One of the things that drives me nuts is washed out shadows. When my film is underexposed, my scans come back from the lab with shadows that are dark gray instead of black. I can fix this in post-processing of course, but it’s a drag. And what’s more, it means I’m not getting the full dynamic range out of my film.

So why are those shadows washed out anyway? If you underexpose your film, it would make sense that the subject would be less bright, but black should still be black, right? But what happens is the lab scans so that the subject of the image is at the proper density. If your subject’s skin tones are too dark, they get bumped up. And so does the minimum shadow density.

While ideally I would expose my film properly all the time, that’s just not possible in the real world. I shoot weddings! Sometimes you have to sacrifice proper exposure in exchange for a shutter speed that won’t blur your subject. Poor exposure is often more acceptable than a blurry bride. But it’d be nice if I had a film that could handle underexposure a little more gracefully.

I had never used Ilford’s XP2 Plus, which is a ‘chromogenic’ film. It uses the C41 color-film processing, and is in effect a single-layer color film. Upon reading the literature, I took special note where it said the film works well even exposed at ISO 800 (i.e. One stop underexposed). So I thought I’d better try it!

Where I experience problems is during receptions, which are often very dark. Very little light, large rooms, and often the available light is an ugly mix of tungsten and fluorescent. So to simulate this, I placed my sun under a tungsten recessed light in our living room’s ceiling, and turned the rest of the lights off. This would give me plenty of dark shadows, but with lighting that was consistent with the temperature I might find in a reception. I then pitted Kodak Tri-X 400 vs Ilford XP2. Tri-X is of course a traditional black and white film.

I did several tests to compare the film, shooting each roll in matching Nikon N90s bodies, and switched the same lens (and flash, when applicable) between the two. Here’s what I found:

XP2 does really well maintaining good contrast when shot at ISO 800. Tri-X, not so much. Look at the images above. XP2 maintains that solid black shadow very well. But the ISO 800 on the Tri-X is noticeably ‘gray’ compared to the ISO 400 version. In fact, comparing the histograms of each image in Lightroom, the XP2 ISO 800 frame about matches the blacks in the ISO 400 version of the Tri-X.

One of the other things I tested was overexposure latitude. I took an incident-meter reading outdoors in direct sunlight, and then shot a light brick wall with a white rose in front of it. I exposed at ISO 400, 200 and 100 (zero, one and two stops overexposed). Both films performed very well under these circumstances, so I wouldn’t pick one or the other on that basis alone. I didn’t test anything more extreme than that, but C41 process film is known for its overexposure latitude.

Before doing this test, I primarily considered C41 black and white film to be merely a convenience. You could have a local mini-lab process it if you want. You could also take advantage of dust removal technology that scanners offer, which don’t work on traditional black and white films. XP2 is about twice as expensive as Tri-X however, and hasn’t seemed worth it. However with the underexposure latitude XP2 offers, I’m rethinking that math.

So why didn’t I test Kodak BW400CN instead? It too is a C41 process black and white film. However it is no longer made in medium format, only 35mm. XP2 comes in both varieties, and I shoot both formats of film.

One other thing to consider is that Tri-X pushes better than XP2. In fact, the literature recommends that you don’t push XP2 at all, because no benefit would be gained (haven’t tried it myself). However a lab will usually charge extra to push film, and you run into other problems. If I needed to go to ISO 1600, I’d probably choose Tri-X. But for ISO 400 and 800, I think XP2 is my way forward.

You might want to see my film use in action, on my client-centric site here.

So my birthday is coming up. This was fortuitously timed with the almost complete exhaustion of the battery in my Apple iPhone 3G (not GS…I’m behind the times by two generations). So my wife sent me down to the local AT&T store to buy myself a birthday present, which I was happy to do. Behold, my new iPhone 4! Woot woot. There it is, above.

Wait, what’s that piece of paper taped to my new phone? Why, it’s a free incident light meter of course!

There are a number of light-meter apps for the iPhone, although none of them would work on my 3G. So that was the first thing I looked for when I upgraded my phone. However all of those meters are reflective light meters. To use them, the phone’s camera is aimed at the scene to be photographed, and measures the light being reflected from the objects in the scene. Just like the meter found in all cameras.

Reflective light meters are certainly convenient, but they have some drawbacks. They are easily fooled by back-lit situations, because the sun or bright sky causes the meter to underexpose. They also vary as the scene varies, making your images inconsistent from one to another. And they are also fooled by very bright or very dark scenes: that wedding dress in a white room is going to underexpose and make everything gray. Same with the dark forest.

An incident light meter measures the light falling on the object, not the light reflecting from the object. This means that you get the proper exposure, no matter how light or dark your actual subject matter is. This is done by placing the incident meter at the subject’s position, and pointing it back toward the camera. The meter determines how much light is falling on the subject from the camera’s direction, and proper exposure is achieved. A white translucent dome or disc is placed over the sensor, to average the light sources and avoid errors.

Using an incident meter is also useful because you can meter for the shadow side of something, without worrying about any back-lit light sources causing your meter to underexpose. I do this all the time with portrait photography. I place my subjects with their backs to the sun, and then use an incident meter to measure the light falling on their faces. I use this exposure reading, and let my highlights blow out if necessary. Since I’m shooting film, I’m not too worried about overexposure: film can handle a lot more highlight information that digital can. Here’s an example where I metered for the shadow side with an incident meter, and then shot in manual mode. I didn’t have to worry about exposure as long as I kept my clients facing the right way. (By the way, my work is filled with examples of back-lit images such as this, some strobed and some without. You can see more here.)

So incident meters are useful for film photography especially. They take a little more effort, but the results are worth it. Wouldn’t it be great if you could use your phone for an incident light meter, and not have to carry a dedicated meter around with you?

(read more…)

That’s where that little piece of paper comes in. I did a search for iPhone light meters and came up with several: some were free, some were cheap. There was even one that claimed to have an incident light meter setting! Yay! Until I tried it. Boo! The designer was obviously confused about what an incident meter was, and just switched the meter reading from the main (rear) camera to the front one. That’s not a functional incident light meter, and it’s useless that way.

However, with the addition of a piece of typing paper taped over your iPhone 4′s front lens, you have both an incident meter and a reflective meter, and don’t need to fuss with putting some sort of diffusion over the main camera lens. You keep the main lens free to take pictures, and can always remove the tape if you need the front lens for something. The key is to find a light meter app that will allow you to switch between the front and rear camera lenses. Then just leave the tape there all the time. As a general rule, you’ll have to determine what sort of exposure correction you need to do with the incident light meter. You could even have one meter app for reflective readings, and a second app for incident readings. Leave the second app with the exposure compensation and the front camera dialed in, and you don’t have to fiddle with settings.

As luck would have it, I found a meter app that not only allows me to switch between front and rear cameras, but also doesn’t need any compensation! Coincidence? I’m not sure. It turns out the rear lens measures reflective scenes pretty well, and the front lens measures accurately with the paper taped over it. Other apps didn’t respond the same way, and would require exposure compensation.

The app is called Pocket Light Meter, made by Nuwaste Studios. It’s free with advertisements, or $0.99 without. I’m not affiliated with this company, I’m just telling you which one worked best in my experience. FotometerPro, by Kit Da Studio, is the app that inaccurately claimed to have incident metering. I found it slow and occasionally inaccurate, even with reflective metering.

This combination of printer paper, tape, and iPhone 4 app yields an incident meter reading that is usually within 1/3 stop of my Gossen Luna-Pro F, and also my Minolta digital meter. That’s pretty impressive! I’ve been wandering around the house and yard for the past two days, checking the readings against my ‘real’ meter. It works! Your printer paper might be a different density than mine, your adhesive tape might also have different characteristics than mine, so your mileage may vary.

Now I’m off to Alaska for two weeks, and I’m not bringing a meter. I will rely on my Mamiya 645AF for reflective in-camera readings, and will use my iPhone for incident readings. I won’t get rid of my Luna Pro, but for travel and always-with-you metering, this is perfect!

P.S. If you don’t have a real incident light meter to use for calibrating your meter app, there are a couple of ways you can find the right exposure compensation adjustment:

1. Grab a camera and select spot-metering if it has it, and go outside. Put the sun behind you, and hold the palm of your hand in front of you, in the sunlight (or ambient cloudiness, depending on the weather). Get a meter reading off your hand, and mentally adjust so that you overexpose one stop. That’s your meter reading. Now point your diffuser-covered lens at the sun/bright spot in the sky, and measure. Adjust your exposure compensation accordingly. For example, on a sunny day you might get a reading of f/16 1/250 @ ISO 100 from your palm. Mentally adjust that to f/16 1/125 @ ISO 100 (one stop overexposed). And then you measure with your iPhone, and you get a reading of f/16 1/60 @ ISO 100. That’s one stop overexposed, so you need to adjust your exposure compensation to -1 stop. This palm-metering technique works regardless of your skin color, by the way, because palms tend to be the same brightness regardless of the color of the rest of your skin.

2. No camera with a built-in meter? Just take your iPhone meter outside on a sunny day, at noon. Get a meter reading by pointing the diffused lens at the sun. Using the sunny-16 rule, you should get a reading close to f/16 1/100 @ ISO 100. If not, adjust your exposure compensation until you do.

Update: here is a screen shot of the app, measuring bright sun on the front lens. The image is the blurry paper. The reading is within 1/3 stop. Cool huh?

Just received my first rolls of the new Kodak Portra 160, and have the scans back from the lab. I took the boys to the zoo and figured it’d be a good time to a) test the new formulation of the film, and b) practice using my manual-focus 80mm f/1.9 lens on my Mamiya 645AF. Yes that’s right, f/1.9. You Contax 645 users and your measly f/2 lenses can eat my bokeh. My images are all 0.1 better than yours now. Hah!

But I digress.

The preliminary results look really nice! Because I wanted near-instant gratification, I took the film to my local lab to be scanned. They turned it around in two days, but unfortunately the scans don’t look as nice as the lab I use for my serious work (Richard Photo Lab in Los Angeles). They’ve been sharpened and there’s some jpg noise…so I can’t really comment on the grain structure compared to old 160 NC, or new 400 or whatever. So for now I’ll just have to say…hmm, very promising!

As we were eating lunch after our zoo visit, I remembered reading that Portra 160 could tolerate two stops under exposure. So I popped one frame at ISO 160 and another at ISO 400 (I know, only 1.3 stops underexposed). See the combined image below.

When I got the scans back, I couldn’t figure out which frame was underexposed! That’s a very good sign. I did finally figure it out, by putting the frames on a lightbox and noticing that the blown out window on one frame was slightly less dense than the other frame.

Note I was manually exposing here: since the scene was heavily backlit, I got a reading off my palm and opened up one stop, which yields roughly an 18% gray (for the ISO 160). This ensured proper exposure for the face in shadow. Since this was a fun trip, I didn’t want to bring a heavy medium-format camera AND a meter! Shutter speed was 1/125th at f/1.9. I then underexposed by bumping the shutter to 1/500th.

Can you tell which frame is the underexposed one?

It’s the second frame. Looks pretty darn good, eh? The first frame is out of focus because I was using a manual-focus f/1.9 lens, with very limited depth of field and a bouncing child. I will want to test this further, on stationary subjects.

I’d never heard of the Koni Omega Rapid series of cameras until someone offhandedly mentioned it in a Bronica Users Group. I found one for not much money, complete with lens and 120 film back, and then quickly jumped on a 220 film back even before the camera arrived. It was a good move! The Koni Omega is a 6×7 medium format rangefinder. It comes standard with a Hexanon 90mm f/3.5 lens, which is really sharp! And the rangefinder is really very accurate, at least on the version I have. So it’s possible to shoot portraits wide open and have nice bokeh (out of focus background) and yet keep the subject very sharp. All without using a reflex mirror to see what I’m doing!

The 220 back turned out to have light leaks, so I need to work on that a bit. But I’m very excited about this camera. It has a leaf shutter, so the flash syncs at all shutter speeds (up to 1/500). This is useful when lighting outdoors, and so this will likely become my main outdoor-portrait camera. It’s not a ‘fast’ camera, in that focusing takes a moment. So I can’t practically run after kids, firing away. And with only 10 or 20 shots per roll (120 or 220), it’s not that sort of camera anyway. But for giant portraits of a more sedate nature, it’s perfect! Oh one other thing, the minimum focus distance is about 3 ft, so it’s not a close-up camera. But rangefinders aren’t ideal for that anyway.

All images shot on a 220 roll of Fuji Pro 400H, exposed at ISO 250.

Lead image: my dining room ceiling fan. Camera was placed on the table, and centered carefully. I pre-focused as best I could, but couldn’t really be sure since it had to sit on the table. f/5.6 and shutter speed of 1/15th.

Posters at the Majestic Ventura Theater, Ventura California.

Old church building, Ventura.

Another old church, this one painted pink and converted into a bed and breakfast!

This is Luis, who I met outside a barber shop. The shop hadn’t opened yet, and he feared the barber might have closed up permanently. He thought I was waiting for a haircut as well, so we started chatting. He agreed to pose for a quick portrait.

Manufacturer: Holga Ltd.
Model: 120N
Film: 120
Type: point-n-shoot, scale focus
Lens: 60mm “optical lens” (yes, that’s what it says on front!). Supposedly f/8 or f/11 apertures, but the aperture selection never does anything. Assume f/11 when using.
Shutter: Yes. It has a shutter. Two speeds even: “B” and “N”. B stands for Bulb, i.e. it’s open until you release the shutter. “N” stands for about 1/125th second.

Features:
Hot shoe (but flash fires both on pressing and releasing of shutter button)
Film advance is with a thumb wheel.
Tripod mount (but no cable release, so you’ll have to improvise for long exposures)
Handy focusing pictograms showing a head-and-shoulders, three people together, a large group of people, and a mountain.
Insert that allows you to shoot 16 smaller images, instead of 12.

It’s hardly worth doing a profile on the Holga, as it’s such a cult classic. Poor craftsmanship makes for a lot of light leaks, difficult operation, and a lousy plastic lens makes images so bad they’re good (if you like that lo fi look). While the camera does work with color film, its sweet spot to me seems to be black and white film.

Included in this post are shots from my son’s recent fifth birthday party. Ilford HP5 film, pushed one stop by my lab, with the on-camera SB-20 strobe set to ISO 800. I was hoping to pick up a little of the ambient light but that didn’t really work out…almost all the background illumination is from the strobe. I would have been better off shooting with a ISO 3200 film.

This is a fun benefit of shooting with Fujifilm FP3000B instant film. You get a nice ‘positive’ black and white print from the process, but you can also use the throw-away ‘negative’ part to get a funky, retro version of the same image. I shot this on my Toyo-View C view camera, with a Caltar 250mm f/5.6 lens. Ambient window light, and exposure was f/5.6 and 1/8 sec.

Making portraits with shallow depth of field on a 4×5 view camera is a tricky process. The depth of field is so shallow that any minor movement front to back can bring the image out of focus. So I used a technique employed by photographers in the 1800s,when exposures were so long that they had to practically nail down their subjects. In fact many of them would use some sort of brace or support behind the head, so the subject could remain still for several minutes.

My exposure wasn’t that long of course, but I did need to keep an eight year old from moving while I focused, then inserted the film back and exposed the image. So I had him kneel on the ground, and set a dining room chair behind his head. He used this as a reference point to keep his head still.

The negative part of the image seems to solarize very easily, which simply means that portions of the image that are at the extreme highlight or shadow range will reverse. I’ve been told that’s due to not enough development time and/or the room being too cold. I increased development time from my earlier experiment, and it is much improved. But you can see the bars of the dining room chair in the negative version, which have solarized. They’re not visible in the positive version below. There’s also a weird solarized edge effect, visible around his cheeks and earlobes.

The process is simple: once you’ve made your exposure and pulled your positive print away, remove the paper edges from around the negative portion, including the bottom part where the chemicals were stored. Wipe that clean with a paper towel, and go wash your hands. Let it dry (or use a blow dryer), so you don’t get goo on your scanner later on. We’re talking several hours of drying if you don’t use a hair dryer. Then scan like you would a photo or document, in reflective mode. Flip and invert the image in Photoshop (the negative will also be flipped right to left), and then tweak the contrast as you see fit. I’ve toned these in Lightroom with a traditional silver print two-tone look.

What I really want to see is the the latitude. Will it be similar to Portra 400, or will it be less flexible, like Ektar?

I first heard about this on Leo Patrone’s blog. You can read the official Kodak stuff here. Oh and it should be available in about a month!

Hey look, I’m Jonathan Canlas! (Hardly.)

I’m giving a talk on photography to some Cub Scouts tomorrow, and the main event will be having them shoot each other using my Toyo-View C 4×5 view camera, using Fuji FP-3000B instant film. Instant photo gratification for nine year olds…can’t beat it! Strobes and everything. So I did a test with the camera today (haven’t used it in awhile).

Just like Mr Canlas, I scanned the ‘throw away’ negative rather than scanning the actual positive print. Has a little more character this way. Inverted it, flipped it, adjusted levels and added a little sepia tone. The solarization is interesting, as that doesn’t exist on the positive.

I set up an Alien Bees B800 strobe, and bounced it off the ceiling behind the camera. Since this is ISO 3200 film, a little light goes a long way. f/22.5 if I recall. I triggered the strobe using CyberSync radio triggers. 250mm lens.

My eldest son just had eye surgery last week, so he’s got an eye patch on. In case you were wondering.

I only have a polaroid back for this camera, so I had to borrow my friend’s Fuji pack film back. Unfortunately he’s going to sell it afterward, so this might be the last Fuji instant film I use on the Toyo. Oh well…

This is the fourth free film giveaway, and it’ll be a regular occurrence until supplies get low.

I recently acquired several grocery bags full of film from a fellow photographer. It’s all expired, but has been kept refrigerated and so is still perfectly fine. I thought I’d share the wealth!

This time, one lucky person will receive four (4) rolls of KodakPortra 800  35mm film, 36 exposures. AND you will also receive four (4) rolls of Fujifilm NPH (ISO 400), 36 exposures. That’s eight rolls of film, for free! I’ll ship it anywhere in the world.

The rules:

- Void wherever taxed, licensed or prohibited. Don’t enter if it will get you or I in trouble. No purchase necessary (or even possible, as I am not currently selling anything).

- You must tweet (or retweet) the link to this post on Twitter. Use the handy icon below. If you don’t have a Twitter account, perhaps it’s time you signed up for one?

- Comment on this post, by putting your Twitter user name below. That way I can verify that you’ve tweeted a link to this post. Make sure you enter a valid email address when commenting (in the non-published email field), as I will contact the winner that way.

- The winner will be randomly selected from those who participate. The Twitter user name of the winner will be posted in the blog post itself, on Tuesday January 18th 2011, some time in the morning (Pacific Coast Time). I will email the winner for his/her mailing address at that time.

- Previous winners ARE eligible, since it’s been awhile.

January 18, 2011: And the winner is…”wallflwrforjane”! Congratulations! The winner was selected randomly using random.org.

One purpose of the test was also to see what such extreme pushing and underexposure does to skin tones. Sadly, I decided to shoot this in my living room! We have beige walls, and the walls add a sickly yellow-green color cast to everything. So I’m unable to determine how skin tones really look. I’ve tweaked as much color as I could in Lightroom, but didn’t want to overdo it. These were scanned, like the images from my previous post, on my Epson 4990 film scanner. Perhaps a lab scan would yield even better results, and I’m sure the color would be correct.

These images were shot on my Mamiya 645AF. I set up two strobes in two corners of the room, bouncing the light off the wall/ceiling junction. I metered in front of the Christmas tree, so that each strobe was properly exposed at ISO 3200. The data didn’t print on the film for some reason, so I can’t bore you with f-stop info.

To my undiscerning eye, the combination of ISO 3200 and pushing two stops looks a lot like simply underexposing the film two stops, at ISO 1600, with no push. With a difference that the grain is slightly increased in the more extreme test. Compare the Christmas tree branches in both posts. The shadow detail appears to be about the same. And I must point out that either one of these tests look better than the (expired, cold-stored) Fujifilm NHGII 800 film I also shot on Christmas, rated at box speed. That film looked so bad that I had to convert the images to black and white!

Is Kodak Portra 400 a wonder-film? Can you push it to ISO 3200 and have it look like Ektar? No of course not. Is it usable at 3200, and something you’d be glad to show a client? Yeah, I’d say it is. I would not hesitate to shoot it at these speeds for night photography, or for indoor/event work.

And here’s a thought: my (mostly-disused) dSLRs are about three years old, and so are only decent up to about ISO 400. Do I spend several thousand dollars to get usable ISO 3200? Or do I spend $5 and buy a pack of Portra 400? I don’t really need to answer that, do I?

And here’s a thought: Ilford Delta 3200, and Kodak Tmax 3200 black and white films both go for about $7 each (35mm roll, B&H Photo). Both films are the ‘nuclear’ option when lighting is so bad you can’t shoot with anything else, color or black and white. The new Portra 400 is about $6 per roll. Given the decently subtle grain, and the lower cost, does it make better financial sense to shoot ALL low-light work on Portra, and convert digitally to black and white when the urge hits? I guess it all depends on whether your lab charges the same to push Delta/Tmax to 3200 vs Portra, and/or whether you’re developing your own black and white film. An interesting way to simplify your film stocks though. Anyone have some thoughts on that?

That’s me on the right, in the shorts.