by myoheddie

out of curiosity - what happend to the bessa? I'm thinking of getting one soon so...

Not sure yet - I bought it from someone on here & they bought it from Keh second hand - so it really is anyone's guess to what happened to cause the problem (the rangefinder was very much out of whack).

Bessa rangefinders are notorious for going out of alignment on the slightest of knocks - but never having one new I wouldn't be able to comment. I sent it away to get aligned & they came back saying it looks like it's been taken apart and not put back together correctly - so it might have to have an overhaul as a result. Fingers crossed it is not too serious!

Upside is that when it comes back they should have locked the rangefinder adjustment down with superglue/nail polish which means it shouldn't fall out of adjustment as easily as the factory ones do.

I definitely would still get another bessa on the basis of this experience. The camera itself is fantastic and costs 1/3rd of an equivalent leica + it has AE.

I just gotta sort this 1 thing out and I'll be happy.

The built in framelines for 35|40/50/90/75 are great. The R4A goes one step further and includes 21/25/28 which is good if you want to shoot wide.

I'd have to give an R4a a run before considering changing to it - I have the 21mm viewfinder and it is great at most aperture - most things are in focus and you don't really need the rangefinder.

[adam]

Just got some good news that the R3A has been repaired. Apparently it was missing some internals which caused the len's mount to be mounted wrong which in turn made the rangefinder to never be aligned correctly.

Annoying that it wasn't just a simple fix but never the less it should return to me in good condition and means I can actually try out the 40/1.4 nokton finally!

In other news, a buddy and I sat down last week and spent a good couple of hours focussing in a Zeiss Super Ikonta 531/16 folding 120mm camera.

The lens appears to be very sharp and now the rangefinder is tuned in it should be quite a nice user - I have a couple of rolls to process and scan, will post one or two shots when I have got around to that.

Originally bought the zeiss as a more portable alternative to a TLR, but it had several problems from the get go. Good to finally get everything on it working (has been sitting here waiting for me to pull my finger out for a good 18 months at least).

[Athiril]

Once I get to Melb Im going to start selling a couple of products.. inexpensive colour portrait film (120), rodinal, and my colour developer concentrate (like a colour version of rodinal).

I need to get out and do more film shooting.. got a shoot here with 2 fresh models tomorrow will pull out the RB67 for it.

edit: forgot to mention II was playing around on ebay and accidentally won a Minolta Scan Dual II (USB), Ive used one before and was impressed with the detail, it'll definately do me for 35mm I think

[magnum_pwr]

Originally Posted by Athiril

Once I get to Melb Im going to start selling a couple of products.. inexpensive colour portrait film (120), rodinal, and my colour developer concentrate (like a colour version of rodinal).

I need to get out and do more film shooting.. got a shoot here with 2 fresh models tomorrow will pull out the RB67 for it.

edit: forgot to mention II was playing around on ebay and accidentally won a Minolta Scan Dual II (USB), Ive used one before and was impressed with the detail, it'll definately do me for 35mm I think

I've got this scanner also too bad its only usb 1.1. Can I ask how much you got yours for?

Here are some results. First time scanning film but I reckon it turned out alright.
Films are either (iirc) Delta 400 or HP5+...


Endless stairway by alucard_1987, on Flickr


Wasteland by alucard_1987, on Flickr


WMD by alucard_1987, on Flickr

Still a novice so still need to work on digital post processing a bit.

[Athiril]

$120 AUD I think, but $50 US of that was for shipping.

[magnum_pwr]

That sounds terrific!

Paid 130 Euros for mine PLUS shipping and even then I was surprised I won it

[aZn.ov.Darkness]

Bought one of those negative scanners from ALDI the other week. What a utter waste of time. Darn thing didn't even work. Lent it to a friend, who luckily it worked for, but with horrible colour balance. Very disappoint. Can't expect much for $40 I guess

Oh, it was about time I got an SLR

[Frozen_Hell]

Originally Posted by aZn.ov.Darkness

Bought one of those negative scanners from ALDI the other week. What a utter waste of time. Darn thing didn't even work. Lent it to a friend, who luckily it worked for, but with horrible colour balance. Very disappoint. Can't expect much for $40 I guess

Are you scanning colour negative film? There is no standard for the shade of the orange base on the film, so you'll need to manually adjust colour balance yourself to compensate if the scanner doesn't automatically get it right.

I used to have a Nikon film scanner and the bundled software that came with that allowed for profiles to be saved that I could apply to certain negative film I was scanning to correct the colour cast, but I had to setup those profiles myself to what I thought was correct colour balance.

[aZn.ov.Darkness]

As far as I could see, there wasn't any options to save profiles for different negatives with the provided software. The scans were coming up extremely blue, and we were thinking about creating some Lightroom presets for it, but knowing it wouldn't work on my laptop made me hate the damn thing.