Painted Black and White
Before colour film, there was only black and white. If you wanted your picture to be in colour, you had to hand paint the negatives to add the colour yourself. This sounds extremely painful, but remember the common film types back then were much larger than the common 35mm we use today, so in practice it was just plain painful. The practice was used mainly in portrait photography and was wide spread until colour film came along. The technique is used sparingly now, but there's no doubt the images it produces have a very unique look to them.
Today, it is much easier to do your own hand painted negatives. With the help of film scanners and image editing software you can create your own old time portraits from pretty much any photo. I won't go into too much detail here, but it involves using layers in your image editing software, setting the blend type to overlay and careful selection of colours. See the before and after shots below:
Hand painted black and whites have a very distinct look. With modern image editing software it is really not that hard to do, but can take some time to get right. I spent a long time trying to get a realistic looking skin colour and settled on this one (that I think still looks a little washed out). I'm working on a better explanation and how to page for this technique, so stay tuned!
Information Links
I've been looking at the stats for visitors to my site and it's occurred to me that a lot of visitors coming from google searches are looking for information that I don't really have on my site. Here, I will try to correct this problem by providing links to sites that might be more useful than mine.
The Shanghai GP3 Flickr Group
Here you can find info on, or ask questions about Shanghai GP3 branded films.
Film Development Times
Select your film and developer type on the left. This will display known good development times for almost any type of film and developer. Specifically, here is the two that usually generate the most interest:
Those are the most sought after according to my stats. As more information becomes available, I will update this post.
(A couple of request through google are closely related to pages I'm working on in the techniques section, most notably "Sprocket Hole Photography" and :120 Film in Kodak Brownie Six-20". They will be up shortly!)
Multiple Exposure Experiment
I had read about film swaps before, and the idea had me interested, but the logistics and time involved put me off. A few weeks back I decided I could do my own film swap, with the added bonus of knowing what was on the film already.
For those that don't know, film swaps are when you shoot a roll of film then rewind it, but not all the way. You have to leave the leader out (some cameras do this, others don't have the option. With manual cameras you can feel when the film leader is released from the opposite spool while rewinding it) so the film is use-able again. You package the film up and send it to the other person, and they shoot it as per normal. When the film is developed you get a roll of double exposures (2 photos taken on top of each other on the film), and you don't know what they will look like until they are developed.
I decided to skip the unpredictable results and sending to someone else parts, and do my own film swap. I set about creating some simple black and white patterns on my computer, then used the whole roll up by taking 6 photos of each pattern. I made them full screen on my laptop, then took a full frame shot on my Konica Autoreflex-T with a 57mm 1.4 lens. here's the patterns I used:
(1280x800, because that's the resolution of my laptop. Feel free to download and use them yourself.)
Once all these were shot (6 shots each on a roll of 36 exposures) I rewound the film until I felt the leader release from the take-up spool, then reloaded it. It was then time to head out and get some shots.
This part took weeks, mostly because of a run of bad weather, then me forgetting about it for a couple of weeks. I looked at the camera last night and only 27 shots were taken. I decided that was enough, as I really wanted to see how it turned out. In the end, it turned out...
Great! Some of the patterns didn't work very well, and most of the shots didn't line up with the pattern frames, but this made the shots all the better. Some of the shots have two different patterns overlapping them, making some strange effects.
Overall, I highly recommend giving this a shot. Experiment with creating patterns (I used various filters and render command in The GIMP) and find out what works.
My only advice would be this: I used 100 iso film, and for most of the shots I exposed bot h frames at 100 iso. Depending on your pattern, this can cause overexposure. I would suggest (if your camera allows it) you underexpose your shots slightly. Only by as much as half a stop, 1 stop would probably be too much.
You can check out the ones that worked on my Double Exposure Experiment flickr set.
Cheap Lenses
When I first started taking photos I often wondered why some lenses cost so much more than others. Sure, they were "faster" (had a wider aperture, allowing more light in), but I couldn't see why some were 3x -4x the cost of others (even with similar apertures). It turns out there's many reasons, but there's one that's easy to see in the end result, it's called chromatic aberration.
Chromatic aberration is a type of distortion where the lens fails to focus all colours to the same point on the film / sensor. What you end up with is parts of your picture having halos of colour. See if you can spot it in the first image here (cropped from a larger picture, taken with a Konica Minolta 5D and Minolta 70-300mm 4.5-5.6 D lens):
It's not easy to spot, especially at this size, so here's a zoomed in shot:
See the blue / violet on the bird's shoulder? That's chromatic aberration. The lens has failed to focus the violet light to the same point as all the other colours to make the white (shade of grey in this case) colouring of the bird.
Most lens manufacturers have ways of dealing with this, but it's not cheap. This is where the more expensive lenses come from. In the Minolta (now Sony) range, these normally have the "APO" badge which stands for Apochromatic. This is the name of a method of using multiple lens elements to reduce chromatic aberrations.
If you would like more information, I can suggest the following Wikipedia links. They are very complicated, but all the info you ever wanted is there.
Film Photography Podcast (April)
The latest Film Photography Podcast is up and ready to download!
If you haven't already, I suggest you check out the backlog of episodes as well. Hosted by Michael Raso and Duane Polcou, This podcast is an informal look at film photography and related issues. Well worth a listen for anyone interested in film photography, and also worth joining the Film Photography Podcast Flickr group.
DIY Macro Lens
I have always liked macro photography. Revealing a world of sights that would be otherwise unseen or not thought about is a fascinating process. You can spend a lot of money on a macro setup, and lenses alone can cost you hundreds, or even thousands of dollars. Or, you can use an old-school trick and spend about $20.
The secret to getting a cheap macro setup is in the reversal ring. These are available commercially, but it's easy enough to create your own. My reversal ring (as seen in the picture above, between the two lenses) is a step-up ring glued to a step-down ring. That's all you need. After acquiring or making one, you just need to experiment with different lens combinations to get what you are after.
The setup pictured has a 70-210mm lens @ 210 couple to a 135mm lens. It works great, but the depth of field is extremely shallow, as you can see in this picture. If you leave the aperture wide open (in this case f3.5) on the second lens (the 135mm) you won't get any vignetting, but you will lose a great deal of depth of field. If you adjust it down you will gain depth of field, but it will vignette rather badly.
All in all I had a lot of fun finishing up a roll with some experimentations with this macro setup. I would suggest not bothering to try and hand hold for these shots, a tripod (or in this case just sitting on a table) is a must. You might want to set the timer as well, so you don't shake the camera while pressing the shutter release.
Against All Odds.
Against all odds, I got this photo.
I was on a weekend de-stress on the Sunshine Coast with my friend (pictured). We had 2 days and 2 nights to ourselves, and planned not much more than drinking a lot.
In this shot my friend is trying to figure out my digital point and shoot camera. I shot this photo with my Minolta Dynax 600si Classic with a Minolta 50mm f1.7 lens. No planning, no extra lighting, just a snapshot really.
I'm surprised how good this photo turned out considering the many stages at which something could have gone wrong. First of all, we were both rather drunk. Second of all, I accidentally under-developed this roll. I was re-using some chemicals and forgot to add the +10% time into my calculations.
Even after all that, I really like the shot. Although it may not be technically great, it is a treat for the eyes (well, at least mine anyway).
This brings up my first ever tip: For portrait shots, make sure the eyes are in focus. With lenses such as this 50mm f1.7, you can achieve amazingly shallow depth of field (as seen here). As long as the eyes are in focus, your photo will be ok. Using spot focus helps achieve this easily.
Minolta Dynax 600si, Minolta 50mm f1.7, Ilford HP5+ @ 400iso, Ilfotech LC29.Search
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