I acquired a Yashica 12 medium-format TLR camera from the 1960s. (The lens hood is 3D printed, though.)
I'm still learning how to use it, but here are some pictures on the Waco river walk. The bridge was taken with Arista 400 and the other pictures with HPS5. I need to learn to focus better.
The sky in the last photo brought back memories. The slightly sulphurous smell of fixer; the sharp smell of acetic acid…
IanS’s unsolicited advice, to be valued at cost:
Today, with digital colour the default, you need a reason to use B&W film. Natural reasons (apart from nostalgia) would be an interest in tone, structure and texture.
Develop an eye for tone. This is missing in a lot of modern B&W work. You don’t have to accept the whole gospel according to St Ansel, but you do have to think about it.
Choose a film and stick with it, at least for a while. You don’t want to change too many variables at once.
Key difference between digital and (negative) film: digital clips highlights hard, film clips shadows softly.
Do you have yellow/orange/red filters? These darken blue skies, giving the dramatic look seen in old architectural magazines.
I think someone asked it a bunch of Socratic questions, and then it just started thinking, and it's still there, thinking.
Ian:
I have a yellow filter on my 1939 Voigtlander 35mm, but it's not movable to the TLR. I could buy a cheap ebay 37mm filter and add a mount to my hood.
I should confess that there was a fair amount of adjustment of tones in Lightroom of these photos.
My biggest problem was with some portraits (not shown for privacy reasons) where I just couldn't get things sharp. I don't know if it's my eyesight (I was using the built-in magnifier, though, on top of the focusing screen), or the grain on the film, or, worst of all, a miscalibration between the looking and taking lenses.
Testing calibration is easy. Set up a line of batteries (or similar objects) and focus on the middle one as best you can. Then see which one turns out sharpest. Best to do this with tripod and cable release (if you have one) to avoid other sources of blurring.
Other possibilities:
Depth of field issues: Are the images sharp anywhere? If so, this could be the problem. At the same f number, bigger cameras (i.e. bigger film or sensor area) have less depth of field than smaller ones. This is quite noticeable even if you are coming from a 35mm/full frame camera, still more from a mobile phone. You may have to stop down to get adequate depth of field.
Motion blur: Maybe shutter speed is too low. The films you used have nominal speed ISO 400. Young people these days (I’m getting old…) don’t appreciate the luxury of being able to dial up ISO 1000 or more. Tripod and cable release will help. Also extra light.
Maybe the lens isn’t quite sharp wide open? Conventional wisdom used to be (not so much now) that you had to stop down 1 – 2 stops to get best sharpness.
Grain will be noticeable but should not affect sharpness much, at least if the exposure and development are even vaguely reasonable. Note that the last picture, presumably taken in full sun with a narrow aperture and high shutter speed, is plenty sharp. If other pictures aren’t so sharp, the problem is not the grain.
The fox was probably shot pretty wide-open, was very sharp in the viewfinder, and the details on its paws are sharp in the photo, so I think the calibration is probably OK.
I haven't gotten the negatives back yet, just scans, some of which were corrected by the lab. So maybe the negatives will give me some sort of a hint as to the lack of sharpness.
One problem the camera has is that shutter times are too low by one stop, except for 1/500 which is pretty close. I can fix that by remembering to raise the shutter speed after metering (the camera has a built-in meter, which seems to be well-calibrated, though I had to add a Schottky diode to step down a modern coin-cell battery to the voltage of the mercury cell it was designed for), but I generally don't remember. :-(
6 comments:
Very cool, Alex!
The sky in the last photo brought back memories. The slightly sulphurous smell of fixer; the sharp smell of acetic acid…
IanS’s unsolicited advice, to be valued at cost:
Today, with digital colour the default, you need a reason to use B&W film. Natural reasons (apart from nostalgia) would be an interest in tone, structure and texture.
Develop an eye for tone. This is missing in a lot of modern B&W work. You don’t have to accept the whole gospel according to St Ansel, but you do have to think about it.
Choose a film and stick with it, at least for a while. You don’t want to change too many variables at once.
Key difference between digital and (negative) film: digital clips highlights hard, film clips shadows softly.
Do you have yellow/orange/red filters? These darken blue skies, giving the dramatic look seen in old architectural magazines.
How did you get the elephant in that position?
Walter:
I think someone asked it a bunch of Socratic questions, and then it just started thinking, and it's still there, thinking.
Ian:
I have a yellow filter on my 1939 Voigtlander 35mm, but it's not movable to the TLR. I could buy a cheap ebay 37mm filter and add a mount to my hood.
I should confess that there was a fair amount of adjustment of tones in Lightroom of these photos.
My biggest problem was with some portraits (not shown for privacy reasons) where I just couldn't get things sharp. I don't know if it's my eyesight (I was using the built-in magnifier, though, on top of the focusing screen), or the grain on the film, or, worst of all, a miscalibration between the looking and taking lenses.
Testing calibration is easy. Set up a line of batteries (or similar objects) and focus on the middle one as best you can. Then see which one turns out sharpest. Best to do this with tripod and cable release (if you have one) to avoid other sources of blurring.
Other possibilities:
Depth of field issues: Are the images sharp anywhere? If so, this could be the problem. At the same f number, bigger cameras (i.e. bigger film or sensor area) have less depth of field than smaller ones. This is quite noticeable even if you are coming from a 35mm/full frame camera, still more from a mobile phone. You may have to stop down to get adequate depth of field.
Motion blur: Maybe shutter speed is too low. The films you used have nominal speed ISO 400. Young people these days (I’m getting old…) don’t appreciate the luxury of being able to dial up ISO 1000 or more. Tripod and cable release will help. Also extra light.
Maybe the lens isn’t quite sharp wide open? Conventional wisdom used to be (not so much now) that you had to stop down 1 – 2 stops to get best sharpness.
Grain will be noticeable but should not affect sharpness much, at least if the exposure and development are even vaguely reasonable. Note that the last picture, presumably taken in full sun with a narrow aperture and high shutter speed, is plenty sharp. If other pictures aren’t so sharp, the problem is not the grain.
The fox was probably shot pretty wide-open, was very sharp in the viewfinder, and the details on its paws are sharp in the photo, so I think the calibration is probably OK.
I haven't gotten the negatives back yet, just scans, some of which were corrected by the lab. So maybe the negatives will give me some sort of a hint as to the lack of sharpness.
One problem the camera has is that shutter times are too low by one stop, except for 1/500 which is pretty close. I can fix that by remembering to raise the shutter speed after metering (the camera has a built-in meter, which seems to be well-calibrated, though I had to add a Schottky diode to step down a modern coin-cell battery to the voltage of the mercury cell it was designed for), but I generally don't remember. :-(
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