On a sunny day in the middle of September I decided to go on a trip up the Nebelhorn. I deliberately chose this destination, because I had planned for a long time to go up a mountain in the Alps to use my 8”x10” (20x25cm) camera up there. I made that fateful day the day it would finally happen. At home I packed my bags: The Intrepid 8x10 (first generation) went into a messenger bag, five film holders went into a backpack, together with the 121mm f/8 Schneider-Kreuznach Super Angulon lens. I managed to stuff the light meter somewhere in there, too.
After a 2-hour ride through the south of Germany, I reached the cable car station in the town of Oberstdorf. There I got to stand in the waiting line, armed to the teeth with camera equipment, sweating because of the heat and my choice of clothing. “At the top of the mountain it will be cold”, I thought. I guessed wrong. Three cable car rides later (there are two intermediate stations), I met with a friend at the restaurant on the peak of the Nebelhorn. It was warm and sunny.
A hearty lunch later, and it was already 1 pm. I went to work: My friend found a nice place for setting up and I got the camera and other stuff out of my bags. (See first image in this post to get an idea of what the set up looked like.) The weather and the view at the peak were ideal for what I wanted to capture. The first exposure was done, and I was ready to move to the next position. Wanderlust and a desire to get home on the same day grabbed my friends attention and he went on his way on the path down to town. A 3-hour hike (according to the internet) that turned out to be rougher and longer than anticipated.
I stayed at the peak, looking for different vantage points to expose some negatives to the vista of a busy mountain range. It seems like a weird guy with a large format camera is no daily sight for those who hike up an down the Nebelhorn. I got bemused looks and wherever I decided to set up, there was at least one curious hiker asking questions about the camera, what it is, how it works and why I decided to drag it up there, instead of going with an easy to carry digital camera.
For me the answer was always: It’s fun! Curiosity and the joy of taking it slow and deliberate were ultimately the reasons why I bought the camera in the first place. And the large negatives. Oh those large negatives!
After exposing all 10 negatives, I took the cable car back to my parking space in Oberstdorf. Another 2-hour drive and I was back home, shuffling to get the negatives development in my little “bathroom lab”.
The Results
I developed two sheets of negatives (Fomapan 100) at a time in Adonal (Rodinal) 50+1 solution. Two sheets at a time isn’t the most efficient use of my time, as I have a larger drum for up to six sheets, but this was the safer path in cases I made an error during development. After development and drying, I put the sheets into protective covers. Turns out some of them were not completely dry and ended up with a sticky patch that is visible as a large blotch.
The next day I digitized the material with a Nikon D600 (with 24-70mm @ f/8) and a light table (usually used for tracing on paper). I do not have a scanner capable of scanning 8”x10”, which is why the “take picture with digital camera” approach has to suffice for now. The resulting RAW files went through DxO PhotoLab for inversion and some corrections.
It was the first time that I used the 128mm wide-angle lens, and as you can see in the corners it seems to vignette quite a bit even at f/32. Another problem with the wide-angle is the tendency to get more into the shot than was bargained for. I have a couple of pictures with some guard rail in the frame. And this, even though I was very close and sufficiently above that railing.
Conclusion
To me the effort was a success. It may have been a pain to get the camera and equipment up to the peak of the Nebelhorn, and the results may be sub-optimal, but it was a fun, social event. For next time, I would probably take another lens with me, though.
The images in this post are from a 3 day trip to Austria with a group of colleagues (similar to the trip to Ibiza). I took the Nikon F5 with the Nikkor 50mm f/1.2 attached with me and took a couple of shots on site. The film that I tried out on these days is Kodak Pro Image 100 and Rollei RPX 25 (which I did not yet develop).
With the 50mm I either have a problem nailing focus at f/1.2, or it is not very sharp at that fast aperture. Stopped down, it looks plenty sharp to me, though.
The site in Austria was ”Almdorf Seinerzeit”, which is a set of two small “villages” on a hillside, consisting of guest housing, swimming pools, sauna and other amenities. Between those two “villages”, there is the main building with reception and restaurant.
Right around the “corner”, you can find the ”Biosphärenpark Nockberge”, which invites you to go a bit of a hike. After my experience with Ibiza, I decided to be lazy and stay near the “village”. Some quiet time (everyone else was on a hike or riding mountain bikes), fresh air and the landscape: Relaxing.
The only noise to disturb the silence was the click of the shutter.
As the avid reader might have guessed, I quite enjoy shooting with my Leica M4-P. It may not come as a surprise then, that on a trip during the early days of 2018, I took the camera and its mate (the Voigtländer Color Scopar 35mm) with me to the town of Boulder, Colorado.
Boulder is right at the feet of a mountain range, which makes the choice of name quite punny. January is a weird time to visit this area: Everything has a tint of red-ish brown, as the colours of dried vegetation, the brickwork of the buildings and the tone of the hills mix into a uniform mush. And the Christmas decoration is still sprinkled all over the place.
I was there, as so often when I travel, for business. My limited free time was spent with meandering through the streets around the Pearl Street Mall and with a short hike to the foot of the nearby hills.
There is not much else that I can tell about Boulder. The time of the year wasn’t ideal, I did not have a car to explore the east of the area and aside from a sight-seeing tour around the office, I did not get out much. At least as far as I remember.
Thus I am left with a friendly farewell and a hardy “Enjoy the pictures, mate!”.
Another week, another trip to New York. This time I spent my free time walking around in Manhattan south of Central Park. One day along the High Line, another day along Broadway up to Central Park, which had a lot of police presence because of the New York Marathon.
In the morning, just after arriving at the office, I had a rather unusual sight out of the window. Unusual at least for me, as I am only a visitor to the big apple. The clouds hung low over downtown Manhattan, with skyscrapers disappearing into fluffy white cotton candy. I had to take a picture of that.
I had the Leica M4-P with me, with the Voigtländer 35mm (the one with the ridiculously long name) bolted on. Another thing in my pocket was the ColorChecker Passport Photo from x-rite (first generation). My thought was: All my scanned negatives look off colourwise. If I have a reference for white balance at the beginning of each series of pictures, I may be able to colour correct properly. (Note: The images in this post have been re-scanned, based on my recent insight into ”scanning film the right way”.)
In the end, taking pictures of the ColorChecker did not improve the situation at all. I still ended up with a nasty colour cast in my scans. Not knowing about this outcome at the time of shooting, I now have a couple of frames with my little ColorChecker in various situations around New York.
Funnily enough: Even though I can’t state enough that I have barely an idea about what I am doing when I run around with a camera, I still was asked by strangers to help them take their picture because I looked like I know what I am doing. That is the “Leica effect” at work. If you want to become a good photographer, buy a Leica. At least in your mind, and apparently in other peoples minds, you will have your goal achieved automatically.
Once upon a time, on an island far, far away. Well, not that far, but still far enough to warrant the use of a plane. It was the summer of 2017 and somehow I ended up at a large hotel complex on the island of Ibiza. Three days (including arrival and departure) with colleagues and an overly ambitious organizing team, far from civilisation as I know it (I grew up in a big city, but I love the outdoors). Various activities planned, among them a hike and a trip to the city.
I had my Leica M4-P with the Voigtländer Color Skopar 35mm f/2.5 VM II Pancake with me. That name is a mouthful, but the lens itself is nicely compact. Together with the little rangefinder, you get a handy travel companion that is comfortable to always have with you.
Walking around the island, especially near the hotel, is a chore of a hike. Just out the door, you start with a hill climb. Then it goes up and down, left and right, along roads and gravel paths. We even went cross country and through the woods where there was no indication of a path whatsoever.
Aside from that near-death experience (the hike), the weather was nice and the sights made up for at least a bit of the pain. And my little Leica was a joy to use: I set the aperture to f/8, the shutter speed to 1/250, and was set for the rest of the day. All I had to do was frame, focus and shoot. The aperture ring on the lens is a little too easy to knock around, so I had to check the f-stop from time to time. Thanks to the wonders of film (a Fuji Superia 200), it did not matter too much. All frames came out exposed ok.
The last day on Ibiza had the trip to the city on its schedule. Until then I had a bit of time to relax and recover from the pain of the hike on the first day. The first stop was down at the harbour. From there, we split up into smaller groups and some of us went up to Ibiza Castle. I got up to Baluard de Sant Jaume, before my body told me it got reminded too much of the exertions of the first day. My group turned around and we wandered through the streets of Dalt Vila. Those streets are photogenic, and around each corner is a potential subject to be framed and shot.
After the sightseeing tour in the city, we got back on the bus and drover to the airport to be stuffed back into the winged tin-can that flew us home.
A couple of days ago, while browsing 35mmc, I came by an article written by Mark Sperry on scanning at home with a Pacific Image XA. He mentioned (my interpretation), that scanning isn’t easy: To get great images, you have to put some effort into learning how to use the scanner and the software. As mentioned before in my posts, I haven’t figured out how to get scanned negatives to look the way I would expect them to look. Mark’s blog post inspired me to look for some tips and tricks for my scanner, a Nikon CoolScan LS-9000 ED.
I found an essential step in the release notes of VueScan (see “Scanning Roll of Film”): Locking the exposure and locking the film base colour. I missed that before. Furthermore, I took inspiration from Kenneth Morris Lee and his ”Scanning Tips with Epson and VueScan Software” to get a flat image for further processing in DxO PhotoLab. ColorPerfect has some nice tips on how to set up the Nikon Scan software, where I took a hint from the “Improving quality by use of analogue gain” section.
To test my new insights, I dug through my archive of scans for a good example. I chose the one that you can see above: It was taken in the Zoo in Munich. It was one of my first colour scans and I think I just used Auto Levels for colour correction in VueScan. It has a nasty colour cast towards yellow/orange that I did not know how to fix. At the time, I probably thought that this is what Kodak Ektar looks like. I found the negative neatly tucked away in a sleeve in my collection and went to work.
Scanning
The process begins with getting the correct exposure and film base colour locked in. I tend to cut the film to get as many pictures as possible into the film holder of the scanner. Given that these are medium format 6x7 negatives, I had two frames on one strip. The clear area between both frames, or the border of a frame, are a good area to use for exposure and film base colour locking. (For information of how to do this, please read the VueScan release notes: Scanning Roll of Film)
After locking the film base colour, you can find the values in the “Color” tab of VueScan (they are named as “Film base colours red/green/blue”). As an additional step, I set the analogue gain on the input tab to “1 divided by the film base colour value” and remove the film base colour lock afterwards. This corrects for the film base colour by telling the scanner to expose longer/shorter for each colour channel instead of simply multiplying by the factor detected when locking. I took the idea from the Nikon Scan tips on the ColorPerfect page. The benefit compared to multiplication is questionable, but the idea of getting a bit more colour accuracy makes me feel enthusiastic.
All other settings of VueScan are the usual, with exception for the tips for “Curve low”, “Curve high” and “Film Vendor” found in the ”Scanning Tips with Epson and VueScan Software” guide. The resulting scan can be seen above this section. It is a bit dark and flat, just how I wanted it.
DxO Photolab
The image from the previous section, saved as a 16 bit per channel TIFF file, was opened in DxO PhotoLab for colour correction and a bit of colour grading. I started with the “RGB white balance” tab and used the picker on the bright tree trunk on the left of the image. I never know what to pick in the image, so I try some spots where I think it may give me the correct balance until I am satisfied. Next is a combination of the “Exposure compensation” and the “Tone curve” tab: If the image is too dark/bright, adjust the exposure. If the image is too flat, try adding contrast by adjusting the gamma value. Adjusting gamma changes the perceived brightness of the image, so you may need to tweak the exposure compensation, and vice versa.
The result of my efforts is above this section. If you compare it to my first try on top of this post, I think the colours look a lot better and the colour cast is gone. I did overdo it with the gamma correction: The image is a bit too contrasty. It serves well as an example of how much “depth” you can get out of a flat image, though.
And there you have it: I may not yet get perfect results, but I am a lot closer to scanning film the right way.
Once upon a time, in a bout of temporal insanity (happens more often than I dare admit), I bought an 800mm f/5.6 Sigma behemoth of a lens. Why, you ask? To scratch one of those annoying “I want that!” itches, that beset one’s mind without rhyme or reason. I started testing the darn thing with my trusty Nikon D600 and a full moon. The lens came with a 1.4x teleconverter made by Sigma. With a bit of file work, I could adapt my 2.0x Nikon made teleconverter, too. With both attached, I get a neat little focal length of 2240mm. But with my otherwise decent tripod, my tests at those focal lengths were off to a shaky start.
I got a better, sturdier tripod and a gimbal head for quick and accurate turns. A big improvement. Pictures of the Moon now were usable, though not that impressive. The lens is of an older make and model (which I only noticed, after it had arrived). It is not the sharpest tool in the box, unfortunately. I had a suspicion that the lens was made back in the film days. So I decided to try it out with a film body, the Nikon F5. Off I went with tripod, gimbal, lens and camera in my luggage, and drove down to a nearby lake to meet with a friend who wanted to play around with his self-built camera slider.
We set up at the shore of the lake and stayed there for the whole duration. The lens is darn heavy, so I could not be motivated to move around much. And the camera slider was used to try out some time-lapses, which meant that my friend had a lot of time at his hands, while bound to one place.
As it turns out, if you have a long telephoto lens, you do not need to move around much, anyways: Everything appears close by. Often way too close. We joked with people passing by (you don’t see people with weird camera equipment too often around here, and passersby sometimes like to comment) that I should take photos of their friends at the other side of the lake (a couple kilometres away).
By my judgement, the lens is not very sharp on film either. Somehow I manage to see past that in this case, though. And some of the blur is down to motion, e.g. when I tried to catch a bird in flight, or a dog playing. An aperture of f/5.6 is not that fast, and the film I used was Fomapan 100, which means it was not a very sensitive emulsion. Thus, slightly too long shutter times mean some motion blur, too.
Road trips can be awesome. As it so happens, once upon a time I was on a road trip from Las Vegas, through Death Valley up towards Lake Tahoe and then San Francisco. It was the path a colleague and myself took to get from a conference in Las Vegas to some meetings with folks from one of the other offices. The trip took us roughly a weekend and my colleague suggested stopping at Mono Lake to wander around and take some pictures.
The lake has some photogenic features and I took some pictures on my smartphone and filled a roll of Fuji NPS 160 with a Hasselblad 503cx. The camera worked fine and I had the 10 frames filled quickly with various rock formations and vegetation. I love using cameras with big mirrors because of the satisfying “thunk” you get when pressing the shutter.
Everything went smoothly. The roll used is a colour film. Why are the five frames in black and white? Well, development did not go as planned. I put two rolls on the same spindle. That would not be a problem, as you are supposed to put two rolls on the same spindle. Somehow I managed to put both rolls on top of each other, so that they were stuck together. That way, not enough chemicals got to the emulsion and the images came out muted and with a strong colour cast towards blue.
At the time, I could not figure out how to rescue those pictures. I gave up on them and forgot about it until the time came to write this blog entry. Like with the other posts so far, I dug through my archives to see which images might have been taken with the Hassi. The only colour images, so far, are those where I failed during development. I started a last attempt to correct the colour cast with the help of the hue, saturation and lightness sliders in DxO PhotoLab. It did not work.
Then an idea crept out of the depths of my conscious: What about turning those images black and white? I tried some black and white film presets from the DxO FilmPack, settled for Rollei Retro 80s and adjusted exposure. Voilà! I got something usable!
Whenever I have a chance to visit New York, I take the time to walk around for a bit. Each time I try to take a different camera (feel free to expect more posts involving the city that never sleeps). The first time I visited the big apple, I was overjoyed to find that it is all that movies, TV, documentaries, stereotypes, etc., told me it would be. That in itself was unexpected. Never before did I go anywhere and though “Yeah… this is totally like in those Hollywood blockbusters!”.
There is a lot to shoot (with a camera, of course) around Manhatten (which is where I spent my time during my visits): Architecture, people, advertisement, the High Line, the Hudson River, and of course Central Park. The NYC Horse Carriage Rides are usually one of the first sights at Central Park that I point my camera at. From paths through the park, you have a nice perspective of the various skyscrapers that line the border. A selection of lakes, topical buildings, large grass fields (e.g. for sports activities) and paths snaking through a few small hills, attract all kinds of people. A decent way to find relief from tedious “street” photography between all those tall buildings and the hectic crowds (especially around broadway). And with a bit of luck, you can find some people in costumes LARPing away.
This time I took the Tele Rolleiflex 135mm f/4 with me. For those who do not know the camera: It is a Twin Lens Reflex (TLR) camera with a focal length of 135mm and a maximum aperture opening of f/4. On a TLR, you frame the picture through one lens, while the negative is exposed through another lens. My Tele Rolleiflex includes a light meter (which seems to be optional) with an additional “low light” toggle. This allows to switch sensitivity, extending the range in which the light meter may be used.
Operation of the camera is easy if you know what you need to do: The tricky part here is the crank that is used to wind the shutter and advance the film to the next picture. If you load film and do not follow the procedure exactly as described in the manual, the crank will not lock when the film has been advanced to the first frame. In essence, you wind, and wind, and wind, and wind… and finish winding the whole film onto the takeup-spool, without every snapping a picture. Given that I do not take this camera out as often as I should, I tend to forget about the correct procedure and ruin at least one roll of film. (It is difficult to rescue the roll by rolling it back onto the source-spool.)
If you manage to do everything right, though, taking pictures with this TLR camera is just plain awesome. The camera hanging at waist-height seems to make you nearly invisible to the people passing by. Looking down into the image of the waist-lever viewfinder, framing, focusing, snapping, winding, probably smiling, you look like you are enveloped in your little world, oblivious to what is going on around you. To others, you are mostly harmless.
Footnote: The film used (I think) is a Fuji NPS 160.
About a year after moving to the south of Germany, I had the opportunity to travel to Sydney (Australia) for business reasons. With a stay of 2 weeks, this was an excellent excuse to give my first (before, I only had the Mamiya RB67 that I borrowed from my dad) medium format camera a run for its money: The Texas Leica!
“Texas Leica” is the nickname given to all Fuji GW690, because their looks and operation reminded people of a Leica rangefinder. Just a lot larger. Like everything else in Texas. Mine is the third-generation model (i.e. Fuji GW690III), which looks a bit plasticky, but feels and operates wonderfully. Only the built-in lens hood is a bit annoying, as it tends to tilt and get stuck when stowed away in my luggage.
Exploring Sydney was quite delightful. I adored the bay area, which is always busy with the regular ferry traffic (which is part of public transportation and may be used with the same Oyster card that is used for bus and train), sailboats, riverboats and some historic sailing ships. Sitting on a bench near the water was great for calming the mind and for relaxing a bit.
The city centre reminded me of a cross between New York and San Francisco: Narrow streets between skyscrapers and a lot of road construction. On one afternoon, I joined a couple of colleagues on a walk to Luna Park, crossing the Sydney Harbour Bridge. The view from the bridge was nice, but it already started to get dark when we got there. Luna Park turned out to be mostly empty with only a few people here and there. A mostly empty entertainment park, but with everything lit up and running, turns out to be a bit creepy.
I love animals and tend to take a trip to the zoo when I am somewhere new and when I have time to do so. Sydney does have Taronga Zoo, which is worth a visit. It houses some local wildlife, and some from around the world, but the main attraction to me was the gorgeous view over the bay area.
Sydney was fun, my “little” Fuji was fun, and I met some interesting people there. If I ever have the opportunity to travel there again, I won’t hesitate to take it.