The Official Head-Case Photography Thread.

[dsavitsk]

38 minutes ago, Knuckledragger said:

While this drama has been unfolding, a cute little otter has been swimming around ...  I have failed to get a single picture ... while I've struggled with camera gear.

Back in the day, I owned a pretty good pile of Contax gear - both RTS and G systems. I also worked at a used camera shop and had access to whatever Hasselblad/Mamiya/Leica/etc stuff I wanted to play with. All my best shots from the time were taken with a Vivitar branded K1000 knock off I bought in the 4th grade, and a zoom lens my mother-in-law bought at a garage sale for $15.

[Knuckledragger]

I mean sure, no piece of camera gear with make one a good photographer.  Camera bodies notwithstanding for a second there is something important to note here. Otters are a lot like birds: Small, fast moving and easily spooked.  Otters offer the additional challenge of being under the water most of the time they're in it.  To even attempt capturing one, I'd need a 400mm or longer lens on a full frame sensor.  Truthfully I'd probably do better with a 500mm or 600m.  Canon makes some killer primes in those focal lengths, and they each cost as much as a decent used car (400/2.8 is $12K; 500/4 is $9K; 600/4 is $13K; there's a 1200mm F/8 that's $20K.) There is a reason, in spite of living next to a hotbed of avian and aquatic (and aquatic avian) activity, I don't try to be a nature photographer. 

I actually did try to capture the otter, with my manual Meyer-Optic 30mm F/4 Orestegor.  Handheld with no tripod:

That row of bubbles is his doing.  You'll have to trust me on this one as I managed exactly zero photos of him with his head out of the water. 

[Knuckledragger]

Oh dear.  Today has been one of bad discoveries.  First off, the 5D IV is running ancient firmware.  After much banging of head against various objects, I managed to go from 1.17 to 1.4.  I still cannot get the (gosh darn) Canon EOS utility for MacOS to connect to the 5D via USB.  I was able to connect the 5D to my WiFi network and get things working that way.  While all of the above has been stressful and headache inducing, it pales in comparison to this afternoon's discovery.

Since yesterday I have tried every single one of my many CF cards with the 5D.  It has rejected all of them.  At first I wasn't too surprised as my CF cards are old and older.  My cranky old 30D doesn't like most of them.  My ID 5D classic is less picky.  I now know why the 5D IV doesn't like any of them:

It has a bent bin.  The paste eating absolute chucklefuck previous owner shoved a card in the wrong way and either never noticed or never told anyone.  I'm now weighing my options about whether or not I want to keep this camera.  I still have not successfully gotten app that will report the camera's shutter actuation count.  It's looking like I'm going to have to pursue that on (shudder) Windows.

[Knuckledragger]

In spite of the above, I spent much of the weekend shooting with the 5D IV.  It's quite a beast.  The 100% viewfinder is really something.  Being me, I dug out a big chunk of my manual focus glass collection and began taking pictures of stationary objects.  I make no secret of the fact that I am not greatly impressed with flower macros.  Bottles on the other hand, I find highly amusing.

Long time readers will know of my interest in old manual lenses with an excessive number of aperture blades.  These lenses allow for precise "bokeh shaping" of the OOF area of a photo  I'm starting with the king of them all here, the Russian made Tair 11a 135mm F/2.8, which has 22 aperture blades.  I don't know of a widely produced 35mm lens with more.  This shot was taken around F8.  I say "around" because like most of my old manuals, the Tair doesn't have F-stops.  The aperture ring spins freely throughout its range.  I should say "freely" as the ring is quite stiff on my copy, particularly past F/8.  To be fair to it, I dropped it in 2008 and it's never been the same since.  Being old, Russian and probably afflicted with some haze, the Tair is not a contrast king.  I'd not shoot film through it, but with digital imaging it's a trivia task to adjust the levels in Photoshop.

 

Next in line is the massive Meyer-Optik Orestegor 300mm F/4 and it's 19 blade aperture.  The 300 is 5 pounds by itself and the 5D with a battery grip is not exactly light either.  I cannot handhold the combination steadily enough to take photos with it.  I ended up bracing the 300mm against a fence post and framing as best I could.  This shot was also taken around F/8.  I had to bump the ISO up to 1600 to get a sufficiently high shutter speed.  With the 300, I always observe the "one over focal length" rule even with the lens is supported.  My Orestegor copy has visible haze and fungus in it (sad) so I always have to edit photos taken with it.  This one was relatively easy to clean up.  As is the case with most of these old lenses, it's quite sharp stopped down. 

 

The same bottle gets boring after a bit, so I used my mid 1950s Praktica F. X 2 35mm SLR as a subject.  Taken with the Tair 11A, around F/8.  If the camera looks kind of grubby in this photo, that's because it is.  I took this shot after I spent considerable time cleaning it with a toothbrush.  I only ever put one roll of film through the F.X 2, and got like 3 usable shots out of it.  I love old lenses.  Old SLRs, not so much.  Attached to the F.X 2 is an E. Ludwig Meritar 50mm F/2.9, which was the "kit lens" for this camera when it was new.  I've never used the Meritar much.  I have a bunch of 50s and for me it's not a particularly interesting focal length.  I did attach the Meritar to my 5D IV briefly.  More on that later, maybe.

I have been photographing bottles on Marthas Vineyard for a long time, using a large variety of lenses and cameras:

The reason I bought the Praktica F.X 2 in 2007 was not for the little 50mm Meritar.  Also included in the auction was a Meyer-Optik Orestor 135mm F/2.8, which has a 15 blade aperture.  It's the lens that got me started on collecting old manuals.  I took this shot in the spring of 2008.  The Orestor was around F/8 (there seems to be a pattern here), on a Canon Rebel G film SLR using expired Kodak Portra 400UC.  I had minimal idea what I was doing here.  I should have set the EV down by a third of a stop ...or a half, I don't think the Rebel G did thirds of a stop.

 

The worst thing about color print film is that it's such a crapshoot.  I took this on 06/07/08 - 4:30PM (as my notes say), with Kodak Gold 200 AKA one of the most meh film stocks imaginable.  In this instances, the Gold 200 decided to one up its much more expensive sibling.  This shot has a wonderfully dreamy quality too it.  Lens was once again the Orestor 135mm.  I have no idea about exposure settings.  My notes for my earliest rolls of film are spotty at best.   This is a fact that comes back to bite me in the ass repeatedly.

 

Facing the other direction for once, with a neatly shaped bottle.  Taken in the spring of 2009 with my 30D and humble 35mm F/2.  This was not long before an idiot knocked that combination off a table in a nightclub and broke the 35mm's AF motor.  I've used it as a manual focus lens for 14 years now. 

 

Going out with a bang here.  10/06/08 - 11:53AM.  135mm Orestor at F/5, 125th.  Canon Rebel K2 with Fuji Velvia 50.  Cropped to 5:4 but otherwise unedited.  When I list of the things in my life that I have encountered that lived up to and even exceeded the hype (Citizen Kane, Tapatio Hot Sauce, Canon 85mm F/1.2L, Biosphere's Substrata, Fuji Velvia 50) I am not fucking kidding.  Velvia 50 absolute smokes every other color film stock on the planet.  The way it renders blues and purples makes digital cameras look like toys.  It's ISO 50 and mercilessly unforgiving about exposure tolerances.  It was dearly expensive 15 years ago and even more pricey now.  It has no peers.  The cobalt blue bottle speaks for itself.  Later I'll do a post of a bunch of V50 shots I took in 2008.  Right now I have to contact the seller of the 5D IV I bought and tell him he bent a CF card slot pin.

[padam]

Well, it seems that the D700 + 50/1.8G shows no signs of slowing down, here are some edits. For a 15-year-old sub-400$ camera, it's superb. And it's only the second time I've used it. AF can get confused (you can see how it missed the eyes on the vertical shot, it generally wants to focus on the closest thing), might try messing with settings.



















RAW files require far less time, providing a denser, richer, more colourful image with more of a filmic, timeless quality to them (imho). All embedded LR profiles work great. At first, I didn't even notice that there are also DX2 Profiles to mimic Nikon's software. I wish modern cameras would work similarly, not making me curse while editing...

The only thing that I will pay attention to is occasionally dialling in a bit of negative expo compensation to protect highlights on faces. Dynamic range is of course not quite as much as a modern camera but it's fine, more malleable than the 5D Mk1 (same regarding the AF system). And of course, wouldn't it be nice to have a 28/1.4E to complement the nifty fifty - maybe one day...

 Here's one with the R6 for comparison, colours feel quite different to my eyes (cooler, less saturated).



There was a huge discount on the R6 Mark II so the R6 is already gone. Haven't tested it, some said colour science has been improved. Demand on DSLR cameras have plummeted, so I might still get a 6D or a 5D III just to see if I can find  that perfect happy medium between old vs new, basic vs complex, cheap vs expensive. Right now, what the D700 does to my eyes reminds me of what the SR-Lambda NB does to my ears.

[Knuckledragger]

Today I got another manual focus 135mm prime lens in the mail.  Ya rly.  This makes ...I've lost count.  It's a Japanese made Suntar Auto 135mm F/2.8.  The copy I got is very clean.  I stuck an M42/EF adapter on it and ambled around my yard during the golden hour.

First thing of note.  The minimum focus distance of the Suntar is eight feet.  This thing is more farsighted than I am.  For comparison, the Orestor can do just over 4 feet, the Tair does 1.2 meters (feet are capitalist propaganda), and the the Sonnar can do 3.3 feet ...and that's just the 135mms I have on this desk.  What that meant is I had to completely rethink the way I shoot.

 

Goofing around with DoF during the golden hour.  I think this shot was around F/8.  Next major point.  The Suntar only has full stop aperture increments.  Hello?  What decade is it?  The Great War called.  Jerry's up to his old tricks again.  This is a colossal limitation that will greatly impact how I take photos.  Using a modern digital body, I can of course futz with shutter speed and ISO in 1/3 stops to compensate.  I've been spoiled by all my vintage glass with its free floating aperture settings. 

 

This one was either F/5.6 or F/8, I do not remember.  The Suntar has a not insignificant CA problem wide open, but it seems to lose it quickly when stopped down.  I need to test this more, of course.

 

Another bottle shot.  This is documentation of me trying to make sense of the minimum focus distance.  I will not be using the Suntar for close up images of small objects.  TBH, this is not a problem.  I already have a small army of manual 135mms and while each has their own quirks and character, they're all good at capturing a bottle sized object.  The Suntar is an odd beast, and I will have to move outside my normal comfort zone to make use of it.  I should mention I got it for $18 shipped, which is less than I'll pay for the UV filter I eventually put on it ...just as soon as I figure out its filter size (it isn't marked.)

[jose]

Some photos using my tele lenses (sorry I'm a real newbie in photography): 

The last month, I used a Canon ef 70-300mm f4-5.6 is ii nano usm: 

 

This week I used a Canon ef 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6l is usm: 

 

I still have to practice a lot to achieve acceptable results, especially with the 100-400, although the weather, the haze and the forest fires don't help much.

 

[Knuckledragger]

I've been busily going through photos I shot on film in in '07 and '08.  I used a variety of different cameras, and many film stocks.  Many of the exposures are lousy and more often than not the scans are bad as well.  Eventually I will buy a scanner and correct some of these problems.  Over a long enough timeline I will buy a slide scanner and get revisit the expensive, risky and hugely rewarding world of Fuji Velvia 50.

I've got several posts to make about my old film shots, but they're going to have to wait for the moment.  While going through scans of a roll of Fuji Superia X-Tra ISO 800 color print film, I found a number of frames I took with my then new to me Meyer-Optik Orestegor 300mm F/4.  I've mentioned the insanity of this lens repeatedly.  Sadly, my copy has grown some fungus and haze in the 15 years since I last used it regularly.

I was not great at taking notes about exposures I took for the first few rolls of film I shot, which is a fact that comes back to bite me in the ass every time I revisit them.  By the time I got my second Canon film body (and EOS Rebel K2, which I still have) I began recording time, date, lens, exposure settings etc. 

For this shot I wrote "Frame 3:  Edgartown, 10/06/08 - 2:35PM - Orestor 135mm @ F/6.7 1/2000 - tree + reflection vert.  oops shot!"  That means I didn't plan on taking that photo.  For several reasons (mostly having to do with the crap shoot is that is shooting color print film), I like it better than the shot I meant to take.  Most modern SLRs display metering info when one half presses the shutter button.  This is a super handy feature.  It can be difficult to avoid a full press sometimes, triggering an unwanted exposure.  In the digital world, this is irrelevant.  When shooting film, it's a PITA and can be an expensive one.  I've done it a bunch of times.  This summer I can count two accidental exposures I did with the little Leica C3 I got a the second hand shot as well as at least two more with the Rebel K2 which I have pressed back into service.

Even though we live in a "post tag" world now because of abuse by things like bots and spammers, I still obsessively tag every photo I post to Flickr (itself a site that is a relic of the past).  My personal favorite is Taken While Driving, each frame of which represents me endangering myself and others.  Yesterday I decided I needed a name for "oopsie" photos I didn't plan on taking.

August 2005, which I was slightly past the "shiny bit toward subject" level of photography.  I think this was at Landmark College, my old alma mater.

October of that same year.  The PowerShot S60 I had slipped out of my hand and went for an impromptu bungee jump on its wrist strap.

I decided on the term "accidental exposure."  I checked Flickr for the term.

It turns out that "Accidental Exposure" and "Accidental Male Exposure" (which comes up in the same search) are commonly used terms for specific types of dick picks, and there are thousands of them on Flickr.  There's at least one group dedicated to the subject and one user who had that as a name.  I'm ...not opposed to consenting adults who want to share dick picks amongst themselves, but I don't want my clumsy shutter presses getting lost in the sea of old man peens. 

So I went with "Accidental Shutter Release" instead.  This has been your "there are a lot of dicks on the internet" moment.

[jose]

1 hour ago, Knuckledragger said:

 

I liked this photo a lot.

I recently bought a Samyang 800mm to continue with my "paranoia" of photographing the moon (a mirror lens or basically a mini telescope) that achieves a blur with rounded effects... very curious.

By the way, that thing moves even when mounted on a tripod.

[mwl168]

Madison, Wisconsin

 

 

[Knuckledragger]

I've been going through scans of film exposures I took in '06-09.  I had very mixed results.  For reasons still unclear to me, I had massive beginner's luck with Kodak BW400CN and Fuji Velvia 50, followed by some just awful photos (largely due to bad processing I think.)  I experienced hugely mixed results with Kodak Gold 200, which is to say I did quite well with a meh film stock.  I also had a lot of fun with a couple trash cams.  One I bought at a dollar store in 2006:

Shown here last week (taken with my new 5D IV and 85/1.8).  I actually had two of these IIRC.  A black one and this blue one.  Both have crappy plastic 35mm F/11 lenses and lots of light leaks.  I got rid of the black one at some point, because one dollar store camera is arguably too many.  I also had (and still have) a Vivitar Ultra Wide and Slim:

Seen here in the summer of '08.  It's got a 28mm F/22 lens and considerable better build quality than the $1 camera.  It's still a plastic toy, but it's a damn Leica by comparison.  I put 3 rolls of film through the $1 camera(s), and one through the Vivitar.  I had mixed results with both.  At the time, I only uploaded a handful of photos from each roll.  Revisiting the scans I'm much more forgiving of bad shots now.  My relaxed attitude is for a host of reasons not the least of which is the fact that's been 15 years.  Below are only newly uploaded photos.  I might go over some ones I liked back in '08 later.

The family cottage on MV, taken with the $1 camer and Kodak Gold 200 in November of '06.  I really like this shot, and not just because the cottage has been torn down for over a dozen years now.  The $1 camera managed to do organically what all the Hipstamatic type cameraphone apps attempt to recreate.

The hill across the street from my house on MV, November '06.  This shot has been hugely popular on Flickr and I'm not entirely sure why.  The truth is that it was a cold November day, but not nearly as bleak looking as the $1 camera and Kodak Gold made it out to be. 

 

Pointing a cheap plastic camera with an F/11 lens and fixed 1/30th shutter at the setting sun is a dumb idea.  This is a terribly exposed shot, but the car with is headlights on makes the image for me.  I get a strong 70s horror movie aesthetic from it.

 

My yard on the mainland, October '06.  Six years before I had a bunch of trees cut down.  That's an authentic $1 camera light leak on the side there.

 

The view from my back yard on MV, April 07.  $1 camera and Kodak Gold engaging in some impressive synergy here.

 

Another shot of my back yard, very similar to the one above.  Most of those trees are gone now.  What these two shots illustrate is that lighting is the single most important part of photography.  Also water is wet, and I strongly suspect it rolls downhill.

 

Edgartown Harbor with Chappaquiddick in the background.  That's the famous Mad Max catamaran sailing along, which is something I only just down figured out.  My mother had a good friend on MV for many years named Ruth.  She was an Austrian, born in 1924.  Ruth had done a great many things including being a skilled sailor.  She spent her last years owning a farm on Chappaquiddick (Chappy is not that big and there are not many farms on it.)  Ruth took a very dim view of Mad Max precisely because it was a catamaran.

 

The first shot I ever took with my Canon EF 17-40mm F/4L, 7/23/08 - 5:58PM (by that point I'd learned to take mostly complete notes on time and exposure.)  I had the 17-40 attached to my Rebel K2 loaded with Fuji Superia X-Tra ISO 800 bleh print film.  Not a very interesting shot, but it was my first time using the 17-40 on a full frame format.

 

None of the photos I've posted so far had any edits to them, except for this one.  The colors were too washed out and the contrast was just awful, so I relented and did a slightly cleanup in Photoshop.  $1 camera and Kodak Gold, October '06.  In this case, the cheap plastic lens made the image look cheery and nostalgic and less like a horror movie.

I have ...a lot more print exposures that I've gone through.  Next time: A cheap fisheye adapter a friend lent me attached to a mid 1950s 50mm prime, further evidence that 35mm F/2 is my favorite lens and maybe some terrible B&W shots.  Also maybe some current stuff taken with the 5D IV.

[blessingx]

BBC History Of Photography 

 

[Knuckledragger]

Did I say film scans?  I mean "through the viewfinder" silliness.  So there's a longstanding technique of pointing modern digital cameras at the viewfinder of old film cameras.  Specifically top down viewfinders as most TLRs have.  This process works best with medium format cameras that have large, square viewfinders.  I don't have one of those.  I do have an early 50s Praktica F. X 2 35mm SLR that has a wacky waist level viewfinder.

First off, the photo that inspired me, all the way back in 2009:

Oskars Cirsis on Flickr pointed his D700 at his Pentacon Six (neither of which I have and both of which I covet) and really hit it out of the park.  He wisely removed the viewfinder hood, which would make the Six hard to use, but much easier to photograph.  It only took me 14 years to finally get around to trying out this technique myself.

 

Alex Yanchenkov did the same thing in late 2012 with a 5D Mk II pointed at a Kiev 60.

 

Same idea done in 2018 with an iPhone by Josh White on Flickr.  The iPhone's pseudo HDR makes the process much easier.

As I have said, I don't have a medium format camera.  I've priced out various MF SLRs and TLRs on the 'bay, and they suffer from the "small pickup truck syndrome."  10-15 years ago, they were dirt cheap on the used market.  Now they're all "no lowballs, I know what I have."  It's a really weird time to be alive.

The F. X 2 SLR I have is 35mm of course, so it has a much smaller viewfinder.  It also has a pesky flip out focusing loupe which gets in the way:

It folds away ...mostly.  Also my poor F. X 2 is much, much more dirty than this example and no amount of cleaning will fully restore it.  With that said, others have used this exact camera for through the viewfinder photos:

Both done with a smartphone.  The telltale pseudo HDR is all over these shots.  NB: I don't hate the fake tonemapping that smartphone camera apps do for snapshots but it's one of those things that cannot be unseen.  So anyway, I've made a couple attempts at my own TTV shots over the last few days:

F. X 2 with an Ashai Super-Takuma 50mm F/1.4, wide open and infinity focused.  Shot with a 5D IV and 35mm F/2 (F/16, 1/4, ISO100) which has had a broken AF motor since 2009.  I used a pair of tripods, so there's legs visible all over the place.

Same as above, except for I swapped my Tair 11a 135mm F/2.8 in place of the Ashai.

The following day, with the Ashai 50 again, this time using my iPhone (which weighs about 1/100 of what the 5D on a tripod does).  It was not my plan to capture the truck in the middle of the viewfinder.  I was explicitly trying to avoid any cars, but I live on a busy road.  Even on a Sunday, there's a bustle of vehicles going past.  With all of this said, the truck did manage to get itself framed rather well.  "I meant to do that!"

Bonus:

This is what the setup looked like from my first attempt (using my 17-40 vs the 35mm).  The problem here was that the sun was beating down on the deck and the camera body was brighter than the viewfinder.  Also, I've been looking at non working medium format cameras on the 'bay.  The problem here is that besides the "small pickup truck" syndrome, TLRs are for the most part quite good looking cameras.  People like having a TLR as an art piece on their mantle or wherever.

While I'd love to have a non-working Rollei (Bill Tague's personal one, photographed by me in 2010), the prices of them are too expensive for what they are.  I understand the appeal.  Rollies are beautiful mechanical marvels.  There are some cheaper models out there:

This Ansco Anscoflex II TLR 620 is $50 plus shipping.  It is, and I want to be delicate here, also the UGLIEST GODDAMN CAMERA I HAVE SEEN IN MY ENTIRE FUCKING LIFE.  It has the most horrific institutional aesthetic to it imaginable.  It looks like it was used for mugshots in 1963.  It is genuinely so repugnant I'd rather be condemned to a life of shooting Kodak Gold 200 than ever use it.  I'd rather quit photography for another 10 years than have it in my house.

[jose]

Cool. For a moment i thought it was a Hasselblad.

[blessingx]

I've seen worse.  

EDIT:  Wait, plastic lens??

Edited August 28, 2023 by blessingx

[Knuckledragger]

I forget who said it, nor do I remember the exact quote, but words I live by are "The biggest enemy of present you is past you."  I have spent more time than I want to contemplate going over film exposures I took in 2008.  My first EOS film body was a Rebel G, which I only used for a few rolls before getting a Rebel K2.  My notes for the exposures I took with the Rebel G are spotty at best.  For at lest one roll of film (Kodak Supra 400) I did take careful notes on the time, date and lens used.  The problem is that I did not save this list anywhere I can find.  2008 was a tumultuous year for me.  My at that point aged Windows XP machine went kaput due to a bad motherboard.

 

I bought my first Mac laptop in 2008.

 

I then spent considerable time copy all data off the pile of HDDs that were inside the old Windows box.

Related, it was during this time period that I lost a really important 30GB archive "DJ Mixes and music by SoulSeek members."  This is irreplaceable data from the early days of slsk, including mixes from a bunch of OG members at least two of whom are no longer with us.  It was also during this time that I lost some photography related data: A number of entire photo sets are gone, as is the meta data notes for I don't know how many rolls of film.

I have developed an eye where I can approximate FoV on full frame to make reasonably good guesses as to what lens I was using in many situations.  I recognize what my 35mm F/2 looks like.  I can usually identify a 50mm.  I can spot the damn 300mm Orestegor, because I used it sparingly at best (now would be a great time to question why I feel the need to own two of them, but I digress) and because it's FoV is like nothing else I own.  Telling apart my 135mm and 200mm primes?  Not so easy.  I have to reconstruct what lens I thought I was using on unknown shots by cross referencing them with frames I uploaded in 2008.  This has been a maddening process.  For example:

I suspect both of these shots were taken with my 200mm F/4 Orestegor.  A lens, I might add, that I cannot currently locate.  I have torn apart my house looking for it.  I found the pleather case I used to store it for 15 years, but not lens itself.  As the kids say, inb4 I buy a second copy of the zebra 200mm.  Both these shots had the lousy noise that color print film generates on a coin flip and in the latter case, off colors.  I ran them both through Topaz DeNoise AI and did some mild adjustment in Photoshop.  I really make it a point to not do drastic edits to print exposures if I can help it.

 

This was definitely taken with my 35mm F/2.  I'd know it's DoF vs FoV anywhere.  Similarly, I recognize its bokeh.

 

Looking the other direction on the same morning.  Again, I'd be willing to bet that this is the 35mm F/2.  The noise in the original was awful, so I ran it through Topaz again.  I didn't make any other changes.  I actually quite like the look of this shot.  It might be a hair underexposed, but I think it works in this case.

 

The diminutive Edgartown lighthouse.  This shot was awfully noisy, so I spent longer than I usually do in Topaz, removing noise but not erasing the film grain.  What I recall is that it was the middle of the day and a fog bank rolled in out of nowhere.  Such weather conditions are not exactly unheard of on an island.

The Edgartown docks.  What I like to call the "poor section" of town.  EOS Rebel G, EF 35mm F/2 and Kodak Supra 400.  I did a mild denoising with Topaz and slight cleanup in Photoshop.  Once again I had to work backwards from photos I uploaded in '08 to figure out the time, date and lens.

What I have not done and really need to do is create a new local text file with the information I've reverse engineered today.  Flickr is a side that's been around for nearly 20 years, but I do have some doubts about its future.  The truth I have data stored on there that I don't have locally.  Right now I have strong desire to do ...anything except for digging up old exposure data.  Ugh.  It stopped raining so I think I'm going to take my boat anchor of a 5D IV for a stroll.

[dsavitsk]

On 8/28/2023 at 12:59 PM, blessingx said:

I've seen worse.

Me, too ...

 

[blessingx]

Went to a lowrider show this weekend at the Montalvo Arts Center in Saratoga. Took a couple cameras to snap away. 
First up monochrome with the new to me M9M

 

[blessingx]

And now a little color with the 907x 50c 

Edited September 5, 2023 by blessingx

[Voltron]

[Knuckledragger]

The Monochrom does show a lot of values of gray.  It's funny how it just ends suddenly with low light detail.  To my eye it behaves more like slide film that B&W print film in that regard.  Related: Anyone remember when B&W slide film was a (common) thing?  It's all but nonexistent these days.

[blessingx]

34 minutes ago, Knuckledragger said:

The Monochrom does show a lot of values of gray.  It's funny how it just ends suddenly with low light detail.  To my eye it behaves more like slide film that B&W print film in that regard.  Related: Anyone remember when B&W slide film was a (common) thing?  It's all but nonexistent these days.

I'd love to shoot all four Monochroms to compare, and better understand the CCD element of the first Monochrom, though wildly different other specs too. It's going to take a little time to get to know as it's so easy to blow the highlights. These were shot about two stops underexposed (used ND filter as primitive meter is away from lens), then brought up in post. That's probably not ideal, but I'll experiment. I remember B&W slide film, but never shot it. Sadly all my experience is with the Agfa Scala 200 Exposure (aka Alien Skin) sim, but it's one of my favorites. 

[dsavitsk]

2 hours ago, Knuckledragger said:

 Anyone remember when B&W slide film was a (common) thing?

Not sure it was ever common, but Ektagraphic HC slide film was one of my favorites.

https://125px.com/docs/film/kodak/f12-Ektagraphic_HC.pdf

https://www.lomography.com/films/871967025-kodak-ektagraphic-hc/photos

[swt61]

I remember it being pretty common. I'm really old.

[dsavitsk]

50 minutes ago, swt61 said:

I remember it being pretty common. I'm really old.

Agfa Scala was a thing in the 90's, but otherwise I don't remember any B&W slide films.