Donald Traxler's Poetry

Tuesday, February 22, 2022

The Laws of Entropy

The laws of entropy

never fail.

A closed system, with

a fixed amount of

energy

will tend toward

decay

and chaos.

Soon to fall from

the tree,

we shall feed

other phyla.

My Return to Film Photography - XII

OK, the first order of business today is something I promised about a week ago: I said that I would compare, as fairly as I could, a couple of digital images with their re-creations on film. Here is the first:

The upper image is the digital one, while the lower one was shot on film. I would have to go with the one shot on film. Here is the second pose:

Again, the upper image is the digital one, while the lower one was shot on film. Again, I prefer the one shot on film. It is also true that the digital images lack resolution. I shot them at 4 MP, which was clearly not enough to go up against film.

In my previous instalment in this series, I posted some selfies shot in medium format, using a 28" cable release. This limited the distance from the subject (me) to the film plane to about 38". I decided to try the same thing in 35mm, with the AE-1. Here are a few images:

Next time, we'll put the Canon EOS Rebel 2000 through its paces, with some general-purpose film photography. In the meantime, shoot film, if you can!

(to be continued)

143 Thousand Visits, and Many Selfies

A couple of days ago we passed the 143k milestone, but I was too busy to write about it until now. My busyness has mostly been due to my return to film photography, which has so far been covered in eleven parts in the series "My Return to Film Photography." I'll be adding another instalment of that series today.

On the poetry front, poems come when inspiration comes, and the Muse sleeps with whomever she chooses.

With regard to translations, I've phased out my translations into world languages, having decided to leave that to my readers. I will, though, be faithful to my Udugi roots.

My renewed interest in film photography is time-consuming, but I believe it will be an excellent source of inspiration.

Please don't forget that this blog is a two-way street: you can make comments, suggestions, and requests.

In conclusion, I would like to thank you all, once again, for your continued interest and enthusiasm. Wadó, ꮹꮩ.

Sunday, February 20, 2022

My Return to Film Photography - XI

I'm still shooting and developing film, but for this instalment 2-1/4 x 2-1/4" (6x6cm) medium-format shooting with my venerable Mamiya C33 is the focus. My promise to compare a couple of digital images to their 35mm film re-creations will have to wait until next time.

Since my 28" cable-release works so well with the C33 (much better than the 20 ft. air release, or my jury-rigged substitute for it), I decided to shoot some selfies using the cable-release. Doing this with a TLR with no internal metering or auto-exposure and (of course) no autofocus, presented some challenges. These would be direct, not mirror shots, and the distance would be limited by the cable-release and my arm. I measured the distance from my body to the film plane, and it turned out to be 38". I set this distance, as best I could, on the distance scale for the 80mm normal lens. With an 80mm lens, especially at this close distance, the depth-of-field would be quite shallow, and focusing would be critical.

I would be using the LED desk lamp for my main light, and had already measured its light with my two 35mm, auto-exposure cameras. With 400 ISO film, the Canon AE-1 gave me 1/30 sec. at f 2.8; the EOS gave me 1/30 sec. at f 4. I set the shutter of the C33 at 1/30 sec., and the aperture between f 2.8 and f 4. I also verified this setting with the Gossen Scout 2 handheld light meter (selenium photocell), which I had learned from previous experiments must be set for 150 ASA/ISO instead of 400, to compensate for the LED light source.

These were challenging conditions, thanks to the use of vintage equipment. As it turned out, though, all frames were well focused and properly exposed.

The film I would be using was Ilford HP5+, which is one of my favorites, just as it was many years ago.

In the course of this selfie shoot, which was pretty repetitive, I became overconfident and forgot that the cable-release holds the shutter button down until you unlock the release. This caused two of my twelve exposures to be wasted.

Development was very straightforward, and presented no problem. Ilford, of course, does not tell you what developing time to use with Kodak D-76, but their ID-11 is essentially the same developer. I developed the film for six minutes at 72°F, and got consistently excellent negatives.

Here are some results from the medium-format selfie shoot:

The framing of this shot was guesswork, based on the amount of the taking lens that was in my line of sight. After slight cropping, the file size of the scanned negative is 6.66 MB.

I often wish that I had a more youthful model. The angle of the single, LED light was unforgiving, but I like the honesty and accuracy of the shot. I also like its luminosity, which I don't think you would get in a digital shot. All scans were done at 2400 dpi. This is the full, uncropped negative, and the file size is 7.14 MB.

Apart from artistic considerations, one advantage of an extremely high-contrast rendition is that the file size of the scan will be much smaller than that of a normal, gray-scale version. This scan, which was also moderately cropped, has a file size of 2.47 MB.

Next time, we'll attempt some comparisons between film and digital, and between 35mm and medium-format. In the meantime, shoot film if you can!

(to be continued)

Wednesday, February 16, 2022

Photo: Torso at Seventy-five

Age is just a number, and mine is fully listed. Shot on May 6, 2018. I'd like to say that Torquato Torso has improved with age in the intervening years, but that is sadly not the case.

Tuesday, February 15, 2022

If You Were Going to Say

Text and image are by Donald C. Traxler aka Donald Jacobson Traxler, and are hereby given into the public domain.