We went for a walk

My daughter and I, a couple of weeks ago. Went for this walk as I had this film sitting inside that old Kodak Colorsnap 35 camera I got from Craig in Orkney about a year ago, or maybe even a bit longer. It seems to be in some kind of working condition, even though some of the snaps seem to have been exposed a bit oddly which was probably my own fault. The film was not exactly the best of things to put inside this camera either, as it was pretty low on ISO value. I think I might go for a 400 or something the next time I load the thing up. 

Here she is, out walking carrying the Diana F+ in her hands. 

From the entrance to "Aksla Stadion", an old arena on top of the Aksla mountain. This place has seen it's best days years ago, and is slowly falling apart and into a state beyond any chance of repair. It used to be a great place though, back in the days when I grew up. I went up there one afternoon lately, just to have a look at how things are these days. I brought my old Colorsnap thing from Kodak, and snapped a BWsnap of the place instead. 

And then we had snow, again, as you know if you follow this spot. Just for a few days, but still there's nothing much fun about it when all you want to have is spring and nice temperatures. Don't ask me what those two lines going through this frame is all about. I got no idea at all. The same thing seems to have fastened on three or four of the frames from this camera every now and then through the film. This one was taken at the doorstep at the cottage not too many days ago. It's nothing like this today, mind you, as the temperature is a lot higher this morning. 

The first day this spring with good temperatures (for this area, anyway) today. 14 deg. C right now, which is very good compared to 3-4 deg. the last weeks and months. 
I'm on my way out to make some good use of the nice weather. It's not sunny, but that's no problem as long as it's not raining and the temperature is good. 
Have a great day, all of you!

More on paper negatives

As you might know I used some time a few days ago to do a few tests on some B&W darkroom paper, just to have an idea how light sensitive they really are. This is something you just have to test from paper to paper, and also depends a bit on the age of the paper. New RC papers seem to be rather fast, while others are slow as heck. When you got some old RC paper, and also a few boxes of totally unknown baryte paper from eastern europe, the only way to determine light sensitiveness will be to run a simple test. 

Using B&W paper instead of the usual film inside a camera will give you a different result. Paper will not render colors in the same way as the film, just because it's more sensitive to other spectrums of light than film is. Not that there's a huge difference, but it's definitely visible. 
Another thing which is a bit challenging is to manage the contrast you get when using paper instead of film. You will get a high contrast, but some say it's possible to lower it with the use of filters and such. I have not bothered to go down that road, as I'm just doing this for fun sometimes. 
Details seems to be more easily washed out when using paper, and I find it especially to happen in the highlight areas of the photo. Typically dead and white skies, and white areas appear with very low detail levels. In these snaps I measured and exposed to try get details in the shadow areas, and I'm quite happy with the results in that respect. The sky is totally washed out though. In all the snaps from this day. Next time I test paper I will try to see if it's possible to get more details up there, but I must say I doubt I can have both highlights and shadows details inside the same photo, as the ability to record a huge number of EV's (large span) is a lot better on film than on a paper. 
I have done this before, on some old Agfa Brovira paper. The very thin and fine old paper from back in the 70's some time. I got a feeling that paper had a bit more span than the two papers I tested a couple of days ago. I will do a few more tests soon, just to determine if that's actually the case, or if I was a bit more lucky (or maybe exposed a bit different) last time I fumbled around in this area.

And please bear over with me... there's a whole lot of examples here, and they are all just that. Examples taken just outside my doorstep, just because I ran in and out of the darkroom with each and every negative to have them developed just seconds after they were shot. 

Ilford RC paper. Not very impressed with the results I got with these, but a lot of the trouble could be related to scanning issues. The negatives looked quite good, even though they were clearly the ones most prone to high contrast issues. 

Another one on the Ilford RC paper. Not very different to the last one, as you see. The shadow details is not the worst I've ever seen from a paper negative, but the highlight details really suck. 

This is the baryte paper from Fotokemika, the EMAKS 883 kind of thing. Very matte, nice surface on this paper. Grade 2, if you wonder... nice grain I think, and maybe a little bit better than the Ilford paper when it comes to highlight details. 

Another snap from the EMAKS 883 kind of thing. A bit of extreme stuff here in the shadows, as you see. More contrast than the last snap. 

Ilford paper, as you might see. This is not bad, actually. At least if you look a bit away from that very white and boring sky. That said, I have to say that this day did not exactly have the best looking sky to snap. Boring light, as it happens.

The barn next door. Snapped on Ilford RC paper. It's actually quite OK, I think. 

This was just a test to see if I could get some details on them mountains over there. If you look quite closely you can still see the snowy mountain top differ a tiny bit from the sky above. Not by much, but you still can see the line. Else the tones are a bit crappy, me thinks. 

Not that it's anything to put up on the wall or anything, but this one was probably the one I'm most satisfied with of all the test snaps I did this day. The shadows looks great, as it happens, and the highlights are not sticking out like a sour thumb. It's the upper corner of the garden, and a place I got some work to do... as you might see. The last couple of winters has been a bit rough to the infrastructure up there... I think this was Ilford paper, but I will have to check the facts of that when I can get hold of the original negative some time over the weekend.

Nothing much to say about this. Just posted it to have you see the jib boom I have been scraping and sanding the last few days. It belongs to my boat, and are to be re-fitted quite soon, I hope. 

Paper negative test inside the house. Camera supported on the table, snapping towards a few of my Bob Dylan books and stuff. There might be a couple of Rolling Stones books in that pile as well, I would think. Blown highlights, as you see. I think this was the EMAKS 883 paper.

Definitely EMAKS 883 paper from Fotokemika. This is not extremely bad, either. You still see that the highlights are a bit washed out...

ISO value on different papers

So, I got a few different types of darkroom papers, B&W style, as you might know. I'm not exactly collecting stuff like that, but a few packs of these things has been coming my way for a variety of reasons. In most cases you got folks that used to do some work in the dark back in the days. Not exactly back in the dark age, but quite close to it. They usually don't need their old paper anymore, and will happily give it away if they not already have thrown the things away. 

So, today I was a bit curious if some of the paper I got around was still working and if it would be a possible to use them inside some pinhole camera or something else. Just for fun, as I sometimes do things just for fun. Then I thought it would be nice to know roughly what ISO grade I should rate them, these old papers. So I went upstairs and picked two different packs of some old stuff, and went inside the readily made up darkish room. Picked a couple of sheets from each box and cut them to pieces I did. Around 6x7 cm, as it happens. Just to make them fit quite snugly inside the film backs for my Mamiya system. 
Then it was trial and error until I came up with ISO numbers that seems to work quite fine. 
I have not scanned the paper negatives yet, mind you, but with some experience you know when a negative looks fine, and when it looks crap. 
I might even post some of the negatives if they ever dry up.
Contrast is usually the hard stuff to control when using paper negatives, and it looks like this will be the issue of todays test as well. But it's just for fun, as you know. And fun it is! I would really like to test the same thing in a big or huge camera though...

I ran a kind of very unofficial and easy test on these three boxes. Did not discover until a bit later that the two boxes of EMAKS from Fotokemika in Zagreb, Croatia was the exact same paper only in different sizes. Nice paper it is, but it's not of multi contrast type. Well, the results my audience is as follows: Go for ASA 12 on the english stuff as long as the box looks something like this one (bought some time early or mid 90's by yours truly), and measure for ASA 3 on the Emax kind of thing THEN open up or add three steps of exposure. Yes, it's slow as heck, but will give you some nice baryte prints if you only got the time. 

And that was todays photo related stuff done, and not even a single frame of film has been wasted. Not yet, anyway. I had a kind of plan to finish the film inside the rangefinder M6 black type of thing I got somewhere inside one of them bags more or less full of cameras. Don't know if that will happen today, but I could get some spare time a bit later in the evening. 

Very quick one!

Just to tell you I've used this fine day in a number of ways. 
Scanning a few films, hauled out the very long jib boom or whatever you call it in the foreign language, scared away a few cats (and neighbours probably) with a small quad drone I won at the christmas lottery on board the ship, walked around the too big garden checking what's next should we get some nice temperature soon. Probably a few more things as well, but I will leave that for another day. Oh, and I made another camera. Pinhole one, as you do when you feel the need for one coming up. Small cardboard box this time. Square kind of thing. I used the best part of three or four minutes making the thing up, so nothing fancy at all mind you. 
Tomorrow is another day, and I got things to do it seems. 

Me and the younger daughter went for a walk a few days ago. She carried the Diana F+ camera, while I was struggling to empty the roll inside that old Kodak Colorsnap 35 thing. The film had been sitting there for almost a year, and I was quite keen to see if there was anything on it at all. Well, it was, but you will have to wait to see anything of it. They were over exposed, most of the frames anyway. Still you will get the idea, I hope. It's kind of cool, actually. 
Well, the daughter found a few sheep down by the sea, and jumped over the fence to see if they were kind of tame enough to fasten on the old ORWO NP22 film from the old East German kind of country, or republic as it happen. Other side of the old heavy curtain, as you remember. Made in the 70's some time, but still seems to be fresh enough to make sheep render nice enough don't you think?

She managed to make all three of them stick inside the small frame of that Diana F+, the daughter. Must have been lucky, or she's got some kind of talent for it. I don't know. What I do know is that she went away with the camera, after her father had put a fresh film inside after this walk, and I have not seen it since. It's probably either left at some party, or the film is not finished off yet. I bet I get the film in return when it's due to be developed though... and maybe even the camera on a good day. 

Warm tone papers

So, you thought that the Ilford Warm Tone paper had a warm tone inside, did you? Well it does, of course, but nothing extreme.
Ever tried the Fomatone Nature MG532 II paper? It's so warm you'll burn your fingers should you touch the thing. No toner needed kind of paper, if you see what I mean?
The surface of this thing is nothing less than beautiful, but it got this very warm tone making it quite special, and useful maybe only for certain and a small handful of prints. It's not an everyday paper, to put it that way. But yes, it's nice. The people over in The Czech Republic sure knows what it takes to make some fine darkroom papers. I got a few of their other papers as well. Stay tuned for a few more examples during the time to come. 

The lighthouse you should know quite well by now. Out there on the small skerry of Ona, on this very coastline. Or outside it, to speak the truth. Printed on the mentioned Foma paper, scanned and posted. Seems like the scan is lacking a tiny bit of contrast compared to the original, and maybe the paper is a bit more brownish than my monitor seems to draw. Anyway, you might get the idea... More info: Mamiya RZ67 camera, 50mm Sekor lens and some film I can't remember right now. Could be Fomapan 100. Nice film, by the way.

Another long night

At least finished off before 5 in the morning this time. Not to bad, everything taken into account. I have used the time well, by the way. Developed something like 6 films, believe it or not. 3 of each size. 
I was up early as well, because I had to drive my wife to work this morning. Tomorrow will be early again, because I got work to do outside the house. Cutting things, as it happens. Nope, it's not the lawn yet as that one only barely became free of snow this afternoon. We got this hedge, you see. With very long branches and stuff on the plants. They would need some cutting, I have been told... 

Same pub as yesterday. You remember the place they wanted to buy all my best cameras and such... Luckily I got away just after this fox was duly snapped up. It all went inside the rangefinder and stayed there until I came home. 

I did a few pinhole snaps today as well, you should know. All the ones from yesterday were ruined bigtime. I recon my improvised darkroom at the cottage was not that dark anyway. Well, I knew it was not, but I found myself with no other option as for yesterday. Today I made a different approach and ended up with a couple of useful frames. Nothing less.
I found a few boxes of that thin and very nice Agfa Brovira paper in one of my drawers upstairs which I immediately put into some good use. I might need to cut a few of them to make a nice paper negative or two. I like paper negatives, at least to a certain degree. At least when I put them inside one of the Mamiya cameras, or something else useful.

This? Nah, nothing to worry too much about. It's just the captain. Still over three weeks until I see them again. A bit strange, but good as well. As long as it's not for a too long period of time, at least. Same camera as above. Different film though.

I should pull myself together and get to bed, actually. I can feel I'm a bit past 25 when it comes to this part of the day. Late nights and such, you know. 

It was pinhole day 2016, today

Sure! Maybe you were not aware of that certain fact? 
Last Sunday in April, every year it's Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day. You know what I'm talking about, right? The kind of photographic method where you use any light tightish box with only a very small hole to use instead of your usual way too expensive lens? You put inside any light sensitive material, position your "camera", pulls away your finger or tape or whatever you use to cover up the hole in the front, and then count to whatever you feel might be quite close to right, before you cover the thing up again and bring it into a darkish place to change "film". Then you repeat until you're satisfied, or tired of the whole thing. 
I did not get tired, and I don't know if I can call myself satisfied either. I made four very quick test exposures on the stairs back home before I ventured off to get the real pictures done. You know, you got to post them as well, on the dedicated World Pinhole Day site. I will do so, when or if I got something to post. Some time tomorrow, hopefully.
I will post a couple for you, of them tests just outside the front door. I still need to run into the darkroom for a quick developing of the five or six last exposures I did. 

Three-four seconds exposure done inside my trusty coffee box with a black lid on top. Something like 0.2 mm pinhole (a guess) done on Ilford paper. Some leftovers from a year or so. I got both the paper and the camera from Ingrid in Orkney, as I forgot to bring either to work last year. She kindly delivered the needed remedies on the quayside just before we went to sea. No chemicals though, as that would require a bit more. I would love to see and hear my crew when transforming my cabin bathroom into a darkroom... so I left the idea quite quick. 

The view from the front door towards the pond, and the neighbor. Same data as above. Both are mobile snaps of the actual paper negative, inverted on some weird app and then tinily adjusted using the "Snapseed" app on my telephone. Then transferred and posted. 

And, we did a walk by the sea today. Nice place around here, on this island called "Vigra" just outside my home town. I brought cameras, as it happens, with film loaded. Managed to end a few of the rolls that has been lingering inside the things for the last few weeks, so will be great to have them developed some day quite soon. I got a few 120 rolls around as well, so there will be more to come quite soon. I hope.
Well... off I go to get the last paper negatives from todays quick round with the coffee box done.