How To Develop Film

Another How To Shoot Super 8

Motion Picture - Super 8 Camera

I am all set to expose my first roll of Super 8 using my grand fathers more than 40 years old camera. It is exciting to get back to old technology.

So far I could not find a decent manual for the camera I have.

Using old gear sometimes needs some explanation.
Here a "How to use a Super 8 Camera"

Elemental Imaging

Recently I bumped while searching for images of vintage Super 8 motion picture film cameras into the size of Elemental Imaging.

There is not much information around the people behind this site, except the location being Boulder, Colorado in the USA.

The site is around photographs showcasing old stuff. Stuff such as mechanical details, junk, cars, trucks, typing machines, airplanes, ...

An interesting concept offering a resource of vintage subjects captured in digital.

Featuring David McGhee

David McGhee: Dallas Photographer, Dallas Food and Bevergae Photographer, Marriott preferred photographer, Dallas architectural photographer, American Portraits, David McGhee Photographer, Photo producer in Dallas

David McGhee has an impressive portfolio of large format landscape images.
I do not know what camera he uses, how he captures and develops these images, but it is an impressive piece of art.

Have a look at David's site link and be inspired by what he does and how it is presented.

Underwater Videography - Socorro Island, Mexico

Black and White - Technology Photography

wearing high heels... - Yasu Nakamura (500px)

eight - Shigehiro Ono (500px)

Captain Nemo's plane - Atle Blekastad (500px)

ELECTRONICS, BEING ENGINEER - Jawed Ali (500px)

Vintage microphone on black background - Péter Mocosonoky (500px)

Seeking Perfection in Landscape Photography

Have you ever been frustrated by the fled of almost perfect landscape images on the internet?

How come that all those people are on location under perfect conditions at the perfect time?

Jay Patel shared a blog post on visualwilderness.com highlighting three ways of thinking which will successfully take away you passion for landscape photography.
Read through here: link

The three reasons why not to pursue landscape photography are:
- trying to capture the awesome photo you see on the internet an in magazines
- searching for likes, tweets, and +1s
- capturing photos under perfect conditions only

As a conclusion, here the recommendation from Jay:
"The next time you go on a landscape photography adventure… make it less about popularity or trying to get the next best shot and more about having an adventure and exploring your creativity. You may find that you’ve fallen even more deeply in love with landscape photography."

The Digital Side of Film Photographers

Film photographers nowadays do have a serious tick. They need to show off their fancy, unique, and rare hobby of capturing the world through the viewfinder of a vintage analog mechanical camera and not having immediately images to share available.

So, how to overcome this film photographer's dilemma?



Here is how! - And I count myself in here too.

Rescued Film Project

The rescued film project is dedicated to rescuing lost and forgotten rolls of film from all over the world. Levi Bettwieser is running that project dedicated to rescuing and archiving these historical images which otherwise would be lost or destroyed.

Among the rescued rolls there is a series of images taken by a world war two soldier which had never been developed. Watch the video below. This is an impressive documentary by Levi Bettwieser about his passion and the series of rolls shot by this soldier 70 years ago that are developed and watched at for the first time.

Once again I learn that images on film have an incredibly long life. Film is probably one of the most persistent storage media for any kind of data. I often ask my self whether my digital image archive will still be available, usable, and searchable in 15 years time given technological development. However, the film negatives from my early days of photography as a child more than 25 years ago are still physically there, I can scan them, process the scans and use them like any digital image today. Same for the pile of slides from my father and grandfather that will never expire.

Levi Bettweiser develops the film in small series by hand at home in his kitchen. He says that developing film which has been stored somewhere most likely under non ideal conditions is a case buy case hand craft. For this kind of film a commercial lab processing hundreds of films per day would just not get the results needed for these historical testimonials.



In order to rescue more film, Levi Bettwieser is running a crowdfunding campaign in order to raise money for development of another stock of 66 bundles of film which is approximately 1200 rolls.

Outdoor Photography - Scott Rinckenberger

One of my favourite outdoor photographers is Scott Rinckenberger. Find his work at link.

www.scottrinck.com/portfolio

Some of Scott's work is just mind blowing. Being an outdoor guy and mountaineer himself he reaches locations in nature yielding opportunities for landscape imagery never seen before.

What is interesting about Scott too is the fact that he is using all kinds of cameras. From compact to high end DSLRs. Proofing that sometimes the result depends more on the photographer or the image processor than on the equipment.

Following Scott's recommendation I started using a Sony RX100 III for some of my work where I am not able to carry my DSLR or medium format film camera. And truly, results are perfect.

Scott has a series of mountain landscape images under special light conditions all in black and white.  Some can be seen on the portfolio screenshot shown above. These are images never seen before. With unmet contrast and lighting effects that are hard to get. Some of the here shown situations probably only occur for a couple of seconds per day, taking under consideration weather conditions probably even with less probability that it happens when the photographer is there. Hence, Scott must have been spending hours hiking, snowshoeing, skiing through the snowy mountains in order to capture these artistic shots.

I might consider getting one of his fine art prints for my office. Something unique and artistic. - How about you?

Inside Ansel Adams' Darkroom

Underwater Footage - Reef Life

4K UltraHD underwater stock footage Demo Reel 60p from Undersea Productions on Vimeo.

Black and White - Wave Photography

Battle cry - Ulf Hörsted (500px)

Waves & Sea Bw - Michele Marrucci (500px) 

Black and White Wave No. 4 - Thomas Sebourn (500px)

The south... - Daniel Tjongari (500px)

Incoming Giant - Kelly Headrick (500px)

Twin Lens Reflex Camera

The Hasselblad X1D - The first medium format mirror less camera

Beginners Guide to 35mm Film Camera

For digital natives! - Have you ever wondered how a mechanical 35mm film camera works and needs to be handled in order to get results?

Here is a comprehensive HowTo. - Enjoy the fun!

High End Cameras - Alpa Phase One

Have a look at this humanistic report by Kai W. on the high end Alpa Phase One camera. - Testing out the gear lead to several spectacular failures...



And a second report using the medium format Phase One for high end large scale photos:

Alpenglühen

L'Alpe qui saigne... - Vincent Favre (500px)

Is there something more beautiful than landscape images at sun set? The more special and unique, the more attractive they become.

It needs patience, time, and the right anticipation of weather phenomena in order to get that one special shot. The shot of a - maybe well known - landscape photographed hundreds of times before but never in that unique setting.

Light, contrast, color - texture and shape. Many landscape images under special light conditions are unique.

The Last Stand - Enrosadira (500px)

In the central European Alps a well known situation is called "Alpenglühen". This means literally "the glowing alps". Or in french "L'Alpe qui saigne" which is translated to "bleeding alps".

Alpenlicht - Martin (500px)

For the scientists: this is the moment of the sun set where mountain peeks are hit only by the remaining red wavelength components of the sunlight. A moment which appears for just a couple of seconds and only under weather conditions in favour of corresponding light refraction.

Mistry Peak - Philipp Franceschini (500px)

Underwater Videography - Galapagos

Galapagos from Darek Sepiolo on Vimeo.

Black and White - Beach Photography

Magoito - Filipe Tomaz Silva (500px)

The Cliff - David Fernandez (500px)

Channel to the Sea - Phill Doherty (500px)

Stockness Wind - Marco Petracci (500px)

Cadzand beach - Thierry Costa (500px)

A Documentary About Film Photography

Brothers Wright - no not the inventors of the airplane, but founders of CineStillFilm - are running a business bringing classic motion picture film to still photography format.
Watch the interview on their philosophy, motivation and vision.

People Photography

Taking pictures of random people on the street sometimes can turn out to be tricky and challenging. Not all people like their picture being taken.

As a photographer being discreet, making sure people notice one is around taking pictures, respecting if people refuse the picture, ... all about being respectful helps.

However, the best shots probably happen if they are taken quickly out of the moment. Usually this goes along with the subject noticing you as a photographer right after the shutter release. Depending on the culture it is good thing to show them the picture - something which became easy to do in the digital world - or have a short chat with people. In other cultures people just are not interested. And in some cultures people expect a tip for their picture being taken.

In order to get as natural as possible images it can be helpful to take pictures using a longer focal length lens. That way the subject is not perturbed in natural out of the moment behaviour, the photographer can keep some distance and is able to take some time for composing the picture and finding the right moment and exposure.

Depending on what you want to achieve as a photographer you want to make sure the subject to notice, or not to notice, that their picture is being taken.

Depending on what you want to achieve as a photographer you want to make sure the subject to notice, or not to notice, that their picture is being taken.

For example, the fish sales woman at a fish market in Barcelona, Spain (see above). She was in the middle of a conversation with a customer talking about the delicious fresh sea food at her booth. Hence, you want to keep that moment, you want to make the image speak. If she would be looking into the camera most of the content of that image would be lost.

Another example is the lady of this shop in Shanghai who was about to eat her noodle soup (see above, right). She was concentrated on her soup slurping the noodles surrounded by the products she is selling. Suddenly she looked up from her bowl directly into my camera, noticed that I was about to take a picture and gave me that look saying "leave me alone, I am eating".

Selecting the right film

I was not aware that Jared Polin - Fro Knows Photo - was running a film photography project.

All About Film - Documentary on film photography

Mystic Angkor

A place to be for travel photographers is - there is no doubt - the ruins of Angkor Wat in Cambodia.

Here an impression of this mystical place.

Mystic Angkor - Olivier Schram (500px)

Underwater Video - The Blue Ocean

The Blue Ocean in RED from Howard Hall on Vimeo.

Black & White - Boat Photography

Beaten by the sea - Bernardo Lorena Ponte (500px)

For Sale: One Boat... Two Pieces - Mark Law (500px)

A heron on the watch - Kai Bergmann (500px)

Below the Pier - Guy Biechele (500px)

The Plassey, Inisheer Island, Ireland - Lori Seebeck (500px)

Legendary Photographers - Bill Cunningham

Bill Cunningham who was one of the leaders turning fashion photography into its own branch of visual art died June 25th 2016 at age 87 in New York.

While fashion photography nowadays is a very composed and technical discipline Cunningham was focusing on how people stage fashion in the streets of New York in everyday life.

Read the article in memorandum of Bill Cunningham at: The New York Times http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/06/26/style/bill-cunningham-legendary-times-fashion-photographer-dies-at-87.html?_r=0&referer=http://m.facebook.com

Classic Cameras

Classic vintage cameras come more and more en vogue nowadays.

Approximately two years ago I started working with old film cameras again. And I notice more and more that this becomes a real trend.

In the video below the colleagues from DigitalRev TV give a review on the Kodak Retina IIIC camera.
This camera has been introduced in 1954. It is a compact range finder camera which was designed with a lens system allowing to interchange the front elements of the lenses. It is an interesting piece of engineering.

On eBay this camera can be purchased at 100 to 300 US$ depending on conditions.

Lavender Season

Lavender Show - Pawel Uchorczak (500px)

As every year the image sharing platforms are filling up with lavender field photographs again.

While last year I went on a lavender photography field trip to the south of France myself, I am following the season this year through photo streams.

The colors are impressive. But, how much digital editing is behind those eye catching images?

I definitely have to go back there in season in order to better explore the color and light space.

Eyes - Iza Lyson (500px)

Sunrise and Dramatic Clouds over Lavender Field - Valentin Valkov (500px)