FPP Retrochrome (Ektachrome). Scanned at 4800, color corrected, and shrunk to 1024 on the long side for the blog.
Rio Grande
Rio near Embudo
My sweetie at the Rio
Hard to balance. Ektachrome is way less sensitive to red and somewhat less to green than blue.
These are screen grabs from GIMP.
The top image above before any edits
Decomposing to the individual channels gives some interesting insight. This creates a gray scale image for each color channel representing the strength of that color’s contribution to the image as a value from 0 (black) to 255 (white). Obviously, the amount of each color mostly depends on the subject matter.
Red: very dark = low values
Green is a lot stronger but maybe not as much as you’d expect. The line of trees behind the shore plants are juniper and piñon.
Blue is as strong or stronger than green, even for the green plants.
Blue is about what I’d expect a conversion to black and white to look like. It’s that overwhelming in this film.
The FM operates just fine without batteries — just with no metering.
The frame counter (36 max) is on the top deck just in front of the wind lever.
The LEDs in the viewfinder are used as a battery check.
Film speeds are from ISO 12 to 3200. Full stops are numbered (100, 200, …) with dots for 1/3 stop increments (e.g., 64 & 80 between 50 and 100).
Lift and turn the shutter speed knob to set the film speed.
The back can be removed for an instant or bulk film back.
The gallium photodiodes for metering are located in the eyepiece module rather than in the pentaprism. EV1 to EV18.
The meter is 60/40 center weighted — 60% given to the center 12mm and the remaining 40% to the rest of the image in the viewfinder.
No dedicated mirror lockup but it goes up when the self timer is used.
And… even reading the manual, I got the LED meanings wrong. + or – means more than 1 stop off. Center dot and + or – means 1/5 to 1 stop off.
From the manual. Derp.
Film Photography Project’s “Retrochrome” is expired, cold-stored Kodak Extachrome. Ektachrome is pretty cool, color-wise, even when fresh.
Goober behind the screen. Removed some blue.
Dragon kite. Removed some blue and bumped the saturation a little.
Low fall sun through the leaves. Color corrected and tweaked the levels.
I added another image of Goober (2 versions) because it was a funny struggle to get the colors right. The white sheets were really cool (blue). I tried tons of different tweaks and it was either still too blue or over-corrected and orange. I played with filters while I decided whether to not use the image or just convert it to black and white. Most results were “meh” but I like this solarized one.
Solarized Goober. Very black light poster.
Finally, just goofing around, I chose the “skin tone” filter. It’s supposed to correct skin tones that look wrong, usually because of lighting. I clicked the dropper icon on Goober’s face and, like magic, the colors in the image were right.
While editing the video, I thought of a way to do exposure compensation. The lens is smaller than the glass covering and well above the CdS sensor. A bit of neutral density filter material over the sensor but not the lens and it’ll over-expose. Over the lens but not the sensor will underexpose. I have some 3-stop from using Instax in pack film Polaroids…
The film is Fuji 200 i got with a camera lot from a Craigslist ad. It was in his garage and I have no idea how old it is. Pretty grainy so I did some noise reduction and minor tone tweaks. Processed and scanned by Gold One Hour Photo in Los Angeles, CA.
Eastern side of the Salton Sea.
There were some other tracks but not many.
Lattice above a picnic table — now a good 1/2 mile from the sea.
At this rate I may collect the whole set. This is another awesome camera.
The next two photos and the ones at the end of the video were shot with the Series E 50mm f/1.8 lens on expired Fujicolor Super HQ 100 film.
My sweetie with the dragon kite.
Acequia culvert.
The next photos were shot using a Tokina AT-X 28-85mm zoom I got on a Nikon FE. It’s not super bright, f/3.5-4.5, but it’s not a bad walking around lens and the macro is pretty good. From what I could find on line, close focus is 1.5 feet at 28mm. Seems about right — I didn’t biff too many flower shots. Film is a 12 exposure roll of expired Kodak Gold 200.
Flowers by the house. Macro is tough on a windy day.
I can’t mow the yard. Look at all the daisies!
I’ll have to try this shot again. I almost captured the melancholy mood.
Some grain from the old Kodak 400 film but not bad. Processed in Unicolor C-41 and scanned on the Canoscan 9000f at 4800DPI. Slight color tweaks and resized for upload.
The last big snow of the season?
Wagon wheel at a motel on Cerrillos Road.
Tattoo space for rent.
Black Mesa silhouette.
Cruising downtown.
I still have trouble maintaining proper temperature but color processing is getting a little easier.
