Old-time pleasure

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of shooting a couple rolls of XP2 in a beautiful OM-1 and a Kodak Retina 1A.To make matters even more simple, I used, for the very first time, a Zuiko 50/1.8. I used to own a 50/1.4 and currently have a 50/3.5, but I never used a 50/1.8 before. Yes, it's an oldie--silvernosed, low serial-number.

The sky was dynamic and I was shooting in a small town which time has passed by. On the Olympus, I did use a polarizer combined with a Red #25 to give the scenes a signature look. The Retina was a riot to shoot with. Exposures were easy to come up with--Sunny 16 -1 stop.

I'll be developing the film today and will be scanning a few shots over the next couple of days.What is interesting is how different I shoot when it's film vs digital. I hate to admit this, but I think I'm a far better photographer with film than digital.

Rescue the Boring

Recently I spent an evening photographing the Wittenberg Grange Hall north of Newton, Iowa. The above photograph was taken with the Olympus E-1 and processed straight with no modification in RawShooter. (click on image to see a larger version).

Unfortunately, the image doesn't do anything for me. The dynamic range was very extreme and attempts to compress it would probably result in a muddy image. I was playing around with the highlight contrast and fill light adjustment when I saw something unique happening. Ah, time to have a little fun.


One thing that suprised me was the extensive amount of detail hidden in the shadows. The detail in the weatherboarding is there and even the bricks are visible. To achieve this image, I moved the Fill Light to +100, Highlight Contrast to -100, Saturation to +80, Exposure Compensation to +.70, Shadow Contrast to +30, and some minor adjustments to the white-balance and tint.

This isn't a perfect image, but it does illustrate what you can do with an editor to breathe new life into an image destined to be deleted.

Sunrise along the Lake Superior shoreline

Porcupine Mountains State Park provides some amazingly diversified shorelines. The above photo (click on it to see a larger version) was taken about a kilometer west of Union Campground just prior to sunrise. The glowing sky eluminated the storm debris which was washed up all the way to the forest.

The photo was taken with the rising sun to my back. Camera setup was the Olympus OM-4, Zuiko 35/shift lens and tripod. I scanned the Kodak T400CN chromogenic film with the Nikon Coolscan V-ED with Vuescan version 8.4.29.

Where silver meets pixels

This photograph was taken along the Lake Superior shoreline at Porcupine State Park in Michigan. I used an OM-4 with the Zuiko 24/2.8

Film used for this picture is Kodak T400CN which is a chromogenic film. This film has been very difficult to use in the darkroom, but it scans exceptionally well. I scanned this with the latest version of Vuescan (8.4.29) on the Nikon Coolscan V-ED. The only editing was a slight amount of contrast enhancement, resizing and sharpening. (click on the image to see a larger version).

Exposure was determined using Multi-Spot Metering in Manual mode. I spot metered several spots in the sky as well as shadow locations. To preserve DOF, I first set my aperture to provide desired image sharpness and adjusted shutter-speed last. In the OM-4 viewfinder, there are marks in the exposure scale indicating +2 and -2 stops. I adjusted the shutter-speed to keep all the dots within these marks. If the exposure dots extend beyond the 4-stop range, it is necessary to determine which is more important to preserve--shadows or highlights. As highlights were most important in this case, with the sky and the birch bark, I would have made sure the dots didn't extend beyond the +2 mark.

T400CN does have an extensive toe and shoulder, which really gives us about 11-stops of usable dynamic range, so it isn't overly necessary to worry about over or under-exposing the film. But the scanning process is dynamic-range limited.

Regardess, the digitization process of film gives us a greater usable dynamic range, with a real toe and shoulder than a digital camera.

Vista and NVidia Dual Monitor Issues

We just got a brand new Toshiba laptop with the NVidia GeForce Go 7300 video card. The problem is that there is a major driver incompatibility between Microsoft Vista and this card. The system does not appear to support dual-monitors. This is a major problem since this computer is for use in displaying SongShow Plus.

When plugging in the external monitor or projector, the laptop would immediately output the screen to the external monitor and disable the laptop screen. No setting changes would bring it back and obviously screen spanning was not possible.

In the sytem's "Task Scheduler" there is a process called "TMM" located under the MobilePC category. This needs to be disabled. Once disabled the system will refrain from forcing a switch to the external monitor.

With TMM disabled, all of the multi-monitor features now function, albiet rather questionably. Vista is not an operating system quite ready for prime-time. I'm looking forward to updates to both Vista and the NVidia card.

OM-Series Viewfinder Diopter - The Minolta Option

The OM-4 and OM-3 lines of Olympus cameras have a built-in adjustable diopter for the viewfinder. For those of us who are a touch nearsighted, this is a fantastic feature. However, the older Olympus cameras don't have this feature. Optional diopters are available, however, they are as rare as hen's teeth.

Minolta made a set of rectangle-shape diopters which fit in the OM viewfinder. For example, here is one listed on that great auction site, 120133739594, identical to ones I use in my OM bodies.

You will want to use a touch of adhesive to hold it in place. Do not use SuperGlue, because the glue will damage the anti-reflective coating on the viewfinder elements. I've found that hot-glue works pretty well, without damaging anything.


This OM-2S looks a little rough, and my diopter a bit beat up, but this has been my workhorse camera for the past 20 years. I've reglued that thing more times that I can remember.

Wedding Proof Books and mixed formats

After each wedding I tend to take a few days before editing the pictures down. This way I have a chance to detach from the event and get a more balanced viewpoint of the images. I've tended to operate in this manner because emotional attachment precludes effective editing.

The bulk of the images for this wedding were taken with the Olympus E-1, but I also used the Minolta A1 and Olympus OM-2S for some shots. The pre-ceremony shots were all taken with the Minolta and OM-2S, while the E-1 was used almost exclusively for the ceremony with several OM-2S shots backing things up. Film choice was Portra 160NC. Had I realized how dark the evening in the forest was going to be, I would have loaded Portra 400NC instead. I mounted the 24/2.8 lens on the camera and zone focused it.

I recall the day when my OM-2S was considered "quiet". Compared to my E-1, the thing sounds like a tree falling. It's amazing how our expectations have changed. Yet, there is a simple pleasure in shooting with a camera that is so responsive and transparent to the image-making process.

As it turned out, there were only two film images which were used in the proof book, however, one of them made it to the cover! The 24/2.8 lens gave me a perspective that my 14-54 DZ on the E-1 couldn't. This points out, again, the need for a wide-angle zoom for the E-1.

The biggest issue that I battled with this wedding was the exposures. The background was so bright that I consistently underexposed the pictures. For the film images, this proved disastrous, but for the E-1 images, I was able to correct it pretty well in RawShooter during conversion. As the E-1 was shot at ISO 400, noise did come up some, but in the final prints it will still be fine. ISO 400 images from the E-1 are not too different than scanned Portra 160 films.

A couple of the silhouette shots converted to B&W very nicely. When using RawShooter for conversion, I desaturated the images, adjusted the highlight, shadow contrast and exposure sliders until it was "close" and then made wild swings to the white-balance settings until the skin-tones landed in the right "zone". For noise-removal, I used RawShooter's "Pattern Noise Reduction" turned all the way up. The resulting image is almost exactly like 35mm Tri-X. This, however, is with the E-1. The Minolta A1 requires similar, but slightly different tweeks--mostly with the inclusion of some "Color-Noise Reduction" and a touch of "Fill Light". The Minolta's "look" is more like Tmax than Tri-X in the skin tones.

Proof book assembly and ordering was totally performed in Miller's proofing ordering software. Total time for upload over my DSL connection was about 30 minutes. It took me three passes to narrow down the images for inclusion, about 20 minutes to batch process the images to JPEGs, a half hour to scan the Portra film as I only scanned the "keepers" and about 40 minutes to build the proof book.

Other than obvious exposure/contrast correction and WB adjustments, I leave all the color-correction to Miller's Lab. They do an excellent job and are far faster than I am.

The only adjustment I'm going to make for the next mixed-format wedding is the 100% conversion to Portra 160VC and Portra 400VC films. By the time I correct the E-1 images to the "look" I like, they are much closer to the VC films.