Hacking Photography - one Picture at a time
Since I’ve started to develop Black & White film myself, I haven’t been experiencing much with developers and techniques but that’s changing today!
We are going to look at how a developer, dilution and developing time can affect the look of a negative. If you prefer to skip the reading and see me in action, check out the video below.
Today I want to share with you my thoughts on the Leica M and more generally the Rangefinder system. When I sold all my digital equipment to make a permanent switch to analog camera I went for a Rangefinder camera. The obvious choice for me was to buy a Leica M6 and a full set of lenses to cover a wide focal range.
I first bought the body then ordered at the same time all sort of lenses from different resellers. I had a good sum of money from my sales and was feeling like a kid in a candy shop! I bought 5 lenses going from 21mm up to 135mm thinking that I would never need to buy glass for the rest of my life… Of course that was wrong otherwise we wouldn’t be here today!
Scanning film is probably the least attractive part of shooting film but that doesn’t mean you should neglect this stage. Nowadays, we all want to share our analog images online and the only way to do that is by digitalising our negatives one way or another. If you want to get the most out of your negative, then you should choose your scanner carefully as it’s probably THE most important part of the chain after capturing the image.
Scanners can be as cheap as a dinner for 2 or as expensive as a car but today we’ll be looking at what is considered the mid-range film scanners. We want to avoid the low-range (under 100$) as they deliver poor quality scans which will have to be rescanned at some point. We will also avoid the high-range simply because we can’t afford it (yet!). The mid-range is ideal for sharing your images online, medium sized prints and archiving.
We all have seen some very encouraging news recently coming from major film companies bringing back or releasing new film stocks. Some promising accessories, like the “Lab-Box Film Tank”, have also emerged and it seems that nothing can stop the return of film at the front stage.
The present and near future seem very promising for film photographers and you can read everywhere that film is back…but aren’t we celebrating a bit too fast? I recently had an interesting talk with Juho Leppänen who’s behind cameraventures.com about the future of analog photography and its whereabouts in the next 15 years.
There are as many techniques to develop black & white film than there are photographers.
Today I’m going to show how I develop most of my B&W films. That doesn’t mean that’s the right way to do it and that you should follow my instructions word for word. This is just what works for me until now.
Today we are cooking film!
For those of you who’ve never heard of Film Soup before, don’t worry, it has nothing to do with the soup from your childhood nightmares! It’s basically a technique were you voluntary damage a film with all sorts of chemicals like detergent, alcohol or whatever you want before developing it.
I finally did it! After sitting in my fridge for a few months, I managed to developed myself a roll of CineStill 800 pushed to 3200 ISO and the results look great!
It was intimidating at first but I was being overly dramatic, it’s actually pretty easy to develop pushed C-41 film at home.
It’s Saint Patrick’s Day, you ran out of B&W developer, all stores are closed down and the only thing you can find is beer.
Nothing worse could happen but don’t worry we have THE solution to develop your roll of film.
I’m sure you’ve already guessed it! Yes, we are going to use beer as developer and not any beer. I’m talking about the most emblematic in Ireland: GUINNESS!
Among vodka, caviar and other wonderful creations of nature, Russia has also a lot to offer to photographers in the chase of extreme sensations!
At the time of Soviet Union, there were a lot of cameras manufactured there. LOMO, which stands for Leningradskoïe Optiko-Mekhanitcheskoïe Obiedinienie (don’t ask me to pronounce it!) was probably one of the most prolific and is still renowned nowadays.
If you want sharp black and white images with fine grain, then you are on the right page my friend!
I’m a bit of a freak in terms of image quality and I love very detailed photos. That’s why I’ve been searching for a good combination of film and developer to obtain the best results. The technique I’m about to share is not for every situation and ideally, you will need either a decent amount of light or a tripod.
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