Film and Digital – Side By Side
I’ve been using these Lightroom presets for a while. I’ve mentioned them before and they bear mentioning again. They are Micky G’s Black & White Presets for Lightroom.
I’ve often wondered how good/accurate they are. I’ve been pleased with them, to say the least. While I was out shooting last week, I came upon the scene pictured here and took a number of photos with my 645e. At that time, I just happened to remember that I wanted to make a comparison of a real film shot with one of the B&W presets. Well, I was shooting with some 10 year Tech Pan and that, unfortunately, is not in the preset list. However, a close cousin, Agfa Pan 25 is. Since I was shooting on the tripod, I decided to go for it.
I took the shot, first, with the 645e at f/5.6, removed the camera, put on the D300 with the 18-270 mm Tamron, moved the zoom to 35 mm, approximating a normal lens, adjusted the aperture to f/5.6, and took the same shot.
As many of you will notice this is not exactly a controlled experiment. First, f/5.6 on a 35 mm camera does not give the same depth of field as f/5.6 on a medium format camera. I’m not quite sure what the relationship is, but i probably should have gone a stop higher on the 645e. You can see the difference in DOF between the two but, in truth, I really like the DOF fall off of the 645e. I remember shooting with my view camera and f/5.6 was like shooting at f/1.4 on a 35 mm. There was hardly any DOF at all.
In looking at the two photos, I’m quite impressed with the job that the filter did. It looks pretty realistic. I tried not to tweak much at all with either of the photos and I like the whites of the film better; however, that could easily, very easily be tweaked to make them look the same, but out of the box, that’s a pretty good starting point!
What do you think?
That printing feeling again
Kodak Tech Pan 25 – Mamyia 645e – Rodinal 1:300
Every morning on the way to work, pass a framing shop, I’ve Been Framed. They have a sign outside that they change weekly, offering different specials on framing. Almost without fail, after reading the sign, I think: I need to bring my printer Charleston so that I can do some prints and hang them on the wall. Yet, each time that I go back for the weekend, I don’t do it.
It’s not a matter of forgetting, because I do usually remember. Every Sunday, I look at that printer and wonder why I don’t bring it. I could say that I don’t have a place to put it, but I could by a stand. 
At one point, a couple of years ago, I got into printing and was printing several times a week. Then, I stopped. Now I feel the desire to fire up that printer again.
The walls in my apartment are bare and I always think that somehow that is wrong. After all, I have so many photos that I could place on the wall and make it feel more cozy.
Previously all of the photos that I printed were done using Epson Premium Luster photo paper, which I like a lot. However, this time, I think that I want to find a paper, or perhaps several papers that are closer to the rag paper that I used to use in the darkroom when I felt that a particular photo needed that nice, creamy look or a feel different than I could get using the resin coated polycontrast papers that I normally used.
I know that there are a plethora of sample packs out there and would love some suggestions of papers to try.
The above photo is one that I really want to print.
Not bad for a 10 year-old
Kodak Tech Pan 25 – Expired April 1999 – Rodinal 1:300
I think that those of us who have been shooting film for quite some time tend to romanticize our favorite films. I know that I do. For me, there were two films that I always tried to keep on hand. Agfa Pan 25 and Kodak Tech Pan 25. Yeah, I was, and still am a big fan of very low ISO, tight-grained film.
You could probably do the same thing with digital, but I don’t see someone going back and waxing romantically about a 4 MP digital camera, but who knows. I guess that any thing is possible.
So it was that I ended up in Bull Hole in Coolomee, NC with 2 rolls of expired Tech Pan 25. Tech Pan was known to have very high contrast and was almost a lithographic film, great for copying line drawings, etc. However, if developed properly, it could deliver some great tonality and nearly untouchable, unseeable grain.
I had planned to use these two rolls on something else, but when I saw the forest, the snow, the river, and the rocks, well, let’s just say that a guy can change his mind two.
After shooting both of the rolls, I was quite satisfied. I even did a couple of comparison shots, taking the same shot with both the film and a digital camera, just to see what the differences were. More on that in a different post.
This evening, I could hardly wait to get the rolls into the soup, or at least one of the rolls. As the film is 10 years past expiration date, I hoped that everything would turn out right. I developed them, waited the appropriate time for them to rinse, then had a peek. At first, the negatives looked a bit thin and low contrast, but after they dried and I scanned them, they were all pretty darn good!
As I remembered, the grain was almost impossible to see and the look of the photos was just as I liked them. The top photo is a little contrasty, but it was taken at about 10 AM with a pretty hefty does of sunlight entering from the right. I love the shot.
The other shot, of the beech tree, well what can I say. This tree was one handsome model.
I can’t wait to see what’s on the other roll!