Very Imperfect #10 Cirkut Image made on a brisk day in February, Goldfield, Nevada

jimgalli · Mar 7, 2024

Been a while since I've posted a Cirkut picture. Please try to forgive the non stitching program stitches. I could use a simple stitching program like used to be included in photoshop before they went looney tunes with subscription. Totally imperfect, but at least I got off my butt and made a negative. This was #10 Cirkut with Aviphot Pan 200 film and I used a 12" Artar with a #58 pinion gear. It's a self portrait and you can see me waving down in the far right bottom corner.

Romanko · Mar 7, 2024

Impressive! What is the size of the negative?
Do you know what causes uneven exposure of each frame?

monst · Mar 7, 2024

It says what the problem with the lines is in the description.

Kino · Mar 7, 2024

Impressive! Jim don't you lure me into the World of Circuit Camera madness!

warden · Mar 7, 2024

Great shadow portrait!

jimgalli · Mar 7, 2024

9.5X42” negative. Yes uneven scanning a piece at a time sewed together.

Pioneer · Mar 7, 2024

Looks good Jim. Haven't been down to Tonopatch in what seems like forever. Things clear up a little bit I'll have to head down there for some shooting with the 8x10.

jimgalli · Mar 7, 2024

Thanks everyone. Hope to do some damage with the Cirkut (s) this spring. Does anyone have pinion gears that are doubles that you would sell? I know I'll have to solve the scanning / stitching situation to make these somewhat presentable. Gears Gears Gears. Need gears. Low 30's to high 60's. Can use them all.

Romanko · Mar 7, 2024

jimgalli said:
9.5X42” negative.

Speechless. Another stupid question: How do you develop such a huge negative?
You got a nice tonal range out of Aviphot. What developer did you use?

jimgalli · Mar 7, 2024

Romanko said:
Speechless. Another stupid question: How do you develop such a huge negative?
You got a nice tonal range out of Aviphot. What developer did you use?

I use Sandy King's Pyrocat HD developer that I mix up from scratch. One shot developer. And I load the exposed film into a 47" long piece of 3" ABS sewer pipe that has a cap on one end and a threaded adapter with plug at the other. Light tight in the pipe once the plugs are on. After the second wash (water) the lights go on. I just roll the pipe back and forth on the counter top for my agitation. No stupid questions here.

Romanko · Mar 7, 2024

Thank you Jim. Are you camera-scanning? I have a similar problem with the unevenness but with a single medium format negative this is rarely a problem.

jimgalli · Mar 7, 2024

Romanko said:
Thank you Jim. Are you camera-scanning? I have a similar problem with the unevenness but with a single medium format negative this is rarely a problem.

No I'm using an Epson V700 flatbed scanner doing about 7X9,5" at a time and then sewing all the individual scans together in one document in photoshop. The Epson is scanning darker on one side than the other.

Romanko · Mar 7, 2024

I am not familiar with flatbed scanners. In the camera world you use Flat Field Correction:

Flat-Field - RawPedia

rawpedia.rawtherapee.com

The technique might work with scanner images as well.

MattKing · Mar 7, 2024

I use and used to recommend Microsoft I.C.E. for stitching multiple images, but Microsoft is no longer offering or supporting it.
Hugin is open source software that many recommend.

mshchem · Mar 7, 2024

I absolutely love this! Nothing better than these great pictures. I can't fathom how many gazillion pixels/bits/bytes??? are represented in one of these negatives.

Well Done!!!

jimgalli · Mar 8, 2024

Thanks all, and thanks Matt for the tip on Hugin. I'll check it out.

Romanko · Mar 8, 2024

mshchem said:
I can't fathom how many gazillion pixels

About 2.3 Gigapixels when scanned with 2400 dpi resolution. The 16-bit image (48 bits per sample) requires about 14 GB of memory.

grain elevator · Mar 8, 2024

What is the intended end-product? A contact print?

Kino · Mar 8, 2024

jimgalli said:
9.5X42” negative. Yes uneven scanning a piece at a time sewed together.

I always meant to ask; how do you store the negatives? Do you wind them up on an aerial spool?

I mean; Freestyle doesn't stock 9.5 x 42 negative sleeves...

ags2mikon · Mar 8, 2024

Impressive! Thank you Jim. Is your web page is down?

Donald Qualls · Mar 8, 2024

jimgalli said:
I'll have to solve the scanning / stitching situation

I've seen freeware for Windows (probably also available for Linux) that does stitching and nothing else. Not sure it'll handle really huge pixel counts, but you don't need much more than 1000 px on the height of the image. Hugin is the software name that comes to mind...

jimgalli · Mar 8, 2024

grain elevator said:
What is the intended end-product? A contact print?

Yes, historically a contact print was the only thing possible with these.

Kino said:
I always meant to ask; how do you store the negatives? Do you wind them up on an aerial spool?

I mean; Freestyle doesn't stock 9.5 x 42 negative sleeves...

I roll them up and wrap a piece of printer paper around the roll with scotch tape holding the tube together and then write on the paper what it is.

ags2mikon said:
Impressive! Thank you Jim. Is your web page is down?

After 15 years of paying fees to a host provider they pulled the plug on the servers and walked away. Poof. She gone. Web workers beware. I'm too old to do it over.

Kino · Mar 8, 2024

jimgalli said:
Yes, historically a contact print was the only thing possible with these.

I once visited a man in Ohio who printed Circuit Camera Negatives using a very unique method.

He build a long shelf at about eye level above an equally long counter top at normal height below. The shelf was really two rails with curbs on the inside and outside of the shelf lip. The shelf had an slot cut out of the center with solid sections on each end and the entire shelf was painted flat black.

On the rail, he had a large chassis of an RC car with a condenser head on top and pierced the chassis for a enlarging lens to shine through the slot.

The lens was masked somehow with a slot so that only a thin beam projected down onto the table below, across the width of the paper.

After going dark, he then took suitably sized paper, the circuit negative and a properly sized sheet of glass to make a sandwich on the table below.

Placing the "car" on the shelf rail above in one of the "black-out" sections of the rail, he turned on the enlarger head and started the very slow geared "car" forward, which then painted the strip of light across the negative below, making the contact print. Once it entered the end black-out zone, he turned off the light and stopped the car.

As I remember, he also had custom, gray PVC trays to develop the prints.

Quite ingenious in my opinion...

jimgalli · Mar 8, 2024

110 years ago, the guys who had wife and kids at home to feed with these things would photograph a convention, develop the film in a bucket in the hotel room, print in the bathtub all night and sell the prints to the conventioneers before they left for home. Now THAT'S amazing. The invention of necessity. When dinosaurs roamed the earth. Lately our pickup truck tires, 10" wide and 3 inches deep, might make a good tray for processing prints. Put the exposed print in the tire pour in chems. & roll. I confess I'm just having fun making the negs. Good scans to view might be "good enough" for me.

Mark Crabtree · Mar 8, 2024

jimgalli said:
110 years ago, the guys who had wife and kids at home to feed with these things would photograph a convention, develop the film in a bucket in the hotel room, print in the bathtub all night and sell the prints to the conventioneers before they left for home. Now THAT'S amazing. The invention of necessity. When dinosaurs roamed the earth.

I resemble that remark.

For a proof print to sell from, you cut off and wetted down a piece of rc paper and slapped it onto the back of the hotel bathroom door (remove the coat hook if necessary). Then put the wet negative on that and squeegee it well to get out air bubbles. Expose with a bare bulb by waving it up and down the length of the negative. Contact speed paper helped, otherwise you were waving pretty fast.

Very Imperfect #10 Cirkut Image made on a brisk day in February, Goldfield, Nevada

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