Hiw did masahisa fukase achieve this effect?

[removed account4]

I wonder how many non-teachers know about what the word for a group of ravens is...

treachery of raven and conspiracy of raven ...

 

[Lachlan Young]

Could be a copy neg of a portion of the original.

The prints might not be big, but the enlargement of this particular image is.

I don't think that's the case - I'm increasingly sure it's just a really dense 35mm neg (probably Tri-X or Neopan SSS) printed on a G5 paper, likely with a condenser enlarger. In other words a neg that's significantly overexposed and overdeveloped - which when printed hard will bring the visible granularity out strongly at 4x, never mind 6.5x. If you've ever printed negs like this, they really benefit from an enlarger with a powerful lamp - hence the possibility that he resorted to using a faster L39 camera lens wide open to try and speed up the exposure. Plenty of the old fast L39 50's for RF cameras are very much not flat field - especially wide open.

 

[Patrick Robert James]

Well Lachlan I've been dealing with small negs and fast film for the last couple of years, and enhancing grain pretty much the entire three decades I've been making pictures. I am pretty sure he enlarged a tiny portion of the neg. Here is an example of a Minox neg (8x11mm) and Fomapan 400 developed in Rodinal. And an enlargement of one of the birds cropped out of the image. The image is a print scan and the neg was printed at max contrast (all blue). Look familiar? That section that is enlarged is maybe a millimeter on the film.

Another alternative that neither of us mentioned is he could have used Recording film. That was pretty popular back in the day from what I've read. I still think that even with that he was enlarging just a part of the neg. I've shot recording film and even that won't produce grain the size of what is in his images unless the neg is cropped of course. If you look at his work as a whole it is generally regular 35mm and a lot of it is full frame.

I think we can both agree though that he certainly didn't use a regular enlarging lens.

 

[warden]

Here is an example of a Minox neg.... I think we can both agree though that he certainly didn't use a regular enlarging lens.

Back in 2020 I was trying to accomplish the same thing with a Beseler 23C (i.e. sharply focusing on just a few millimeters of film) and I didn't achieve what I was after. Fukase was part of that thread as well.

Increasing grain for traditional grain films

Your result is much closer to what I was after. Now I'm wondering about using a wide angle camera lens (say a 21mm lens or similar) instead of an enlarger lens on my Beseler, and most likely needing a custom deep lens board to make it work. Does this sound possible? I don't want to purchase a Minox enlarger for my fun.

Has anyone done something like this?

 

[4season]

Now I'm wondering about using a wide angle camera lens (say a 21mm lens or similar) instead of an enlarger lens on my Beseler, and most likely needing a custom deep lens board to make it work. Does this sound possible?

I'd think your image would be very dim.

 

[Patrick Robert James]

Back in 2020 I was trying to accomplish the same thing with a Beseler 23C (i.e. sharply focusing on just a few millimeters of film) and I didn't achieve what I was after. Fukase was part of that thread as well.

Increasing grain for traditional grain films

Your result is much closer to what I was after. Now I'm wondering about using a wide angle camera lens (say a 21mm lens or similar) instead of an enlarger lens on my Beseler, and most likely needing a custom deep lens board to make it work. Does this sound possible? I don't want to purchase a Minox enlarger for my fun.

Has anyone done something like this?

I've put a lot of thought into this because I would like to use my Saunders 4x5 enlarger for Minox for much bigger prints than on the Minox enlarger. There aren't any good enlarging lenses that I have found that are significantly shorter than the 30mm Minolta though. The problem with camera lenses have been touched on already in this thread. They are not flat field. If you are enlarging a tiny portion of a neg that may not matter at all. A modern Leica thread mount wide angle lens like the Voigtlander 15mm (I think there is a 12mm too) would probably work fine for a tiny portion of a neg since you would only be using the center of the lens. That would also not require any mods to your enlarger. Just screw it right in. Other options that would require more work to fit on an enlarger are movie lenses and 110 lenses like the ones made for the Pentax 110. A wide angle for 35mm I would guess would be the best/easiest option overall. Any way you do it though your exposures are going to be long unless you make a light source specifically for the small neg size. Even with the 250 watt bulb in my Saunders and the 35mm mixing box, the exposure times for Minox are brutal. Several minutes sometimes. Not worth it. Same neg in the Minox enlarger is 8s on the dim setting and that is a little 12v bulb! Huge difference. I had better luck enlarging the Minox with the Minolta on my Focomat. Those exposures were in the 30-45s range.

I haven't tried any of the above yet. The 15mm Voigtlander lens is around $400 these days. The other lenses would be a pain because something would have to be machined which I can't do. One advantage of getting a Voigtlander lens though is you can use it on your Leica if you own one.

Hope that answers your question.

 

[warden]

I've put a lot of thought into this because I would like to use my Saunders 4x5 enlarger for Minox for much bigger prints than on the Minox enlarger. There aren't any good enlarging lenses that I have found that are significantly shorter than the 30mm Minolta though. The problem with camera lenses have been touched on already in this thread. They are not flat field. If you are enlarging a tiny portion of a neg that may not matter at all. A modern Leica thread mount wide angle lens like the Voigtlander 15mm (I think there is a 12mm too) would probably work fine for a tiny portion of a neg since you would only be using the center of the lens. That would also not require any mods to your enlarger. Just screw it right in. Other options that would require more work to fit on an enlarger are movie lenses and 110 lenses like the ones made for the Pentax 110. A wide angle for 35mm I would guess would be the best/easiest option overall. Any way you do it though your exposures are going to be long unless you make a light source specifically for the small neg size. Even with the 250 watt bulb in my Saunders and the 35mm mixing box, the exposure times for Minox are brutal. Several minutes sometimes. Not worth it. Same neg in the Minox enlarger is 8s on the dim setting and that is a little 12v bulb! Huge difference. I had better luck enlarging the Minox with the Minolta on my Focomat. Those exposures were in the 30-45s range.

I haven't tried any of the above yet. The 15mm Voigtlander lens is around $400 these days. The other lenses would be a pain because something would have to be machined which I can't do. One advantage of getting a Voigtlander lens though is you can use it on your Leica if you own one.

Hope that answers your question.

It does, Patrick, and I appreciate your response. The Voigtlander route is attractive but spendy for my goofing around. But I'm glad to hear the idea isn't ridiculous, so if the idea graduates beyond goofing around I'll follow up on it. The extra long exposures would also force my kind-of darkroom to become actually dark, which is probably appropriate.

The dimness issue was definitely present when I was trying super-enlarging that head detail from the other thread. I think the enlarger was ten feet from the easel, so the projected image was quite dim and almost impossible to focus without an assistant.

 

[grain elevator]

Short focal length lenses for surveillance cameras are plentiful and cheap, but certainly not flat field. There maybe technical lenses to be harvested from devices like scanners that should be fairly flat field though. Maybe from the barcode scanners at supermarkets? Just walk in with a high vis vest and a toolbox, chances are no-one will stop you

 

[awty]

I think you will need to start with a high grain negative to do it with an enlarger, scanners tend to enhance more of the grain than an enlarger. Ive maxed out my durst 1000 using a 35mm film the Minolta 35mm lens on a 50cmx 60cm piece of paper and even then the grain isnt coarse unless its coarse to begin with.
I have a voigtlander 15mm, must try that.

 

[Pieter12]

From what I've read about the Ravens series, it was shot in low light and difficult to print. From that, I conclude a fast film (TMZ 3200?), maybe pushed.
From the Wikipedia entry on "Ravens" below, its seems the birds were rather small in the frame, requiring quite a bit of enlargement to fill the frame as the example in the original post.

"Technically, the photographs of ravens were very difficult to achieve, with Fukase having to focus his camera on the small, moving black subjects in almost total darkness. Setting correct exposures was equally challenging. According to Fukase's former assistant, photographer Masato Seto, printing some of the Karasu photographs required complicated burning and dodging."

 

[awty]

My experience is thin negs are better for coarse grain than dense and a high contrast filter is best at bringing it out.
Another interesting grain effect is dropping your 20C developed film into 30c fixer.

 

[Pieter12]

My experience is thin negs are better for coarse grain than dense and a high contrast filter is best at bringing it out.
Another interesting grain effect is dropping your 20C developed film into 30c fixer.

Reticulation?

 

[awty]

Also a high contrast scene has a greater visual effect, I would say he is burning in the birds for greater effect.

Strider by Paul Fitz, on Flickr

 

[warden]

I have a voigtlander 15mm, must try that.

Excellent, you can do my homework for me.

 

[awty]

Excellent, you can do my homework for me.

Ha, not sure whether it will work. Had to stick the 35mm on top of a recessed lens holder to get it close enough to the film to focus.

 

[Lachlan Young]

From what I've read about the Ravens series, it was shot in low light and difficult to print. From that, I conclude a fast film (TMZ 3200?), maybe pushed.
From the Wikipedia entry on "Ravens" below, its seems the birds were rather small in the frame, requiring quite a bit of enlargement to fill the frame as the example in the original post.

"Technically, the photographs of ravens were very difficult to achieve, with Fukase having to focus his camera on the small, moving black subjects in almost total darkness. Setting correct exposures was equally challenging. According to Fukase's former assistant, photographer Masato Seto, printing some of the Karasu photographs required complicated burning and dodging."

More likely pushed Tri-X and 2475 than TMax 3200. And given that the image in this thread has a clearly visible camera gate - and seems to be from a 10x12" (sheet size) print, it's reasonable to surmise that the effect is either from the printing step - or intermediate steps between camera negative and final print. I think a duplicated neg, or a re-photographed sectional enlargement are now far more plausible scenarios for the origination of the visual effect (with intentional use of a taking lens that suffers from field curvature at wide apertures). The corners seem to have some evidence of the sense of a secondary, finer granularity - suggesting a duplicating step or re-photographed print being used to try and boost contrast.

 

[Craig75]

Also a high contrast scene has a greater visual effect, I would say he is burning in the birds for greater effect.

Strider by Paul Fitz, on Flickr

Yes looks very burned in to me with those round edges and a sort of burn halo around the bird.

 

[awty]

Yes looks very burned in to me with those round edges and a sort of burn halo around the bird.

Once you burnt in the birds its less of a chore to get the contrast and exposure right on the grain The problem is getting such sharpness in the chunky grain, not hard to do digitally, but in my experience not easy with an enlarger.

 

[awty]

15mm is nearly a normal lens in 8mm film.
5.5mm is grain heaven.

 

[reddesert]

I think Lachlan mostly said it. TMZ 3200 did not exist yet at the time Fukase made the Ravens series (70s to early 80s). Tri-X pushed or maybe Kodak Recording film (I have no experience with that) for speed and the large grain. Grain can be really obvious in underexposed parts of the negative.

If you look at the 3rd picture and 8th picture in this view of Ravens 5: http://masahisafukase.com/ravens-5-1979/ the 3rd picture is a presumably full frame shot of a flock of ravens with large grain in the sky, and obvious manipulation to give the ravens "eyes." Then the 8th picture is of a few ravens in flight with the grain magnified and the curvature-of-field or coma effect at the edges. Perhaps made by using an improvised lens, such as a wide angle taking lens, as an enlarging lens for a lot of magnification.

If you wanted to put a SLR wide angle lens on an enlarger, you don't need an extra-short lens cone, since the lens is retrofocus. You could use an SLR to 39mm adapter, which are available for some lenses now. Or just take a flange or rear cap and fasten it to a lensboard.

He did use double exposures sometimes, whether in camera or in darkroom I don't know. But a few of the Ravens 5 images that look like double exposures are actually the effects from taking a photo out a train window, I think.

 

[Lachlan Young]

@reddesert The answers can be found hiding in your link - it looks like Nikon F2 (and some Pentax or Contax interjections) with pretty normal prime lenses in the 24-300mm range - nothing extreme or special (apart from a 3x Telemore listed in one of them), and all using Tri-X for the BW. The 'eyes' are eye catchlights from flash - you see it in quite a few of his images.

There's tendency to regard a lot of folk like Fukase as being some kind of neophyte in terms of technique - which he very much wasn't. I'm considerably more convinced that the coma effect is from intentionally making a copy from a sectional enlargement (the sort of basic job that anyone who grew up in and around a provincial photo studio business (like Fukase did) would have been familiar with - and particularly the issue of field curvature) than from any of the overly complicated methods people seem to have fixated on.

 

[radiant]

the overly complicated methods people seem to have fixated on.

I think you concluded analog photography here

 

[Lachlan Young]

I think you concluded analog photography here

Not really - it just shows who hasn't had to do decent quality repro work!

 

[awty]

Where's a Raven when you need one.
Best I could come up with, isnt far off the initial post.

 

[radiant]

@awty you have cracked the code!