Shocker!

No, not Andy Murray winning Wimbledon (thought that's pretty momentous - first Brit to win the men's singles in 77 years); but that my new (old) Nikon is less than an once heavier than my trusty Olympus!

When Olympus launched the OM-1 in 1972 - I remember it like it was yesterday - the big selling points were its size and weight.

The publicity material was stunning. Black lettering (matt) on a black (glossy) background. Only thing missing was the black light lighting up black, to tell you... (for those of you old - and geeky - enough to remember Zaphod and Arthur). But I digress...

I gave my Nikkormat FTn to my father and bought my first OM-1n, used, in 1979. I had that camera for just 2 years until Andy North left it in his room - unlocked - and it was stolen.

The next OM was another OM-1n (£125), again used, from Fox Talbot in Hammersmith.  That camera I still have. It's been through some pretty harsh treatment, particularly the 130F heat of the Sahara desert; not to mention the sand.

Fast forward 20 years and the next OM - well two actually - were a pair of OM-2S' which I picked up for very little money on eBay in 2001. One of those is that pictured here. And in case you're interested, I have found that setting the shutter to 60 mechanical (the red numbers) and the metering to 'Program' does seem to prevent the much discussed battery drain. The current battery has been in the camera for so long - probably 2 years - that I've forgotten exactly when I put it in.

Anyway, in the 34 years I've used Olympus cameras, I've always held onto the belief, as touted in the Olympus marketing campaign 41 years ago, that the OM system was smaller and lighter than it's competitors.

So it came as something of a surprise to find that my new (old) Nikon FE2 which I bought on eBay last week was almost exactly the same weight. With the practically identical 35-105mm zoom lens, the OM-2 weighed in at 2lb 4.8oz and the Nikon at 2lb 5.1oz, less than 1% heavier.

The FE2 doesn't have the OM-2's 'Program' mode - which is fine since I never use it anyway, and is easier to use in manual. It does have two faster shutter speeds, 1/2000^th and 1/4000^th, neither of which I'm likely to use either. The matching needles in the viewfinder for manual mode metering is inspired, and much more intuitive and informative than the 'up a bit, down a bit' metering that many manual cameras, including the OM-1 and OM-2, use. And the sound of the shutter / mirror is remarkable. Much crisper than the OM-2, and as it turns our, a tad louder. It's probably purely imaginary but it sounds like good engineering.

This is the first grown-up Nikon I've owned; the Nikkormat doesn't count (and that was a really heavy camera). So a bit late in life (mine and that of film photography), I've been converted to Nikon!

I would still like to have an OM-5D; but my loyalty to Olympus has dissipated a little on discovering that in fact it wasn't the smallest, lightest SLR on the market. And as full-frame DSLRs become affordable, maybe at some point I'll get a Nikon.

The shutter sound    

Here's a recording of the two shutters. The first is the OM-1n (both OM-2s have film in), the second the FE2. Both were set to 1/250th of a second. The third and fourth pairs of firings show the wave form in Audacity.

un-ortho-dox

Partly out of curiosity, partly because 4x5 film is getting more expensive, I decided to experiment with some orthochromatic film. On an unrelated note, today is shorter than yesterday, reminding me that another year begins to wind down and time is getting shorter by the minute.

So what did I find? First, my safe light isn't as safe as I thought (too high a wattage bulb - but that's another story) so I fogged a fair amount of film.

Second, skys look funny, perhaps something to do with the polarization of the light in that the part you expect to be deepest blue is lightest (unless that's another artifact from fogging the film).

Third, the emulsion terribly delicate. Tray processing is really hard because the emulsion scratches so easily.

Fourth, the film is very thin which creates handling problems; for example, it buckles easily, and two sheets can easily get stuck together in the tank.    

Finally, the detail the film resolves is extraordinary. On the left is a 6 kdpi scan of the Tuff Shed plaque above the door in the image above.

The film does have some very unfamiliar characteristics, but at 20c a sheet, I can do quite a few experiments to gain some familiarity with how it behaves and what I might do with it.

For the record, I developed these in Xtol 1+4 for about 8 minutes. I didn't take the temperature but I imagine given an ambient of about 80F, that it was not far off this (~26C).

More Arista Testing

Two more test of Arista EDU 4x5 sheet film. I've loaded all my film holders with ISO 100 on one side and ISO 200 on the other. Since I got into the habit of exposing both sides of the holder as a matter of course, this is a simple way to test the films; or at least is would be if Arista notched their films differently. Since both emulsions are notched the same, you have to keep careful track of them in the trays and it's possible that I mixed them up along the way. So all of what follows may be back to front.

The 200 ASA film was thin and underdeveloped. It may need longer than my time/temp calculator is suggesting.

100 ASA, Xtol 1+1,  4:52 @ 25C

200 ASA. Xtol 1+1,  5:50 @ 25C

The 200 image has blown highlights, a narrower dynamic range and steeper curve in the middle than the 100. However, while there are things I like about both images, each can be replicated with with other.

200 ASA, Xtol 1+1,  4:52 @ 25C

100 ASA, Xtol 1+1,  4:52 @ 25C

Here I have tried to replicate 100 ASA image with the 200 ASA negative (left) and the 200 ASA image with the 100 ASA negative (right). Not perfect by any means, but fairly close.

The bottom line is that there is so much that can be done in GIMP (or similar) that the main thing is to  know what kind of image you want and worry less about the developer and the film. Although purists will say that you should get the negative right at exposure / developing (it's hard to argue with that), you aren't completely sunk if you don't. With the aid of scanners and computers, it is now very much easier to recover from a poorly exposed or improperly developed image that it used to be.

So I'm not much closer to choosing a 4x5 film. I'm sure some wag will say it depends what you want to capture and that one should match the emulsion to the subject, but I'm not that good (of fussy).

This morning I did a blind taste test of Peet's and Green Mountain coffees. Both were bold dark roast. I couldn't tell them apart.  I'm sure that some people with more evolved sense could but at the moment I'll take what come (in coffees and photographic emulsions).

Resiliance

About a month ago, I found about 20 4x5 slide holders. Since until last fall, I hadn't done any developing since 2006 and therefore not taken any 4x5s since then; these were old so I wasn't expecting much when I developed them.

The negatives were very dense, probably their age and terrible miss-treatment; they'd been in a box in the woodshed since 2006 which means freezing in the winter and really hot in the summer.  But the wonder of digital technology is that one can fairly easily capture all the available information a negative has to offer, however traditionally 'unprintable'. These would have needed something like grade 6 paper - if such a thing existed;  the film base was so dark that there was very little difference in opacity between the highlights and the shadows. They looked as though they had been accidentally exposed to light. However, if you tell the scanner's AD converter how to interpret even these terrible negatives, it will generate a nice smooth 256 interval scale between the shadows and the highlights, regardless of the negative's overall density.

Here's one that was taken in about 2002.

  
The developer is Xtol (or EcoPro), 1+1.

Three formats

Clips from the same scene in three formats; 12MP digital (the LX7), a 2,400dpi and a 1,800dpi scan both from the same RZ6x7  Arista 100 negative (significantly under-developed - the app is, or I am, doing something wrong) and a sheet of Arista 100 scanned at 1,200dpi from the SR45. The lenses were   Mamiya 50mm for the RZ67, a Schneider Super Angulon 90mm f8 for the large format. The LX7 was at 24mm equivalent.  

LX7

RZ67 @ 2400dpi

RZ67 @ 1,800dpi

SR45 @ 1200dpi

What I find slightly surprising is that the 1,200 dpi scan of the SR45 negative, which creates a file with fewer pixels than the higher res scan of the RZ67 neg, is more detailed. Further evidence comes from the files sizes. The high res RZ scan has 1.3 times as many pixels but generates a smaller file meaning that there are more regularities that the jpeg algorithm can compress.

	width	height	px (M)	file size (MB)
LX7	3776	2520	9.5	4.8
RZ67 @ 2,400	6280	4983	31.3	8.6
RZ67 @ 1,800	4710	3737	17.6	5.5
SR45 @ 1,200	5411	4300	23.3	9.1

(The saw cuts in the last image I find particularly satisfying). I also discovered that you can enter any scan resolution directly into the Epson dialog box; you don't have to use one of their presets in the drop-down. 1,800 dpi isn't one of the options, but the scanner did exactly what was asked when I put that resolution in... I should probably read the manual. 

Arista 100 and 200 4x5 tests

I ended up buying a 4x5 tank. It takes a huge amount of liquid (54 fluid oz) and can't be inverted since it isn't sealed at the top, but 12 negs processed individually in a tray would have taken a long time; that's still an option, but this is easier for 'bulk' runs.

Here are three crops from the same scene:

LX7

Arista EDU 200

Arista EDU 100

The first is digital - my LX7 (which produces very nice black and white jpegs right out of the box - nicer I think than my trusty LX3).













Next is a sheet of 4x5 Arista EDU 200. Since neither the Massive Development Chart not the Arista information sheet give any data for Xtol 1+1, I guessed at about 1.5x the time for stock Xtol. The negs are a bit thin so it may need a little longer (8 minutes at 21C). I also had to create a scan profile that opened the shadows considerably and flattened the mid tones).






Finally, Arista 100 in Xtol 1+1.

Not sure which I like best. The Arista 200 has quite acceptable grain which I think is consistent with what I found in the 120 roll experiments in January. It's also thinner which has opened up the low to mid tones (both negs were scanned with the same profile). But on balance, I think the Arista 100 wins the day. Here's the full scene:

.

4x5 x 10

Six months after getting back into processing my own film, I decided on the spur of the moment to make a couple of 4x5 negatives. The RZ67 seemed as light as a feather after putting up the Cambo SR45. (So a post that really isn't about RZ67 does mention it).

I had intended (and still may) buy a 4x5 tank, but thought I'd first do some in trays. I was about to order three small developing trays from Adorama when I wondered if there was anything around the house I could use. After considering some Safeway plastic mashed potato containers, I settled on Crystal Geyser gallon bottles, cut in half. These made remarkably good trays with ribs to help the chemicals circulate and a big spout to pour the chemicals back into bottles. So this (left) is my 4x5 developing kit - three halves of some one gallon bottles in a large tray that was once a print washer. And it worked like a charm I have to say. The first negs done in this setup and the first I've developed in 10 years, have no streaking or scratches. Impatience has some benefits.

After accidentally developing my last roll of 120 for 2 minutes less than I should have, I found that negatives, though thin, produced some quite pleasing results. So I developed one of my two 4x5 negatives for 9 minutes, the recommend time for Delta 100 in Xtol 1+1 @ 20C, and the other for 8 minutes.

These are the two images. On the left is the under-developed negative, on the right the one developed for the recommended time.


I haven't made up my mind whether I like the under-cooked image better. But It's something to experiment with.