Richard Vanek - Black and White Photography

Today is a national holiday in Slovak Republic. I went to visit friend in city near by. I could choose for highway or local secondary roads. I went for second one as it was a beautiful weather and I took my camera. I knew this route across mountain so I was expecting to gets some nice pictures on those hardly 60km. Yes I took me almost two and half hours, four rolls and one speed ticket :-)

It was so funny with that speed ticket, as I was stopping almost every 5 kilometers. I was driving down the mountains and catch-up with some local people. as they saw my coming from back they start speeding up, even I wasn't any pushing and wasn't indicating in any way that I want to overtake them. So we reach first village I slowed down to 60km/hour which is max speed in town here and than I saw further limit to 40km/hour because of possible truck entering the road. I though well today nobody is working so it will be not so hot so I just slow down to about 50km/hour. The car in front of me doesn't slow down at all, just entered the village.
As I was passing huge hill of small stones I noticed white car standing there in little strange position. "They check speed here", flashed through my mind. At that was it. After next 1km I was stopped after the local car by police. I was driving 48km/hour, poor guy in front of me 78km/hour.

Now I have some work to do. Few dozen rolls to develop and even more to scan. And I guess some printing. I am looking forward to do it. It was a while. Yesterday I start to setup separate computer for scanner. I hope that will solve my scanning problems and you can start seeing new picture on-line.

I have open new section Articles which is replacing all Notes section. Currently I have add two articles describing how I do take pictures and how I do develop black and white film. I am writing next few about scanning, archiving and printing.

P.S.: I am still struggling with installation of second computer, purely for scanning.

Shortly: scanner is running now! So I can scan and I am doing so. There is, of course, longer story behind it. For a whole last week I tried to install Gentoo Linux and was failing on disk space. Building simple minimal system with 2GB HD when one need to have X11 base libraries is just not possible. Building X11 doesn't fit. So I spent every evening of the last week and failed. Today I said myself: Why just not try Debian Linux! I am already running one on my local home server and was running for almost seven years at piskoftak.sk/com. So that what I did, downloaded two CD, boot, install and run in less than 2 hours. And now scanner is up and running after I installed some additional libraries and 2.4 kernel.

So I finished scanning films I had develop and I have ordered new bottles of Aculux 2 for next rolls to be developed. From today on I am starting again printing and publishing new pictures. I have them quite a few. And also my plans with starting of sale at ebay should become more actual. Yes yes, quite a lot of goals hopefully it will comes true slowly. I must say I am not much in hurry, but I feel that I have too little time for all these things I like. I have god some thoughts about working one day less. Will see how that will turn. Well I will earn less but I will got extra day for photography. I think I will first try it with free days I have left for this year. If it will go right than I consider changing my contract.

First version of my new article about post processing developed negatives is on-line. Take a look and tell me if it is any useful. I started to write theses articles as a reaction on e-mail which I am getting in last few month more and more. I hope articles will answer most of the questions from those e-mails and I can save time by just redirecting to them as the answer.
I am preparing one more about printing and extension to developing procedure describing of exact development of my favorite Fuji Neopan 400 and Kodak 125PX.

When I write about this. Today morning I realized that I am running out of my film stock again. I have about last 30 rolls of Fuji Neopan and no one Kodak 125PX. So I went to my favorite place 7 day shop and realize that they do not sell Kodak 125PX anymore. Very strange I have no idea where I am going to buy it for such a nice price as they had it. Do you know? Tell me!

Lately I was using my Nikon F80 all the time. I have that Nikkor 50/1.8D lens on it and I am really happy with camera. Yesterday I took out mine Olympus OM2n in attempt to use 28mm lens. Batteries were dead as I forget to set camera meter to off. Well no problem I bought new ones.
I was thinking about this 28mm lens more and more lately. I will try to use it more and will see hoe does it perform. I have in mind to do shots in rooms with people and than 28mm could be nice to use. I have no idea how it will perform wide open at 2.8. This will be interesting to try together with some more sensitive film. I did use Fuji Neopan 1600 occasionally, but I never pinpoint its exposure and development to the perfection. I guess this will be interesting to try together.

I coudn't resist and I have added new picture today. Well it is not new at all I took it around year 1988 or so. I believe it is one of my best photographs. I print this picture first time about four years ago and sold about twelve prints already. I like it very much, on one side it is nice contrast and details on other hand it is a bit spooky :-) More you can read in its description.
I was actually keeping this picture for a day when I open sale of my prints from web or ebay. Everybody who saw this shots asked me why it is not on web. So I put it on-line today as indication of my excitement about photography.

This is quite old picture. I believe I exposed it somewhere around 1988. We were in some mountain cottage and it was in winter/spring time. Was raining for few days and nobody was really about it as our plans were about skying. I was already outside after breakfast when one of my friends was looking through this window on entrance to the restaurant. Most of the people when they look at print of this picture they see only foggy window, after few second they jump out of it because they realize ghost like face there. This happened quite often when I showed this print.

I had this idea yesterday, while I was reading book in bed. I have got vuescan for scanning my negatives, but I know that it can read digital files. So can't it read also raw files from digital cameras? For example from Nikon D70? And I know now! Yes it can!!!
So that is the end of my search how to finally get best information from those *.nef files, which I have from my tryout with D70. I just produced nice 48bit tiff files from Nikon nef format using vuescan.
It is great! Soon I can show you my results from few hours try out of D70. I am so excited! So watch out for last roll pictures. It's going soon to be change.
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Today is a Saturday, so after doing some home stuff I did also quite a lot with my photographs. I have bought DVD rewriter to be able to backup more efficiently.

I used vuescan to convert all me Nikon raw files to tiff format.

And I published new article this time about printing. Take a look and let me know what do you think about all these article series.

I have been busy today with trying to get as much as possible data from those Nikon NEF RAW files. I am really curious what b&w prints I can get out of it. This digital approach and D70 particularly giving me strange feeling in a sens that that is a way. Especially after I calculated few days ago that I need to buy new films. I decide to buy 100 rolls of Neopan 400 and about 50 rolls of Kodak 125PX. Total cost is around 400 euros!!! Man that is almost half price of D70! And if I consider that I have everything else to go digital way except memory cards for D70, than I start thinking!. From year to year I shoot more and expenses are growing...

I have updated last roll page again. This time for long time promised effect on Nikon D70 digital. I put five pictures which represents some things I encounter while using D70 for few hours. One I can't explain others are just difference from analog I am use to. Well take a look and if you know answer to my question from first two picture, please let me know.

This is a strange effect I have found when exposing into sun through the edge of leaf (1/1500 s, F 4.80, focal length: 52.00 mm). I have no idea what that light green blue net of pixels is. hwy it is there and what fault it is. It is because CCD? If you have clue, please please let me know, I am really curious. I am quite often taking shots into difficult light. I would hate to see this every time.

Update: This is what seems to me as reasonable and possibly correct answer:
"Think of the CCD elements as small buckets that fill with electrons during exposure. When the buckets are full, they spill over and the electrons run into adjacent buckets.
Another thing that happens is that, when one channel (RGB) blows out (buckets fill), before the other channels, software interpolates what the color at that location should have been. But that is based on a guestimate at best. I think this is what caused the cross hatched effect in the border of the blow out region"

But there is still interesting that just next pixels are almost dark. It is kind of net. That what you see on enlarged version is 1:1 pixel magnification from raw file. Effect appears only on top and bottom of highlighted area from Sun, not on side.
There is also some possibility that it is cost by electronic shutter of D70 (I have no idea how that kind of shutter works).

I did shot in a attempt to see how sensor will handle direct sun into it. Lens wasn't any expensive just simple AF 28-80G/3.5-5,6, but was very good for shots I did in this sunny afternoon. (1/1500 s, F 4.80, focal length: 52.00 mm ) As you can see there are beams of light coming from place where Sun was just about be uncovered by leaf. I like this effect. What I do not like is strange effect you can maybe see as well. These are light green blue parts on top and bottom of bright area. In zoom it looks like net of dark green blue and light green blue pixels. What it is? I have no idea but it is very distracting.

I was after that light effect which you will get when you shoot on film very reflective surface. I made this shot also on film. I was wondering if I get same effect as on film with stripes of light rendering outside reflected surface. As you can see here tehre is no such a effect on the bel of bike. It is competely overexposed (as expected) but no artifact outside of reflection area. Pity I like that effect of film in this situation.

This is shot on the same place but now with about -2EV exposure compensation (1/250 s, F 3.30). As you can see part in dark shadow (inside) is quite dark as it should be. The outside is possible to see details on concrete stones in bright sun. I guess this is just normal handling of difficult light. So it is up to the photographer.

This was just test of light metering. I was using aperture priority and made shot where more than half of frame was in dark shadow and about 1/3 in direct sunlight. (1/45 s, F 3.30) As you can see part which was outside is completely burned. There is no information on concrete tails about any structure. I didn't make this test with film camera, but I must say I was hoping in Nikon 3D exposure metering. Well here it's failed. I guess it was trying to make dark looks like zone V and therefore outside just jump out of dynamic range.

After I post question about D70 artifact when shooting to Sun I have got quite a lot of reactions and huge load on server :-) Luckily I do not run my own anymore :-)))

But back to the problematic shot, which is just 1:1 enlargement of similar shot. On both this effect appears:

This is what seems to me as reasonable and possibly correct answer:

"Think of the CCD elements as small buckets that fill with electrons during exposure. When the buckets are full, they spill over and the electrons run into adjacent buckets.
Another thing that happens is that, when one channel (RGB) blows out (buckets fill), before the other channels, software interpolates what the color at that location should have been. But that is based on a guestimate at best. I think this is what caused the cross hatched effect in the border of the blow out region"

But there is still interesting that just next pixels are almost dark. It is kind of net. That what you see on enlarged version is 1:1 pixel magnification from raw file. Effect appears only on top and bottom of highlighted area from Sun, not on side.
There is also some possibility that it is cost by electronic shutter of D70 (I have no idea how that kind of shutter works).

As you can read in text next to picture on my web it was shot with about f4.5 and 1/1500 with 52mm focal length. Camera has 28-80G/3.5-5.6 Nikkor zoom lens. But I believe glass has not participated on this. There were suggestion that when lens is more closed f16- f22 it will not happened, but than if I want to have narrow DOF this is not a option.

So what more? I do not know really. I am use to use difficult light condition to get unusual shots and therefore this wasn't search for breaking down digital future for me :-) just try out of shot I would normally do. I wanted to see hoe D70 will handle it.
I really would like to know why this kind of thing happened and if it is only on D70 or all digi cameras could have the same behavior.
Thank for your thought and if somebody knows more about CCD A/D and possibly how CCD is filtered for RGB colors, maybe than you can tell me how this can be avoided.

BTW: I was very happy with D70 handling and reactions. Absolutely perfect no objection I like that camera very much. I just would like to know how to avoid these kind of artifacts.

Yesterday and today evening I have spend mostly trying to convert color image from Nikon D70 to do black and white forms, which I would like. I tried few plug-ins to do it, but at the end I did a lot of tests in Picture Window Pro. I really like that software.

So my first result you can see here. It is simple shot, but I kind like it. I printed this version and it looks quite nice. There is probably still a lot to enhanced, but I am just tired too much to continue for the moment. If I remember right I did the same shot on Fuji Neopan 400. Now just develop it and I can compare them :-)
As I was not printing in few last weeks I need to clean printer, which took about half an hour. Now everything is OK and I can print without been afraid of any dirt and stain on paper.

My second try of color to black and white conversion is on-line. It is also kind of prove that Nikon D70 is making nice pictures.
Today when I was showing print of previous picture to my friend who borrowed me his Nikon D70 I realize how great it is to have this possibility. This way I can see and feel not only handling of the camera but also result and whole process until print. I see what it involves to get good raw data from camera and what is needed and possible to get nice b&w print from color CCD data.
Tom thank you very much!

We have this kind of wooden jogging equipment on one side of our village. There are two small lakes and around is few of such a wooden things. When I was walking the other day with borrowed D70 I find it nice to how unfocused background will be handled by the cheap 28-80/3.5-5.6 lens and CCD. Looks good to me, print has enormous amount of details on first wood. This was also my second hand made translation from color to b&w, still learning.(1/250 s, F 8.00, focal length: 50.00 mm )

This weekend start good, in sense that I have developed already six rolls and maybe I will do next four tomorrow. If I got this speed that it is not far a time when I finish my backlog of undeveloped negatives.
On other hand, already from yesterday I feel very bad, headache, full nose and fever. I will stay in bed longer I guess.
Anyway after this week working on digital color to b&w transition it really felt good today do some real developing and see those negatives in real. This is what you will not see and feel in digital photography. I know what I am talking about, as I do all my live software design and therefore I am feel lack of visual feedback from product I created. Something I am jealous when my friend from childhood said, this is a bridge I build.

In a few past day I didn't feel really good. I stayed Monday in bed and Tuesday had to go to work. But came back completely exhausted. At least I did some film developing. I must say I still like to do it. It is just different that sitting in front of computer and convert zeros and ones up and down :-) Anyway do you know what I do when developing a film and has do wait whole minute for next inversion of tank? No well for a long time I was just waiting and thinking, in a past year or so I start exercising a bit. It is kind of funny. Fuji Neopan 400 I develop for 12 minutes and only one inversion every minute. So I have almost 55 second every minute to do simple exercise movements. It is incredible useful especially when I develop in the evening, I am completely refreshed after developing and can do some other stuff, like hunting zeros and ones :-)))))

Today I have bought scsi terminator in hope it will solve problems of my scanner. Unfortunately it didn't. Behavior is exactly the same. I am going to call service center for repair. I have already register my scanner for possible repair at service desk. So now I need only to use this number and make appointment to bring it there.