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.

A Thing for Shadows

"And there may be some who argue that if beauty has to hide its weak points in the dark it is not beauty at all" (Tanizaki, Junichiro. In Praise of Shadows. Stony Creek, Connecticut: Leete's Island Books, 1977.) Like Tanizaki, I believe that shadows present depth. Light, as Americans (and all Westerners use it) becomes a bleaching sterilizer. An ideal American room could be a hospital room -- white, evenly lit, uniform throughout, and devoid of shadows and depth. Another, similar room could be a cell in an asylum. Americans have fetishized light to a point where an overabundance in all aspects of every day is seen as normal. Too much light forces our eyes to work harder, with our pupils shut way down, and brings on eye strain and fatigue quickly. It robs what we see of depth and character. And so, today, we look at photos which praise shadows and in which shadows become the central actor in each picture.


San Francisco Public Library, Mission Bay Branch.


Fourth and King Muni stop. I liked that the shadows make a train track for the Muni light rail stop at Caltrain.


Leasing.


Cherry blossoms in their tree's shadow.


Willie Mays Silhouette.

Fantastic Day with an Amateur Camera

I've had mixed feelings about my dad's old camera gear. The lenses he bought are great -- best versions of each of the Vivitars. And the kit 55mm Mamiya lens is also very good. But the old Mamiya/Sekor DTL1000 I've had problems using. I find the interface to be cumbersome and the size overly bulky. But the results from last Thursday indicate that this camera is equally capable of recording quality shots when compared to any of my Nikons, Pentax, or Canon cameras. The TMax roll had 41 frames on it. I may have not been paying attention when I rolled it. So I had about 75% more frames than normal and a larger chance of catching some good shots. That said, the good shots I captured were some of my best this year. Also indicating that this camera works very well with the Takumar 55mm f1.8.


1/125th, f1.8. Photographing a sticker of a photographer photographing you. That's a lot of photographing.


1/30th, f11. Dark sky due to a negative processing error, but the effect is nifty. When the film was loaded on the developing reel, the negative was touching another negative, so the emulsion did not develop properly. That leaves the darkened area seen in this image.


1/100th, f1.8. Some purple flowers to test this lens' ability to take close-up shots.


Full second, f16


1/500th, f1.8. Focus is a bit off, but in my defense from the time I raised the camera to the time I shot the image -- including focusing, was the time it took him to begin his jump and get to the zenith.


1/60th, f1.8. I'm pleased enough with this shot to keep it. Lining it up to be perfectly symmetrical posed a challenge, but it seems that the Embarcadero Place architects must have wanted the flower sculpture to line up exactly with the tower.


1/30th, f1.8. Hyatt in downtown San Francisco


1/30th, f2. Also the Hyatt. There are two ways to photograph buildings: Straight on or at an angle. If you elect to use an angle, don't make it look like an accident. Go big or don't both. So I attempted a fiarly extreme angle here after the previous shots had been straight on.


1/30th, f1.8.


Because I expected this roll to only have about 27 frames, I stopped keeping track of the shots after frame 29 (the above image) expecting that each one would be the last and that it would not turn out.

Had you asked me a week ago if I felt a 55mm lens was well suited for architecture photography, I'd have said no. I think of this lens as a good portrait and close-up lens. However, it has good resolving ability and would is very well suited to architecture.

Developing Problems and Bad Photos

I'll only share a couple photos today. For some reason, this TMax 400 roll did not develop well. Two major problems plague the result: surge lines and incomplete fixing. I developed this exactly as I always develop 400 ISO film and, in an effort to prevent surge marks (a few rolls this year have has minor and limited surging), I agitated the two rolls in this tank very slowly. Still, these are the worst surge lines I've ever seen.

Surge lines occur on film when the agitation is too quick. The developer moves over the film at different speeds. During development, developing chemicals read the film surface through the perforation holes as well as through the gaps in the loading spiral. So, for some reason, this roll developed surge lines. The other roll did not.

Also, this roll came our purple when finished. Even though this was fixed for seven minutes, the fix did not clear all the film surface off the negatives. The purple tint made the negatives slightly less contrasty and, in a few years, the images will be completely muddy. To fix this, I could re-fix it in another, longer fix bath. However, that would not correct the surge lines, so I don't see any reason to bother.


1/30th, f5.6. Taken from one angle, the hand appears to be giving the ball to someone.


1/50th, f5.6. Taken from a different angle, it appears to be mid-pitch.


1/640th, f4. These are the surge lines I mentioned. They were less evident in the above photos because of the light background.


1/800th, f4.

So, today's lesson: even gentle agitation can leave surge lines. To prevent this, I'll need to agitate even more slowly in the future. Also, TMax requires a much longer fixing time than other films. So future rolls will go back to a ten-minute fixing bath with three sets of rotations. This fixing bath was seven minutes with two rotations (one minute at the outset and then 30 seconds halfway through.)

In sum, very disappointing results from last Monday.

Only Okay, K2

I've decided I do not much care for my Tokina-EL 28mm lens. It is VERY difficult to focus well and the images never seem quite as good as they do with my Vivitar or Focal 28mm lenses. Oddly, my Tokina SX-L, 28-200 is a fantastic lens at 28mm, so I suspect it has to do with overall lens quality. The little EL has a tiny front lens, maybe 26mm across, and that severely restricts the amount of light that comes through. So the lens does not have the best contrast profile, nor does it render colors as truly as other lenses. This translates into monochrome photography because muddled colors mean muddled contrast and muddled details.

That said, when this lens is on, it's SPOT on. But there's no middle ground and no room for error nor compromise.


1/500th, f5.6


1/1,000th, f2.8


1/500th, f11


1/500th, f11

Those last shots, taken while I hung out the side of a cable car, required almost no post processing and are basically straight out of the camera. They aren't great shots, but display what this lens can do when it's on. At f11, where this lens seems to be sharpest, it's very crisp with nice depth, good tone, and a great dispersion through the zones. This lens works quite well with TMax 400, when it' on. But this lens does not present highly usable results when it's open much wider than f5.6. This severely hampers the lens' ability to perform in diverse situations, too.

As for why lenses perform differently under different conditions, that requires its own, future post. Having just done two long posts this week about filters, I'll refrain from posting a third long post about light bending through glass and how apertures control sharpness as depth of field. Another week.

Better Weather Makes Better Photographs

Back in December I visited a Griffin Statue in SOMA at 8th and Townsend. The statue is in a traffic circle island on a pedestal. I thought it was pretty neat. That is until this past Wednesday when I saw an identical one in Walnut Creek. Oh yes. It's a mass-produced concrete griffin. The one in Walnut Creek, as you will see tomorrow, even has a fountain.

Anyway, here is a link to my trip there in December: SOMA Near Mission and Hayes Valley. Now, here are photos from this trip. Same film, I believe, as before, but a different camera and lens combination. These were taken with a Nikkormat FTN, one of my two copies of this camera. This one works better than the other -- the light seals are fine and it's less fidgety. Specifically, the other one I have to hit with fair gusto before the film advance lever operates following a shot. This one need a smack, but only when it has film inside and at that it does not require much force. However, I'll be keeping both copies as these are great cameras.

To open, here's a shot from last December, taken with my Nikon F3.


Here's a similar shot from this trip, other side of the statue, with the Nikkormat and 105mm Nikkor-P.

1/500th, f22. This shoot had some advantages over the other:
1- The weather was sunny, which provided nice lighting and contrast. In December, the sky was overcast with drizzle, which muted shadows and forced longer exposures. This caused some camera blur.
2- The developer used for the previous batch had exceeded it's 16-roll limit without replenisher being added. This caused the developer to work with less quality than this recent shoot. The December shoot's developer caused excessive grainyness and detail loss. This was much better. Compare the shots -- this is the same film.


1/1,000th, f16. This shot brings out a number of the statues details. Again, good lighting and fresh chemicals prevent the statue from looking it it just received an acid bath.


1/500th, f22. One final shot of this statue. It's a nice piece and I imagine you could probably order one for each side of your driveway, front door, or swimming pool if you wanted.


1/1000th, f11. Scallop detail. Mmmmmmm. Scallops.


1/1,000th, f11. Uh oh! Lunch time's over!


You can see the difference between this photo, taken in December, and the one above. Again, better lighting and chemical quality produce better results.

So, today's lessons:

1- Always keep chemicals fresh
2- Keep developer properly replenished or replace it if there's no replenisher available.
3- Lighting is vital

More than a Mountain

This was the first time I took this K2 out. I picked it up for $30 along with a Pentax-A 28-80 zoom and a Pentax professional flash. All black cameras are still less aesthetically pleasing to me than chrome cameras, but with as good as this, my F3, My K-7, my RT, and my N70 all perform, I'm not opposed to all black cameras from a design stance anymore. However, the chrome is definitely better for heat tolerance on hot or sunny days. When shooting slide film, this is of some importance as slide film begin deteriorating as soon as it reaches room temperature. That said, I wasn't shooting slide film so none of that matters.


1/125th, f8. Either the Hilton or Marriott, I forget which. Gorgeous building -- one of my favorites in San Francisco.


1/60th, f4. A skyscraper reflecting off the Hilton. This shot would be better straight-on, and that something I need to try soon.


1/125th, f4. I recognize that they're disease carriers and pretty filthy animals, but
seagulls are also neat because they eat french fries. Any animal that loves french fries can't be all bad.


1/8th, f4. Black Lotus. Koi stencil. Pink, in reality; white, on film. A bit blurry because this was hand-held at 1/8th of a second.


1/125th, f11. Pedestrian bridge over Mission Street (I think.) This connects the Yerba Buena Gardens to the Muscone Center.


1/60th, f4. Sunset behind AT&T Park. A nice way to end a day and a blog entry.

Sometimes a Jewel

I believe that the Balda Juwella is the oldest camera I own and have ever owned. Made in the early 1930s, I believe, this camera shoots 6X9 negatives -- 6 centimeters by 9 centimeters. Compared to standard 35mm negatives, these are huge. Since the film is basically the same, this allows for greater image quality in similarly-sized prints or much larger enlargements. Part of the issue with this film may have been that it expired in 1989, making its use difficult to predict and the results possibly tenuous. The undeveloped spaces between the negatives exhibited flecking and indicated that the negative film was not perfectly clear. So that could contribute, also, to the film being overexposed. OF eight shots, four were scannable. They are shared below.


I forgot my notebook last Monday, so I don't recall all the settings, but this was f32, and a long exposure with the shutter set to bulb. It was approximately 1.5 seconds or so. For stability, I set it on a trashcan across the street. A lady stopped to ask me about my camera while I took this shot, and explain to her son how cameras used to work. It was neat and I enjoy it when people ask about my gear. So that was fun.

I'm not sure what the white blob is, but I suspect a static discharge. It could also be flare or a film flaw.


Houseboats in Mission Creek. f22 or f32.


A bike rack. Handheld at f11 or f16.


1/25th of a second exposure, resting on the sidewalk. I'd hoped to get the whole train but hit the shutter too late.

SOMA, near The Mission and Hayes Valley

The office closed early December 30th for the holiday, so I took the opportunity to walk down to the Hayes Valley/civic Center/Mission area to get some photos. I had my Nikon F3 and the 43-86mm f3.5 zoom lens.



A motorcycle. This required some extra gamma adjustment to balance the contrast. The F3's batteries were low and many of the shots taken on the 30th were either slightly over- or underexposed.


It's like a Rorschach test.


A griffin face on a griffin statue. 8th and Townsend. Postprocessed to increase gamma and contrast.


This is a second capture at f16, straight outta the camera. The above was wide open, and you can note the resolution differences between them, especially around the edges.


The griffin statue, a profile. Processed to increase shadows within the statue.