Velvia - use of filters for landscapes.

[StoneNYC]

Stone I like your pictures and your scanner. The V750 does a really nice job. By the way my comment about my cheating by bracketing was a little bit of a joke about myself not taking me too seriously. I don't go out too often with my RB67 which is damn heavy. And I often only shoot one or two subjects while out on one roll of film. So anything that helps get me the right exposure to work with is just a lot less frustrating than coming home with too dark or too light.

Thanks, it's nice, back when I was still shooting 35mm I went on the LF forum and they all said V750 so that's what I got... I can't decide if I would have been better starting with a coolscan, but I suppose in the end now that I mostly shoot LF I'm glad I have the V750.

As far as bracketing, I don't really ever bracket, I just try and make a good exposure the first time.

So far I've done decently well, with only a few errors. Sheet film is too expensive to bracket...

 

[Poisson Du Jour]

The V700 (V750 is a US market model) is here beside me, relegated to scanning old prints for my book ('Rise of the Supergraft: Transplants without borders'). Since 2011 all scanning for my exhibition work from RVP images has been done in-lab by a drum-scanner and the results are superior — but I did have several scans printed off 6x17 images two years back; these were "OK", but later drum scans showed how much better things are (scanning from supplied transparencies is built into the cost of exhibition-quality prints). There is not the time here to work on scans — I'm out-there photographing, unloading, dropping film in, vetting quickly, mounting and back at lab for work (around 150km return travel, twice weekly), even though that work is restricted to print-profiling and colourimetrics (no corrections applied that I've specified in recent memory), proofing then finals.

The late Tasmanian photographer Peter Dombrovskis often took 14 double 4x5 holders with him on his far-reaching solo expeditions into the wilderness (initially using Ektachrome, then Velvia); of that number of holders, at least 8 holders were brackets — his large format incident metering was very rudimentary and his complete archive (Peter Dombrovskis: National Library of Australia archive, 1960 to 1996) shows a large number of quite bad exposure errors (and surprisingly bad compositions), along with the many 'lucky strikes' — the truly evocative, beautifully captured images, that made it into his still-sought after books and postcards. I don't think there are many people that would throw that much film out to brackets! Personally I would find it prohibitively expensive.

 

[Trail Images]

What works one time, doesn't the next. Or vice versa.

................me too!

Alan, I have to agree with your comment. Although I love my Microtek i900 scanner and have no fault there, it's just the nature of my scans with Velvia 50 in both MF & LF. I use Silverfast and it's excellent as a scanning software IMO, I just find many times I do no corrections at all with it and drag the image into PS as an Adobe 98 RGB and do all the processing work after the scan.

 

[StoneNYC]

................me too!

Alan, I have to agree with your comment. Although I love my Microtek i900 scanner and have no fault there, it's just the nature of my scans with Velvia 50 in both MF & LF. I use Silverfast and it's excellent as a scanning software IMO, I just find many times I do no corrections at all with it and drag the image into PS as an Adobe 98 RGB and do all the processing work after the scan.

I can't seem to make silverfast 8 work for me, it never wants to scan, and if I can get it too, it never wants to let me adjust anything, I've given up trying to use it, the same could be said for PS, the darn thing is too complicated, so I just have to make good exposures to begin with...

 

[StoneNYC]

The V700 (V750 is a US market model) is here beside me, relegated to scanning old prints for my book ('Rise of the Supergraft: Transplants without borders'). Since 2011 all scanning for my exhibition work from RVP images has been done in-lab by a drum-scanner and the results are superior — but I did have several scans printed off 6x17 images two years back; these were "OK", but later drum scans showed how much better things are (scanning from supplied transparencies is built into the cost of exhibition-quality prints). There is not the time here to work on scans — I'm out-there photographing, unloading, dropping film in, vetting quickly, mounting and back at lab for work (around 150km return travel, twice weekly), even though that work is restricted to print-profiling and colourimetrics (no corrections applied that I've specified in recent memory), proofing then finals.

The late Tasmanian photographer Peter Dombrovskis often took 14 double 4x5 holders with him on his far-reaching solo expeditions into the wilderness (initially using Ektachrome, then Velvia); of that number of holders, at least 8 holders were brackets — his large format incident metering was very rudimentary and his complete archive (Peter Dombrovskis: National Library of Australia archive, 1960 to 1996) shows a large number of quite bad exposure errors (and surprisingly bad compositions), along with the many 'lucky strikes' — the truly evocative, beautifully captured images, that made it into his still-sought after books and postcards. I don't think there are many people that would throw that much film out to brackets! Personally I would find it prohibitively expensive.

Interesting, well if I had the money maybe I would waste more film and bracket... Lol thanks for the share, makes me feel better that I don't, just because I would prefer to be accurate and purposeful in my work rather than throwing darts...

 

[Trail Images]

Stone, I could not agree more about making the exposure right in the field in the first place as you mentioned. However, with certain anomalies with scanners, color profiles, inherent film casts, and all around conversion from analog to digital things do get a bit "off" at times. So, if one cares to bring it back toward what was captured it can take adjustments at times to correct the "being off" as it were.

I have Silverfast 6.6 and find it does an excellent job. Although admittedly I find less is better. Many times scanning without any adjustments works just fine and then make post scan changes as you feel necessary, if at all.

 

[Alan Klein]

I can't seem to make silverfast 8 work for me, it never wants to scan, and if I can get it too, it never wants to let me adjust anything, I've given up trying to use it, the same could be said for PS, the darn thing is too complicated, so I just have to make good exposures to begin with...

But that's the way to do it regardless. You always want to work with a properly exposed shot. Trying to correct it afterwards, whether film or digital, often doesn't work. If it is exposed right, it usually makes everything else you do afterwards easier and the results come out best. What's the expression, you can't make silk purse from a sow's ear. In my case though, since I'm shooting cheaper roll film rather than LF, I figure "wasting" a couple of shots is better than coming home with nothing worth while.

This shot http://www.flickr.com/photos/alanklein2000/11854936794/in/set-72157626597775701 taken when the sun was setting was a little dark. But good enough to get a good result. But I totally blew the correct exposure probably because I forgot to release the shutter after releasing the mirror. But I was able to get the second shot to work although exposed slightly darker. There was another set of three bracketed shots taken right afterwards with a different lens that were all dark. So I lost all three but was able to salvage that one shot of 6 that I posted. For me that's great. One out of 6 seems good to me and worth the "waste" of film. Maybe the lower cost is making me sloppy, don't know.

But I think it mainly has to do with being accurate in your initial exposure. Often, it's not that easy. The light at this time of the day changes very quickly. You have to compensate for filtering, reciprical failure with the slow Velvia, etc. So even if you think you got the correct initial exposure, you might not. If you're shooting in the middle of the day, exposure readings are more accurate and consistent. Also, they're not changing from one shot to the next as they do during magic hour, before sunset and after sunrise. I shot one set of pictures that just a couple of minutes later were too dark just a few minutes later. Hey, I use to bracket 5 shots, so I'm getting better. Well, maybe.

 

[StoneNYC]

But that's the way to do it regardless. You always want to work with a properly exposed shot. Trying to correct it afterwards, whether film or digital, often doesn't work. If it is exposed right, it usually makes everything else you do afterwards easier and the results come out best. What's the expression, you can't make silk purse from a sow's ear. In my case though, since I'm shooting cheaper roll film rather than LF, I figure "wasting" a couple of shots is better than coming home with nothing worth while.

This shot http://www.flickr.com/photos/alanklein2000/11854936794/in/set-72157626597775701 taken when the sun was setting was a little dark. But good enough to get a good result. But I totally blew the correct exposure probably because I forgot to release the shutter after releasing the mirror. But I was able to get the second shot to work although exposed slightly darker. There was another set of three bracketed shots taken right afterwards with a different lens that were all dark. So I lost all three but was able to salvage that one shot of 6 that I posted. For me that's great. One out of 6 seems good to me and worth the "waste" of film. Maybe the lower cost is making me sloppy, don't know.

But I think it mainly has to do with being accurate in your initial exposure. Often, it's not that easy. The light at this time of the day changes very quickly. You have to compensate for filtering, reciprical failure with the slow Velvia, etc. So even if you think you got the correct initial exposure, you might not. If you're shooting in the middle of the day, exposure readings are more accurate and consistent. Also, they're not changing from one shot to the next as they do during magic hour, before sunset and after sunrise. I shot one set of pictures that just a couple of minutes later were too dark just a few minutes later. Hey, I use to bracket 5 shots, so I'm getting better. Well, maybe.

It's true about exposure changing, I made an exposure of that water subtle colors image (Vs. the extreme saturated ones) of 37 seconds and a second of one minute 9 seconds, and both essentially look identical, and the one over a minute looks fractionally LESS exposed than the shorter exposure... Lol

 

[Poisson Du Jour]

Interesting, well if I had the money maybe I would waste more film and bracket... Lol thanks for the share, makes me feel better that I don't, just because I would prefer to be accurate and purposeful in my work rather than throwing darts...

Dombrovskis certainly had wealth (and the family still does, thanks to him)! Things have changed since PD's time. A lot. The work of today's photographers, even those working in digital, together with the LF analogue practitioners in Australia (specifically Tasmania), is superior to that produced by Dombrovskis with the same materials (e.g. Velvia sheet film, Linhof Master Tek, 3 lenses...). A lot of time has passed since PD's images were first made (1970s, 80s and mid-1990s, and all of them were improperly stored resulting in pinholing). The difference between his work and the rest is that he pioneered photography in remote regions unseen (or unheard of!) by city people. I can only wonder if he knew that for all the effort put into so many of his trips, for so much bracketing etc., that often he would come back with nothing.

The problems with ugly exposure were put down to his use of a polariser without the appropriate filter factor being included. Others still were botched through changed light from metered conditions. Lots to keep track of to avoid running RVP into fifty shades of black!

 

[ctsundevil]

The filters I use when working with transparency film are a Polarizer (or Circular Polarizer), graduated neutral density, 81A, 81B, sometimes an 85, and some graduated color filters.
The most important thing is to get it right in camera. It's much more difficult or impossible to fix things later.

 

[StoneNYC]

The filters I use when working with transparency film are a Polarizer (or Circular Polarizer), graduated neutral density, 81A, 81B, sometimes an 85, and some graduated color filters.
The most important thing is to get it right in camera. It's much more difficult or impossible to fix things later.

Do you use the special long exposure filter that Fuji recommends to prevent color shift?

Also, you're in CT??? Let's hang out! Hah!

 

[ctsundevil]

No, I've never tried any color adjustment filters for long exposure. The only slide film I've used for long exposure is E200 and that was for night shots. I thought the color shift was minor and looked all right.

Stone, where in CT are you? I live in Newtown.

 

[StoneNYC]

No, I've never tried any color adjustment filters for long exposure. The only slide film I've used for long exposure is E200 and that was for night shots. I thought the color shift was minor and looked all right.

Stone, where in CT are you? I live in Newtown.

OMG I live in Trumbull!! Going to PM you hah!