Fujified kids

[brazile]

Have been playing around with Fuji FP100C45 lately, and just in time, as they seem to have discontinued it -- what's in the retail pipeline now is all there's going to be, I guess. I snagged a couple boxes of it and a box of FP3000B45 as well, as it's done, too, as I understand it. A shame; I enjoy playing with it.

Here's a couple scans of prints I made over the past week or so. Both were taken with my Crown Graphic and a 90/6.8 Angulon I picked up on LPF a while back.

My daughter, studying and patiently ignoring my fiddling around with trying to focus via the ground glass in her very dim room:


bat6-987, Senioritis by rbrazile, on Flickr

My son, who happened to stroll into the kitchen yesterday morning while I was experimenting in the light from the window:


bat7-022, Morning glory by rbrazile, on Flickr

Next up: try to reclaim the negatives and see how scans of them differ from scans of the prints.

Robert

[Philip]

Good colour in those pictures, very different in the two shots.  And lovely light in your kitchen!  Your Crown Graphic is serving you well.

[brazile]

Thanks, Philip! I'm very happy with these results, although the scans show a bit more softness than I expected, of what source I'm still uncertain. Could be the lens (doubtful), my focusing (more likely, but I was pretty careful), a difference in registration distance between the ground glass and the Fuji PA-45 holder (possible), native to the "instant" film and its development method (seems most likely to me), or the scan itself (done on a refurbished V700 I picked up a couple weeks ago).

I just experimented with removing the backing on the "disposable" negative using bleach.Washed a bit of the developer off the front with cold water as well; I don't appear to have removed much if any of the emulsion, fortunately, which is said to be a risk of removing the "wave" patterns left by the developer. The negative is hanging to dry now -- once it's dry, I'll scan it and compare to the print scan to see if that helps me suss it out.

Robert

[OpenWater]

Aside from the technical issues you mention, both of these are wonderful images of your family.  The light in your kitchen is fantastic.

[br1078lum]

A lot of variables to work through there, Robert.  For the change in focus plane between the ground glass and film holder, you could create a mask to be able to make three exposures on the same film, setting the gg focus in front and back of the plane on two of them.  I would think the low light levels on your daughters photo could contribute to the softness.  Both are very good portraits.

PF

[brazile]

Thanks, Mike -- I don't mean to say I'm disappointed with the images themselves, I quite like them, actually. Would like to take a run at printing them if I can clean up the originals a bit. Both offspring are going to be moving out this year, so I'm motivated to capture them around the house while I can.

PF, thanks for the suggestion for a testing technique. I may very well try that once I've eliminated a few other variables. I need to evaluate "plane of best focus" on the scanner anyway, for one thing, so I'll be playing with shims or step wedges or some such there. I also plan to shoot some regular B&W film with the Crown Graphic soon to compare. Perhaps even this afternoon, if my family's plans for me don't take up the entirety of it.

Robert

[radiophoto]

Nice job, Robert!  Let me echo the others with my praise of the kitchen light.    Oh, and it's an attractive kitchen as well.  Nice woodwork and fixtures.

Your kids look so different from each other.  What's the age gap?

[apocaplops]

Very nice, and I'd say the softness works well in both of these portraits - they're very intimate, and I think tack-sharp resolution might really detract from that.

I'd be most like to agree that the softness is inherent in the film itself, but I could be wrong.

That's sad to hear about its discontinuation. I suppose the packfilm version may not be long for this world either. I should stock up...

[brazile]

Thanks very much, Pete. I love the kitchen: it's the result of remodeling we did about 10 years ago (ah, the ephemeral benefits of the dot com era) and it has held up very well. Has the best light the house, as well, both because of the remodeling, and because our house is built into the side of a hill, so much of the front of the house is kind of in a hole and thus rather dark, while the back of the house faces east and is not shadowed by the back-door neighbor's house, which is further down the slope. The kids do look very different; my daughter tends to take after my side of the family while my son takes after my wife's family more. He is 24 (will be 25 in May) and has worked in various education-related jobs while trying to find a full-time schoolteacher position, and she just turned 17 and is finishing up her senior year in high school. She'll be off to Texas for college in the fall.

Erich, I agree with you about the softness. It doesn't bother me at all in this usage (and may in fact help, as you suggest) but I would like to understand if it's an inherent limitation of the medium, or if different technique might result in a bit more clarity. Now that I have resolved an unexpected issue with my scanner (in short: I picked up a refurbished V700 to make it easier to scan negatives larger than 120, it turned out to have a fault that prevented transparency scans, Epson replaced it immediately with a new one -- good customer service!) I plan to play around with reclaiming the negatives, which is amusing. Here is the first one (which was overexposed to begin with, which is why I chose it: no concern about damaging it):


Bleached negative by rbrazile, on Flickr

It features the sink my son was standing over in the original shot, and was taken with the Angulon wide open ( f/6.8 ) for slightly too long. The greenish tinge may be because some of the bleach used to remove the backing found its way onto the emulsion side, or it could be tied to my attempt to wash off the remaining developer. I'll have to do some more experiments to see.

Robert

[radiophoto]

She'll be off to Texas for college in the fall.

Lots of good schools in Texas, which one?  Probably not Texas A&M - Corpus Christi.

[brazile]

She'll be off to Texas for college in the fall.

Lots of good schools in Texas, which one?  Probably not Texas A&M - Corpus Christi.

No, not TAMU-CC: Rice University, my own alma mater, and that of my wife and her parents as well. Bit of a tradition, I guess.

Robert