Archives / 2009 / June

1

Shooting Film – Ilford Delta100 In PMK Pyro

I spent about a week calibrating Ilford Delta100 in a couple different developers. I have only ever shot it on 35mm on a few rare occasions. I ultimately decided to stay with Kodak TMAX 100 for both 35mm as well as medium format applications. The Delta 100 was a fantastic film and a worthy competitor to TMAX 100. My decision to stay with TMAX 100 over the Ilford film was purely subjective, I had no technical issues with TMAX 100 as so many others do and I happened to...

28 June 2009 | Articles, General Photography | , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment
11

Never Saw This Light Before

I have been having a couple of conversations with various e-buddies about laziness, inspiration, cameras, film, and just getting off my ass to make some images. One of the reasons that I don’t do much commercial work any more is that it is so easy to become jaded with photography. Once you feel that you can make a picture of anything anytime you want because you have to it is easy to slip into a place where you have no desire to. Over the last week or so I...

25 June 2009 | Articles, General Photography | , , , , , | 11 Comments
11

I Am An Image Pack-Rat – Why I Almost Never Get Rid of Images

When I was shooting film for everything I almost never got rid of any negatives. A combination of both irrational reasons as well as rational reasons combined to make me keep everything I shot. From a rational point of view if I was shooting roll film It was more trouble to cut individual negatives out of the strip rather than just filing the whole thing. For sheet film if there were technical faults or aesthetic faults I would make notes on what went wrong for educational purposes – mine...

24 June 2009 | Articles, General Photography | , , , , | 11 Comments
5

Nik Silver Efex Pro 3.0 Follow-up

Seems that my mini-review of Nik Silver Efex for Aperture sparked a mild amount of interest from a couple of people that haven’t done a whole lot of black and white conversions to date, are interested in the Silver Efex plug-in and wanted a little bit more info.Of course they pointed out the flaws in my quick and dirty review of the software. One guy even asked if I ever shoot any thing that I have to walk more than 10 feet from my desk to shoot. He was...

22 June 2009 | Apple Aperture, Articles | , , , , | 5 Comments
7

Film – Polapan100 Instant Black and White Slides

Here is a fun one. Way out of production Polapan black and white slide film. As far as I know this was only available as an instant 35mm film that you shot and then processed “instantly” in a little machine that you could by from Polaroid. The little machine was pretty cool and could process all of the other Polaroid 35mm slide films as well. You had to crank a little handle at a specific speed, not to fast, not too slow. This film was basically useless prior to...

22 June 2009 | Articles, General Photography | , | 7 Comments
7

New MacBook Pro – I Am Very Very Happy

Quick update. Just took delivery via FedEx of a brand new MacBook Pro 15 yesterday morning. I have not been this happy with a new machine since my PowerBook G4 Ti in 2001 or maybe my dual 1.42 Ghz PowerMac G4 with 2 GB of RAM in 2002. Of course I have had the consistent march of ever more powerful machines. I was happy with my PowerMac G5 (solo) and my PowerBook G4 Al 1.25 Ghz with 2 GB but they were incremental and gave me a little bit...

20 June 2009 | Site News | , | 7 Comments
4

Aperture Plug-in Mini Review – Nik Silver Efex Pro 3.0

I started  out in photography with black and white. I still prefer making black and white photographs in both the traditional silver process, digital, and hybrid approaches. Having fessed up to that I will also disclose that I have tried just about every digital black and white product known to mankind. Honestly I have never been really impressed with any of them above and beyond what I can do with plain old Adobe Photoshop and would probably not recommend any of them to anybody. Nik Silver Efex Pro 3.0...

19 June 2009 | Apple Aperture, Articles | , , , , , | 4 Comments
0

Shooting Film – Pyro Clarification And Notes

I have put a number of posts in the “shooting film” series. By a large margin the posts that have generated the most questions and correspondence have been the couple of films that I have posted so far that have been developed in pyro. If memory serves, I believe that the only two have been Ilford HP5 plus in PMK pyro and Kodak Plus-X also developed in PMK pyro. The Plus-X wasn’t even in the shooting film series – It was in the a random rant about “80% of...

18 June 2009 | Articles, General Photography | , , , , , , | 0 Comments
12

Ansel Adams Lightroom Presets

Like most other people that publish a website either for business, pleasure, or creative outlet I monitor where visitors to the site come from. If this were a commercial site I would do this to fine tune what is making me money. I look at where visitors come from and how they ended up here for amusement, satisfaction of my curiosity, and every once in a while to assess what kind of posts I might publish based on keywords that people use to get here. Some keywords are really...

17 June 2009 | Articles, General Photography, Site News | , , | 12 Comments
3

Polaroid Type 665 PN – RIP – A Unique and Interesting Film

Polaroid Type 665 is pretty much Type 55 in a medium format pack. A little background for those not familiar with Polaroid materials. I never really shot Polaroid materials as my primary medium. Some people have made a career out of it. Most of us old-timers did use it to check lighting and confirm everything was just right before letting it rip. After seening someone or other’s gallery show done entirely using Poloaroid Type 55 I decided to give it a try and used it as my proofing and...

15 June 2009 | Articles, General Photography | , , , , | 3 Comments
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