StarDestroyer.Net BBS

A photo of my dream camera taken with a Leica Summilux 50mm/f1.4 on the Panasonic GF1 which one of the RF dudes in Singapore graciously lent me to play with.



Someone lent me his Canon 50mm/f0.95. Bokeh is butter and simply melts with this little depth of field.



Some other photos taken on the Voigtlander 35mm/f1.2

The unimog was moving in that one!

"It's too Cold".

Some performance art, the result of a little over a year of training. A bit of a fuck up on my part near the start, but we'd only had two weeks to learn the routine (along with various others).

Fun with night time photography and jury rigged lighting

My tribute to Aliens. Enjoy!

Taken with the Voigtlander 25mm/f0.95 on the Panasonic GF1






More here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/86833683@N ... 217393193/

FANTASTic shot Rye!

The doggy looks cranky... Which part of Maryland or Virginia is this?

Harpers Ferry

Phantasee wrote:Well, of course it is. You go, and then you remember how much you hate bugs and cold and exposure to the elements and oh shit you're missing Lost!

So you never go again. But you take plenty of pictures so everyone knows you're "into the outdoors" and shit.

Finally made the leap into Rangefinder Photography with this guy:

Some pics taken on the GF1 with the Voigtlander 25mm/f0.95

From a local fitness show...





Taken with a Canon 50mm 1.8 II on my Canon EOS 1000D.

You can see more at my photo set.

g1 - GOOD pics!

Sunrise & some Dissection:

Sunrise at 06:20 AM (Taken on my way to class)

IMG_0006 by Dan Ofer, on Flickr.

Undeveloped Bee (no functional stinger or wings - note the white rear):

IMG_0011 by Dan Ofer, on Flickr


IMG_0001 by Dan Ofer, on Flickr
Morning.

Starting the dissection:

IMG_0031 by Dan Ofer, on Flickr
(Balancing pins, wings, legs, scissors and pliers is tricky, even when you're chopping off extraneous limbs!)
Locusta Migratoria (The wandering Locust).

g1 - GOOD pics!

Sunrise & some Dissection:

Sunrise at 06:20 AM (Taken on my way to class)

IMG_0006 by Dan Ofer, on Flickr.

Undeveloped Bee (no functional stinger or wings - note the white rear):

IMG_0011 by Dan Ofer, on Flickr


IMG_0001 by Dan Ofer, on Flickr
Morning.

Starting the dissection:

IMG_0031 by Dan Ofer, on Flickr
(Balancing pins, wings, legs, scissors and pliers is tricky, even when you're chopping off extraneous limbs!)
Locusta Migratoria (The wandering Locust).

If there's one thing I must say about Afga Vista film, is that the colors certainly give an interesting vintage look. Of course, resolution is rather low with this film.

Again, taken with the CV 35mm/f1.2. And yes, there's dust, despite my best attempts to get rid of them.

These are some of my better shots, and I have found out the hard way that color film is a royal pain in the butt the expose properly in low light conditions.

Fingolfin_Noldor wrote:If there's one thing I must say about Afga Vista film, is that the colors certainly give an interesting vintage look. Of course, resolution is rather low with this film.

Which ISO version of the film are you using? Going by the manufacturer's tech sheets as well as this chart, Vista 100 should have pretty good resolution. The higher speed versions aren't as sharp but they're still up there compared to other films of the same speed.

Fingolfin_Noldor wrote:These are some of my better shots, and I have found out the hard way that color film is a royal pain in the butt the expose properly in low light conditions.

The thing to remember about negative film is it's the opposite of digital & slide film, you can overexpose it by quite a lot without blowing out the highlights. When in doubt, overexpose it so you can capture the shadow details. This page has examples of how much you can vary the exposures while still getting decent results.

aerius wrote:Which ISO version of the film are you using? Going by the manufacturer's tech sheets as well as this chart, Vista 100 should have pretty good resolution. The higher speed versions aren't as sharp but they're still up there compared to other films of the same speed.

I think either Vista 200 or Vista 400. I suspect the latter. That might explain a bit.

The thing to remember about negative film is it's the opposite of digital & slide film, you can overexpose it by quite a lot without blowing out the highlights. When in doubt, overexpose it so you can capture the shadow details. This page has examples of how much you can vary the exposures while still getting decent results.

I had some bad experiences to some extent with Vista 400 at night. But let me rescan the whole lot because the lab that did the scanning did a horrible job at it. *mutters*

aerius wrote:

Fingolfin_Noldor wrote:If there's one thing I must say about Afga Vista film, is that the colors certainly give an interesting vintage look. Of course, resolution is rather low with this film.

Which ISO version of the film are you using? Going by the manufacturer's tech sheets as well as this chart, Vista 100 should have pretty good resolution. The higher speed versions aren't as sharp but they're still up there compared to other films of the same speed.

1. AgfaPhoto Vista 200 and 400 films sold in stores now are actually Fujifilm Superia. The AgfaPhoto factory in Leverkusen closed down in 2006 and the stocks of real Agfa Vista film ran out already in 2009 in most places. The only "real" Agfa films available now are Precisa CT 100 slide film and APX 100 & 400 B&W in some places, although the B&W films have been mostly sold out as well, and the availability of the Precisa slide films was always spotty outside of Europe. So anyways, if your film was bought in 2010, there is a good chance it is Superia, which is an okay film, but I thought you should know this. What do the film edge markings say?

2. You are using a Canoscan 9000F scanner, so low resolution is the order of the day. The true optical resolution of the 8600F/8800F/9000F series scanners is only 1800-2000 ppi, which means that you will only get about 5 MP worth of information at best, and actually less than that due to interesting scanning phenomena like grain aliasing. If it's any consolation, there is actually a Finnish photography magazine that compared images scanned with the Canoscan 8800F from 645 MF film with DSLR images and declared that MF film can't compete even with 12 MP DSLRs in resolution. That made my eyes rolling so bad it still hurts

Oh, lab scans. Any lab that uses flatbed CanoScans is BS. Epson V700 is the absolute minimum quality I would accept. Most good labs actually used minilab accessory scanners like Fujifilm SP-3000, which is pretty good. Real pro scans are usually more expensive, though, because they are slower and more labor intensive to do; there is no way to fully automate work flow with a Nikon 9000 or Flextight, let alone drum scanners.

I contemplated getting the Epson V700, but it's out of my budget and I won't invest in something like that for now.

According to the shop I got the Afga APX film from, a German company took it up and is producing them.

Incidentally, he does have a stock of Precisa which I will try eventually, once I work out the kinks of exposure.

Anyhow, some APX 100 shots:

Fingolfin_Noldor wrote:I contemplated getting the Epson V700, but it's out of my budget and I won't invest in something like that for now.

According to the shop I got the Afga APX film from, a German company took it up and is producing them.

Incidentally, he does have a stock of Precisa which I will try eventually, once I work out the kinks of exposure.

The CanoScans are okay for net size viewing, but if you want prints bigger than 15x23 cm, you're going to need something better.

About APX: yeah, but they won't be using the Agfaphoto name, so if it says Agfa or AgfaPhoto, it's still from the old stocks of film coated before 2007.

About Precisa: the Precisa is fairly forgiving for a slide film, so if your camera meter is calibrated correctly, I would just use that without worrying too much, but as usual with slide film you want to apply negative exposure compensation for very contrasty scenes to avoid blow out highlights. Bracketing is also a good idea. Basically you can treat is similarly to small sensor digital compacts, although it is good to remember that it actually has less dynamic range in the shadows, so getting blocked (completely black) shadows is easier if you apply too much negative exp. compensation. The nice thing about slide film is that black areas really are black without any grain, unlike with digital or color negative film, which can be used to an advantage. Unfortunately scanning will introduce a little noise.