Shooting opera from the wings

[tedwhite]

Farace: As I looked your first-posted pics I thought, wow, you must have been that close? Were you onstage? Then I realized they were "crops" and therefore created the illusion of being closer. I had a GSN once. Sold it, unfortunately. However, I've got another coming in the post from a fellow RFF member, which is good because a local band ("Buzz and the Soul Senders") plays frequently in a bar across the street from my darkroom and they've asked me to photograph a session, but only in black and white.

With this band playing, shutter noise is moot, so I could use my Pentax Spotmatic SLR's, but it's a low light scene so an RF camera might work better.

Waiting to see your b/w pics.

 

[Farace]

Ted, some of the shots really were that close. The second of my three posted images was not cropped. I was behind a black masking curtain and if I wanted to, I probably could have leaned forward and touched the closest person.

 

[rogue_designer]

did walgreens do the scanning?

If so - that might be the source of alot of your woes. I'd pick a few that you really like the expressions/compositions, and try to have them rescanned somewhere.

Underexposed C41 films can go greenish, but it shouldn't be that bad.

FWIW - on my monitor, 40oz's correction shows the kimonos as pale blue and burgundy - if a little undersaturated.

 

[Farace]

did walgreens do the scanning?

If so - that might be the source of alot of your woes. I'd pick a few that you really like the expressions/compositions, and try to have them rescanned somewhere.

Underexposed C41 films can go greenish, but it shouldn't be that bad.

FWIW - on my monitor, 40oz's correction shows the kimonos as pale blue and burgundy - if a little undersaturated.

Yes, Walgreen did the scanning and processing.

Now that I'm at work, the correction looks better than at home. Chalk it up to Windows vs. Mac gamma, I guess.

I should have the other two rolls back tomorrow morning.

 

[Farace]

I got my second and third rolls back this morning and they look better (meaning, they aren't exhibiting any signs of green fluorescence, not that I did a better job composing the shots). I take that as a sign that the first roll might have been improperly developed and/or scanned. (I haven't yet been able to look at the disks from these two rolls.) These were processed at a different Walgreen than the first roll. I'll try to post a few shots this evening after I get home.

 

[Farace]

Here are a couple of the shots from the second night. It's BW400CN, in my Retina IIC which I pretty much set and left it there. The first is not cropped, the second is. I decided to leave them "as scanned" by Walgreen, but they do improve with a bit of tweaking.

 

[Farace]

Here are some color shots from the third and final night. This time I used 800 speed Walgreen film (presumably Fuji), using the same Yashica Electro 35 GSN I used the first night. No ghastly fluorescent greens this time (not only a different Walgreen, but a different type processor--the other Walgreen had an Agfa machine, this one a Fuji Frontier; not that I know how they compare). Again, I didn't tweak the images to show the "as scanned" characteristics. The second was cropped, the others not. The first showed me how good the metering is on the Yashica--I really expected the lights to throw off the exposure, but they didn't.

 

[tedwhite]

Nice photographs. I would say the GSN lens is the better lens.

 

[Kin Lau]

Nice shots... I would start using the 2nd lab more.

 

[keithwms]

Whoa the curve on those bw400cn shots is way off. Looks like there is a haze over the blacks, probably from improper scanning. Beware that scanning the bw400CN is best done yourself, in colour mode.

 

[Farace]

Whoa the curve on those bw400cn shots is way off. Looks like there is a haze over the blacks, probably from improper scanning. Beware that scanning the bw400CN is best done yourself, in colour mode.

I was going to mention that the actual B&W prints don't look at all like those scans. The blacks are actually black, etc. I'll have to get a transparency-capable scanner one of these days. (All I have now is a rather old Nikon Scantouch (IIRC).)

 

[40oz]

If the first images you posted (with the green shadows) were scans of prints, you might try getting a few prints from the first roll from the second Walgreens. I wonder if the color cast was a result of the machine settings and not on the negative. Typically, if your prints are unsatisfying, you don't have to pay for them, so if the reprints are no different, just decline them.