Tag: film

High speed Tri-X in Diafine reference, ISO 2000-6400

Nicolai Grossman 1 Comment

High speed Tri-X in Diafine reference by Luke H

Flickr member Luke H tested Kodak Tri-X 400 film (400TX) in Diafine developer at high speed. He shot the frames above at ISOs 2000, 2500, 3200, 4000, 5000, and 6400 with a yellow filter.

Check it out in Luke’s photostream at Flickr

If you’re not familiar with Diafine developer, it’s got several magical properties: it’s a split-bath compensating developer, so it’s difficult to get blocked shadows or blown highlights, one batch can last for well over a year, its temperature range is wide enough (21–30°C / 70–85°F) that you don’t need a thermometer, they recommend you not use a chemical stop bath (just water), film needs to spend at least 3 minutes in each bath (but can spend more), and since the development time is the same for every film, you can develop different emulsions in the same batch at one time. If you’re gentle with the agitation, it’s quite fine-grained. In short: AWESOME.

For more info, see the Diafine group on Flickr, Grant Heffernan, or Sherman Dunnam Photography.

You can buy it from Calumet Photographic, B&H, and Amazon.com in the US, among other places. For the UK, hit Retro Photographic.

Improvized 35mm film leader retriever

Nicolai Grossman Leave a comment

Improvized 35mm film puller by Flickr member fullframe

Rewind your 35mm film all the way into the canister and need to get the leader out again? Here’s how to do it with a piece of film.

Flickr member fullframe writes:

The arrow is pointing in the direction you’re going to insert this into the canister. The hooks were cut into the sprockets to catch the sprockets of the film leader. This is just an illustration, you should cut more notches.

Once you have enough of this film puller in the canister turn the spindle counterclockwise (if you’re looking at the canister with the spindle pointing towards you) until you feel the hooks catch. Slowly pull the film puller out. If things work it should drag out the film leader. You may have to try more than once.

Based on original instructions by Andrew Davidhazy.

Via fullframe and kellybelly

Fujifilm increase film prices

Nicolai Grossman Leave a comment

Fujifilm Press Release

May 17, 2006 – Fuji Photo Film Co., Ltd. (President and CEO: Shigetaka Komori, hereinafter Fujifilm) announced today that from June 2006 onward, it will implement worldwide price increases for its photosensitive material products. The rapid digitalization of photography has created harsh market conditions for the photo imaging business. To sustain its photo imaging business, Fujifilm is undertaking intensive structural reforms, but despite efforts to reduce fixed costs and improve productivity, it no longer can absorb the soaring costs of silver, oil and other raw materials.

Thus, it has been forced to revise its pricing as follows:

  1. Affected products: Photosensitive materials
  2. Effective date: From June 1, 2006 onward
  3. Price revision: The prices of main products are expected to increase by 3% to 20%.

Specific details regarding affected products, effective dates, and exact price increases will be decided based on local market conditions.

Via Photography BLOG

Awesome implications of ISO 24,000 film

Nicolai Grossman Leave a comment

Yesterday, I posted (well, lifted Oren Grad’s post from The Online Photographer) about an ultra high-speed ISO 24,000 B&W reversal film emulsion that Kodak have developed, but one implication didn’t hit me until today: if released commercially, it would allow handheld pinhole photography at normal shutter speeds.

An aperture of f/185 gives you a shutter speed between 1/125 and 1/250 second in about a half stop under full sun, and you’d have an even wider range of choices with zone plates or photon sieves, whose aperture equivalents are larger.

This opens up a lot of possibilities that didn’t really exist before: tripod-free shooting, flash (including fill flash), precision exposure control with normal shutters, and a whole world of candid/documentary and indoor and outdoor stop-motion photography.

While I generally like the slower shooting experience of pinhole photography, sometimes it’s just annoying, and sometimes it outright prevents me from getting the shots I want.

I’m really excited by the possibility of more creative choices. Bring it on, Kodak!

ISO 24,000(!) film developed by Kodak

Nicolai Grossman 1 Comment

Oren Grad’s entire post from The Online Photographer:

No, that’s not a typo. This week at the International Congress of Imaging Science in Rochester, NY, Kodak researchers presented a new silver halide emulsion that is thermally developed to produce a positive image at speeds of up to ISO 24,000. You can read the conference abstract here.

Kodak is currently seeking to determine whether there is sufficient demand for such a film to justify a trial production run. More in this thread over at APUG, including instructions on how to communicate your interest to Kodak.

Via The Online Photographer

Combi-Plan 4×5 daylight tank still sucks donkeys

Nicolai Grossman 4 Comments

It turns out that when I reviewed the HP Combi-Plan T 4×5 daylight sheet film developing tank and called it a "dodgy, leaky piece of shit", I may have vastly under-stated my case.

It was nice today: the trees in a local apple orchard were flowering, it was warm but not hot, and the light was good. I loaded up some Velvia and FP4, grabbed my field camera, and spent half an hour waiting for a cloud to move out of the way of the sun.

It’s been a while since I shot B&W 4×5 and I forgot that I never actually ordered the rotary tube I was looking at to replace the Combi-Plan. Oh well. You know how sometimes you have a bad experience with something, time passes, and you start to think that it couldn’t really be as bad as you remember? The Combi-Plan can’t be that bad, can it?

It can. Now that I’ve given the tank another go, I think it’s still dodgy, it’s still leaky, and still a piece of shit, but that doesn’t really begin to cover it. This time, most of the sheets escaped their carrier channels and were floating around loose inside. One sheet had a few chunks of emulsion scratched out, which could be my sometimes questionable film holder loading skills, but my money’s on it floating around and scraping against sharp film carrier parts.

I’m frankly amazed that this thing is actually sold. If I hacked something this bad together, I wouldn’t even lend it to a friend, let alone attempt to charge money for it. Either the company who make this have never used it or they’ve got balls the size of the moon. This product needs to be melted, dunked in piss, and stabbed in the face with a fucking schoolbus.

UPDATE: The scratches are my fault. I forgot to affix the thing that holds the film in place to the top of the film carrier.

Why are we still shooting slide film? answered by Ken Wronkiewicz

Nicolai Grossman Leave a comment

Ken Wronkiewicz posted a rebuttal to my recent article, Why are we still shooting slide film?, bringing up something I completely failed to consider: slide film has a greater Drange (density range) than print film does. This means that while you give up dynamic range, you get a significantly better contrast range in what you do capture.

In light of this excellent point, I’ll keep shooting slides in low-contrast lighting such as overcast days. You can always get rid of unwanted contrast after the fact, but you can’t add it if you didn’t capture it in the first place.

Check out Ken’s complete explanation at wireheadarts.com.

Why are we still shooting slide film?

Nicolai Grossman 2 Comments

Given that I get my color film developed at a lab and scan it myself (and that I never project slides), I’ve got to wonder why I shoot chromes anymore. The film and processing are both more expensive, and with my workflow, all I get for the money is less dynamic range and no exposure tolerance.

The ~5 stops that most slide film can capture is simply not enough for many non-studio lighting situations. It’s quite common to be faced with the choice of having to severely blow out a bright area or severely block up shadows. Landscape photographers who shoot with view cameras or SLRs can sometimes get around this with split ND filters, but not everybody can take 20 minutes to set up a shot, not every subject has a brightness boundary that falls in a conveniently straight line, and there are plently of cameras that don’t let you look through the lens to see what you’re doing (rangefingers, TLRs, pinholes, toys, etc.), so it’s not a solution for everybody…

Continue reading on Photon Detector

Last chance to order Fujichrome Velvia 50

Nicolai Grossman Leave a comment

Fujifilm press release:

Fujifilm Professional has announced that the final shipment of Fujichrome Velvia 50 has now been received.

This means that once the stock held in the company’s warehouse has been sold there will be no more of the film available.

Fujifilm has been forced into ceasing production of Velvia 50 due to vital raw materials used in the production of the emulsion becoming unavailable.

Despite the withdrawal of Velvia 50, Fujifilm Professional remains committed to the continued production and promotion of professional film. This commitment is illustrated by the launch of three new professional films last year (Fujicolor Pro 160S, Pro 160C and Fujichrome Velvia 100) and there are already plans to launch a further two new professional films in 2006.

While Velvia 50 has traditionally been the favoured film for many photographers there has always been the demand for a film that offers high colour saturation but with higher speed and finer grain – Velvia 100 provides this.