Richard Vanek - Black and White Photography

Dirk, send me some Konica 100Pan film for trying out. I put it in camera right a way and shoot half of it today morning at my way to work. Still more thinking about exposure with spotmeter tahn about composition. I hope it will end soon.
I realize that spot meter is usefull only in certain situations otherwise it just stoping me from taking picture and I am loosing moments.

Day is almost over and I am printing last two prints. I am kind of tired. I prepared quite a few prints for visiting Caroline Schroeder tomorrow. I am really looking forward to see her again and meet her husband. I extremely like her lecture on photo academy last year.

I had discussion with Daniel today about preparing prints for print. He saw me some of his work in steps and I am starting to get idea how he is working on picture. It is something I really need to improve. He was so kind he took on of my scans and is trying to work on it to get it in a shape he likes. I am really wondering how the result will be looking.
Based on our discussion I finally install wacom tablet I have bought few month ago. Unfortunately in my Picture Window Pro there is no support for pressure recognition from wacom tablet pen. But anyhow using pen is much more natural for small update on image.

It was a great day today. I brought my photographs and bunch of contact sheet to Caroline Schroeder. I really value her opinion and she was great help to me before and today as well. We went through pictures and than through contacts. She was asking me a lot of questions and giving me her opinion. All those pictures are ment to be for my Childhood project.
I was a bit lost in this subject in past two month, didn't know where to go and how to approach it. Even I have head full of ideas somehow I was stagnating. I know what was missing! Discussion and opinion of somebody who I know is making photographs the way I like it. And that happened today. I have now clear view and know what to do and how. It feels great.

On the way I stopped to take a look at one Leica M6 wit 50mm Summicron for a quite nice price. The person is working in small but great photo shop. It is one of those real photo shop. The one of those which are full of cameras, bags and photo equipments. Small but you can look around for hours. Not like those these days camera shops where you have twelve digital cameras and seventeen types of batteries - feels like electro shop and not camera shop.
But anyway I was there and I hold M6 in my hand and man it feels good. Really much better that the one I had borrowed half year ago for four hours. This one was used, yes you can see it on the lens and on body as well. But it felt very compact nice in hand and works very smoothly. It is just still bloody expensive.

In a hot sunny days there was so much to do. Bright Sun was shining to our eyes and smells of grass was everywhere. Morning when day was young we were playing in old wooden house. Hiding between strange old machines. I really liked a this hiding game. You were so small and you had a feeling that if you do not see anybody your are also not seen by anybody. And when you realize it is not true you start running as fast ask you can to escape...

After yesterday's discussions I was full of energy today to take a pictures. When we went with kids to some nice big playground with animals and other nice things, I told myself, this is it, now. And I shoot quite a lot (six rolls) as was advice by Caroline. Two of them are already developed and maybe I do next two later night today. But probably not I am quite tired and I still have to do some things. Anyway I was trying to forget about being photographer, forget about camera and just look at word as child. So I was playing with them and taking pictures, a lot of pictures. Funny was that after few minutes they (and me as well) complete forget about camera and just focus on game. I had difficulty to change a roll in camera so much I was in a game.
I am wondering what kind of results I will see. It was interesting experience!

I noticed that visitors are not looking inside my web site to see what is new, so I have made little changes on a top page and gallery page. On top page you can see now modification times for every menu item. And on gallery page small thumbs show last image for each gallery.
I hope it will help to see what was change and will attract people attention to look further.

There is a multiple reasons why I wasn't much active in last week on this web site. One of them is that I was every evening developing all rolls from Sunday and printing small preview prints after discussion with Carolien Schroeder.
And I had again the problem with scanner. I isolate a problem wrote fifth letter to the author of vuescan. Well after three days of no answer from him I decide to try some solutions myself. I tried a lot of things but at the end:
Today I have reinstalled system. I am back to windows 2000 in hope it will work as good as it was before I unreasonable decided to go to WinXP. So far so good, basic system is up and running. Now let's make image and than install all the software. Than I will see if scanner is working right.

Yesterday I was almost there. I mean to have whole system again up and running. Something went wrong ( I wouldn't go to details) and I had to install all over. I was awake until 3 o'clock morning and I am on the same position as yesterday.
I also have already two rolls of Konica Pan 100 exposed but waiting for quick wash liquid to arrive and my scanner to start working again. I hope, I soon will have it working like few month ago smoothly and fast. I have a lot of scanning and printing to do.

It was bit strange today morning. After being awake until 3 o'clock I was little off at the morning. On my usual way on bicycle which runs next to small local road, suddenly, when motorbike was driving unusually fast, I had thought: 'What if he crash now into some car, will I take a first camera out or call 112?'. Nothing happened, of course, but anyway, I was little surprised from where such a though came out.

It is late night (01:00) and my system is again nicely running. I am quite happy after four days of reinstalling, my scanner is again working nice. I didn't find actually what was the problem but after installing SP1 for WinXP it is OK. I made backup off base installation and I am almost done with installing all my software again.
So tired, but glad that it is again working I go to get some sleep. Good night.

You not going to believe it, but I am still dealing with this computer - scan problem. After I installed all software I need, scanner stop working again. So I load last known image and started again. Step by step but this time really after each software installation I was checking if the scanner still works. I am not finished with that one yet. Some other things come in like flying BBQ this afternoon.

Dave woudn't believe it and if it he would he will smile (I hope) in his mind. I have got Konica Hexar silent mode camera :-) Now I used all the money from sale of my Voigtlander Bessa-R2. Yesterday afternoon we had some small party and I shot test roll with this nice silent camera. People has no idea when actually I took a picture. Today at work I already did few shots nobody notice. I really like this. I will not use this camera as replacement of my OM gear but I am planning to use it when taking pictures could be disturbing.

This become probably very annoying for you and for me as well, my problem with computer. I hate when tools are not working! My scanner has its own life and sometimes it works and sometimes not. I should have soon get adaptec scsi card and than I hope it will work better. I hope that whole problem is in supporting or better say nonsupporting my scanner's SCSI card in windows world.
I will start developing some films again. But I have so many to scan and so little time! Every day same complains, hm so let's just stop it and do it. I will try to scan my films on empty system with no additional software and see if it is working. Than I will load all soft. At least I will be able to print and will have some new rolls scanned. until new SCSI card arrive I can do some work.

Yesterday it was a good temperature, humidity and possible air pressure so my scanner was working with old SCSI card like never before. I scanned four rolls without any glitch. Great, so soon there will be some new photos and I can go back to develop rest. Somewhere in next 10 days I'll receive adaptec SCSI card and than my problems with scanner should be over for ever.

I have received Adaptec SCSI card today. I put it in the computer but unfortunately it doesn't change anything on reliability of my scanner. I have no idea what is wrong here. Possibly my double CPU machine has to do something with it. The older I become the more are this kind of things annoying to me. When I was younger it was challenge for me, to find solution. Now I want to scan my photographs and not working scanner is annoyance.

Yesterday we were invited to picnic. There were a lot of kids. I brought my camera and was shooting all the time. I even didn't have much time for eating or talking to other people there. Now about eight rolls waiting again on my shelf to be developed. After this is finished I need to go over all the stuff and make some selections. I did preliminary selection from previous set and printed yesterday one shot. I will soon upload some picture. I still need to setup my upload soft correctly after new installation.
Now it strikes me, maybe I just move my scanner to a Linux machine I have here. That could be solution!

One of the shots I made while visiting child farm with my kids and their friends.

I have developed today unusual film for Europe: Konica Pan 100. Dirk was so nice and curious so he sent it to me three rolls of this film. I had a busy time last few weeks but it is almost over and I can invest more time into things I enjoy.
So how does it look? I developed it in my favorite Paterson Aculux 2 diluted 1:9 in 20C for 7 minutes with agitation every minute 3 inversions in first 10sec.
I only look at negatives after I developed them 30 minutes ago, they look pretty OK. Roll was developed exposed in overcast day together with other six rolls of Fuji Neopan 400. I will know more after I scan it.

Today I had special experience. I have a friend who was been so nice and borrowed me for four hours his Nikon D70. Yes, the digital camera I have read a lot about. And I must say that Dave is partly guilty as well. I am reading his journey to digital world and it influence me a lot as most of the things he is writing from the world of photography.

But back to Nikon D70. Handling, Ooh man it is great! Really this camera must be made for me. After adjusting few custom options I made it fitting my way of taking pictures. This is probably first auto focus camera which convinced me that auto focus is a good thing and can help rather than disturb when making pictures. This is again, I believe, based on some small note by Dave. I made AE/AF lock button working as focus button. I chosen only central point as focus point and when I push this AE/AF lock button it focus and when released it lock the focus at the same place. So it is like manual focusing you made focus and you leave it there until you need to refocus again. Main shutter button when half pressed lock exposure until is half pressed. This way I have full control and speed of auto focusing while keeping freedom to recompose as I wish.
I was shooting on Aperture priority as I always do with my film cameras if possible. This give me complete control about depth of sharpness which I use a lot in my compositions and I do not care often about time.
About the factor of small CCD comparing to size of 35mm frame. Well I must say that again I agree with Dave that when you want 50mm feeling at the end you end up with using 50mm lens and not 35mm or 28mm. You get smaller crop put feeling stays.
The D70 I tried today has cheap 28-80 3.5-5.6f Nikkor lens on it and was lighter than my Olympus OM2n with 5-/1.4f lens. I felt with camera completely comfortable. I also noticed that based on number of pictures. In less than three hours I did over one hundred shots while with Leica M6TTL which I have borrowed some half year ago I did hardly 12 in the same time.

The other thing is when you look at pictures. I made NEF (Nikon RAW format) and I saw so far only direct translation, so I didn't try to made any adjustment or anything. I can see that camera, I guess as more digital cameras, has a problem with exposure range. It is quite narrow. Almost all the time I was using matrix metering and in today heavy sun day most of the time no details in highlights and or shadows. I did few tests on difficult lighting situations and I am sure that film camera with the same matrix metering would bring better results. But let's wait with this until I look what is possible to gt from raw format.

All and all I was really surprised and amazed with handling of the camera. It was fats in reactions natural in handling, light and with good feeling. Maybe I should try Nikon F80 as a film camera :-))))

Unfortunately I didn't have much time to look properly at Nikon raw files I shoot with borrowed Nikon D70. I am leaving for one week soon. So I will be adding those information later. I wish you all nice summer days!