Medium Format ... long may it live!

I've always had the most fun shooting MF compared to anything else.. right now I'm in the process of selling some Nikon primes, and a 3 lens blad kit to fund a Mamiya 7ii kit.

I've been kicking the idea around forever, and finally was swayed when I was Edward Burtynsky uses one as his carry around camera :swoon:

THat's not really the reason, but it's nice to consider 🙂
 
kid_a said:
Craig,
your photos make me miss India even more than my own do. You did really well to capture the essence of such a dynamic country and culture,
cheers
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Thanks Dylan... Actually the difficult part for me was that it was my first time in the country and I was there only 5 days across 3 cities and with customer meetings each day. They were all slipped in either before breakfast or at the very end of the day. Chennai was the worst as all I had was 45 minutes from 4.30pm before we left the office to head to the airport. Dressed in suit and tie, I ran around the block with the Fujifilm Klasse W and managed to get a roll shot. I really need to go back with more time and on my terms to shoot. Hopefully next year... 😀
 
Craig, stellar work, most inspirational. Are you scanning negatives or the actual darkroom prints? The sharpening is most impressive if these are scans of B&W negatives.

Cheers,
Jeff
 
Even with a plastic lens...


3850567583_0f8b35e599_o.jpg
 
jplomley said:
Craig, stellar work, most inspirational. Are you scanning negatives or the actual darkroom prints? The sharpening is most impressive if these are scans of B&W negatives.

Cheers,
Jeff
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Thanx Jeff,

These are direct neg scans on a Nikon 9000ED - TX400. Certainly worked a little in PS and a little sharpening with an edge mask.
 
All this talk about the 50mm is making me think I should pick one up. Would mean a 50/80 combo. What is the FOV of the 50mm in 135 terms?
 
Stradibarrius said:
Craig I would also be interested in your analog to digital conversion method?
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Scanning for me is just about getting as much info as possible - 16 bit grayscale scans with 8x sampling. I Photoshop I first set black and white points and maybe a little global contrast - if it works globally.

Most of the real work I do is the result of local application of curves; that is, pick on a part of the image I want to work on, then work the curves without concern for the rest of the image / apply the curves / then select this as a "history" state / return to the previous state / then with a setting of 20~30% opacity, I paint the curve effect in with the history brush (using a tablet). These areas could be a large area or a small one but I do tend to pick on larger areas first and I never work in layers.

For any sharpening I use some edge masks that I grabbed from a web site called pinkheadedbug.com years ago but unfortunately they no longer appear to be there. There's also some good actions here Luminosity Masks that I also find very useful. My final part is hand spotting the image for dust, etc at 100%.

Basically, I work an image by eye and freehand and not by numbers. Its an approach that is not the easiest to get across in words. This is obviously a brief description but if you have anymore questions I will certainly try my best to answer them. Basically, my workflow does not seem to follow anything I see documented across the web but it works for me.
 
Good Old Yashica Mat 124

Larry
 

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