low light photography

Kodak New Portra 400 Review Part 3a: 3200!

by EveNSteve

The last vote… each of these 400 speed films at 3200! The only light in the room is the 40 watt compact florescent in the lamp behind Eve… talk about crappy light!

All negatives were scanned on an Imacon Scanner as a 3F linear file with no sharpening… essentially a RAW scan.

All images were processed exactly the same in Photoshop. All images were captured with my Nikon FM3a and a 50mm f1.2 AI lens… in this case at F 1.2… bit slow on the shutter speed… hand held. Both files were made so the film edge would read black.

Tell every photographer you know to vote on this as the results will be very informative for our Figital community and will be covered in my fourth and final post on this review on Novemember 23, 2010… vote now!!

Vote Now!!!!

Tapestry, Vatican Museum, Italy. 2009

by EveNSteve

Here is another example from my recent photographic trip to Italy where I had to work through a difficult situation with many restrictions but in the end was rewarded with an image I really like. The artwork was made in the Vatican Museum which is really beautiful and amazing, but as you can imagine very strict with rules about what and how you can photograph. This image is an overlapping frame panoramic (3 frames, in camera) of two different tapestries… I visualized my final image and selectively chose different elements from  two different tapestries to create a new tapestry of my own.

tapestriesvatican_triple_schaub_2009

Tapestry, Vatican Museum, Italy. 2009
Triple Overlapping Frame Panoramic Technique
Capture: Olympus XA 4, Kodak Ektar 100
Image Size: 9.5″ x 25″, Printed on Fabriano Rough 640 GSM
Edition Size: One.
Copyright Stephen Schaub 2009

NOTE: Stay tuned for my next two articles on REDSCALE film and thoughts on the Black Cat Extended Exposure Guide.
Viva la Revolution- Stephen

The New Kodak TMAX 400 (TMY-2) – Pushed to 1600, Processed in XTOL!

by EveNSteve

New Tmax 400 Box

As promised here is a sample image (my wife Eve Ogden Schaub of Life=Art) in Puerto Rico pushing the new TMY-2 (Tmax 400) to an E.I. of 1600 and processed in Xtol Straight using Kodak’s suggested time/ temp . The light was very, very low as even at an E.I. of 1600 my exposure was still 1/8 at F1.4 (hand-held.) The image was made with a Leica M7 with a 50mm Summilux.

So what are my thoughts????

EveFull_1600EveDetail_1_1600EveDetail_2_1600

Please note: click on the thumbnails for a larger view.

1. Of course there is more grain than the 400 speed test I posted a few days ago (click here) but not a lot considering this is a 2 stop push! It is not as crisp and lacks some fine image detail as the other test image had due to the increased grain and I am sure the slow shutter speed and the f1.4 working f stop ( I do the best I can, but on 10 shots of espresso a day what do you expect?)

2. Good shadow detail and the highlights still have nice separation especially considering the light source.

3. Easy to scan- no problems with excessive contrast or anything…the scan was as easy as my last test scan. (Scanned on an Imacon Scanner at 3200 dpi, 16 Bit, wet mount, no sharpening.)

So what does this mean??? Where do we (I) go from here?

Well I for one will shoot this film as my NEW primary film at box speed (400) – but it is nice to know that in a pinch I can push this film to meet my needs no matter what they are… I am going to continue my exploration of different developers (stay tuned!!) for this film, but for now- Xtol works fine. Once again in my opinion – Kudos to Kodak! (It’s been a long while since I’ve been able to say that twice in one week!)

Image Copyright Stephen M. Schaub 2008