After completing my "Between The Light" book I initially wanted to finish the project and concentrate on other series. But after a while this did feel right for me anymore. I had the desire to continue to work on the project, refine the series and re-work it into a slightly different direction. The new images I planned to create should show more of the unnoticed streets and houses, the well kept secrets, the less beautiful and more exciting places. Light would play a even more important role than before. So after a longer break I brought my Hasselblad on one of my latest visits to San Francisco for some more night time shooting. I concentrated on lower Russian Hill, North Beach, Chinatown and Marina.
Read MoreAnalog Portrait Workshop with Jesse Struyvelt
Supported and organized by MeinFilmLab Germany
Choosing a workshop is not easy. Many photographers and self acclaimed photo experts offer workshops these days and I suggest that most of these workshops are either ineffective, boring or aim at beginners. The most important aspect to look at when choosing a workshop is obviously the photographer who is conducting the workshop. This does not necesseraily mean it should be one of the big names, but it should be a person that has something valueable to tell. I don´t attend workshops often, but when I learned about the workshop conducted by Jesse Struyvelt happening during the Summer Festival of the MeinFilmLab, I was immediately hooked. No doubt I wanted to join.
Read MoreScanning Example - Castro Night Shot
After my video tutorial in the last post, I thought a short follow up post with a detailed example would be helpful. So, no video today, but some further explanations on how I scanned the photograph below. But just in case you have missed the video, I highly recommend going back and watch it. It will give you a good overview of all the tasks required during the scanning process.
Read MoreScanning Color Negative Film
I always wanted to write about scanning color negative film. Now I was finally able to put together this site with lots of useful information to get started with scanning color film. The main part of this section is the video tutorial that can be found below.
While positive film seems so much easier to scan, obviously you can see the positive image already, it seems some kind of mystery to scan print film. The first thing you hear is, that you cannot get accurate results due to the orange mask. The orange mask and the fact that the image is inverted are of course two complications we have to deal with, but these challenges are not as complicated as you might think. The biggest problem is that we need to accept the fact that there is no accurate or "correct" scan that we retrieve from the scanner. Even during darkroom printing all prints were interpretations. The old Ansel Adams quote about the score and the performance is also true for color film. Once you have accepted this, you are good to go!
Make you own scans, your own interpretations, give the scans your artistic voice. That is what makes home scanning so fascinating.
Read MoreBerlin
A perfect weekend in Berlin...
Strolling through the streets of Berlin, exploring hidden backyard and experiencing the spirit of this exciting city, has been a big pleasure. If you only have two nights, you need to choose wisely where to go. We decided to only do very little sight-seeing and visit other more typical places instead. This was more difficult than we thought as all the important monuments were so close to our hotel. Stepping outside the lobby we have been in the middle of everything. After some great cakes and wonderful coffee at Quchnia we felt ready to climb the stairs up the French Dome at the "Gendarmen Markt". Our reward was a mind blowing sunset over the terrific skyline of Berlin.
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Shadow detail comparison of an underexposed negative (left) and overexposed negative (right).
How Exposure affects scanning of color negative film
The way we expose film has a tremendous amount on the quality and mood of the final photograph. Of course exposure affects image brightness and contrast, but also quality and color.
Carmencita Film Lab and photographer Johnny Patience both did a wonderful exposure series to demonstrate the effect of under and overexposure to film. Please follow this link to check their series and read their recommendations. You can also find a good film guide from "Mein Film Lab" which explains a lot about the different characters of film. Unfortunately it is only available in German so far.
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McClures Beach - Point Reyes National Seashore
Impressions from a early morning at McClures Beach.
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Hasselblad 500cm - Kodak Portra 400 - Carmencita Film Lab
An ode to Imperfection
Imperfection
In the hunt for the best images we normally sort out all accidents and only keep the technically perfect images. Despite the slight blur, I liked the whole image so much, that I decided to keep this photograph.
I enjoy the mood, the location, the flying birds and the old sunken ship. I even enjoy the slight but lovely blur from an unsteady hand. This has become an iconic shot in the Point Reyes area. A different take...
Read MoreMuir Woods
Kilo Papa Hotel
KPH - Marconi Station
Point Reyes National Seashore
In those days before GPS navigation and satellite communication vessels around the globe relied on the services of "Marconi Wireless Corporation
Read MoreKodak Portra 400 - Fuji Frontier Scan by Carmencita Film Lab (Spain)
Scanner Banding
Scanner Banding or "how to deal with the staircase effect"
A simple hardware solution that helps avoiding a phenomena called “scanner banding” or staircase effect that often occurs when using a flatbed scanner such as an Epson V700/V750 for negative scanning.
Scanning has always been a love and hate relationship for me. As traditional color darkroom printing was never a good option for me, I soon started to send my rolls of film to a good lab and have them scan my negatives. The results have always been wonderful and exceeded my expectations by far. Unfortunately this set my goals very high and I never achieved similar results using my personal scanner at home. Of course my V700 cannot be compared to a film scanner or a high class Flexlight, Fuji Frontier or Noritsu scanner. Nevertheless, I worked on my scanning workflow to come a little closer to the scans from my lab.
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