Here's a sample shot from the mystery film. You can see it has pretty nice tones and incredible detail, but it's ISO 1.6 and I just don't know what I can even do with that.
Showing posts with label Nikkor-H 50mm. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nikkor-H 50mm. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 26, 2013
F3 Workout
I took my Nikon F3 on a Memorial Day hike in the Lime Ridge Open Space. I wanted to get some nice nature photos and see if any wildlife was active. None was, but I managed a few nice shots in the open space anyway. I shot eleven rolls of film, including a roll of mystery film that exposes at ISO 1.6. It came in a container labeled Kodak 2383, and the film matches the general description of 2383, but it lacks the edge markings. Anyway, here are some of the better shots, taken on various films, from the hike.
Here's a sample shot from the mystery film. You can see it has pretty nice tones and incredible detail, but it's ISO 1.6 and I just don't know what I can even do with that.
Here's a sample shot from the mystery film. You can see it has pretty nice tones and incredible detail, but it's ISO 1.6 and I just don't know what I can even do with that.
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Alameda Bayshore
The Nikon N70 is a lightweight, very user-friendly camera with a number of good features (though it notably lacks a few others.) It offers a number of great qualities: light weight (so it causes little or no neck fatigue), excellent metering (my copy routinely returns entire rolls with good histogram profiles), and a reasonably good autofocus feature (for those of you who use AF lenses -- you know who you are.)
The N70 is an AIS camera and has no obvious way to accommodate NAI lenses. One notable Internet camera expert claims NAI lenses can't even mount on the N70. Firstly, that claim is untrue. It warrants a user to use caution when using an NAI lens on an AI Nikon that has not been modified to accept NAI lenses, but at least for the N70 it's possible. So, once an NAI lens is mounted, can it be used? Yes. Can it be metered? Yes. Here's how:
1- Press the lens release and rotate the lens about 1/10th of a rotation until the shutter (which need to be set at the proper aperture) closes.
2- Take a meter reading and press and hold the auto exposure lock button.
3- Rotate the lens to lock it back in place, still holding the AEL button, and verify your focus.
4- Take your photos.
Alternately, you can take a meter reading, change the camera's mode to manual, set the shutter speed appropriately, and take your shot.
Now you can use your N70 for lots of old, great, suffixed Nikkor lenses! So, onto the shots. These all had a yellow filter to assist in contrast enhancement. Any post-processing will be noted.
1/100th of a second, f16. Chains alongside a park sidewalk. Even at the margins, the Nikkor-H captures detail and retains good image quality. This is a very well designed lens.
1/2,500th of a second, f2. This shot required some post-processing. The flower, being yellow, was exceedingly bright on the image. With the magic wand set at 55 and contiguous, I masked the flower. Then feathered it at 75 pixels, copied the selection, and pasted it on the image. I dropped the layer's gamma to about .15 and set the transparency at 75% or so.This resulted in sufficient detail within the flower.
1/80th, f11. Same process as above to correct some ultra-white areas, except that the wand was not set to contiguous. This resulted in vein detail in leaves that otherwise had no detail (about 15% of the photo.)
1/2,500th at f4. The cloud's center was a bit over-white, so it got the mask and gamma treatment, too. no other post-processing. I just like this because the sky came in extremely dark, which doesn't always happen with a yellow filter.
1/2,500th at f2.8. Post-processing included automatic contrast correction (which had almost no effect anyway.) My goal here was to make a "3-D" image where the grasses seemed to jump out of the picture. It's about halfway there. The Nikkor-H may not be a good lens for 3-D effects; it's too well engineered.
1.4,000th of a second at f2. This one had no post-processing at all. The goal was the same as above, but with less success.
This day's photos suffered from two hindrances: 1- I was in a new place and didn't know what to expect photographically and 2- I was more focused on learning how to use the NAI lens on the N70 that with photo composition. The latter being my own fault. But the N70, as is typical, returned great shots in terms of dynamic range, image quality, and tonality.
The N70 is an AIS camera and has no obvious way to accommodate NAI lenses. One notable Internet camera expert claims NAI lenses can't even mount on the N70. Firstly, that claim is untrue. It warrants a user to use caution when using an NAI lens on an AI Nikon that has not been modified to accept NAI lenses, but at least for the N70 it's possible. So, once an NAI lens is mounted, can it be used? Yes. Can it be metered? Yes. Here's how:
1- Press the lens release and rotate the lens about 1/10th of a rotation until the shutter (which need to be set at the proper aperture) closes.
2- Take a meter reading and press and hold the auto exposure lock button.
3- Rotate the lens to lock it back in place, still holding the AEL button, and verify your focus.
4- Take your photos.
Alternately, you can take a meter reading, change the camera's mode to manual, set the shutter speed appropriately, and take your shot.
Now you can use your N70 for lots of old, great, suffixed Nikkor lenses! So, onto the shots. These all had a yellow filter to assist in contrast enhancement. Any post-processing will be noted.
1/100th of a second, f16. Chains alongside a park sidewalk. Even at the margins, the Nikkor-H captures detail and retains good image quality. This is a very well designed lens.
1/2,500th of a second, f2. This shot required some post-processing. The flower, being yellow, was exceedingly bright on the image. With the magic wand set at 55 and contiguous, I masked the flower. Then feathered it at 75 pixels, copied the selection, and pasted it on the image. I dropped the layer's gamma to about .15 and set the transparency at 75% or so.This resulted in sufficient detail within the flower.
1/80th, f11. Same process as above to correct some ultra-white areas, except that the wand was not set to contiguous. This resulted in vein detail in leaves that otherwise had no detail (about 15% of the photo.)
1/2,500th at f4. The cloud's center was a bit over-white, so it got the mask and gamma treatment, too. no other post-processing. I just like this because the sky came in extremely dark, which doesn't always happen with a yellow filter.
1/2,500th at f2.8. Post-processing included automatic contrast correction (which had almost no effect anyway.) My goal here was to make a "3-D" image where the grasses seemed to jump out of the picture. It's about halfway there. The Nikkor-H may not be a good lens for 3-D effects; it's too well engineered.
1.4,000th of a second at f2. This one had no post-processing at all. The goal was the same as above, but with less success.
This day's photos suffered from two hindrances: 1- I was in a new place and didn't know what to expect photographically and 2- I was more focused on learning how to use the NAI lens on the N70 that with photo composition. The latter being my own fault. But the N70, as is typical, returned great shots in terms of dynamic range, image quality, and tonality.
Sunday, January 1, 2012
Pioneer, California, on Christmas Day
On Christmas day I took in Pioneer, California, with my girlfriend but didn't use the entire film roll. So I finished the roll on Friday 30 December 2011 in San Francisco. This roll was one of four I finished on 30 December with the Nikon F3. For the Christmas day shots, I used a Nikon 50mm f2 (yellow filter) and for the 30 December shots a Nikon 43-86mm f3.5 (red filter). The zoom lens is an interesting piece of gear and will, at some point, get its own post.
This post will focus on the Pioneer Christmas shots and a post later this week will discuss the 30 December shots. The photos below were all shot with Kodak Safety Film 5062. That's Pan-X 125 ISO. This film was produced in Kodak's Rochester plant in 1976 and sat in a bulk loader until a few weeks ago. Kodak produced their film with a code in the film name to track production. For that code, check out this link. The film has held up well, considering that I doubt ti had been refrigerated. In fact, I'm fairly certain it was stored in a garage and exposed to heat and cold cycles that are no friend to film. So the images are a bit foggy, but they retain their quality and contrast fairly well. I've included a couple shots below straight scanned and then a few with minor post processing to correct contrast issue, film fogging, and poor framing.
Christmas Day Redwood Sapling. This shot, straight out of the camera, was taken with a yellow filter. That resulted in the faux infrared look. The sapling had very light green leaves which, in visible light spectrum terms, were reflecting a lot of yellow light. Much of what we see as green is actually yellow light. So using a yellow filter caused the yellow light to lighten compared to the surrounding tones, causing the film to record the yellower areas as near-white.
This is the image run through Photoshop. I balanced the contrast and then used the magic wand to select the hyper-white areas as a single mask. I copied the areas and pasted them back on the image. I dropped the gamma to .4 and the layer transparency to 60%. After flattening, I did the same with one small remaining white area only with .2 gamma and -.009 offset followed by a 50% transparency. After a second flattening, I dropped the overall gamma to .73.
Redwood Sprig. This is new growth on an old redwood. Similar postprocessing as above, but less intense. Same effect as above, with the yellow filter, but somewhat lost during postprocessing.
Here's the final image I'll share in this post, some empty chairs and a table. The property we stayed at had numerous benches, tables, and such scattered about the acreage. The owners must enjoy relaxing in nature's spaces with many of the garden and outdoor areas well suited for peaceful evenings with friends and warm drinks.
Lessons learned this roll: Yellow filters can produce faux-infrared effects under certain conditions and expired film remains usable for monochrome, but requires more postprocessing.
This post will focus on the Pioneer Christmas shots and a post later this week will discuss the 30 December shots. The photos below were all shot with Kodak Safety Film 5062. That's Pan-X 125 ISO. This film was produced in Kodak's Rochester plant in 1976 and sat in a bulk loader until a few weeks ago. Kodak produced their film with a code in the film name to track production. For that code, check out this link. The film has held up well, considering that I doubt ti had been refrigerated. In fact, I'm fairly certain it was stored in a garage and exposed to heat and cold cycles that are no friend to film. So the images are a bit foggy, but they retain their quality and contrast fairly well. I've included a couple shots below straight scanned and then a few with minor post processing to correct contrast issue, film fogging, and poor framing.
Christmas Day Redwood Sapling. This shot, straight out of the camera, was taken with a yellow filter. That resulted in the faux infrared look. The sapling had very light green leaves which, in visible light spectrum terms, were reflecting a lot of yellow light. Much of what we see as green is actually yellow light. So using a yellow filter caused the yellow light to lighten compared to the surrounding tones, causing the film to record the yellower areas as near-white.
This is the image run through Photoshop. I balanced the contrast and then used the magic wand to select the hyper-white areas as a single mask. I copied the areas and pasted them back on the image. I dropped the gamma to .4 and the layer transparency to 60%. After flattening, I did the same with one small remaining white area only with .2 gamma and -.009 offset followed by a 50% transparency. After a second flattening, I dropped the overall gamma to .73.
Redwood Sprig. This is new growth on an old redwood. Similar postprocessing as above, but less intense. Same effect as above, with the yellow filter, but somewhat lost during postprocessing.
Here's the final image I'll share in this post, some empty chairs and a table. The property we stayed at had numerous benches, tables, and such scattered about the acreage. The owners must enjoy relaxing in nature's spaces with many of the garden and outdoor areas well suited for peaceful evenings with friends and warm drinks.
Lessons learned this roll: Yellow filters can produce faux-infrared effects under certain conditions and expired film remains usable for monochrome, but requires more postprocessing.
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