Californian Summer

December 31, 2016

A little summer inspiration with this very short travel essay. All taken on film...

Yasshica Electro 35GT / Kodak Ektar 100 / scanned & processed by MeinFilmLab

**Hasselblad 500cm - Ilford FP4 PLUS - developed by viertelvor8 lab in Berlin - 4 minutes exposure at f/8**

Making a digital black & white master print from an analog negative (Part I)

January 25, 2016

From a negative to a black & white "Master-Print-File"

Black and White printing has always been a mastery that requires many years of learning, knowledge and dedication. Nothing will ever compete with a carefully printed black and white print. However acquiring these skills, maintaining a darkroom and finding the time to print regularly exceeds the possibilities of most people. Digital made things easier, but still it can be regarded a mastery to skillfully make a digital master print file from an analog negative. This tutorial will show you in detail how to scan black and white medium format negatives and than process them in Adobe Lightroom like the old masters did it in the darkroom.

Pierce Point Ranch

October 21, 2015

The era of the great Point Reyes dairies opened in 1857. Here are images from the Pierce Point Ranch which is under National Park Service management, which is dedicated to the preservation of the Park´s cultural heritage.

Shadow detail comparison of an underexposed negative (left) and overexposed negative (right).

How Exposure affects scanning of color negative film

October 15, 2015

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.

Hasselblad 500cm - Kodak Portra 400 - Carmencita Film Lab

An ode to Imperfection

October 1, 2015

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...