The Caffenol Cookbook

Caffenol, in all its variants, has no doubt became a venerable contemporary film developer. Not only because it uses only widely available, non-toxic components, but also because it gives good results with many BW films. So it's no surprise so many analog photographers adopted caffenol (in one or a few variants) as their developer of choice. By the end of last year, 8 photographers issued a  fantastic (albeit only online) Caffenol Cookbook Bible. It's not only a collection of developer recipes, there's also a brief portfolio from each of those photographers. Among them, there's also Martina Woll, who has been featured on TAP some months ago. Enjoy the Cookbook!

PhotoKlassik: a new Analog Magazine on the Block!

Thomas Maschke (the editor) kindly asked me to post the notification about their new analog photo magazine, namely PhotoKlassik, on our site. How could I ever refuse such a proposal! PhotoKlassik, for now, comes only in printed form, and in German language. Anyway, those of you dear Readers who speak German (and there are so many German visitors on our blog, at least 30%) can be glad to have another quality publication in our realm. For the others, we can just hope an English version will follow soon. And maybe also a web version (or at least the excerpts). I just wish to the PhotoKlassik team to keep the good work going on!

Let the Drum Scanner be the Judge of Your Shots!

It's been quite a while since we've been posting anything here. But I thought that would well be worth to post, to demistify certain misconceptions about the "high" resolution of contemporary consumer (or even prosumer) scanners. Fact is, our featured (and excellent, too) photographer, Margus has been in the "drum scanner business" (so to speak) for quite a while. And he's got enough guts to take the bumpy (and expensive) road to restore a drum scanner back in working order. Bravo!

Anyway, I dared to post a couple of photos (retrieved from his photostream). These pics very explicitely show the obvious superiority of a drum scanner, even though with such a "low" (nominal) resolution of 3000 ppi and the "modest" Dmax of 3.6. 

 

 

Copyright Margus Sootla. Retrieved from Flickr.

Copyright Margus Sootla. Retrieved from Flickr.

Now, a question arises very naturally: if drum scanners would be more common (=affordable to use) in the past years, how many more photographers would stick with film (or at least for a much longer time)???

Margus, my very compliments for the excellent scanner restoration job!

Mitja

Monday Column which is Not a Column, It's about the Schedule

Many many times in a lifetime things just get complicated and/or overcrowded. Looks like that the very same situation happened to the blog's authors as well (albeit to each one due to different circumstances, but personal issues anyway). It thus became to us (Matjaž and me) a bit difficult to keep the blog running in the same manner as we have been for a few months so far. No, we are not shutting down the blog, only the posts will be updated somewhat less regularly as they have been so far. We hope you understand. But we also want to thank all of you who have participated so far-it was really a refreshing experience!

Oh, about the new scanner I got more than a week ago: yesterday I finally unboxed the whole thing...and tested a few mounted slides, but without playing aruound with the adjustments (in the scanner software). Below, there is a scan from a Kodak Elite slide (not Extra Color) made at 3000 dpi, slightly sharpened with unsharp mask (and reduced red saturation) in Gimp. Clearly, there is a lot of room for improvement in the scanning approach with this Plustek. Reportedly, the scanner does its best when scanning at the maximum 7200 dpi, then resizing down to 3200-3600 dpi. Trouble is, if you own a 5-year old computer like mine, it's just too slow to do the job done in a reasonable amount of time. So for now, I am just bound to use that scanner at some low to mid point of its performance- until I get a new PC.....yes, this IS consumerism!

Cottage Tip: Building a small exposure meter-Part III

When I finally got a working panel voltmeter (measuring range 200 mV) I got an unpleasant surprise; it needs a separate supply, other than the circuit, but it wasn't specified in the catalog I bought from. There are also voltmeters able to share the same power supply with the rest of the circuit (the so-called common-ground type), but unluckily not this one. So I needed first to make somehow a split power supply with the same battery for both the sensor circuit and the voltmeter, with the available resources. So I redesigned the circuit a bit. The aim is to keep both voltages (for the meter and the sensor) as »far away« as possible from each other, preventing to get faulty readings. Below, see the circuit schematics.

 After that, I needed to do a quick test to such a circuit on the breadboard. I also needed to do a short-circuit on one contact pair on the voltmeter, in orderto get into the 200 mV range (following the instructions). Oddly, there was already one short-circuit present (factory-made). These »shorts« also set the decimal point. So two decimal points are now present. Nothing dramatic, only funny somehow (note in the photo).

 

As the weather wasn't really appropriate (for several days) to fully test the meter outside and in sunny conditions, I relied on my instinct so I soldered the final circuit on the prototype board.

 

I then made the apertures on the enclosure for the display, the sensor and the activating switch. The battery holder is just an ordinary AAA battery holder shortened by about 15 mm and glued together (the batteries A23 and AAA are of the same width).

 

the battery holder

Finally, I put everything inside the enclosure: switch, panel meter, sensor, circuit and battery-using solder and glue. As it seems, it works nicely! Now, a necessary addition should be to mount (below the panel meter) also an exposure calculator wheel to be able to set the exposure settings. But I first need to buy some plastic printable film to do that.

The inside of the exposure meter

The finished "product"

 Should the precision of the meter be a bit off, I will still need to change the Zener diode in charge to power the panel meter, i.e. using one with a bit lower voltage-just enough to ensure the meter to work, by changing the existing diode in the circuit with another one.

Portfolio of the Week: Kit Yip

Dear Readers,
This week we moved quite a bit east, to Hong Kong and it's my pleasure to introduce Kit Yip and her featured work. She started her photographic journey in 2006. She states that her photos are are mostly inspired by light and shadow, as well as character and mood. But I would add the she is also a master of bokeh (check the photos, what a subtlety!). When chance occurs, she promptly joins to collaborate with other artists and models, since it's always a good learning experience one can draw from such a circumstance. She describes herself as wanderer in her spare time, being that very wandering in the streets her major source of inspiration. As for the films and cameras used; she uses a really wide range of films and cameras. However, her mostly used cameras are a Leica M and a Hasselblad, being always carried around. Nice choice, Kit! You can get a grasp of Kit's work on Flickr and her Facebook page. Enjoy!

Mitja

 

 All photos copyright: Kit Yip

Monday Column: Is Analogue Photographer not Hooked by Consumerism?

We all live in consumer capitalism, where big (and small) corporation by ads make our needs. As photographers we are targeted by the corporation which produces all sorts of photographic equipment. The pace of new products is higher and higher every year, but in the photographic markets with digitalisation is this trend even higher. Corporations make our needs of photographic equipment, by minor tweaks of existing stuff and advertising them as revolutionary change that you must have and that it would change our picture making from amateur to professional. When we fell for it (and we all in some sort of another do), then we are hooked by self propelling chain of consumer hell. Did your pictures, with your brand new revolutionary camera, look the same as they did with your old camera? Then you need the super new lens(es). Still not happy? Maybe you can improve them with new tripod, or some other accessory! Wait, your computer can not process the huge amount the new huge raw files of your brand new camera? Maybe is there an answer on the computer market for this (think fruit), you can get also a new version of your favorite software for editing your picture. And then you need the new printer to print bigger prints. Are still not happy with your pictures? Maybe the next year new revolutionary camera with missing features will improve your work! You get the point.

So, we get stockpiling “old” unused still capable equipment on our shelves, worthless for the used market in the case of the “old” used digital cameras. But what about analogue photographers? There are no new revolutionary products every year. The old cameras are those who are more interesting. We don’t leave them to collect dust; we repair them, lubricate and take them on photographic trips time to time. Just the right thing to get off the hook of modern consumer world... But if you need the new revolutionary scanner, you are on again!

Matjaž