Editing snaps is so darn boring!

Just had to say it... again!
Editing a few versions of the same snap for the customer to decide which one to go for. Lots of nitpicking work and probably worth nothing when I'm done, or if I ever get done at all. It would be OK if I had a lightning fast pooter and the files were of a workable size. Well, it's nothing like that, believe me. This is going to be the biggest thing ever delivered from my hands, so better be a bit careful with this one. I would probably cry if I ruined this because of some software issue or something like that. Imagine getting back a really pixelated thing when you thought everything was good to go. 
Nah, I better take my time and get it right instead. Who knows, the one who's going to put this one up on her wall might have friends and all, and before I know it I sit here checking pixels again. Well, that's life when you agreed to sell something way to big to print the old fashion way with my equipment anyway. 

Nope, not edited at all. I'm way to fed up with that thing at the moment to even care. This was snapped during the last days of my last trip at work. You might remember me talking about a viking festival and such stuff? Well, this old norwegian viking ship copy were laid up in this bay just below the viking village they have built right here. Nice lines in these small boats. They sure knew how to build sleek and fast hulls back in the days. I probably used orange filter on this one, but I'm not too sure about it. It was very late in the evening, but on these summer nights there's plenty of light available for more or less anything. Ilford FP4+... I'm quite sure about that.

What else has been happening, you might ask?
Nothing much, as usual. At least not since the last disaster on board, which more or less lasted from the first minute I came on board thursday mid day and all the way to saturday evening around 21.00 Nope, no fun was involved, at all. Way to many hours at work with only a very, very few hours of sleep in between. That's not exactly how you like your period of work to start off, I can tell you that much. 

Since then everything has been flowing smooth enough, so I'm alright now, thank you very much :)  

Darkroom papers and a few examples

Yesterday I was trying to give you folks who still have not tried film a simple and easy way to find out which type of film to go for. Not that everything is as simple as my short explanation, maybe, but it might work for some and in any case it should work great as a kick in the bottom to anyone thinking about trying this stuff for the first time. 

Your major place where woodoo can and will happen though, will be inside the darkroom under a redish light throwing different papers in and out of fluids with more or less unknown chemicals inside. And there will be some brainwork going on as well. At least when you get into the flow and things start working as it should. 
Your film negative will still have an influence, but it's more about the way it's exposed than onto which type of film it was exposed.
Inside the darkroom it's all about how much light you dare to shine through your negative onto different parts of your paper of choice, and then there's the very nature of your paper of choice itself. The choice you make here will really do something about what your end result looks like when you get out of the darkroom after a shorter, or more likely longer period of time inside. 
I don't have any research material available on this, but I got a strong feeling that the absolute majority of film users these days have never been inside a darkroom, or have not used one in very many years. Scanning of film seems to be the thing these days, and I would think more or less every filmwaster is scanning film in one way or another. Some with sophisticated machines, some with simpler units, and some are just using a digital snapping device to get the job done. There are lots of ways to Rome, and none of them are perfect... They will never be either, because you're screwing up the whole intention of using film by making a digital file out of it. 
And still we keep on doing it, just to get our snaps out on the web and into each others puters all over the place. Which is fine, of course! 
Still, it's when your masterpiece is printed on real high quality darkroom paper you will start to understand the point in doing this the way we do. 

My example print done on some Ilford FB Classic paper. A nice paper with a neutral toned base, and a smooth and beautiful matte surface. It's a bit tricky to get the print straight and even when the drying is done, but with the help of some weights and a bit of heat it all usually ends up looking absolutely smashing. Most of the time...

I'm not going to act like I know every paper available on the market, just like I'm far from the position of knowing every film on the market either. I can and will tell you though, that your choice of paper will have a lot more influence on your finished product than your choice of film. 
You got a very few main types of paper. Usually we're talking about Resin coated (RC) paper, or Fiber based (FB) paper. Some will stick to one type only, while others will use both. 
RC paper is by far the easiest paper to handle, and the one to start with. Because the RC paper is made of a couple of layers of polyethylene it will not suck up any fluids you throw it into. This also means that it dries without curling up like a dried out fallen leaf, and it's a bit easier to wash all the chemicals out of making it easier to get a decent result in that respect. The range of surface textures are limited due to the very nature of this paper, but you still normally get it in glossy and a bit less glossy or pearly kind of version.

This is a scan of the Emaks K883 G2 Croatian paper. Definately not the best paper for this particular snap, as it's a tad picky about things going on inside the fog up there. I have seen this before with this paper, but it only applies to one of my boxes. The other one (a smaller paper) is just fine. There might be an issue with this particular batch, but I don't know that for sure. The surface of the paper is dead matte, and got some very nice shades of gray inside. I like it a lot... but would really like to see a multigrade version of the same paper.

Most papers made today will, with a few exeptions, be of a multigrade type. This means you will be able to adjust the contrast on the paper from virtually no contrast at all, up to a more or less black and white only and very graphic looking version on the same type of paper. This was not the case back in the days when I went into a darkroom for the first time, and the downside of it was that you would need a lot more different grades of paper to get the job done back then. Nowadays all you need is a stack of different filters, or just simply an enlarger with a multi contrast head, or even a color head. There's a lot of them out there, so you will be able to find something useful to get second hand. 

Here we go! Now we're starting to heat up things by shining light through the negative onto some Foma paper. This is the Fomatone 532 Nature II paper, and as you might already notice there's a significant tint of yellowish inside this paper. I think it might be good for some special stuff, but it's definately not an everyday paper for sure. I have read that lith printers often use this paper, so I might try that... or rather maybe just silmply ship some of it away over the sea to check if a couple of great lith printers over in the UK can get anything nice out of them in some way. 

To really start exploring papers and textures you have to go the slightly more cumbersome way and get hold of some fiber based paper. Inside this playground there's a lot more to discover, and more or less every paper has it's own special quality in some way. 
Ilford got a nice range of some fine papers in a few different grades of warmness. The difference between their more normal papers is not that big, but you can still easily spot the normal ones from the warmtone styles. Their matte papers got a very nice surface, but without any clearly noticeable texture. It's just plain thick and very good paper, more or less. Then you have their Art 300 paper, which is 100% cotton rag and got a beautiful well defined eggshell surface. Way too expensive, but a hands down lovely paper me thinks. 
Fomapan got a small range of papers, but beware! Some of their papers, especially their Fomatone range, are real warm in the tone, and nothing you would use for all kinds of snaps for sure. But then again we are all different, and to get that certain looks it sure will be useful in one way or the other.

And the last one, the Fomatone 542 Chamois paper. The same surface as the Nature one above, but with an even warmer tone inside, I should have lit a bit more light through on this one, I know, but since it only was a brief test to see what the paper looked like I did not bother. This paper is for special purpose only, I would have to say, but still it's a nice thing having it around. I mean we should all applaude any company still pushing stuff like this out their doors these days. The structure, texture and surface of these papers are just beautiful, so I might try a bit more normal tinted version of them some day. They got two other papers in this same Fomatone series called Classic 131 and 132, where one of them is matte, and the other one glossy.

Just like scanning film, scanning paper prints will not give you the best idea of what the print looks like for real. The texture of the paper, and the thickness and feel of it, will totally dissappear and you will be watching a flat surface on your screen instead of a three dimentional real paper. 
I have tried to show you four different scans from the same negative printed on four different types of paper. The first one is on Ilford FB Classic paper, the next one were done on a very nice matte paper called Emaks K883 produced in Croatia. It's worth to mention that this paper is not of a multigrade type, meaning it's only made in a couple of standard grades which give you no way to adjust the contrast of the paper like you do with contemporary papers. It's old fashion, but it still works great with the right negative. 
The two last examples will be Fomatone (532 Nature and 542 Chamois. Just check out those very warm tones on that Chamois paper... looks antique as soon as you get out of the darkroom. And they got a lovely surface as well, them Fomatone papers. 

And hey... just like with film, old and well expired and out of date papers can really come in handy for some kind of more or less special work at some point. I still got a few boxes of paper from my fathers darkroom back in the 70's, and they still works quite nice.

So, if you're after that something you can't really put your finger at, try to play around with a few different papers for your prints. It's normally very helpful, and will give you a lot more variables to work with than changing from one film to another. At least that's my opinion about this. 

Good luck and have fun!!

The film of your choice, and how to get there

There's a whole lot of discussions going on around the interweb thing about films, what to choose and why. And yes, your choice of film will definately give you different results, and some of them will sometimes be a better choice than others. Somebody new to this might get the impression that you would need a whole bunch of different type of films to get covered, but it's nothing like that. At least in my opinion...
When buying new film today it's rather simple, actually. If we look at the B&W side of the matters there's only a very few left to choose from. You got the english company, the american one, and a few choices from the eastern part of europe. Maybe there's still something made over in russia, but I don't know too much about that. Oh, and yeah, you got some chinese stuff, of course.
So, compared to back in the days when I started to snap things on film the size of the available assortment is a bit limited. 
Still, and even though I have gone through quite a number of rolls the last few years, I have not tried everything available. 
Why? Because I don't feel like I have to... that's why. 

In my opinion there's no point (at least not to me) in testing everything, and here's why I think that way.
Films simply look far to similar to each other to start picking on details, and the chance I will get everything out of the film the way it was intended is actually microscopic. I will never be able to get the same results as them hotshots doing "everything right" to get their fantastic spotless and wonderfully exposed negatives, prefereably in a size most of us never even knew existed. These few people are the big champions of the trade, and nothing most of us would have a snowballs chance in a hot place to even partly compare ourselves to. 
Now, that said, it's nothing we should worry too much about either. I mean who would work with film if a sterile "perfect" negative was the goal everytime you snapped a photo? 
Nah, that sounds like too much hassle and work and way to many sleepless nights to me I must say. I like good negatives, and for a reason, but I'm not addicted to getting a state of the art result every time I open a shutter for a shorter or longer period of time.
Which film you end up liking the most, compared to the next one, will wery often boil down to a feeling more than things you can put concrete words on. 

If you want your snaps to look very different there's a better way to achieve that than keep thinking you're gonna find the film that does it all for you. The answer lies in the darkroom paper and the treatment you give that paper, my friends. That's where you can really get lost in time and space by testing different inventions, old and new. I need to talk about that some other day.

A scan of one of the prints from my latest darkroom session, and my latest trip to my small island on the coast of Norway. Snapped on 120 film using the Rolleiflex, printed on some quite tricky Emaks 5"x7"  K883 Grade 2 baryte paper from Zabreg, Croatia. Tricky in the way that it's more or less not sensitive to light at all compared to the contemporary papers around, but a lovely surface and well worth giving a test if you get hold of a few sheets of the thing. I think this was exposed around 2 minutes at f5,6 or something like that. Compare it to the one beneath snapped from the same location on the same film but exposed for something like 4 or 6 seconds at the same aperture. Both negs were similar, and therefore compareable. As always, the scan looks horrible compared to the real print...

So, here's a quick sollution and guidance on how to find your own film of choice:
You run through a couple of different films with standard old fashion grain, develop and check.
Then you do the same with the more contemporary T-grain, or Delta grain. Again, develop and check.
Then you simply find out which style you like the most, and go for that sort of film. Period.
Personally I like the old fashion and traditional type of thing, which means I got a few different films to choose from. The only thing I need to worry about is if I want a fast or a slower film. The same issue will be valid for people running for the other type of film as well, but they usually got a nice choice of high ASA films to choose from. 
To put this very simple I'm kind of stuck with the old Ilford films (HP5 and FP4), Kodak Tri-X, Fomapan and a very few others. All of them would be nice films, and all of them should be able to give you a good enough result. There's also a fair chance you gonna ruin everything. We are not called film wasters for nothing, as you should know. This applies whichever type of film you settle with.
Some of my best snaps was actually done on some very cheap chinese film I bought years ago having been stucked away inside a drawer inside a warm room for a long time. OK, you can see some flaws, but that's just adding to the feel of the negatives in some weird way. 

The big difference between films will really surface when or if you get hold of some old film. I mean the stuff that went out of production years and years ago. That's where the real fun starts to some of us, and I can and will not blame them. 
And then you got the old and since long expired specialist kind of films, very often with an extreme contrast hidden inside. Loads of fun can be had if you find a roll or two of that sort somewhere.

Another one from the darkroom, this time on Ilford FB Classic paper. A bit contrasty, I know, but I still like the result, probably mostly because of the lighthouse and them clouds up there. I ripped the orange filter off my rangefinder lens and just held it against the old Rolleiflex lens. Worked flawlessly I would dare to say. Some gaffer tape and it could easily become a more permanent sollution should I need it at some point. 

And yes, I know that there's more variables to add into this subject such as which developer for what film and so on. If you really want to dig deep into that area please help yourself. There's a lot out there to read, but not very much visdom to gain I'm afraid. Personally I'm a man who likes to keep things simple, as you should know by now, and therefore I usually throw my films into whatever I got inside the house when I feel the urge to wash a film or five. Most of the time we're talking Rodinal, D-76, Xtol or HC-110. Simple!

So... no worries folks! Keep it simple and go snapping... that would be my best advice to anyone new to this old fashion way to do things. After all, it's not exactly rocket science! 
OK, it's close, but not quite there.

Another one printed

I spent 10 days way out on my small island not too long ago. 
Luckily I was in the posession of some film, and a couple of cameras. The weather was great for most of the time, but we also had some fog coming in a couple of times. 
I went outside to see if something nice would stick to the film anyway, and it sort of did. 

I printed this one a few days ago. I got no clue what's going on at the right hand side here, but I can assure you that this was not a part of the print. Scanner issues, I guess. It more or less destroyed that nice transition between fog and lighthouse. You will have to use some of your imagination, I'm afraid. It looks like Ilford FB paper, and the details in the print on them stones are a lot better than this scan when looking at it on this screen. As uaual, when I scan something. This was snapped on a rangefinder of german origin. 

There's a few more to come, but this will have to do for now. 
I'm at work, as you might know. Down in Great Yarmouth over there in old England, as it happens. And we got some trouble with the ship, as usual. And yes, that's the same as saying my department is the only one working right now. Well, besides the galley crew, of course. They work all the time no matter what's going on. 

I have been inside the darkroom as well!

I might fortgot to mention it, but I have been a few short moments inside the darkish room... with the red light lit and all. 
And yes, I had a great time even though nothing much came out of it other than a bunch of more or less wasted paper. 
The usual thing, as you should know by now. 

As I'm not in the possession of the original files (physical paper prints) right here and now, it's a bit confusing to tell you the absolute truth. My guess it that this scan is of a darkroom print on some Ilford multigrade fiber based paper (it's definitely a scan of a print anyway), but I'm not 100% sure about it. What more could one ask for, though, than being out there on the island as one of the very few and at the same time have some decent fog coming in from the sea to add some mystery to the whole scene? At least that's what happened right here. I got the same thing printed on a few different papers, and I need to show them off one of these days for sure. The difference is quite something to start a discussion around... to be honest. Not that I see that happening, but still...!!

I got a few scans for you though, and you might even find a few of them a bit interesting. Foma... you know the Czech company making both film and other sorts of light sensitive material? Paper and such? 
Well, they got quite a range I have to say, and their papers are really something else. 
I got nothing of that to show off right now, as I'm just about to fall asleep in some hotel room before hopefully getting on the plane to Amsterdam and then further to Norwich tomorrow morning. I only got the one above, printed on some old and very expanded croatian paper. Grade II as it happens. No modern multigrade stuff from that old company, as you should know. 
I like it, no matter what. Thick and solid paper base, and the most beautiful texture ever. But stiff! 
You will get over it though, at some point. 

A day beside the scanner

Oh yes! Scanning film. More or less the ultimate boring thing to do, to be honest. 

I'm going to work tomorrow, you see. Had to get it done to be able to post something during the next few weeks, or so. 

I have been both here and there, and a little bit over the hills and far away. 

Hopefully there will be something to please an eye or two, but you never quite know. 

I sort of liked this one. It was snapped a couple of weeks ago when I was staying on my small island of Ona for about a week. Sort of a double exposure done on the Rolleiflex. I don't even know how to do that, so this was completely by accident. I need to find out what went wrong... 

I'm off tomorrow afternoon, so I see you some time then. 

What's been happening lately?

You may ask this question, as I have been totally off the blogging parts of life this last month.
It's summer, as it happens, and the weather has been quite nice the last couple of weeks. Decent weather is nothing we take for granted over here, and one has to really grab the opportunity and make some good old use of it should the sun decide to shine through them clouds for more than a few minutes in a row. 
And that's what I have done, actually. Been at home, and on my small island of Ona for a bit more than a week, and generally here and there and all over the parishes more or less close to my home. 

I know, I know... this one has been posted before around this place. It's from the island of Smøla, as you might remember if you have been reading my old stuff at some point. We took a trip out here to this island this weekend, as we like this kind of terrain and quiet areas. 

This weekend I went over to Smøla, to the island where my mother grew up. The forecast for my hometown were not the best, but looked quite a lot brighter a bit further north. So we packed some stuff into the car, and went off. The original plan was to hire somewhere to stay a couple of nights, but as the island has only a very limited number of beds for hire, and a lot was going on this weekend, we found it wise to bring our small tent instead. 
We ended up camping out on a very small holm, where the land meets the North Sea. Just the way we like things to be, to be honest. 
And a fine weekend it was. Dry, and with sunshine and around 20 deg. Very nice, and not the every day experience out here on this side of the country I can tell you. 

Another old snap from around the same places we walked this weekend. This time the weather was quite a bit better, I have to say. Sunshine from a blue sky, and what have we all. A little bit windy, but that's just the way it is out here on the very edge of where man can still live. 

Now I'm back home, just in time to get my clothes washed and made ready for a month at sea again. Work to be done, you know. 

Oh, and in between all this I have been able to get into the darkroom on a few occasions. Developed a bunch of films and made a few half decent prints on some nice paper I did. No scanning has been done, but I hope I can get some done tomorrow just to have something to show around this place in the month to come. Not that I've got a lot of great stuff or anything, as you know, but maybe there's still one or two of interest.
And I also ordered and got some fresh film from over in England. A bunch of 135 and 120 rolls of Ilford HP5+ and FP4+, and also 20 rolls of Kentmere 400 and 100 ASA films. Never tried them before, so that's what's inside a couple of my cameras right now. 

As there's chance of crew change with helicopter this time I need to  think twice before I pack my stuff. That would mean only one camera, and a limited number of lenses to go with it. Sounds like the perfect trip for one of the german rangefinders to be honest. I might even only bring one lens, as that's a bit more exiting in many ways. We will see... as I will keep you updated. 

This old M3 kind of thing should be a good enough choice of camera to bring for this next trip to sea, I would think. Either with the 35mm lens, or maybe the great 50mm one I really like a lot. Those who survive will see what the final decision will be.