Introduction, Raw Scans, Neg Film, Highlight Compression, Slide Film, PhotoShop, Conclusion

Introduction

Some time ago I wrote a well received article about getting the most from colour negative scans with VueScan. Since writing the article my workflow has changed significantly, and these are the main reasons why:

• It takes far too long to profile the film base colour using VueScan, scanning isn’t fun at the best of times and I’m an impatient person.
• I’m now shooting a lot more colour slide film, and wanted something that would work equally well if I needed to tweak colour.
• I’m shooting 8×10 & 4×5 sheet film which doesn’t have an area of clear base that I can sample.
• I realised that the old method didn’t stop me having to tweak colour in PhotoShop, and that often the output was worse than from a film preset.

By chance A friend, Raoul Gatepin (Who is an awesome photographer) introduced me to the PhotoShop plugin, ColorNeg, and since then I’ve not really looked back.

ColorPerfect is the latest incarnation of ColorNeg (it amalgamates ColorNeg & ColorPos for slide film) and is the plugin I use on a daily basis, I’ll do my best to describe my workflow here using both text and imagery.

Note: this article does not cover Screen or Scanner profiling, both are critical to good colour workflow, it’s particularly important to ensure your screen is profiled otherwise how will you know if you are making good colour decisions?

Raw Scans

For ColorPerfect to work at its best we need to ensure that VueScan does not do any image processing on our scans whatsoever, for this reason we must save our scans as 16 bit RAW Linear files. Before going any further with this article you will need to own a licensed professional version of VueScan otherwise RAW output is unavailable.

I’m also very much of the opinion that sharpening, dust removal, etc should be done selectively and by hand in PhotoShop so I disable things like ICE & sharpening, here’s a quick run through of how I think you should configure VueScan.

The first thing I turn off in viewscan is the automatic saving of scans – I often find that the scan shows an imperfection that the preview does not, meaning I’ll discard the scan, so why waste disk space keeping a copy?

Although we’re going to save our scans as RAW files it’s important to keep VueScan’s Media setting configured to ‘Color Negative’. With this setting enabled VueScan scales the output of each colour channel so that they are roughly the same. There is typically 1 EV difference between each channel with red being brightest and blue darkest.

Increasing the number of samples helps to eliminate noise in the shadow areas of the scan, obviously the more samples the longer the scan will take so I opt for 3 as a minimum number to average out error.

Next you need to untick every format except ‘Raw file’ on the Output tab, be sure to leave Raw DNG unticked! Set the ‘Raw file type’ to ’48 Bit RGB’. I also like to set Printed Size to ‘Scan size’ to stop VueScan resizing the output.

Now that you have a baseline configuration for ColorPerfect you should save it for future reference. It’s time to start scanning.

Neg Film

Once you’ve scanned, saved and opened your image in PhotoShop you should have something looking a bit like this:

The orange cast of the film base is very apparent, our next step is to start the ColorPerfect plugin via the Filter menu in PS (Filter->CF Systems->ColorPerfect).

I’ve deliberately chosen a difficult film stock here, it’s a cheapo Boots Chemist 200 speed film, most branded films are a doddle to colour correct because the film preset is obvious but in this case some internet searching showed the film to be a Fuji rebrand. So with this in mind I simply chose the film base that gave the most natural looking colour – although you can see that there’s a slight magenta cast to the sky/neutrals.

You’ll notice that I have ringed the three areas of importance in red, film brand, film type, and gamma input mode. The Gamma Input mode should always be set to L for colour negatives (which should always be Linear 16 bit scans), the other setting of G is for use with positive files produced from Slide Film.

Again, this film stock is generic, and although we know the approximate brand we’ve no way for sure to know the actual film type. Even when we know the brand and stock, individual batches can be quite different from one another. The development process throws even more variance into the mix. In short, it’s quite obvious that the inbuilt profiles may never actually give us the best match when we know a film stock, let alone when we don’t. This is where a great new feature of ColorPerfect comes to the rescue, it’s a feature called Filmtype

You can see in the screenshot above that I’ve selected the ‘FilmType’ setting in the main dropdown. All that you need to do after this is find a neutral gray area in your image and click on it. For this photo I clicked about in the grey parts of the cloud until the overall balance was as close as I could get it. Now here’s the nifty bit, by dragging the main slider up and down ColorPerfect varies things just slightly, and typically somewhere in the entire slider range you’ll hit the sweet-spot.

Things still aren’t quite right, the contrast looks a little off, so now it’s time to adjust Gamma.

Change the main drop down setting to Gamma, then simply adjust the main slider until the blacks look about right. That’s it. Often these changes may be marginal, but it’s what feels right that is usually best.

So now that I’m happy I simply click ‘OK’ and use PhotoShop to ultra fine tune colour and levels.

Highlight Compression

Another great feature in ColorPerfect is the ability to compress the highlights in your image, essentially, this stops highlights being blown when you are trying to boost shadow detail. This is important because although colour negative film has a dynamic range which is often in excess of 14 stops, a typical positive image (be it on screen or print) has far fewer. Naturally you’ll need to represent as much of this information as you can but in a non linear fashion.

The above example exhibits significantly blown highlights. I’ve ringed the highlight compression box, this consists of 3 settings, these are, from left to right: the number of stops correction(or off), range of values, & the image percentage being blown out/clipped. So, for this example you can see that the compression is off, the range is 220 (default), and the clipping percentage is 18.86%

Simply by setting the compression range to 0.2 stops I’ve reduced the percentage of blown out pixels from 18.86% to 7.3%. I’ve deliberately chosen to leave a reasonable percentage of blown pixels because otherwise the image can start to look pretty flat. I believe that blacks and whites should almost always be clipped to some extent – have a play with the feature yourself and see what looks best to you.

Slide Film

This section is under construction.

PhotoShop

When I’m finished with the image in ColourPerfect I may want to fine tune some things, usually this will be levels work and fine tuning of colour. I must admit that I find the PhotoShop interface much more intuitive to work with than that of ColourPerfect so I tend to use it for fine tuning even though most of this can easily be achieved in the plugin.

Firstly I apply a ‘Levels’ adjustment layer (Layer->New Adjustment Layer->Levels…)

Next I correct any overall cast by adjusting neutral colour balance with a ‘Selective Colour’ adjustment layer (Layer->New Adjustment Layer->Selective Colour), in this image you can see that the greens have a bit too much magenta in, so I remove as many points of magenta as are needed to achieve a good overall balance to the greens:

Finally I adjust sky colour by making a white colour collection, you can see in the screenshot below that I had to drop out some magenta and boost cyan. The key is to always try and make the smallest corrections possible otherwise you can end up with clipping somewhere else in the gamut, and that normally leads to posterised colour.

As I mentioned above you can also make these adjustments within ColorPerfect using it’s colour correction (CC) filters – however, one benefit of doing this in PhotoShop with a selective colour layer is that you can easily revisit the adjustment layer to make changes. ColorPerfect is what I term a ‘destructive’ process, by this I mean that once you click OK you can’t go back without starting from scratch on the original scan.

And that’s pretty much it for PhotoShop other than any selective contrast and sharpening work I would normally perform

Conclusion

ColorPerfect saves me a lot of time when using VueScan. Before my use of ColorPerfect I had to perform time consuming exposure locking and film base colour sampling all because VueScan has very limited film profile support. Even after carrying out these long correction procedures, I was still having to fine tune colour in PhotoShop: and sometimes it was more course than fine tuning.

So now I have the best of both worlds, I can use my preferred scanning software, and spend minimal time in post production. I figure I spend about a minute per image correcting colour, and ColorPerfect is usually just a few seconds of that time.

I am quite sure that far more can be done with ColorPerfect, and I’ll update this article as I discover new techniques, and perhaps offer contrasting views if I believe that the same can be done more quickly in Photoshop. If I had one wish, it’s that ColourPerfect could be an adjustment layer rather than a plugin. But nothing is ever perfect.

I do hope that this is of use to some of you and please remember that you’re very welcome to post your own workflow and process improvement suggestions right here.

I have a print available for purchase through Nova Gallery.

The print is taken from my work in progress series 30 Something.

Introduction

Put yourself in this scenario, you have just received an e-mail about one of your online photos, the sender would like a hi-res copy for print (be it a competition entry/client/magazine/whatever), this is great news, but where did you put the original media??? If you’ve been taking a lot of photos for a while you could be wading through an awful lot of files or film to find one image, and that’s time that you either don’t have or could better spend on something else.

This is where Digital Asset Management (DAM) comes into its own. In this post I will describe the methods I use to store and catalogue my photographs in order that I can quickly locate the original media for any print or digital file. These methods add a very small initial overhead to storing your photos, but deliver an easily searched and cleverly indexed image catalogue.

For my purposes I use some software called Iview MediaPro, but Adobe Bridge, Lightroom, or any other photographic/media cataloguing software will work just as well. In order to use this method successfully you will need to have some of this software installed on your computer.

Organising your files

Folder Structure

I organise all of my files in a very simple, but very powerful hierarchy of folders on my hard drive. The folders can easily be archived onto other media and backups can be taken at any point.

I have a folder for each year. The folder format is: YYYY

In the year folders I have a folder for each shoot based upon the year month and first day of the shoot. All of the digital originals and film scans for that shoot go into this folder. The folder format is: YYYYMMDD_Location_Subjects_OtherInfo

In the shoot folders I have a folder where I keep all edits, in my case PSD files. I DO NOT catalogue edits. The folder format is: EDITS

© Ben Anderson

File Names

Digital cameras do pretty well at giving your photos unique file names, but some will re-use the same filenames after counting though a particular range. By storing your shots in ‘shoot folders’ as described above it’s very unlikely that you’ll get duplicates in one place that will overwrite one another. Cameras insert a lot of metadata into the headers of your files, this metadata can describe exposure, time, date, image resolution, camera model, and much more, all of this is information that your catalogue software will import.

Film scans on the other hand contain none of this information, if you’re lucky you will get the scan date/time and scanner model. It is VITAL that you use a numbering system for your scans. I use a very simple but, again, very powerful system which I will now describe:

I store all of my negatives in film binders, be they 135, 120, 4×5, or 8×10. Each binder is numbered, the first being 0001. The negatives are inserted into archival film pages. Each page is numbered, the very first page being page 00010001 (the first 4 digits are the binder number – this stops pages being put in the wrong binders later), each individual frame is simply the frame number on the film. So, if I scanned frame 9 on film page 1 from binder 1, it would be named 00010001-9.tif This makes it exceptionally simple to locate an original film frame from a scan.

Cataloguing

File Import

Every time I add original files into a ‘shoot folder’ that folder gets imported into Iview MediaPro – it’s just a drag and drop, the tool itself only ever keeps one catalogue copy of a file so dropping the same files in more than once does not create duplicates in the catalogue. This means that if you ever forget to add something you can just drop your entire folder structure in again, all the missing content will get added.

Adding Value

Now that my catalogue knows about the files, I want to record some additional information about them.

Star rating – Each photo gets a quality rating from 1 to 5 stars (* -> *****), you can use this later to thin down the catalogue, or simply to pick out your best images.

Colour coding – At import time I generally do not assign a colour code, I do this as I work though processing the shots from a shoot, here are the codes I use:

Yellow – This is the default colour, it means that the image has been tagged, starred and, obviously, colour coded, but no post processing has yet occurred. Assigning this colour as I process the images makes it easy to identify any images I’ve missed – especially handy when importing files from the past that I forgot to add, the newly added images will have no colour coding.

Green – the image has been post processed (so a PSD should exist in the EDITS folder)

Red – the image requires some post processing/is of interest.

Orange – the image has previously been post processed but needs working over again

Tagging – this is where the real power of a catalogue lies, by tagging effectively you can easily and effectively search your files for common elements. I tend to add names, objects, film type, location, and anything else I think might prove useful later.

What Now?

Locating Original Media

Now that you have catalogued all of your originals, how do you exploit it? Easily, whenever you make an edit, make sure you follow your naming convention, keep the original filename or add the name as a tag to wherever it gets uploaded. Write the filename on the back of your prints. It can’t get much easier than that, now you will always be able to quickly find the original media for any of your edits.

Scalability

If you take a LOT of photos, perhaps you are a pro or have simply just been shooting for a LONG time, you can split your catalogues into smaller chunks, each catalogue can contain just a year, a month, or even a single shoot. IView allows catalogues to be catalogued, so you can create a master file for the rare occasions where you need to search your entire body of work (or a smaller subset)

Conclusion

You now know how to effectively keep track of your photographs, so get to it, the sooner you start the better. If you have a backlog of photos to be catalogued it will be daunting, but you may find some gems you’d previously overlooked or forgotten about. Have peace of mind that you will always be able to find your original media.

© Ben Anderson

I got the first set of negatives back from the lab (Peak Imaging in the UK – use them, they are superb), and here is my first ever 8×10 photograph. The ‘model’ is my friend griffleriff (aka Stephen Griffin), the inverted quotes signify a bit of an in joke

© Stephen Griffin

I’ve finally completed putting together my 8×10 gear. The last bits required to complete the puzzle were a Sinar Pan/Tilt head, a heavy duty Slik Professional 4 tripod, and a big laptop bag (TechAir 5504 – it’s superb), I use the bag for the film holders and general shooting paraphernalia.

© Stephen Griffin

So, with the gear all now being in place I’ve been able to get out and shoot on 8×10 film. Careful packing has allowed me to get all the parts of the P2 into my smallish rolling peli case, this has made it so much easier to get the camera to location than when I was lugging the huge peli 1650 about – no more of that!

I recruited my friend Griffleriff (Stephen Griffin) to come along as an assistant/Sherpa but he decided to take these photos of me using the P2 instead – no wages for Griff!

© Stephen Griffin

What I hadn’t counted on is how much of a dork I’d look whilst I was shooting with this thing Or perhaps I’m just kidding myself and I don’t require the camera to look dorky….

© Stephen Griffin
See the results here…

Introduction, Theory, Gear, Options, Conclusion

© Ben Anderson

Introduction

Recently a friend of mine looking to take up large format photography asked my advice on what they should do, I wrote a lengthy e-mail to him which distilled all the knowledge I’d accumulated. Much of this knowledge was either very hard to find or required speaking directly to those in the know, so it may be useful for others…

A Little Theory

Before we can begin to describe what equipment you’ll need it’s probably a good idea to delve into a little theory and background, I hope this doesn’t put you to sleep.

The three most amenable formats are 5×4, 5×7, & 10×8 – for some curious reason the Americans describe the two outer formats with the figures reversed, so 4×5 & 8×10.

5×4 has a focal length equivalence roughly 3x that of 35mm (full frame) cameras, so a 90mm lens on a 5×4 camera has a field of view roughly equivalent to 30mm on a 35mm camera – although 5×4′s aspect ratio is different to that of 35mm so the resultant image is taller. 5×7 is approximately 4.5 times that of 35mm, and 10×8 is around 6 times that of 35mm.

Those are the 3 ‘standard’ formats, I say standard because people do shoot larger and also cut down versions of these for speciality photography, for example 20*24 Ultra Large Format, or 4*10 panoramic. Of the three, 5×4 is BY FAR the most readily available in terms of film and equipment, it is also the easiest to shoot due to its smaller size.

Just about any large format lens can be used on any large format camera, the important thing to remember is that not every lens will be suitable for the format you are shooting. This is typically because the lens only produces an image circle large enough to cover a particular format – the bigger the image circle the more expensive the lens tends to be. The wider that a lens is, the smaller its image circle usually is.

Another benefit of large format photography which relies on the size of the image circle is the ability to employ movements. Of which there are, Rise/Fall, Shift, Tilt, & Swing:

Rise and Fall are literally moving the front standard (lens board/plane) or rear standard (film/focus plane) up or down in relation to one another/the zero détente on the camera – this approximates tilting the camera up or down at an angle, but unlike a rigid camera the film and lens plane stay vertical so parallel lines of vertical objects do not converge – very useful for architectural shooting.

Shift is similar to rise and fall but is in the horizontal plane, so you would move the front or rear standard left or right, this is useful for ‘looking around’ objects but maintaining straight horizontals – particularly useful in confined space or when something obstructs a view, also used commonly when shooting a subject in a mirror but not wanting to include the camera/photographer in the scene.

Tilt is used to change where the plane of focus lies in relation to the film plane, this is most often used where not enough critical sharpness can be obtained from the very near to the very far — instead of stopping down excessively as would be required in a rigid body camera (and perhaps introducing softening due to diffraction), the focal plane can be placed in an optimal position to ensure sharpness, for example it can be tilted to be in line with the surface of the sea, or a field, in this manner the depth of field is infinite along the plane, but limited by aperture perpendicular to it.

Swing is similar to Tilt but in the vertical plane, it can be used to ensure the face of a building is in focus if shooting it from an angle other than face on.

Tilts & swings both utilise what is known as the the Scheimpflug principal, see wikipedia for further reading

Of course this isn’t meant to be an exhaustive list of what the movements can be used to achieve but it does give us some ideas. Naturally, the movements can all be used at the same time to achieve complex results.

What You’ll Need

Lenses, Shutters, Lens Boards, Focusing Cloth, Film Holders, Film, Changing Bag, Tripod, Bags, Light Meter

Lenses: This is pretty obvious to most, but some people assume all cameras have a built in lens. Not so, and if that statement was a eureka moment for you then it’s probably not a good idea to be considering large format photography. You are going to need some glass.

© Ben Anderson

5×4 film requires a lens with a minimum image circle of 153.7mm

5×7 film needs lenses with a minimum image circle of 208.7mm

10×8 film dictates that lenses require a minimum image circle of 312.5mm

I have a Schneider 90/5.6 Super Angulon MC (235mm image circle), a Schneider 150/5.6 APO Symmar (220mm image circle), and a Schneider 300/5.6 Symmar S MC (411mm image circle).

Both the 90 & 150 are usable on both 5×4 & 5×7, both have ample coverage for 5×4, both will struggle with movements on 5×7 but the 90mm surprisingly has more room to manoeuvre. The 300 will work fine on all three with ample room for movements. The 90 is wide on 5×4, super wide on 5×7, and unusable due to vignette on 10×8. The 150 is normal on 5×4, wide on 5×7, and again unusable on 10×8. The 300 is short to medium tele on 5×4, short tele on 5×7, and normal on 10×8. Image circles are typically measured with the lens stopped down to f/22, so if the circle produced by a lens is close to what is required you may well see vignetting at larger apertures.

Useful list of 5×4 lens coverage
Useful list of 5×7 lens coverage
Useful list of 10×8 lens coverage
Master list of lens specifications

Shutters: Lenses normally come mounted around a shutter, mine are all mounted on Prontor Pro shutters. Prontor shutters allow the lens to be very easily stopped down and previewed without moving from the rear of the camera before shooting – this is achieved by means of two cable releases (or the expensive Prontor remote control). Copal is perhaps the most common modern shutter and is equally as good quality as the Prontor – Copal shutters are typically lighter than Prontor so often favoured by field photographers. Some lenses come with no shutter, these are referred to as barrel lenses and either require an external shutter (as is the case with Sinar DBM lenses) or can be shot simply be removing the lens cap (or photographers hat!) and counting.

© Ben Anderson

Lens Boards: Almost All large format cameras employ lens boards, these typically come in 3 sizes, copal 0, 1, or 3 (there’s no 2) – these match the diameters required by the most common shutter sizes. You will normally require a board for each lens, but you can reduce your carrying weight by either carrying a lens wrench (needed to mount the lens and shutter assembly to a board), or by using reducing boards.

© Ben Anderson

Using lens boards you can rapidly switch between lenses to suit the subject at hand. You can also use your lenses on different brand cameras, many utilise the same board types, for example Sinar, Horseman, and Chamonix all utilise the Sinar boards that my lenses are mounted in. The advantage of this is that my Sinar camera is not particularly portable whereas a Chamonix field camera is. Naturally this advantage is lost where completely different board types are used by your equipment, but again a lens wrench or reducing boards can be used to overcome this.

Focusing Cloth: Large Format lenses are typically quite slow, with a maximum aperture of f/5.6 or smaller. The image produced by these lenses is then further reduced in intensity when it hits the ground glass (GG) of the camera. In order to easily view the GG you will need a focusing cloth, this can be as simple as a black sheet or t-shirt that you drape over the back of the camera, or a custom made item such as the BlackJacket (I own a 8×10 Blackjacket Hybrid). You will certainly need a focusing cloth for checking critical focus and depth of field whilst stopped down. You may also want a loupe.

© Ben Anderson

Film Holders: By far the most common types of film holder are those made by Fidelity, these are double sided and hold 2 sheets of film. The holders have a reversible dark slide for each sheet, the darkslides have a handle which is black one side or white/silver on the other, most people use black to indicate exposed film and silver/white to indicate unexposed — so you ensure silver is out when you load, and reverse the slide as you expose.

© Ben Anderson

It’s a good idea to have enough holders to contain the number of sheets you’ll want to shoot, this will avoid you having to unload/load film ‘in the field’, obviously this will not be a problem in ‘the studio’. Naturally more holders mean more weight, see here for alternative options. Please note that in the image above the film is not correctly loaded, the notches should be at the bottom right!

Film: It goes without saying that you’ll need some form of light sensitive device to actually capture your images, for the purposes of this article I’m going to discount all but commonly available sheet film ie. no digital, or alternate processes.

© Ben Anderson

Essentially you can shoot pretty much the same types of film as are available in roll film formats, but with limitations. Typically only the slower film speeds are available, and usually only the professional emulsion types. Fuji Pro 160S, Fuji Velvia, Kodak Portra 160 & 400, Ilford HP5+ amongst others are readily available, but don’t expect to see Superia 1600 or any other niche films appearing in sheet form any time soon.

Changing bag/tent/darkroom: Unless you are shooting packfilm, you will have to physically load and/or unload your sheet film into holders. Since film is sensitive to light you’re going to have to load the film in a totally dark environment. This can be achieved in a number of ways:

© Ben Anderson

• Dark bag: Is essentially two light tight bags within each other, there are 2 arm holes, and each of the bags has a large zipper to allow you to insert items. In practicality you can load up to 5×4 sheet film size within a dark bag, but the bag tends to become sweaty quickly and the film can start to stick in the holders so it’s best to load in small batches.

• Dark tent: Is pretty similar to a dark bag but it has a frame of some sorts to keep the tent at maximum volume, they also tend to be larger than a dark bag. You can get these to accomodate film all the way up to Ultra Large Format sizes.

• Dark room: exactly what it sounds like, a room that is dark — but beware, even the slightest illumination can fog film, so it’s best to tape all windows/door frames against stray light. Given the cost of large sheet film sizes, It’s also a good idea to tell people not to enter the room whilst you are working!

Tripod: A sturdy tripod is a must for large format work, for field work you’ll want some carbon fibre legs to minimise weight — Gitzo make a plethora of good legs, be sure to check the max weight for each model to ensure you’re camera/lens/back/holder/cloth total weight will be adequately supported. There are manufacturers that specialise in legs for large format cameras, but expect to pay a hefty premium for their products.

© Ben Anderson

A strong head is also a must if you need any kind of quick adjustment. You could attach a camera body directly to the legs for maximum stability, but adjusting the camera levels will be nigh on impossible in most cases. I have a Manfrotto 410 geared head which I picked up for my medium format gear, it just about works with my P2 & 5×4 back, there’s some pendulum motion which soon dies down, but I don’t fancy my chances if the wind picks up. Because of this I’m planning on obtaining the formidable Sinar Pan/Tilt head, you really couldn’t hope for a more stable base for a heavy camera.

Many people swear by the large ballheads that are available, be very careful to ensure you get something sturdy if you go down this route, some form of variable tension control is essential if you don’t want your gear to nose dive!

Bags/Storage: Large format cameras and all the associated paraphernalia take up quite a bit of room so you’ll need a formidable bag to carry it all in, I bought a Peli 1650 rolling case for my P2 because I don’t ever envisage taking it far from my car – I also need to keep out a very determined 2 year old! Many people use the larger offerings from Lowepro, or even simply hiking backpacks. Those with more financial sense than I simply improvise and use items such as drinks coolers and even pizza bags, the key point is to find something which fits your requirements.

© Ben Anderson

Light Meter: Unless you are able to judge exposures in your head (you’d be surprised how many are able to do this, it’s pretty easy using Sunny 16), you’ll probably want a light meter in order to get your exposures correct. I have a simple Sekonic L308S which I use as an incident meter, those who are a little more exacting will probably want a meter that can take multiple spot readings in order to use the zone system. Read more here.

© Ben Anderson

Optional extras

Loupe, Pack Film, Convertibles, Developing Tank, A Lab

Loupe: A loupe is an optical device used to magnify objects, although you may not require one to accurately focus an image on your ground glass, you will instantly see how useful one is when you try it. I have an 8x glass one made in Japan (Kenro I think), and critical focus is much much easier with it (especially on 5×4). Many people favour loupes which have a long shaft or squared off corners, these features allow them to be used with collapsible focus hoods and into the corners of the ground glass respectively.

© Ben Anderson

Pack Film: There are a number of pack film systems available for large format shooters, Fuji Quickload, Kodak Readyload, Fuji Instant, and Polaroid.

Quickload and Readyload, are simply a single sheet of film in a light tight envelope. The pack is inserted into a holder, clamped into place, and the envelope is partially removed to enable the film to be exposed. Original Readyload packs had 2 sheets of film back to back but were prone to problems. Concensus dictates that it is best to use the vendor specific holder for each type of pack film, but the films can be used in each of the vendors offerings, albeit with different levels of success reported. Quickload & Readyload are approximately twice as expensive as normal sheet film, but they offer the advantage of being loaded in a sterile environment so are not easily contaminated by dust like normal holders. film packs are also significantly lighter than multiple loaded film holders so this type of film is often favoured by the back packer. Kodak recently (as of June 2008) announced the discontinuance of Readyload.

© Ben Anderson

Fuji Instant and Polaroid are essentially the same things, a sheet of film in a packet combined with a chemical pouch to allow instant processing. Polaroid have many more product offerings than Fuji. The film is extracted from the holder between two engaged rollers which distribute the chemicals evenly across the film. Polaroid have recently announced their discontinuance of instant film products, but it is likely that stocks of their products may remain available for some time (be aware that their shelf life is not great!).

Convertibles: Many older lenses are double or even triple convertible, this means that by either removing or rearranging certain elements the lens will have a different focal length. The appeal of this can be instantly recognised, less equipment to buy, and perhaps most importantly, less weight and bulk to carry around.

There are some drawbacks however, many of the lenses do not perform optimally when in their converted states. The shutter and aperture blades may be exposed to the elements in the converted state. Older lenses may not be multicoated so may be more prone to flare (although many would argue the benefits of single versus multicoated elements). Another issue is simply obtaining the lenses, and even identifying them (hopefully someone can help out here!).

Developing Tank: With a suitable developing tank you can process your own B&W film at home just as you would for 135 or 120 roll film. There are square box tanks which use hangers to immerse your film in a bath of chemicals, these require the same large volume of chemicals no matter how many sheets you process so are best used for processing large batches of film.

People also use print developing tanks (such as JOBO tanks) for developing large format sheet film, but be aware that you will need some method of ensuring the anti halation layer of the film gets correctly processed, you need some method to ensure the usable film surface is not in contact with the interior of the tank in order for the chemicals to process the layer.

Processing becomes commensurately more difficult the larger the sheet size gets and commonly a tray based developing process is used – this of course requires a darkroom and working in the dark!

A Lab: The alternative to developing your own film is to pay someone else to do it. Those who shoot colour print or slide film tend to favour using a lab since the process is a little more sensitive to temperature and the chemicals more expensive than for B&W.

Be careful to look carefully at what each lab offers, some will process E6 sheet film only, others will process both but offer bulk discounts on E6, yet others will only process 5×4, so in short you need to carefully weigh up the options. Don’t forget to account for VAT/Sales Tax, most labs gear their services toward professionals.

Some labs in the UK:

Leach Colour – E6 to 10×8, no C41, bulk prices, speed changes extra.
CC Imaging – E6 to 5×4, no C41, bulk prices, speed changes inclusive.
Peak Imaging – E6 to 10×8, C41 to 10×8, bulk prices, speed changes extra.

Conclusion

Shooting large format equipment is costly, time consuming, space wasting, and challenging, but in my opinion the benefits in terms of depth of field and movements far outweigh all of these negatives. Hopefully this less than comprehensive introduction may have helped to clarify some of the more mystical aspects of the pursuit for you.

My thanks go out to the Large Format Photography Forum which has been an invaluable resource

WARNING!!! Although this procedure is straight forward, the author takes no responsibility for any damage, injury, or harm incurred to you, your gear, or anyone else by following this procedure. You attempt this ENTIRELY at your own risk.

With that said, I recently picked up 4 Fidelity Elite 10×8 double dark slides (DDS’s), they were in superb condition but in dire need of a good clean — I suspect they maybe hadn’t been in use for some time. Knowing that dust and dirt can get trapped in the nooks and crannies and create havoc when taking shots, I thought it best to see about getting them spic and span.

© Ben Anderson

I started out using my rocket blower to force dust out of all the obvious places. Inserting and removing the dark slides should have theoretically loosened any dust and grit on the felt light trap, but after trying this the felt was still filthy. With that in mind I decided to see if these things would easily come apart.

And yes, they did, by pulling apart the ends closest to the fold out flaps you can slide out the whole centre section of the holder. Be very careful not to bend the outer U section too much or you might inadvertently snap the holder!

© Ben Anderson

Once the central section is pulled out you can remove the outer guides from it. This will let you work a cloth or brush into all of the areas that have built up dirt and grime over the years. The felt can be tapped against a hard surface to free any dust it is holding – do this gently because within the felt is a fine gage metal form that helps it to keep it’s light tight shape.

© Ben Anderson

For stubborn marks and label glue I applied some Naphtha lighter fuel with a soft cloth – caution, it’s an irritant, and is highly flammable! Duh!

2 of my four holders were a bit more difficult to dismantle, the components were stuck together with epoxy. Inserting a flat wide bladed edge between the guide components and the outer U shape allowed me to ‘crack’ the epoxy by exerting a small amount of pressure. Be careful not to prise too much or you risk leaving marks on the parts which could potentially compromising how light tight the holders are!

See my photos on flickr.

I no longer use this method, click here for my new ColorPerfect method

Introduction, A Few Simple Options, Film profiles suck, Scanning

Using The Histogram, & The Finished Article

Introduction

Hamrick Software’s VueScan is perhaps the most flexible and powerful piece of scanning software available to photographers today. Many people fall foul of its myriad features and options – it can be quite daunting when you first start the software and begin to explore the different option pages. I’m going to explain how to get the best out of VueScan with the minimum of fuss, the least fiddling, and the least deviation from the software’s default options.

If you’ve already got the software installed (at the time of writing the latest version is 8.4.70), then now is perhaps a good time to reset the options to default, you can do this from within the file menu “File->Default Options”

A Few Simple Options

The first thing I turn off in viewscan is the automatic saving of scans – you’re probably going to want to do things like adjust white balance, white point, and blackpoint before committing your scan to disk, so there’s just no need to have this option enabled.

You’ll also want to turn on VueScan’s histogram Graph, you can do this from the Image menu “Image -> graph b/w”, or by hitting ctrl-2. You want the b/w graph because this allows you to adjust white and black point using 2 graphical sliders (explained later in the article).

Film profiles suck

VueScan comes with some pre-configured film profiles, you may think that these are just great, but in reality they aren’t – they just take control away from you, and will more than likely deliver a scan that just does not come up to scratch. Why? Because each and every roll of negative film you shoot has it’s very own slight variations in both manufacturing tolerance, exposure, film fogging (heaven forbid), and most importantly development. All of these combine to change the film’s base colour density – so by choosing a preset you are using a ‘best guess’.

The good news is that there is absolutely no reason to settle for a best guess, and this is because VueScan will allow you to sample the base colour of your film directly. These tips are available on the VueScan homepage, but I’ve combined them with some screenshots to make it even more clear. So without further ado, here’s how it’s done…

Firstly you need to preview your film. Click the Preview button! When the preview finishes you should select an area of clear film between frames (or in the film leader). If the ‘Lock Exposure tickbox is ticked, untick it (see the picture below this one)

Hit the preview button again, when the preview finishes tick the “Lock exposure” tickbox.

Hit the preview button once more, when the preview finishes tick the “Lock film base colour” tickbox.

With these simple steps you have calibrated your roll of film. You only need to do this once per roll, it can be a pain, but it will save you major headaches in post processing.

Scanning

Now that you’ve optimised VueScan for your current roll of film, you’ll want to go ahead and scan some photos. A lot of people like to keep the film borders and frame numbers in their scans, I think this is a complete waste of time – it will also give you more hard work setting levels in post processing because your beautifully crafted photo will be competing with the levels of the border & bright yellow frame numbers. The answer is simple: use the frame crop box to highlight a scanning target just within the borders of each frame.

When you’re happy that you’ve got the frame correctly selected hit the Scan button.

Using the histogram

Now that your scan is in memory you can do some adjustments, there are 2 main ones you’ll probably want to do, the first of which is using the histogram to produce a nice flat image which can easily be adjusted in PhotoShop. Drag the sliding pointers to left and right so that all elements of the graph are between them – if you want to clip some areas then adjust accordingly.

The final adjustment you may want to make is the white balance – find an area in the scan which is neutral and right click on it (hold down control on mac). VueScan will automatically adjust white balance, if you picked the wrong area just try again until you get something that looks correct — You’ll probably only want to do this once per roll (or once for each set of photos with the same lighting conditions) to ensure your scans are colour matched. Double right clicking resets the auto white balance.

The Finished Article

So now it’s time to save your frame, click on the disk icon or use the save image option in the file menu.

Hopefully you should now be able to successfully scan colour negative film and be sure that you’ll get consistent results. You’ll need to use Curves and Levels in PhotoShop to get the best out of your scans. Good Luck!

Yesterday a good friend and I met for coffee in Leeds city centre, I had sold him my Olympus 35RC and was collecting the money from him. Whilst we were drinking our coffee he asked if I would take part in a little photographic experimentation – namely holding a radio triggered flash whilst he shot some street. I agreed on the express condition that should I get smacked I could stomp on his flash.

So, we found a nice spot where I could sit and direct the flash at passers by and he could shoot from the opposite angle, he quite openly took a number of shots of people, most smiled, a few asked what he was doing and after a brief conversation wished him good luck.

After a short while we decided to try some shots whilst on the move – a street food vendor caught his eye and we got into position, he took 2 shots, and all hell broke loose! First of all the vendor started to spout about how it was illegal to take photos of him, my friend said he was happy to have a conversation with him about it, but the vendor was having none of it. A young mother at the front of the queue had simultaneously started up, shouting “oi what are you doing, that’s illegal”, she was under the impression that my friend was taking photos of her children (they did not appear in frame) and that a law had been passed in the UK prohibiting this (not so). Well, my friend decided that since it was only experimentation he would forgo the shot and showed her his DSLR screen whilst he was deleting the photos.

Apparently this was not good enough and the woman beckoned over two Police Community Support Officers (PCSO’s – cheap quasi police with no rights to arrest), who immediately decided to play good cop/bad cop.

The essence of the conversation follows:

PCSO1: “Why are you here, What are you doing, Who are you with?”

FRIEND: “I’m an amateur photographer and am interested in street photography, we’re just experimenting with flash lighting in the street”

PCSO1: “Who are you taking the pictures for?”

FRIEND: “Myself, it’s my hobby”

PCSO1: “You’ll have to delete them”

FRIEND: “Well I don’t have to, but I already did, I showed the woman that I had”

PCSO1: “Show me your camera so I can check”

FRIEND: “I don’t legally have to do that and I already explained that I showed the lady I had deleted them”

PCSO1: “In that case I’m issuing you with a stop and search”

ME: “On what legal grounds”

PCSO2: “Section 1 of PACE” – Section 1 of PACE pertains to searching those suspected of committing a crime for stolen or prohibited articles.

FRIEND: “I don’t understand why you should do that I’m perfectly within my rights to not allow you to search me”

PCSO1: “Well, I could detain you for 20 minutes and have you taken to the station for a proper search”

FRIEND: “Look, here I’ll show you, there’s no point in this getting out of hand, but I am correct about my rights, here see this – produces leaflet covering photographers rights”

PCSO1: “(dismisses leaflet)What you’ve been doing could be seen as anti social behaviour, you’ve got to be really careful taking photos in a public place, buildings and stuff are ok, but not people”

ME: “Can we have a copy of the forms please”

PCSO2: “(gives copies)”

ME: “GREY HAIR!”

We could have been much more pushy about our rights, but I had to get back to work, and didn’t want to have to phone to explain I’d been arrested because although we had maybe been a bit rude, the police did not know the law.

Get your FREE UK Photographers rights guide from HERE.

Write to your MP and have them support the Early Day Motion tabled by MP Austin Mitchell!

Part 2 – Environment, Isolation, Empathy, Diversity, & Story

Click here for Part 1.

6. Environment

This section is closely tied with Location in part 1. Almost everything we do is governed by our environment, and much of our behaviour is also a product of the environment. Parkour could arguably be said to be a product of Lisses (the birth place of parkour) and its modern, concrete, urban landscape. With that in mind it doesn’t take a genius to realise that we should probably show some environmental aspects in our own photographs.

Fortunately, depicting a subject within its natural environment is a sure fire way to add depth and foster emotional attachment to your photos, that’s something we should capitalise upon. As an example, take a look at the photograph of Ben below. Whilst the group were on the move from Leeds International Pool to another favoured location Ben told me that he had been tattooed with a parkour emblem. Now for me this is a pretty hardcore statement which really underlines Ben’s commitment to the discipline

So, how best could I show his tattoo? A close up shot? No. We happened to be on a foot bridge overlooking the location where my, perhaps most notable, photograph, Leeds Leap, was taken. Light bulb! By taking a photo of Ben looking out at the view I could immediately gather together the following ideas: parkour as an urban pursuit, the spiritual nature of the discipline (free your mind), the inspiration and start point for my own parkour photography, the power of Ben’s conviction, the tattoo itself, and the cyclical nature of things — the pool is soon to be demolished.

The environment is all around us, duh, make use of it, it is a powerful tool that can be used both very easily and very effectively to add character and strength to your photos.

© Ben Anderson

7. Isolation

Isolation is really the counterpoint to environment. The idea here is that you should totally direct all of the viewers’ attention on the subject and nothing else.

On occasion the message you are trying to get across is so strong that to have anything else in the scene will only serve to dilute it. One very simple trick is to make sure the background is very simple, a wall, the sky, the ground – something uniform. Or even something so boring or at odds with the subject that it immediately makes your message stand out.

Colour can play a very strong role in achieving subject isolation. If you had a traceur dressed in green doing a move then it wouldn’t be a good idea to shoot them against grass or some trees would it? Instead find a red background, brick works well. Conversely red shirts against green work superbly.

Even though you are isolating a subject, you can still let some environment creep in to add depth, take a closer look at the photo of Devin below.

© Ben Anderson

8. Empathy

Whenever you approach a subject photographically you should bear in mind the implications of any photographs you take. For example, parkour is non competitive, so you should definitely not take a photograph that appears to portray it as such. Similarly, parkour is not a team discipline, and although traceurs train together it would be questionable to display parkour moves performed in tandem or give the appearance of teamwork. Of course this is not the case for photos of Acro.

Again I’ll refer back to some of the other subjects, Anticipation, & Rapport, you can only truly empathise with your subject if you are knowledgeable about it – ensure that you are. By depicting your subject with empathy you help to engender rapport with its practitioners – this is a feedback loop that can lead to some great insights and future benefits.

Although photography will always be exploitative to a certain extent, you can minimise this by helping to portray the goals and dreams of your subjects’ practitioners. Remember that you as a photographer are also being exploited by your subject – it’s a two way street. Don’t be evil – ever!

© Ben Anderson

9. Diversity

Shoot everything.

When you start to look critically at everything which is happening around you, then you will start to see things that would not normally be apparent: forms, the play of light across a face, how the shape of a person interacts with the environment, perhaps a juxtaposition of your subject and something as banal as a commercial banner. There are interesting photographs everywhere, even in the most mundane every day places. By framing them with your camera’s viewfinder you freeze them in time and allow them to be shared with others. If you’re not taking a photo then you’re missing an opportunity.

Eventually as your eye becomes more familiar with this mental ‘framing’ of the world you will know when to shoot and when to wait for the truly sublime: we all have the ability to transcend our everyday existence, catching those rare moments is what you should aim for – people don’t want to looking at boring photos.

Originality is perhaps the single hardest thing in photography, but it always keeps you on your toes, and working out a new and refreshing way to show something is reward in itself.

© Ben Anderson

10. Story

Telling a story is perhaps the single most difficult thing to do with photography. Much can be learnt by looking at cartoons and film story boards, think of the key ways in which each ‘frame’ interacts with its neighbours, flow, form, rhythm, are all important. Consistency of style and format are also paramount (I’ve broken this rule myself in my parkour set so far!) – you should also either use all B&W or all colour photos, or aim to have sections of all the same.

Think about the everyday aspects of your subject, the journey, buying a ticket, mucking about on the bus, the meet, stopping for food, all the little ‘boring’ every day things that happen can help to punctuate a larger body of work and most importantly ground them in the understanding of the viewer — this connection with the viewer is important, never forget it.

© Ben Anderson

Parkour photo set on Benneh.Net