photography

3 Emulsions: Part 1

Kodak UltraMax400

Since Fuji Superia400X has been discontinued 😦 I’m trying out a couple different ISO400 C-41 film stocks. The political economy of film photography is… well… weird RN… and film pricing is responding to inflation, fashion, private equity capital flows and the market distortions caused by Kodaks 2012 bankruptcy that are still rattling around the global economy. I don’t really obsess about which color film I use. My target is an under $10/36exposure roll of ISO400 C-41 process film for everyday work. When I find one that works for me I buy a brick, stash it in the freezer and use it till it’s gone.

One thing I liked about Superia was it did this when you overexposed it 1 stop… You got increased saturation, contrast and a bump in shadow detail without blowing out highlights. It also shifted a bit warmer without getting weird.:

So I bought some current production film and shot some test rolls: Kodak UltraMax400, the new Fuji400, and Wolfen NC400, to see how they respond to the light. I bracketed 3 exposures of each scene: box speed , 1 stop under, and 1 stop over. Developed normally – not pushed or pulled – we get normal, under, and over exposed images.

For consistency I used the same camera and lens (Nikon F6 w/Nikkor 28-105 f/3.5-5.6), and the cameras internal matrix metering mode with no filters or fill flash. All 3 rolls were processed and scanned by Indie Photo here in Philly.

The light in many of these shots pushes at the limit of the films dynamic range that could be controlled through lots of traditional techniques, but the whole point of this experiment was to test those limits. Here’s the results for Kodak UltraMax400:

My biggest takeaway is that this film stock is consistent with other Kodak consumer films I’ve used. It’s a bit ‘hard’ and not quite as forgiving as the old Fuji SuperiaX or Kodak Portra. Over exposed we do get increased saturation but with less latitude, more contrast, and the highlights tend to blow out. Looking at the sunset we got a dramatic color shift that wasn’t correctable. It also doesn’t like being underexposed, we get a magenta shift in the shadows. Nothing that can’t be handled with more careful and intentional exposures (or some tweaking in Lightroom). It has its strengths – and its weaknesses are all manageable, but I won’t be shooting this emulsion at ISO200 on a routine basis.

Kodak DDX 200

Every once in a while I get suckered into trying out a new – or at least new to me – film stock. Pulled in with the promise of ‘unleashing my full creative potential’ or interrogating a new ‘look’. Afterwards I always feel a little used lol. I’m thinking that part of the appeal is people looking for in camera effects or a ‘signature look’, a film that renders like its been through an IG filter (looking at you Pheonix200 lolz). Which is an interesting exercise but IMO always ends up being limited by the character of the emulsion. If I want a ‘filmic’ image I’ll just shoot with my Fuji digital.

So I bought 2 rolls of Kodak DDX, a re-rolled monochrome cinema film that seems to have been around for a while. I shot one roll at box speed (200) and the other at 400. Developed both in Rodinal 1+60. Maybe not the best choice but that’s what I had on my shelf atm and I was impatient… I mixed the chems with the box speed in mind, but then looking at the massive dev chart there were no times given for DDX @400 for the 1+60 dilution, hmmmmm…. So since I had the chems mixed I just guesstimated and approximately doubled the development time given for 200 for the roll exposed at 400, a stop is a stop is a stop, right?

Weirdly, the roll shot at 200 turned out underdeveloped while the one shot at 400 was pretty much perfect. Maybe that was user error ¯_(ツ)_/¯ Maybe it was my 12 year old half empty bottle of Rodinal finally giving up, but it was a surprise as I was mentally prepared for the pushed roll to go sideways since I was playing fast and loose with dev times. Other than that the DDX was pretty well behaved with pretty wide latitude. I’m thinking a nice people and pets film and maybe landscapes/cityscapes. I can see the appeal, it is a very pretty emulsion and It does scan very well, but it’s too clean for me.

So a pretty, fine grained, easy scanning, black and white film, just watch your dev times. But I’m going back to the basic grittier – and cheaper – TriX and HP5 (or FP4 if I want something slower) – which seems to be what I always do after trying something new….

Street work with Cinestill400

Some sample frames from work in progress. Shot 2 rolls of 35mm Cinestill400, a motion picture film that’s been repurposed and marketed for still photography and standard C41 lab chemistry. Found a few light leaks, some interesting color shifts and contrast effects but nothing that would make me use it instead of a more traditional emulsion unless that’s all we’ve got after the zombie apocalypse 🙂

Nikon F100 35mm SLR with various lenses

Ink and paper

3-11-23: Been spending some time printing photos to hang. It’s been refreshing to work with paper again after so much screen time these past couple years. I’ve made all the prints with a ‘hybrid’ process: film capture and development in C-41 chemistry by a local lab, then scanned and digitized, with basic ‘darkroom’ work done on the computer in adobe lightroom, then inkjet printed on archival paper. Here’s a teaser of 2 of the pieces from the show that should be up Monday or Tuesday next week 🙂 If you’re in Philly in March, drop by Higher Grounds cafe at 631 N 3rd (3rd and Fairmount) and take a looksie.

Bridesburg Rail Siding Image Capture: Nikon F5 35mm SLR w/35mm f/2 lens Kodak ProImage100 Exposure 1/80sec f/5.6 ISO 100 Developed and digitized by Indie Photo Lab. Copyright 2023 Justin Harrison

A Bakers Dozen…

Best Laid Plans….

I started out giving myself a project of picking my 12 favorite shots from 2017 because…. well its that time of year… Anyway, that quickly got out of hand, so I gave up on that and changed the self assignment to pick 12 shots from 2017 that I like but hadn’t posted. That morphed into putting together a cross section of shots from 2017 that represented some experiments, diverse content, cameras and medium (35mm and Medium Format film, and digital). 12 grew to 13… Cuz I wanted the Meek Mill pic in there… So here it is.

Cameras Used: Nikon D300 (Digital), Nikon F100, Nikon FE2, Zorki 4, Yashica D

Films Used: TriX, Kodak Portra 400, HP5, Fomopan100

NE Philly Winter Sunset

Butler and Aramingo – looking south from the Lowes parking lot

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The area around Castor and Armingo Ave – a neighborhood no man’s land between Port Richmond, Bridesburg, Kensington, Frankford, and Tacony – is an old industrial corridor whose mixed fortunes have followed the rise and fall of Philly’s manufacturing economy. Today big box stores, strip malls, vacant lots, light industry, rail lines, and abandoned factories coexist with working class rowhouse blocks and a new ‘luxury townhouse’ development. 

Shot on Kodak Portra 400 – Developed and scanned by local lab

Nikon F100 28-105 f3.5-4.5 AF-D Lens (75mm 1/320 sec @ f/ 5.6) 

 

 

Come To The Promised Land

Took some time this summer to go camping at Promised Land State Park in north east Pa. This part of the world has seen more than one boom come and go. The timber was clear cut in the 19th century ( the forests we see today are second and third growth), the coal and steel are gone and with them the railways. Once industry had extracted all the profits from the ground, the land was turned over to the state and the ‘taxpayers’ (that’s us) for ‘rehabilitation’.

For a hot moment there was money to made here as a mountain resort town but those glory days are long gone. Now we are left with the lake and hiking trails, the WPA built dams and campground, struggling working class communities getting squeezed by  New York City developers…. and a lot of empty space.

 

Color pics Nikon D300. Black and white images Nikon FE2 on Kodak TriX and Ilford HP5 film – developed and scanned by hand. Minimal processing in Adobe LightRoom.

Lenses used: Nikon 24mm f/2.8 AF-D, 50mm f/1.4 AF-D, 50mm f/1.4 AIS, 105mm f/2.5