I love film. I love the time it takes, the tiny imperfections that always pop up and the end result when properly done. When I shoot digital, I shoot in RAW to give me the most latitude when working on the image in post. So imagine my joy at discovering a new world, albeit a smaller one.

Reading a blog post I encountered a comment that the JPG B&W images created by the Leica M9 were perfect to this one photographer's eye. This is obviously something very subjective, but since I had some free time I wanted to take a look at them myself. Never wanting to settle for the simple, I decided to compare a couple of shots in JPF B&W setting between my M10 and M9 (in reality it is an ME which sold for 1500 USD less than the M9 but was essentially the same camera).

During the test I discovered a few things worth noting. The first is that I loved both renditions of the Leica JPG B&W.  The second is that they bring in a certain imperfection that brings me back to my film memories.

So why the interest in rediscovering JPG potential? I love my M10 but also shoot my ME a great deal.  There are a variety of reasons for this which I won't go into but lets say that I take my ME out a great deal.  The ME has an 18 mp sensor which is plenty for my shooting but has two substantial draw backs.  The first is that the back screen is crap. It was on the M9 as well. It is barely good enough to check composition and not much else. Nothing to be done about that. The second is that it is slow. Recording images in RAW even with a fast card causes a bit of a delay. Shooting in JPG solves the second issue completely allowing me to take out the Leica ME on JPG mode in B&W and avoid time consuming conversions.

There are low light performance issues with the older sensor of the ME but coming from film, grain does not bother me.  JPG have limitations as we are not given all the data to be able to alter much.  Again, coming from film, this is normal for me. I don't like pictorializing my digital or film images.

This is another reason for me to pull out my trusty ME and capture some nice images straight out of camera. They will not be perfect, they will have their small issues but this is something that I love in film, so why not embrace in digital as well. Limitations and overcoming them is part of what pushes our creativity.  

The shot above was taken with a Leica M10 using a Zeiss 50mm f/2 Planar lens (old design with modern construction makes this one of my all time favorite lenses).  This is straight out of the camera with no adjustments made. 

For comparisons, below is the same scene taken with the ME and the same lens. 

Like most of todays converts to darkroom printing, I learned most of what I know via YouTube videos and helpful chatrooms.  I then upgraded my education through a friend with vastly more experience than I have.  This helped push my darkroom printing up a notch. 

Last week I decided to pay for a full day class on printing taught by Alejandro Gulminelli who is quickly developing a name for himself in the analog photography world of Buenos Aires.  He has traveled extensively and been taught by some amazing people in the US.  He is very approachable and has an easy manner about him.  I had purchased a enlarger from him a few months ago and decided to return to see about a private class.

Alejandro is a very good photographer and a great guy to learn from. He is patient and walks you through his methods giving you ample opportunity to try different things. I really enjoyed the class so lets jump into it!

It was a full day affair at his business/darkroom.  We started with a quick chat about photography, what I was working on and what I wanted to accomplish that day.  I explained that I knew a bit about darkroom work but wanted to see another person's workflow to see how they did it.

I selected a medium format negative (I took several sheets to pick from) and we started working.  Below are a few things that I learned and an overall take away from the class.  

Notes:

1. Alejandro has a very efficient workflow. Paper is expensive in Argentina (roughly twice that of the US) which has pushed him to be careful with waste. I will explain one method I picked up from him below.

2. Alejandro is methodical especially when it comes to bath times and temperature. Development is 2 minutes with Stop baths being about 30 seconds and development being another 2 minutes.  

3. Alejandro has a very good eye for composition so this part of the print process is second nature to him. I took a bit of time to understand why he would compose things a certain way and was very pleased with his selections. This is more intuitive for him and was fun to watch.

4. Alejandro spends a great deal of time nailing the whites on his images. Once the white has the least amount of detail he nails this down before moving to getting his blacks. His blacks he seemed a little less concerned about, ensuring a true black somewhere on the image and running with it.

5. Alejandro has had a great deal of equipment built for him. One item of note is a steel stand to put the wet prints up on in order to squeegee them dry and study them.  It had some LED lights up top to make it easier to see and a collection tray below for the water.

6. Alejandro will try everything else before moving to dodging and burning. He believes it is hard to get a proper dodge or burn without telltale signs of it being done.

7. Alejandro builds his own frames and even installs lighting in them.  

Overall:

My main lessons learned from Alejandro is one of efficient paper use and careful time management. I used to use half a sheet to do my filter tests at 0 and at 5.  This would kill one entire sheet of paper giving me on bright white and a true black. But it did not show me what they looked like together.

Alejandro taught me to take a smaller strip and get the whites right. So lets say we selected a Grade 2 filter at 10 seconds. He then exposes the next strip for the full 10 seconds before applying the Grade 5 filter and working on the true blacks. This saves time and paper.

I am now timing the amount of time my print sits in the developer, stop and fixer. This coupled with a monitoring of the temperature of the baths (I give myself 20-22 degrees C as a range) will give me more consistent results.

You can see Alejandro's Instagram feed here.

@alejandro.gulminelli

It was a rainy weekend, so I dived into my darkroom to have some fun.  Saturday I developed a roll of 120 and 35mm film that I had taken a few months ago.  The 120 was shot with the Mamiya 220 Pro and the 35mm taken by a Nikon F2.  For the darkroom worked, I selected three 120 shots that I liked.  

The one above is a shot of a jawbone (cow or horse).  I loved the cracked enamel and took advantage of the Mamiya 220 close up function.  I am amazed with the lenses on the 220.  It provides amazing detail and the contrast makes all the shots have a three dimensional look.  I have found that a Pearl Semi-Gloss paper really brings it out nicely.

For the darkroom I opted to use the deep dynamic range that was captured. The teeth and bone were bright white (not blown out but just under).  This allowed me to overexpose the negative dropping the background into a deep black.  There was no need for filters as the contrast with this lens is sufficient for almost any image.  This is in an 8x10 image.

The second was shot on the same paper and is also an 8x10 image.  This is an empty wasp hive that we found around the ranch.  It was rather large (about the size of a baseball) and the honeycomb structure was very appealing.  Again there was sufficient contrast to avoid using the filters.  

The third shot is my favorite.  It is a portrait of my father sitting at his ranch. He has this calm serenity in this image but behind those eyes is a highly intelligent man who never stops thinking and solving problems. I am happy with the portrait because it captured a wonderful afternoon and really carries his personality through.  

Again no need for filters.  I did burn his sweater a bit as well as his hat to bring out a bit more detail.  

​

There is something special about picking up the perfect tool. Not compromising, not having to adjust or make do. Like when you pick up the right sized screwdriver which fits perfectly in the screws slots, no play, no give, just a perfect fit.  This is what I experience every time I pick up a Nikon F2.  

It is a hefty camera but it fits right into my big hands. It is robust yet precise. There are no bells or whistles, there is just an aperture ring, shutter speed dial and a shutter button.  The metering offered by the DP-1 is a simple spot metering that just works. It won't take the picture for you, it will just tell you when the center spot is exposed properly given your selected film speed and camera settings.  

Since taking Sover Wong's CLA class for the Nikon F2, I have worked on a bunch of cameras and every time I open one up I marvel at the ingenuity of Nikon.  The mechanism works, pure and simple.  

To do a proper CLA take a solid two days and is not a simple process.  Aside from the course by Sover, I have done a great deal of research into different greases, oils and light sealing material.  I have brought my engineering degree to good use in understanding the effect of temperature and time on grease and oils. I have done all this to leave a perfect tool in the best possible condition possible.  

​Every time I put a Nikon F2 into my calibration rig I am impressed that after 40 years it is still as accurate as it is.  Sure it does require some adjustments to bring it back to factory specifications but this camera has been used and abused for 40 years!  It should be far off the mark.  

My procedure for doing a CLA is always the same.  I set up my work bench with plenty of light. I do a detailed visual inspection of the camera...and I mean detailed. Magnifying glass in hand I am looking to see any signs that might give me a clue as to how it was used or cared for. Paint rubbed off is not an indication of misuse. Even a dent can be overlooked as they rarely cause internal damage and are easy to bang out. The purpose is to get to know the camera well before I start to look at her parts.

I then take the camera to my shutter speed calibration rig and I test all shutter speeds. I also test the light meter to see how accurate it is. Once done I will open the camera up, which is not as straightforward as it sounds. You see to properly take her apart there are certain steps that need to be done in order to avoid stressing some parts. I have seen many videos on YouTube that do it wrong and in one you can see the result with a broken retaining spring. When done properly, it comes apart easily without stressing any internal parts and without any use of force.

I then remove all old light seal material.  There are pieces inside the camera that dry out and turn to dust. I remove all these pieces and use a strong blower to clean out the camera from dust. I then use some alcohol to clean out gears, hinges and areas of rubbing.  

I then turn my attention to the electronics, which are simple on this camera. I repair the battery compartment (almost always broken as it is one of the few weaknesses in design) and ensure that all wires are clean and the solder is still shinny (dull solder can be an indication of battery leak).  

This ends my first day working with the F2.  I put the camera aside, to allow all parts to properly dry.  The following day I oil or grease the needed components with a very high quality oil and grease.  This is important as a generic lithium based grease will work perfectly but will start to dry out after a handful of years. This would require another CLA. There are greases with very long shelf life available for very specific applications that work extremely well.  They have a wide temperature range and do not dry out. I have this flown in as it only requires a very minute amount of grease and oil. 

Once fully lubricated, I replace all light seals. I use a special light seal that uses acid free glue to avoid damaging the body of the camera. Once this is done I partially reassemble and then put it on my calibration rig again to test it.

Many times the camera becomes more accurate after the lubrication making it simpler to calibrate. But sometimes I must fix what a less qualified repairman has done.  I calibrate the slow and fast shutter speed and ensure that the 1/2000 of a second is correct as well. This requires measuring shutter curtain speed and separation and is an iterative process to get right. 

Once firing within factory specifications, I reassemble the camera and do a final test of all functions.  The camera at this stage looks perfectly clean. The shutter button moves freely and the advance lever is smooth.  

Every time I get an old F2 back to factory conditions I can't help but admire the camera. I have plenty of F3 cameras as well, but the mechanical perfection that the Nikon F2 achieved still amazes me. 

I love B&W images.  They speak to me on a level that color simply cannot and for a long while I wondered why.  A few years ago, after reading Susan Sontag "On Photography" book I began to realize what it was.  Photography for me has nothing to do with reality so the B&W abstract interpretation of our world appeals to me. 

But there are times when a color rendition can be just as abstract. The film has to be right, as does the development and the light has to be just so but it does happen.  And these, abstract representation of the world, draw me in and tap into an emotional memory that can be more powerful than a B&W image.

The picture above, with its obvious location, was shot on Portra 400 film.  This was taken early int he morning and the sun was coming up.  The sky was a blue grey while the sun coming up was bouncing off the stone architecture that was all around me.  I shot this image and the colors are obviously nothing like what I was seeing.  But what I was seeing was not nearly as beautiful as this image.  

As I think back on the day, my memory has slowly changed to match this abstract view of it.  It was a wonderful day, a day I took off from work, took a bunch of film and a couple of cameras and dedicated myself to a photography walk around London.  Most of my favorite images of that wonderful city comes from this walk.  

These colorful shots, processed with slightly expired chemicals, give me the abstract interpretation of the world that I love.  Digital continues to improve and the quality of images, the details that can be captured and the perfection of the cameras themselves continue to surprise me.  But the natural film rendering of a scene, when properly captured transmits more emotion then the perfection of those digital cameras.

 The idea is to think of an image, shoot it, develop the roll and make a print in a single day.  This weekend I did just that with a roll of 120, my Mamiya C220 and a Calla Lily that was growing in my front yard.  

I had seen the flower earlier in the week, for those who do not know, this type of Lily gives a flower that lasts about a week.  The plant then continues to offer Lilys for several weeks after that.  So I noticed the first bloom and waited to have a couple very nice ones opened.  Saturday was the day of reckoning. 

I had envisioned a close up of the Lily flower so I needed a camera or lens that could give me a close up.  The Mamiya C220 is one of my favorite cameras for this kind of a shot.  I can focus very close to the object, the 120 film gives me a great deal of detail and the camera is not too unwieldy.  

From past experience, I knew that the metering of this flower was going to be a challenge. You need to spot meter well inside the flower in order to get detail in the highlights.  This was a special challenge because this particular Lily sits in a dark corner of the yard.  The contrast was going to be high and I needed to keep detail in both the dark and the white.  I had a cloudy day and took advantage of the perfect time to capture the shot.

I selected Ilford Delta 100 Pro, one of my favorite low grain film.  This film developed in D76 or ID-11 gives a wonderful tonal range with some potential contrast without becoming overpowering.  If I compare it to HP-5, the Delta 100 has a great deal less contrast but still gives you the option to bring out more using filters.  For this image I wanted something soft yet keeping the details in the whites and blacks.

I chose an Exposure Index of 80 as compared to the box speed of 100.  I developed it normally as if I had exposed it at 100.  I believe this gives me a more even exposure, and if lighting permits, I shoot at 80.

The set up was simple, I put the C220 on my tripod and got up close.  I took a spot meter reading on the inside of the flower.  I wanted a good depth of field to ensure that everything was in focus, and I wanted to be able to tell that the background was actually leaves.  I did not want it to appear as if I took the picture with a backdrop in a studio.  I wanted that garden look to be there, even if just hinted at.  So I selected f/8 and took my reading. I took three shots, to bracket the image. 

• EI 80 f/8 & 1/15sec
• EI 80 f/8 & ⅛ sec
• EI 80 f/8 & 1/30 sec

I ended up going with the ⅛ of a second as the negative appeared to give me more detail in the white flower area. 

I framed the image to ensure that I had some leaves in the background.  The image above was shot through the viewfinder using my iPhone.  The trick with up close images on the C220 is to watch the framing.  Since it is a TLR as you get closer you begin to suffer parallax.  

Here is the final print.  The detail in the flower is clear, the background is still visible and I managed to keep the detail in the shadows as well as the flower petal.  The framing is what I wanted and the light is exactly how I imagined.  The grain of the Ilford Delta 100 allowed me to zoom in for the right crop given the 8x10 paper size.  

The overall project came out better that I had hoped.  

I enjoy doing photo deep dives, for those of you who have not seen it check out the top of this page, but there are dangers of doing this.  A photo taken in isolation of the rest of the photographer's work is often not representative of the photographer.  It can be a great image, a work of art and might move an entire generation of photographers BUT it might still not represent the type of photographer that took it.

When you look at more of a photographer's work, you begin to understand more about their style, methodology and approach.  Most of the time this is purely academic and but sometimes it can teach you something that you can apply to your own photography.  Fan Ho is a prime example of that.  Going through his work, turning page after page I began looking for themes and similarities in the photographs.  This is what I found...

Pulling these images together, showing them one after another, the theme is clear.  They are all taken in the same place, same time of day to take advantage of the light rays coming through.  I would guess it is morning light as people seem to be going to work and school.  

His method here becomes clear.  He knows a place with great light, knows the place well and the time he needs to be there to get the light he is after.  He picked his spot and kept going back.  I can picture him going there every few weeks or months, finding a place to stand and then wait for the story to come together.  

Just as a lion would scout out a watering hole, Fan Ho picked his background and then waited to let the people walk into it.  This is not the meandering walkings of a street photographer trying to capture the life in a neighborhood.  Here we have a very methodical approach to capturing life.  Go to the place where life unfolds in front of the background you like.  

This worked amazingly well for Fan Ho.  He was able to control the composition, ensure good lighting and capture a variety of different people walking through.  If you look at any image, the background represents a massive amount of real estate on an image.  If you can control this you have a great deal of elements within your control.  

Fan Ho took amazing images all over Hong Kong and I do not pretend to argue that he only took this kind of pictures.  But what I do see is a methodical artist who went back to the same places to see what changed.  As I look through some of his other images, I see the same methodology.  

So how does this help me?  It taught me the need to know a city, to understand your surroundings know how the light interacts in that place throughout the day and go back.  Keep going back and see what you can capture in that spot.  

So much has been written about the color rendition of the old Leica M9 (in my case ME) that I thought it was worth showing some of my favorite images using this camera.  I now have a Leica M10 but must admit that the M9 is still a wonderful workhorse.  Yes it has its oddities, such as a limitation on card size, slow buffer and horrible LCD screen but it still performs flawlessly where it really counts.

I see plenty of people discussing the color rendition of a CCD (Charge Coupled Device) sensor versus a CMOS (Complimentary Metal-Oxide Semiconductor) that I thought it worth spending a little time on.  There are a few good places on the internet to dig into the engineering behind each, but suffice to say that the CCD transports the signal from each light reading cell to the edge and then converts it to a digital signal.  A CMOS does a series of amplifications at each cell.  Which is better?  I have no idea...just two different ways of solving the problem, however amplification of signal is difficult without an amplification of the "noise" as well....

Regardless, this is not a comparison between the two sensors because that would be awfully boring.  I can tell you that in many side by side images it can be difficult to see a difference.  But there are shots, that for some amazing reason come out absolutely spellbinding on the CCD sensor.  

The image above, of my two sons at an airport waiting on a delayed flight to Cambodia, is almost straight from the camera as all I adjusted was the contrast (RAW files are always a bit flat), cropped it a bit and gave the blacks a bit of a push.  Someone can look at this image and argue the white balance is off, and it is but look beyond that into the brightness of the blues, the subtle transition into the greenish tint in the background yet still holding onto the real skin tones.  

Here is a very basic snapshot.  I wanted to capture all the junk that a small stall was selling in some backroad store.  The colors really hit me when I looked at this image back home.  Nothing bright, just the basic yellow, green and blue rendered so wonderfully.  

Here a simple image with some amazing red walls in the background.  I shot this image because of the color and the contrast with the white, marble statue.  When I got back I was floored with how well it was captured.  

Here was a sunset off some of the islands in Indonesia.  Again the color and light capture is frankly astonishing.  

This shot is the one that really got me into the color discussion of the Leica M9.  I shot this one and just loved how perfect the color rendition is.  I began wanting to understand why and started seeing the discussion of the CCD sensor versus the CMOS.  

My Leica M10 shoots amazing pictures and the color rendition is very close to what I actually see.  But thus far there is no image that has struck me because of the color.  The detail it captures impresses me as does the feel of the images but the color is fairly...normal.  

So I keep my M9 and occasionally pull it out and use it hoping to get one of those amazing color images.  Maybe there is something to be said for the CCD sensors.....

I travel for work and fun and get to see amazing art all over the world.  I love oil paintings, sculptures and tapestries but struggled to find something worthwhile to do with them photographically.  Taking a picture of a sculpture for the sake of art is really a form of reproduction which complicates my outlook.  Let me explain.

As a photographer I strive to make art with my camera.  I want that art to be built on a unique perspective.  I don't want to recreate the snapshot seen around the world. I want to look at a scene in my own unique, if limited, way and capture it.

So when I look to a work of art, the challenge is how do you make a unique piece of work out of another artists work?  If I just shoot the work and reproduce it, would my work not just be a copy of their efforts?  Would my shot be beautiful because of their work?  How could anyone look critically at the photograph and get something unique from it?

My perspective change with this sculpture that I found in Tuileries Park in Paris.  As I stood looking at this sculpture it brought back my studies of Ancient Greek culture, my visit to Greece and my shear wonder for the art they created.  I wanted to capture this in some way but again did not know how to.  I took a few shots of it and left, disappointed as always when I take a picture that I am unhappy with.  I took it because I could not because it was worth taking.

That night I was thinking about this statue and my struggle to capture it when I had an idea.  Over breakfast I began playing with the idea and when I looked out I saw it very overcast and my idea took form.  I would capture this statue digitally, with a very tight frame. The overcast clouds will give me a backdrop and will almost look as if this Greek Hoplite is making his final stand against the gathering storm.  

I got very close to it and positioned myself so that the statue filled the frame.  I did not want to crop the image after taking it so I shot three different shots to ensure that the statue went from corner to corner of my frame. The clouds were perfect, I got a little low and snapped the shot. 

To be clear, the art was made by the person who carved this wonderful statue.  This no longer bothers me because everything I shoot was made by someone else and all I am offering is a different perspective.  So without taking the credit for the art, I can take credit for my perspective of it.  

This fueled my imagination, and I began looking at sculptures in a very different light.  I began to challenge myself to shoot them in a unique way.  

One of my favorite works is the Winged Victory of Samothrace but I could not find anything to do with it photographically.  I walked around it, along with 30 other people, and took a snapshot just to have it.  I then saw the stairs and decided to include it in my shot.  I waited for the number of people to drop a bit and chose my shot.  

Here I got very low to be able to shoot this statue with a backdrop of the ceiling and window arch.  I wanted enough of it to give some contrast to the image.  Both the statue and the building are works of stone and I like the contrast between them.  The same statue in a different location would not be nearly as interesting to capture.  

Here is a sculpture from Easter Island, a gift from the Chilean government to the Louvre. I liked the mood lighting that they had on it.  This was an easy capture but they had it displayed perfectly.   

It is a moment I was not prepared for.  This is not a new occurrence for me, my first child, an amazing daughter, has been pushing my boundaries since the day she was born. This day would be no different.  She came to me and explained that there was going to be an environmental march downtown in Buenos Aires and she would like to attend.

For those unfamiliar with the latin culture and our famous hotblooded politics let me explain...you see for us, politics is something emotional and anything emotional can become physical.  I am naturally weary of protest marches in Argentina however this one seemed on the tamer side of things. I offered to take her and she brightened up immediately.  I would have been happy to drop her off but she seemed pleased I would be there.  Again, another surprise.

I grabbed the Nikon F2 I had just finished servicing, and two rolls of film.  I selected a 35mm lens as I am still not liking the 28mm lens I have for the Nikon (a matter of getting used to the perspective) but can quickly picture a 35mm focal length.  I wanted something wider than a 50mm do to the tight area I knew I would be in but I also did not want a great deal of distortion.

Off we went to walk to the protest starting off point.  The protest was to start at the Pink House (here the President lives in a pink house) and march to congress.  At congress we were to hear a few speeches then it would end in a cloud of pot.

The march was wonderful, people were friendly and supportive and it was made up by mostly young people filled with illusion and determination.  It was wonderful to walk around them and gain from their energy level.  

For photographers, marches are wonderful events.  People go to these events specifically to get attention to their cause and hence was photographs to be taken.  They welcome it. So taking candid photos of people all over the street is simple and welcome. There is no perceived invasion of privacy and they want to be noticed.  

Photographers of every ilk ran around snapping up photographs as if there was no tomorrow (and for digital there really isn't).  People posed, sang, danced and obviously marched.  

Whenever I photograph these odd events, where family and friends are not the subject matter, I usually do not come back to them.  In other words, I shoot the images, develop them, may print a few but then I do not go back.  Obviously I keep the negatives, but it is not something I typically return to.  In order to make the entire process of some value, I need to tie it into a project, a short one but something that has a clear deliverable at the end.

Weekend Project:
I have developed the two rolls of film and now I will find four or five shots and make a type of collage out of them.  All will be in black and white however I did take a few shots on my phone so I may have one printed in color for the middle of the collage. I will see how it all comes together and go from there.  My goal here is to finish this weekend with a framed collage of this protest to give to my daughter as a gift to commemorate her first march.

Lessons Learned:

• Trust my daughter to push me out of my comfort zone...always.
• Take a wide angle lens.
• Be ready to take a great deal of pictures as people WANT their picture taken.
• It is chaotic so watch your personal belongings.
• The perspective of the images becomes monotonous so change your vantage point, go high, low close up and farther away