B&W Film and an Orange 21 Filter

I have shot B&W film with a red filter, and a light yellow filter and have been pleased with the results.  Recently I used an Orange 21 filter and got mixed results.  The equipment was an OM-1n and Ilford FP4+ 125 asa film.  The lens is a 50mm f3.5 Zuiko macro lens.  I shot the film at 100 asa, but my battery was dead, so I did the Sunny 16 rule, and hoped  that doing settings I think would work without a filter would be adequate.  I did well with the yellow and red filters, but not so well with the orange.  Admittedly, I still don’t “get” filters – I really need to study them in greater detail – but you (and I) can read about them here.  And you can, of course, google all about them!

I take my film to a local lab to be processed, whether color, slide, or silver-based black and white.  They do a fairly good job.  I can have film pushed if I want it, too.  I scan the film myself, whether 135 or 120, using either a Pakon scanner or my V600.  The results are decent.  I clean things up in LR or another program, depending on what I want.  Sometimes I do more in post, such as noise reduction, vignetting, etc.

The Ilford FP4+ is considered to be an excellent film.  When I scanned the pictures, they ended up with a rather reddish brown cast – was that the scanner, the processing, or the orange filter?  You can see the totally unretouched photos below.

I am not really pleased with any of the above photos.  The orange filter turned the red rose the same shade as the leaves.  Contrast of light and dark disappeared.  I plan to shoot another roll of FP4+, without a filter, to truly assess my like or dislike of this film.

Post-processing can change an image immensely.  Noise can disappear, dust and threads on the film can be eliminated, and contrast and exposure adjusted.  I do these digitally, just as you could do in a regular film dark room.  Here are some of the images I could clean up – and some needed a heck of a lot of work, let me tell you!

I even managed to one into a color picture using preset in On1 Photo Raw 2019!

Crazy stuff!  It will be interesting to try to reproduce this colored picture sometime in the future.  Meanwhile, back to the film cameras!

 

Inktober 2019: Days 7-11

I’m really stuck this year – maybe I just don’t have the time or focus or desire?  Hard to say.  I am behind.  I don’t really like some of the pens I have been using for Inktober as they have to be either disposable or impervious to the corrosive effects of the iron gall ink I am using.

Maybe it’s the paper? Some of the paper I am drawing on is really old and yellowed, and not really of artistic quality. I have no idea what it is made of, and is in an sketchbook that is easily 20 years old, and one I never used.

#7: Enchanted

#8: Frail

#9: Swing

#10: Pattern

#11 Snow

Inktober 2019: Days 1-6

This year for Inktober 2019 I decided to work only with iron gall ink, which I made earlier this year.  I am using pen nibs and brush to create the drawings, always done directly with the pen and no preliminary pencil drawing.  The first two pictures are not exclusively iron gall ink, but may be a mix of permanent ink and iron gall.

#1:  Ring 

Tomato cages – I saw these when I was out on the patio trying to figure what to use for rings.

#2:  Mindless

Mindless = Brainless – been watching zombies on TV!  How mindless is that?

#3: Bait

All kinds of bait – jail bait, take the bait, etc.  I chose a fish lure and a mouse trap.  Still warming up at this point for Inktober and getting the groove back, as they say.  This is when the pure iron gall ink begins.  And I decided to do away with the frames I usually use for my photographs.

#4: Freeze 

Again, still warming up.  This one had me stumped.

#5: Build  

Here is when the brain began to work and imagination started warming up.  Heavy equipment for building.  I think it would be a lot of fun to drive one of these things!

#6: Husky  

For those of you who speak English, but may not be aware of the term, “husky” can be big and strong, at least in American English. I like Sumo wrestlers, and though I don’t know much about the sport, I like to watch it now and again.

Inktober!

I did all the prompts for Inktober 2018 – and I plan to do them all again this year.  And I am already behind by a day because, as in real life, it does occasionally happen:  Everything went to hell in a hand basket!

Whaler’s Cove with a 1937 Welta Weltur

There is something so different in the quality of a photo taken with a film camera, rather than a digital camera.  It is apparent even more so when it is done with an uncoated lens from 1937.  The lens in question is a lovely Schneider Kreuznach Xenar 2.8, 75mm, taken using 1937 Welta Weltur camera.  It is a folding camera that takes the still-available 120mm film.  I used Ektar 100 by Kodak, and applied the Sunny 16 rule for manual exposures.

I have a 6×6 version with a 6×4.5 reduction mask.  I thought I had removed the mask – but hadn’t.  All my supposedly square images came out rectangular!  I stitched two images together in PS6 and then tediously removed threads and dots of dust that were apparent even after scanning with Digital Ice on the Epson V600.

This photo makes me think of landscape paintings of the 1700s and 1800s – especially that turquoise sky.  Mayhap a painting will follow.