Jonathan's blog

In today’s day and age of convenience, you might ask why bother using film to take photographs?

After all, a digital camera is cheap and easy. You can take hundreds of photos of anything you like. You can take photos like mad without thinking, and hope one turns out alright. You can delete the poor ones. What could be better?

This is why I have preferred to use my 35mm film camera in preference to my digital camera recently.

Each time I press the shutter on my film camera, I know it’s going to cost me something like 30p in the cost of buying the film, and developing it. So I think twice before I press the button, and the simple act of thinking a second time usually means my photos come out better. I make sure the composure is right, that the lighting is OK and that I haven’t made some mistake that I’ll regret later.

On top of that, I can only get 24 or 36 photos on a roll of film. Sure, I can change films on the move, but this limitation means I don’t want to waste all my exposures. So I save them for something worth taking a photo of.

And besides all the benefits of better photography, it’s fun to  develop a black and white film in my bathroom. I find it so satisfying to take a photo on a camera that is fully manual, take the film out, develop it, and then scan it, and the image on the screen has been almost entirely my own work. No assistance from a microprocessor that thinks it knows best.

Clearly film photography isn’t for everyone, and it’s not for every occasion. I still use digital for my Photo Challenge entries where it’s essential to get them from the camera to the web as fast as possible. But if you fancy learning to become a better photographer, then film is a great tutor. Why not have a look at some old cameras on eBay?

My friend Stu (former organiser of the Photo Challenge and professional photographer based in Leicestershire) has recently launched a photography tutorial website called CameraTutor. There’s not much more I can add other than this info from the site itself, and my encouragement to follow the blog if you are interested in photography yourself.

Starting on the 1st of January, 2010 will be a series of photography tutorials to help you get the best from your camera – it doesn’t matter if you have a top-of-the-range SLR or a point and shoot, there should be something for everyone here. A new tutorial will appear each Friday morning, giving information on a single technique, concept or other thinking point. I hope not to make anything too complicated, and welcome questions and comments on each post in the comments section.

So come along for the ride – I hope I will learn from you as much as you will learn from me, and we can all improve together.

After I posted the other day about building a pinhole camera, I immediately ordered a body cap from eBay. Last night it arrived, and here’s how I made my pinhole camera.

Making the pinhole “lens”

Not only do pinholes have to be tiny in diameter, they should also be made through a thin material. I didn’t even attempt to make a pinhole directly in the body cap. I drilled a 10mm hole and superglued a piece of tin foil over the hole. Using a fine pin, I made a small hole.

Front of pinhole lens

Rear of pinhole lens

Uh, that’s it. Most guides I write have more steps than this, but making a pinhole “lens” for an SLR really is this easy.

What’s the f-number?

The formula for working out the f-number is pretty simple:

           focal length
f-stop = -----------------
         aperture diameter

The aperture diameter is the diameter of the pinhole, and the focal length is the distance between the film and the pinhole.

The Canon AE-1 Program has a small mark on the side to indicate the position of the film plane. The rough distance between this mark and the pinhole is 36mm. Getting a decent estimate of the pinhole is a little trickier, as I need to measure the diameter of the pinhole. The best I could come up with was to take a picture of the pinhole next to a ruler with my Fuji S9600 and a macro lens.

The pinhole

I reckon that’s approximately 0.2mm across.

          36
f-stop = ----- = 180
          0.2

So this is a pretty tiny aperture, and we are going to need long exposures to get it to make a decent picture on film.

Earlier on I pointed the camera out of my window. With the shutter set to its slowest value of 2 seconds, the meter reckoned it wanted an aperture of 8. 180 is 22 times greater than 8, so I need to make my shutter 22 times longer than 2. So we are talking 40-odd seconds for outdoor landscape photography in daylight on ISO200 film. In lower light conditions and perhaps on ISO125 film (such as my Ilford FP4) it’s easy to see that I might need to expose for 2 or 3 minutes.

Although 2 seconds is the longest my SLR can do automatically, it has a mode where the photographer can hold the shutter release for as long as necessary. Never thought I’d need a stopwatch for my photography!

My 35mm pinhole camera

The advantage of making a removable pinhole lens is that I can carry it around and easily change between lenses.

Keep an eye on my photo blog. When I’ve got this film developed I’ll scan and post the pinhole images there.

Update: I have now uploaded some of the pinhole photos.

The other day, I was suddenly taken by an urge to build a pinhole camera. I vaguely recall building one out of a shoebox at primary school that projected a dim image onto some tracing paper, but now that I have the equipment and a little experience in developing films at home, I thought it might be fun to make a pinhole camera that can work with film to make permanent images.

Medium-format sheet film is the ideal thing for such an application. While I have the stuff to develop 120 film, I don’t have any means of scanning it. So my system will be using regular 35mm film, which is more convenient for me.

This got me thinking about how to mount the film in the pinhole camera. Obviously when using small film, the camera needs to be shorter to project a smaller image. Could be fiddly to load individual frames of 35mm film into an oxo box! So I wondered about using the body of my Canon AE-1 Program, basically as a film holder.

But I wasn’t sure how easy it would be to cut a hole in the side of a cereal box and shove a camera in there without letting light in. So I considered building a pinhole camera around the body of my AE-1. Maybe I could jam a toilet roll tube into the FD mount, or something.

Then I found this much more sensible guide, Making a pinhole lens for an SLR. It describes how to make a body cap into a pinhole “lens”. It’s completely light-proof, easy to make, and causes no damage to the camera (assuming you have a second body cap).

So, I’ve ordered a body cap from eBay and I will be making it into a pinhole “lens”. I will, of course, scan and post the results on my photo blog. There will probably be some kind of review on this blog, too. Watch this space!

For some time, I’ve been taking part in Stu’s Tuesday Challenge.

Recently, Stu has had great success with his East Midlands wedding photography business and so doesn’t have time for the Challenge any more.

So I’ve taken over the Challenge and rebranded it the Photo Challenge (so I’m not tied to a Tuesday). I hope the regular contributors on Stu’s blog will continue to take photos for the Challenges. It’s also an ideal opportunity for new photographers to try their hand at some of the challenges and get some feedback.

Why not give it a go?

I hadn’t realised how important it is to calibrate a monitor correctly.

My former method of “calibration” was simply to set the monitor’s contrast to maximum, and set the monitor’s brightness to a value that looked comfortable to me. I didn’t bother changing any settings in software.

But I got caught out.

Last night I took some photos and tweaked them on my PC so they looked OK. I published them and thought nothing of it. But several of my friends commented that they looked a bit dark, and when I checked the pictures out on two of the computers at work, they were indeed too dark.

My badly-calibrated monitors at home caused me to wrongly edit an image. So I read up on how to calibrate a monitor. There are many ways, but the method I’m writing about here is nice and simple.

• If you have TFTs, they are sensitive to the angle you look at them. Tilt them so they face directly at you.
• Turn the lights off in the room you are working in.
• On the monitor, set the colour temperature to 6500K
• On the monitor, set the contrast to 100%
• Look at the gamma black chart below. Adjust the brightness on the monitor until:
  • Bar A is just visible at the bottom
  • Bar B is visible from the bottom to about halfway up the chart


Gamma black chart

• Absolute black on your monitor is now calibrated.
• Find how to adjust the gamma on your computer. For example, I am running the proprietary nVidia X driver on Fedora and it comes with a convenient control panel. You can use Adobe Photo Shop to adjust the gamma, or xgamma under X Windows on Unix/Linux systems.
• Now look at the gamma chart below. Sit as far as possible from the monitor and squint so the lines blur together.


Gamma chart

• Adjust the gamma on your computer so the shade of grey completely across the gamma column is the same at 2.2.
• The monitor is now calibrated.

References

• http://www.normankoren.com/makingfineprints1A.html
• http://www.johncon.com/john/gamma/

As my interest in photography progressed, it was only natural I’d one day end up wanting to develop film. I developed my first roll last night by following this guide. It was extremely helpful – but there were a few points it didn’t cover. I made notes while I was developing, and so here’s a modified version of the guide, including my advice.

If you’re interested in seeing what I was able to achieve, some samples are here.

What you’ll need

These are the items in my inventory. I’ve bought “proper” gear where necessary but most of the kitchen-type items came from a supermarket for pennies. I bought the developing tank from eBay, and the same seller was also offering a kit with all the chemicals, listed as Ilford Black & White Film Developer’s pack

• Developer
• Stop bath
• Fixer
• Wetting agent (cheap washing up liquid will do)
• A developing tank
• 3 water bottles – preferably one litre
• 3 plastic jugs – at least one litre
• Funnel
• Kitchen timer (get one with a mechanical knob rather than a digital one)
• Clothes pegs
• A place to hang the negatives sufficiently high that they won’t touch the ground
• A dim light. Colour doesn’t matter- perhaps a torch with half-flat batteries.
• Scissors
• Bottle opener
• Something to stir the chemicals with. I used old picnic cutlery!
• A storage box for all of the above, with a lid.
• Room thermometer

Preparation

If this is your first time developing a film, there are some things you should do first. You should probably do them before every time you develop a film, even if you’ve been doing it for years

1. Familiarise yourself with how to mix each of the chemicals – how much concentrate to how much water, how much you want to end up with, etc.
2. Make a note of how much of each chemical your tank requires you to use.
3. Calculate and make a note of how long each of the three phases should take.
4. Label each of your empty bottles and jugs with a permanent pen so you know which chemical belongs in which jug.

Loading the film

5. Take film, bottle opener, scissors, developing tank and reels into a lightproof room.
6. Organize the materials on a table. You’ll need to know where each item is in the darkness.
7. Turn off the light.
8. Open the film canister at either end with the bottle opener.
9. Take the film out of the canister and cut off the leading tab at the end to create a straight edge.
10. Load the film onto your tank’s spool. The method varies depending upon your tank, but I found my Paterson System 4 tank easy to use.
11. Pull or cut the end of the film off the spool and remove the tape.
12. Drop the loaded reel into the developing tank and secure the lid.
13. Turn the light back on.

Developing the Film

14. Mix chemicals according to directions.
15. Put the right amount of each chemical into the three jugs.
16. Put any leftover chemicals into the plastic bottles for storage.
17. Technically with a good tank you should be safe to have the light on, but it never hurts to be cautious, so at this point I switched the main light off and worked by the light of a dim torch, pointing at the ceiling to softly illuminate the whole room. If you wait a minute or two, your eyes will get accustomed to the low light.
18. Take the top off the developing tank.
19. Pour the pre-measured developer into the top of the tank.
20. Tap the tank against the counter to dislodge bubbles.
21. Agitate the tank by slowly inverting it and turning it back over for the first 15 seconds.
22. Repeat every 30 seconds for the recommended time (usually 5 to 10 minutes).
23. Pour the developer back into the jug.
24. Pour stop bath into the now-empty developing tank.
25. Agitate the stop bath and let stand for 1 minute.
26. Pour out the stop bath and replace with fixer.
27. Agitate the fixer for 15 seconds and then for 15 seconds once every minute for the allotted time.
28. Pour the fixer back into its jug.
29. Remove the lid of the tank and run water into the tank for 15 minutes.
30. Add wetting agent to the water to expedite drying. If you are using washing up liquid, add a tiny drop to the water in the tank and let it sit for a minute.
31. Remove the film from the tank.
32. Gently pull the film off the reel.
33. Attach a clip to the top of the film and hang it up. I hung mine from a clothes horse in the bath.
34. Attach another 2 or 3 clips at the bottom, to prevent the film from curling as it dries.
35. Hang the film in a dry, dust-free area.
36. I don’t know how long it really takes them to dry, because I went to bed at this point. When I woke up, the film was dry and straight.
37. Cut the film into appropriate length chunks for your scanner / envelopes / etc.
38. Store dry negatives in plastic negative sleeves.

Afterwards

39. You can usually re-use the developer several times (although it takes longer each time). Store it in a clearly labelled bottle.
40. You can re-use the fixer. Store it in a clearly labelled bottle.
41. Rinse all of the “dirty” components in warm water and dry them thoroughly before putting them away in a clean place.

Tips & warnings

• The optimal temperature for most developers is 20°C. Processing at a significantly higher or lower temperature will result in soft, easily damaged film or flat negatives. Some developers have a chart on the packaging to give the time correction if your room temperature is different from this.
• Do not remove the top of the developing tank to look at the film until after the fixing stage.
• Use storage bottles that are just the right size for the amount of developer you are mixing. Label a chemical with its name, date and dilution.
• Begin timing each step as you pour chemicals into the developing tank, and start draining chemicals 10 seconds before the time is up.

In the past, I’ve enjoyed reading Photoshop Disasters. Today I was delighted to spot my own Photoshop Disaster in Dorothy Perkins.

Looks to me as though they’ve just chopped her fingers off to resemble pockets.

Since I started playing with 35mm photography a few weeks ago, I’ve been using Snappy Snaps near Clifton Down shopping centre. It came with the recommendation of a friend.

I’ve simply been asking them to develop the film into negatives and then I’ve been scanning the negatives myself. But I noticed that the first few rolls had scratches and dirt on them. Today when I went to pick up the latest roll, they were still finishing with it when I turned up, so I was able to watch.

The film came snaking out of the machine, and the guy working there yanked it out, treating it with all the care you’d think more appropriate for a roll of toilet paper. He put his fingers all over the film, making no attempt to handle it by the edges.

When he came to cut the film into strips, again he handled the film by touching it all over and cut it roughly. I noticed that one of his cuts went diagonally and took thin strips off the edges of two frames.

I’m no expert on film, but it seems pretty common sense to me that you should handle something as delicate as film with care, and not put fingerprints all over it. It’s not like it’s difficult to hold it by the edges, either.

Accredited professional photographer Glen Smith recommends treating negatives in the following way:

Negatives are particularly subject to damage. The smallest spot of dust, scratch or finger print will be enlarged many times when the negative is printed. Always handle negatives by the edges. A finger print on a negative can ruin a print. Negatives can be gently wiped to remove fingerprints but then there is the risk of scratches. Clean white cotton gloves are ideal if not always practical.

This is exactly what anyone with common sense would suggest as a sensible way of caring for negatives, too.

So now I know how my films get damaged during processing, and I think it’s safe to say I won’t be going to Snappy Snaps at Clifton Down again.

Update: There is an example of a scratched negative here on my photo blog.

When digital cameras came out, people hailed it as a great revolution. You could now take thousands of holiday pictures and simply delete the ones you didn’t like. While this is certainly a bonus for some, it can encourage the photographer to be lazy about setting up the scene properly.

My first “real” camera was a digital one. I do try to think about the composition, the lighting and other things. But often I end up going with the trial-and-error approach, and sometimes for photos like this one I would take hundreds of photos with slightly different settings, just to get the perfect shot.

Since I’ve started using a 35mm SLR, I’ve noticed I think much more carefully when taking photos. Naturally, you think twice before pressing the shutter when you know that it will cost you 25p to do so. I tend to take only one or possibly two photos of the same subject, which makes me carefully consider everything.

This can only be a good thing!

The downside is that it can take a while to fill a roll of film, as I have to have up to  36 pieces of inspiration before I can get the film processed When I get my current film done, I’m looking forward to seeing some of the shots I’ve taken over the last few days.