5 Frames - Hellabrunn
November 17, 2021- Where: Tierpark Hellabrunn, Munich
- Camera: Mamiya RB67
- Lens: Mamiya Sekor C 90mm f/3.8
- Film: Kodak Ektar 100
The Zoo in Munich.
The Zoo in Munich.
The Partnachklamm (Partnach-Gorge) is located in the town of Garmisch-Partenkirchen in a valley on the german parts of the Alps. The parking lot near the entry to the Partnachklamm is located right next to the ramp that is used for ski jump events of the Olympic winter games. I shot these pictures during winter on (I think) Fuji Velvia 50 in an attempt to look at the positive side of shooting the Rolleiflex Tele 135. The camera is great, but it tends to eat film when you do not treat it exactly right. Some of the pictures did not come out too well, probably because of the cold weather. Thus, I decided to jump to the B&W filter and turn most pictures into 50 shades of… you know what.
A work and leisure trip to the rotten apple. Because I do not shoot film in the pursuit of the dreamy, nostalgic, dare say “vintage” look. I shoot film because I collect ways to unintentionally mess up. And I am getting pretty good at it. These are 5 frames that originally were meant to be beautiful color images from around the Big Apple, but I royally messed up development. This was years ago. Sifting through my archives for things that I could create blog posts with, I tend to stumble over these ugly results and think to myself: “What would that look like with some heavy editing and a B&W filter slapped on top of it?” The answer is: Decent. Not like in “That looks decent.”, but more like in a short reprieve from the descent into the madness that is “shooting film”.
A work and leisure trip to New York.
Another walk near the lake. This is the second roll of Fuji Eterna RDI that I shot in a real-world scenario. The color cast is probably due to under-exposure. I set the camera to ISO 6 + 1 stop (so basically ISO 3). Re-Evaluating my previous experiments, I think the next real-world test will be exposed partially at ISO 6 + 2 stops and ISO 6 + 3 stops. That way I can get a better idea of which exposure I like better. The images are all quite dark. Increasing the exposure in DxO PhotoLab 3 only made the color cast worse, so I left it as is.
Fuji Eterna CI is another intermediate film stock for cinematographic purposes. Unlike Fuji Eterna RDI, which I tested in a previous post, it is not meant to be written by an Arrilaser. Nonetheless, I wasn’t able to find a reliable number for ISO for this film, so I took another set of test images. Having learned a little from previous such endeavors, I included a post-it with the camera settings in each photo. Given that the scene is mostly white, with a little bit of black from the color chart, I did the following steps after developing the film:
This way I get roughly the same brightness for each image. In addition, looking at the R, G, and B histogram before leveling, provides an impression of how bad the color cast probably will be in real-life scenarios. I then give my unprofessional judgment on the resulting images by looking at the bright and dark areas, with a focus on the latter.
To my eyes, and with my memories of the histograms, ISO 1.5 to ISO 0.75 look reasonable for Fuji Eterna CI. The yellow-ish color cast is partially due to my laziness and roughly leveling the R, G, and B histograms.
A short walk around town to get some fresh air and snap some shots. This was one of the first rolls of Fuji Eterna RDI that I shot in real-world conditions. I messed up the development (it was either the Rem-Jet removal overnight or messing up the order of the chemicals when mixing the developer) and the exposure time was a bit too short. In general, the images came out very faint and with a strong color cast. Converted to B&W to see if I can get some kind of interesting image out of this mess. Some frames still have some Rem-Jet residue on them.
A nearby forest on a late sunny fall day.
A short walk around town to get some fresh air and snap some shots, mixed with a day trip to the Alpspitz. Messed up development (it was either the Rem-Jet removal overnight or messing up the order of the chemicals when mixing the developer) and some light leaks from the film cartridge. Converted to B&W to see if I can get some kind of interesting image out of this mess.
A visit to the Andechs monastery.