Posts from Scoo

Out with the old, in with the new

nobody@ipernity.com (Scoo) — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 20:24:06 +0000

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A month ago, on the same day that Kodak announced their discontinuation of Kodachrome, I became a father to a wonderful little baby girl. Her name has its basis in Norse mythology. Her arrival was heralded on Facebook and such even before we had the time to tell everyone in person ;)

Apart from the image above (which was taken some time ago) you won't find images of her on my stream. This as anything that ends up on the net will potentially stay there and would be impossible to control. Therefore, for reasons of privacy, she won't generally appear here.

From time to time I might find the time to photograph and will continue to publish images of the kind that I used to, so if that fancies you do continue to pop in from time to time, although updates will most likely be more sporadic nowadays.

The art of colour separations

nobody@ipernity.com (Scoo) — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 16:32:10 +0000

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A couple of years ago I browsed the stream of a fellow at flickr and saw his experiments into colour separations. I didn't think more of it until I browsed the online exhibition of Sergei Prokudin-Gorskij (1863-1944) at the U.S. Library of Congress called The Empire that was Russia. To make a long story short, Prokudin-Gorskij took three exposures of a scene through a red, a green and a blue filter. When these were projected afterwards it was possible to view a colour image. Nowadays (with digital image processing etc.) it's quite easy compared with then to scan each individual frame and then put together a composite image ('making of' section at LoC).

Generally I've seen very little of this on the net, at photo.net there was a post about a chap who lit a stilleben through RGB-coloured stage lights in order to get a similar result.

This I've attempted a couple times before with varying success. Here's my procedure:

1.Take three exposures through a red, a green and a finally a green filter (in my case a 25A, X1 and a 80B as these are the filters I have [the letter and number combinations are the technical designations of the filters].l).

2. Scan them (to save time scan them in 8 bits/pixel) and set the image mode to RGB (if you scanned them in grayscale). Then tint them (in my case via photoshop's channel mixer, any equivalent would do) in red, green and blue (images #1, #2 and #3). For example, for the red image, using the channel mixer I left the red channel at 100% and set the green and blue channel at 0%.

3. Decide upon one image to use as the bottom one (or anchor) in order to line up the sequence of images (I've done as the LoC and chosen the red one). Then copy the green and blue image onto the red one. Set the opacity to 33% for the layer containg the green info and the same for the blue layer. Align both layers using the red one as a reference. Usually moving items (clouds, tree branches, waves etc. will stand out in either colour [RGB]).

4. When the images have been aligned, flatten the image. Usually one should see the embryo of the resulting image at this stage (in my case, red is a bit too dominant as evident by image no. #4). Then, using the levels or curves command or whatnot, set the correct colour balance, brightness & contrast. This is the tricky part. Of the images I've taken using this method only one has been somewhat suffessfull/accurate (see links below). As #5 and #6 show, one can muck about as much as one like to trying to get a pleasing result. Factors that influence the result is the spectral sensitivity of the film used, strength of the colour filters, the subjective treatment of the source files when scanning etc etc.

First attempt (red-green)

First RGB attempt (red-green-blue)

First successful RGB

A so-so sucessful sunset

More to come at a later date...

Street action times two

nobody@ipernity.com (Scoo) — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 06:37:02 +0000

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Batch developing is both interesting and challenging. Fortunately Mrs. Scoo wasn't home when I processed all roll films from July (upwards of ten rolls consisting of Ilford PANF & FP4 [iso 50 & 125] and Shanghai GP3 [chinese iso 100 film, copy of Kodak Plus-X]. That left some ten 35mm canisters.

At any rate, doing it all in one evening is easier when I use a developer which isn't diluted I think as I need to cool the chemicals in the sink as the ambient temperature in our flat is often during the summer 25-26°C.

Yesterday, having discovered a Minolta AL (1960s fixed 45mm f/2 lens rangefinder) in good shape, I bought it for street photography use. Its leaf shutter is very quiet in contrast to that of the soviet Zorki 4 which is just about as loud as a SLR, negating somewhat its advantage for stealthy photography.

On my way from the flea shop to the post office to collect a parcel of foma films (took an eternity to get them from a seller in Norway) I noticed blue strobes on the pedestrian street in Turku. A Norway Maple had lost a thick branch due to strong winds. The immidiate area was cordoned off with the fire brigade together with people from the city's "park & greenery department" preparing to fell it completely as it had been badly ripped when the branch broke off. As I had a roll in my bag the Minolta was immidiately put to service, its quiet shutter quite useful. Later I brought my DSLR too for some crowd and uniformed people shots (local news story on the incident; poor machine translated version).

In the evening I and Mrs. Scoo went out to see the "Night of the Arts" (can't think of any non-literal translation of it); the original meaning was that artists, musicians and the lot would display and perform long into the wee hours, nowadays its also a chance for downtown businesses to attract customers up until midnight. At any rate, inside a shopping mall in central Turku we chanced upon the booth of a local photo gallery/association (I've been idly thinking of joining). Several photographers' work was on display, amongst them a chap named Tommi Pirnes who I chatted a bit with. I can see why his "Cat and vine" inspired him to venture further in the world of photography.

I hope to get the rolls developed later today or during the weekend.

On vacation..

nobody@ipernity.com (Scoo) — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 07:33:00 +0000

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Have been all July on vacation, now up north in Finland for some rest & relaxation in the Kainuu region and then Finnish Lapland.

Overcast and rainy weather is aplenty, hoping to get some nice weather for photography and videography.

First self-developed B&W roll

nobody@ipernity.com (Scoo) — Thu, 15 May 2008 05:58:18 +0000

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Yesterday I got around to trying out the chemicals (rodinal & agfa agefix) and apparatus I got at the same time as I ordered negative filing sheets for the growing number of negatives and (unmounted) slides. Having them in envelopes that I get from the developer/camera store is getting rather unwieldy.

Last night it was time to try out the basic starting kit made by Kaiser Fototechnik (tanks etc. are paterson clones). Naturally I botched the spooling of first roll of Agfa APX 100 (which was purpose-shot as a test roll; different filters, uniform motives & different exposures for several frames etc.), I probably winded the film too vigorously onto the spool of the tank, thus it became stuck. Some mild %@#&"!! followed. The valiant test roll then volunteered for a sacrifice for the common good of its compatriots and was promptly spooled without any incidents in lit conditions. Then another roll of APX 100 was conjured and properly spooled.

A developing bath of Rodinal diluted to 1+100 at roughly 20°C for 20 minutes, some agitation at the start and then some at the start of every minute was followed by a mild stop bath (5ml [1 teaspoon] of citric acid powder mixed in 1l of water) which was followed by a ten-minute fixer bath (agfa agefix 1+7). Finally I washed the film by filling the tank and inverting five times, then fresh water and a cycle of ten inversions, then anew with 20 (followed by a final cycle of ten inversions in fresh water).

Was certainly nice to see that something useful came out. I've learnt my lesson though and will try spooling a 120-film in daylight, have test subject already in an old Kodak Verichrome pan that was still inside a camera I got from a buy-sell store.

Tonal range, grain etc. looks acceptable so far, will re-scan it when the film has settled a bit (now quite bulgy). All in all, it was quite fun and felt somewhat akin to baking bread or such.

Links:

www.digitaltruth.com/devchart.html nifty database

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vu0Ul_wsYO8 nifty video

www.photogs.com/bwworld/bwfilmdev.html one of many FAQs

Chapter Two - the nickname

nobody@ipernity.com (Scoo) — Mon, 05 May 2008 18:25:25 +0000

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Roughly ten years ago (I'm fairly certain it was 1998) I had a computer with a 56K modem, subscription services were being introduced by ISPs instead of the horrendous charge-per-minute for calling open, non-subscription ISP telephone/modem numbers.

Fairly early on I found IRC and needed a nickname. The nick I came up with was airforce1 which is nine digits long, the maximum that was allowed (inspiration came from the 1997 film starring Harrison Ford). As you may imagine, that nick wasn't too great. Next one was ScooBiDoo which eventually was shortened to simply Scoo.

One problem with Scoo is that, being only four digits, it is not that unique. To my "horror" I found out that someone also calling himself Scoo has a Mrs. Scoo ;) On flickr the nickname Scoo was taken by a Hungarian, thus I had to adopt an alternative nickname for the duration of my stay there. Fortunately that was not the case with Ipernity :)

Chapter one, why I do it.

nobody@ipernity.com (Scoo) — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 15:39:19 +0000

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Hello world ;)

A couple of years ago my uncle got into photography, inspired by my father who has snapped away for the majority of his adolescent and adult life, only to move on later to videography as a hobby.

Inspired by this I too was bitten by the bug and eventually got myself a dSLR which was put to use recording the world around me. As I learned about the art of photography I passed the usual stages of gear acquisition syndrome, brand loyalty etc. The next big thing was when I got a summer job as an intern at a image archives at the university library of the university I attend. There I was delighted to find various street scenes and other documentary imagery of Turku and Finland in general which was most interesting to see.

Thus the importance to record also mundane and perhaps boring events, often unrelated to one's immidiate family etc. dawned on me. In a world of digital media, just snap away. This is something my father has commented on, he has primarily been a nature photographer and while nature can be somewhat static, the environment in which he & my mother and myself grew up in, my hometown and its citizens, have changed a lot during the years.