Tim Gray
Well-known
Great story. It looks like you are really getting along during your Leica year. Great photos.
About the grain: NCPS does good stuff, but they can be a bit heavy on the sharpening. Couple that with what might be some underexposure and/or the scanner operator deciding to bias towards the shadow tones, and you can get a real grain fest. Also, labs tend to not do as good of a job as you might do yourself with developing. So if you get better results with one film than another with them, then just use that film. Doesn't mean the other film is grainier or inferior; just that their process works better with certain films.
About the grain: NCPS does good stuff, but they can be a bit heavy on the sharpening. Couple that with what might be some underexposure and/or the scanner operator deciding to bias towards the shadow tones, and you can get a real grain fest. Also, labs tend to not do as good of a job as you might do yourself with developing. So if you get better results with one film than another with them, then just use that film. Doesn't mean the other film is grainier or inferior; just that their process works better with certain films.
filmfan
Well-known
I VIN again! I always VIN...
porktaco
Well-known
thanks tim. i'm experimenting with what works with them. i'm still figuring out how do get myself dialed into where i want to be.
paulfish4570
Veteran
i really like the first pizza place shot, and the first under-bridge shot (i think i got those right).
Bingley
Veteran
I like the atmosphere in the most recent sets of photos you've posted. In some, the grain is a little distracting, in others it works well (at least to my eye). It would be interesting to see some of the scenes of hot Austin nights shot w/ chromogenic (C-41) film. If you want to experiment w/ filters, a good place to start is w/ a yellow (K2) filter. Just add one stop of exposure.
porktaco
Well-known
yeah, i'm not a genius about the grain. i like it a lot sometimes, but i'm frustrated other times. one of the reasons i'm buying an NEX7 is that i want a newer digital device than my beloved RD-1 and i don't really crave an m8/m8.2 and i don't think i want to spend 7 grand on an m9 plus then all the new leica glass that such a camera deserves. i do have two children that will at some point attend college. when i bought a canon p (maybe 18 months ago, maybe longer), i used c-41 film at first. i had this silly idea that i'd just take it to walgreens and everything would be good. but the scan quality sucked (very small) and i ended up having to take them to the real lab anyway so i switched to traditional b/w film. still, maybe there's a specific effect i would get with c-41, so i will bear that in mind as i shoot. thanks for the suggestion.
the nice lady at NCPS - for the record, i like them - was so funny when i told her i was having a grain problem. she said that most people use tri-x because they want the grain and that i should maybe think about different film. lol. i haven't written her back yet with my progression of different film attempts. in fairness, i imagine 8x10 workprints might show a very different result from what i get out of scans, and that NCPS grew up as a wet-print place and maybe that's where their heart is. that's cool and it's just something i will have to work with.
thanks all.
the nice lady at NCPS - for the record, i like them - was so funny when i told her i was having a grain problem. she said that most people use tri-x because they want the grain and that i should maybe think about different film. lol. i haven't written her back yet with my progression of different film attempts. in fairness, i imagine 8x10 workprints might show a very different result from what i get out of scans, and that NCPS grew up as a wet-print place and maybe that's where their heart is. that's cool and it's just something i will have to work with.
thanks all.
Tim Gray
Well-known
You might also try T-Max 400 in an effort to combat grain. While I don't find Tri-X to be as grainy as many make it out to be, T-Max 400 is most definitely finer grained. It's also just as flexible and fast as Tri-X (in my experience).
porktaco
Well-known
that's good to know
Bingley
Veteran
I agree w/ Tim Gray about giving TMax 400 a try if you want to limit grain. Also, given the subjects and situations you like to photograph, you might give an older emulsion, like Plus-X, a try, and shoot it at 320 or 400. It might give you the nice tones you're after w/out as much of the graininess you sometimes get from Tri-X. Of course, if you really want to control (rather than eliminate) the grain in your photos, the best approach would be to develop them yourself, where you control the film/developer combination, agitation, and the like. But I'm sure you know that already...
porktaco
Well-known
i barely have time to go to the post office with film. self developing is a fantasy at best. i'll think about plus-x and t-max, thanks. this is a process of iterative experimentation.
tunalegs
Pretended Artist
If you really want smooth I'd rec. Fuji Acros 100 or TMAX 100. Acros 100 is in my opinion amazing.
porktaco
Well-known
interesting. maybe i will. it's not that i'm against grain or anything, i'm just frustrated when i look at other 400-speed photos online and see pretty smoothness. i like the gritty look at times, and the little bits of tone are always wonderful to see.
porktaco
Well-known
i love that movie
I AM THE VINNER. i say that all the time and no one knows WTF i am talking about. also, i saw eszter balint in a nightclub in new york one time and got all downtown-chic-gooey.
JoeV
Thin Air, Bright Sun
Nice set of images. The grain doesn't bother me at all. But if it bothers you, perhaps you could try some of the chromogenic C-41 developed b/w films (both Kodak and Ilford) and see if you like the results. They produce a softer tone with less pronounced granularity, since color emulsion are dye globules instead of opaque oxidized silver crystals.
I admire your one camera project, especially your commitment to stick with film for a whole year. Myself, I'm too scattered with shooting my G1 micro-4/3 and doing large format paper negatives and direct positive paper prints in pinhole and lensed box cameras to give all that up for a year with one camera. It will be interesting for us to hear about some of your learnings from this last year. I'm staying tuned in. Well done.
~Joe
I admire your one camera project, especially your commitment to stick with film for a whole year. Myself, I'm too scattered with shooting my G1 micro-4/3 and doing large format paper negatives and direct positive paper prints in pinhole and lensed box cameras to give all that up for a year with one camera. It will be interesting for us to hear about some of your learnings from this last year. I'm staying tuned in. Well done.
~Joe
porktaco
Well-known
thanks Joe. in the interest of full disclosure, i am shooting a few other cameras and lenses, but so it's a "mostly leica year". but, the overall goal of spending a lot of time with B&W film and a fast 50 is animating most of my activity.
dear diary... i realize i'm somewhat behind.
i left off before posting about my graffiti night. so, there i was, on a quiet summer saturday night, determined to go out and photograph something. austin at night in the summer is kind of an interesting place. most of all, it's not austin in the day in the summer, which means the sun isn't out and people can bear to be outside. so, out they come. austin's also an easy place to get around. san francisco, where i lived before moving to austin isn't exactly easy to get around (or, at least it's not now... once, and not so long ago, it was). new york, where i lived before that, is easy due to the great public transport system, though distances can be somewhat de-motivating.
i figured i'd get in the car and drive around until i found something fun. for night shooting, that usually means i end up on austin's mile-long open drinking area, sixth street, but this night i went east.
geographical aside... now, technically, for those of you familiar with austin, i was still on or around sixth street, but the character of the street changes once you go under I-35 onto austin's east side. west of 35, sixth street is blocked off from congress to 35, and the closed-street character has leaked out past congress even farther west to lamar. although congress is austin's geographical east/west divider, 35 is the real east/west boundary. the east side is the poor side of town, but it's gentrifying. "sixth street" is a big party street, full of college kids and post-college revelers. "east sixth street" is a lot more bohemian. it takes a little more work to find a party but maybe not too much. on the night in question, i drove around until i heard music, and then quickly parked.
i found a big warehousey place with sound and light. it's a great location, with a little warren of buildings and trees and yards. there's a farmers' market there on sundays and they do a SXSW event during the festival. on this night, they had a graffiti art show and break dancing competition.
now, you got to understand, i'm 49 years old, and i grew up in graffiti-filled new york (n.b., i have no personal history of any significance as a graffiti writer or a break dancer). jean-michel basquiat wrote SAMO on the walls of my high school, i rode the train every day into manhattan never knowing what kind of riot of color i'd see on the cars, and i got to see the early days of hip-hop expand out of boroughs and into lower manhattan's more public view. so, i was curious, and had a nostalgic rather than an ironic point of view.
of course, in the old days (i can't bring myself to say "back in the day" without smirking), we didn't have quite this much space and quite this many leaves outside the nighttime establishments...
so, it's a big open warehouse space, where the organizers had set up a bunch of different spaces. the air stunk of spray paint, and there were a couple of guys at work on big canvases. there were a lot of paintings up on walls (for sale, and for display) and they had set up a big hard-plastic mat for breakdancing, with stage for the DJ and MC. that part of the space was absolutely packed, and absolutely rockin.
i took my m5 to shoot with, and my summicron 40. the m5 is great for this sort of thing due to the vertical-hang lugs. sits quietly at your side, and then WHOOP right up for a shot, then right back. i thought the 40 (which is a wonderful little lens) would be wide enough without being too wide. in retrospect, i wish i'd brought a 50 and then a 28. a lot of my shots ended up being cropped, and there were a bunch of things i didn't shoot because i didn't have enough FOV. i would also have liked the extra stop from a 50/1.4 or 1.5. it was dark enough inside that i ended up shooting a lot at 1/60 or even 1/30 and f2. i got a lot of action blur at those speeds. maybe next time, i'll remember that i can push film.
dear diary... i realize i'm somewhat behind.
i left off before posting about my graffiti night. so, there i was, on a quiet summer saturday night, determined to go out and photograph something. austin at night in the summer is kind of an interesting place. most of all, it's not austin in the day in the summer, which means the sun isn't out and people can bear to be outside. so, out they come. austin's also an easy place to get around. san francisco, where i lived before moving to austin isn't exactly easy to get around (or, at least it's not now... once, and not so long ago, it was). new york, where i lived before that, is easy due to the great public transport system, though distances can be somewhat de-motivating.
i figured i'd get in the car and drive around until i found something fun. for night shooting, that usually means i end up on austin's mile-long open drinking area, sixth street, but this night i went east.
geographical aside... now, technically, for those of you familiar with austin, i was still on or around sixth street, but the character of the street changes once you go under I-35 onto austin's east side. west of 35, sixth street is blocked off from congress to 35, and the closed-street character has leaked out past congress even farther west to lamar. although congress is austin's geographical east/west divider, 35 is the real east/west boundary. the east side is the poor side of town, but it's gentrifying. "sixth street" is a big party street, full of college kids and post-college revelers. "east sixth street" is a lot more bohemian. it takes a little more work to find a party but maybe not too much. on the night in question, i drove around until i heard music, and then quickly parked.
i found a big warehousey place with sound and light. it's a great location, with a little warren of buildings and trees and yards. there's a farmers' market there on sundays and they do a SXSW event during the festival. on this night, they had a graffiti art show and break dancing competition.
now, you got to understand, i'm 49 years old, and i grew up in graffiti-filled new york (n.b., i have no personal history of any significance as a graffiti writer or a break dancer). jean-michel basquiat wrote SAMO on the walls of my high school, i rode the train every day into manhattan never knowing what kind of riot of color i'd see on the cars, and i got to see the early days of hip-hop expand out of boroughs and into lower manhattan's more public view. so, i was curious, and had a nostalgic rather than an ironic point of view.
of course, in the old days (i can't bring myself to say "back in the day" without smirking), we didn't have quite this much space and quite this many leaves outside the nighttime establishments...
so, it's a big open warehouse space, where the organizers had set up a bunch of different spaces. the air stunk of spray paint, and there were a couple of guys at work on big canvases. there were a lot of paintings up on walls (for sale, and for display) and they had set up a big hard-plastic mat for breakdancing, with stage for the DJ and MC. that part of the space was absolutely packed, and absolutely rockin.
i took my m5 to shoot with, and my summicron 40. the m5 is great for this sort of thing due to the vertical-hang lugs. sits quietly at your side, and then WHOOP right up for a shot, then right back. i thought the 40 (which is a wonderful little lens) would be wide enough without being too wide. in retrospect, i wish i'd brought a 50 and then a 28. a lot of my shots ended up being cropped, and there were a bunch of things i didn't shoot because i didn't have enough FOV. i would also have liked the extra stop from a 50/1.4 or 1.5. it was dark enough inside that i ended up shooting a lot at 1/60 or even 1/30 and f2. i got a lot of action blur at those speeds. maybe next time, i'll remember that i can push film.
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porktaco
Well-known
finding focus was kind of a bitch in the semi-darkness with a constantly moving crowd and a constantly moving subject but i kept at it. i had a lot of unfortunate focus errors. however, i think this is all part of the film experience. limitations on shutter speed and the amount of light necessary to shoot. blurry action shots that are similar to my memory of the event. tone and texture rather than detail.
of course, some people had a slightly different view of things. you can see the kid with his ipad taking video of the event. he was one of a number of ipadders at the event. i've gotten used to glowing camera LCDs and smartphone displays (even though i don't really like them) at nighttime events. big glowing pad displays will take longer.
the breakdancing competition was a series of one-on-one dance-offs. it was all dudes, except for one woman at the end. they were very athletic, and the art has become much more evolved and gymnastic than BACK IN THE DAY (there, i said it). one-hand stands, flips, twists. very cool.
of course, some people had a slightly different view of things. you can see the kid with his ipad taking video of the event. he was one of a number of ipadders at the event. i've gotten used to glowing camera LCDs and smartphone displays (even though i don't really like them) at nighttime events. big glowing pad displays will take longer.
the breakdancing competition was a series of one-on-one dance-offs. it was all dudes, except for one woman at the end. they were very athletic, and the art has become much more evolved and gymnastic than BACK IN THE DAY (there, i said it). one-hand stands, flips, twists. very cool.
porktaco
Well-known
the organizers had put art up on the walls, as mentioned above, mostly for sale.
there were a lot of yankee hats going on. apparently, i'm not the only expat new yorker in town.
this guy was the only one who noticed that i was shooting film. there were a lot of folks with big ol' digital cameras, he among them.
the event spilled from the warehouse space into the yards out back. i should note that it attracted a mix of black, white, hispanic (and, oddly for a western-US event, a large number of puerto ricans), asian, whatever... the melting pot? not yet, but a wonderfully... eclectic mix.
they'd also set up some big canvases outside for people to tag, and left markers around.
back inside, it was WOLF SHIRT time. a very attractive young lady sitting next to me told me, "i'm gonna get me some of that wolf shirt tonight". now i know what to wear next time i go out.
you know, i learned something today... ok, maybe the south park reference is a bit anachronistic, but i did learn a few things. one, shooting in the dark is hard but possible with film. blurry actions are not too far from my own impressions and memories. two, pushing film wouldn't be a bad experiment next time. three, chicks dig film cameras and i need to get smarter about capitalizing on this. four, as always, a camera is a great vehicle for getting out and seeing things.
there were a lot of yankee hats going on. apparently, i'm not the only expat new yorker in town.
this guy was the only one who noticed that i was shooting film. there were a lot of folks with big ol' digital cameras, he among them.
the event spilled from the warehouse space into the yards out back. i should note that it attracted a mix of black, white, hispanic (and, oddly for a western-US event, a large number of puerto ricans), asian, whatever... the melting pot? not yet, but a wonderfully... eclectic mix.
they'd also set up some big canvases outside for people to tag, and left markers around.
back inside, it was WOLF SHIRT time. a very attractive young lady sitting next to me told me, "i'm gonna get me some of that wolf shirt tonight". now i know what to wear next time i go out.
you know, i learned something today... ok, maybe the south park reference is a bit anachronistic, but i did learn a few things. one, shooting in the dark is hard but possible with film. blurry actions are not too far from my own impressions and memories. two, pushing film wouldn't be a bad experiment next time. three, chicks dig film cameras and i need to get smarter about capitalizing on this. four, as always, a camera is a great vehicle for getting out and seeing things.
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seakayaker1
Well-known
Adam, I have enjoyed reading/viewing your project. Love the honest commentary with the posting of your photos along with the critique/comments being posted.
I stated using film a couple of months ago and have been enjoying the learning process myself. To date have been taking to a local lab for processing (hi-res scan on a CD) and then doing post processing with Aperature, Nik, & Photoshop software. Recently enrolled in a photography course that places us in the darkroom (November timeframe) to process our own negatives and look forward to the experience.
Great thread and look forward to your future postings.
I stated using film a couple of months ago and have been enjoying the learning process myself. To date have been taking to a local lab for processing (hi-res scan on a CD) and then doing post processing with Aperature, Nik, & Photoshop software. Recently enrolled in a photography course that places us in the darkroom (November timeframe) to process our own negatives and look forward to the experience.
Great thread and look forward to your future postings.
porktaco
Well-known
thanks man. it's been a great project