First Impressions: Diana F+ Premium Glass Lens

With the success of the Holga HGL-N Project, I could’t help but wonder about the Diana+ Premium Glass Lens. And so, this great little three-element coated glass lens found its way into my stocking this year, along with a Diana-Nikon lens adapter.

On a full-frame DSLR, this 75mm lens makes a great portrait lens, and compared to the standard plastic Diana lens, is super sharp and focuses to within 1 meter. But even better is how it breathes new life into the Diana F+ 120 film camera. Unlike the Holga HL-N, this lens is made primarily for the Diana F+ film camera, with the added plus that it can be used with an SLR with a simple adapter.

However, on a full-frame DSLR the adapter/lens combination makes for a compact setup, with the f/11 aperture being part of the adapter itself. But I can’t help but think how cool it would be if the adapter had the aperture “turret” that the Diana camera does. Looks like mod potential to me!

Compared to the single-element Holga lens, the Diana is brighter and much sharper, though a little more difficult to focus.

What prevents this from being the ideal walk-around lens is its long length. But the thing about shooting at 75mm on a full-frame DSLR is that you quickly get used to its clean, undistorted perspective. You can be a comfortable distance from your subject; the scale of nearby objects doesn’t fall grossly out of proportion; the angle of view is most flattering for portraits and figurature. It grows on you. As long as you’ve got room to foot-zoom, you’re good to go. 

Because this lens is capable of such sharp focus, you’ll find yourself wanting to focus it like any other lens. And with a DSLR, you can certainly do that. But, the Diana lens beckons to be used as a zone focus lens, and its front focus encourages that. No worries, it works equally well either way. I see a Holga/Diana glass lens shootout in the future.

Here are some samples:

In Search of the Perfect Curve

Once again I am revisiting post-pro lomography. I will stop using film when they pry it from my cold dead hands. But the reality is, it’s only going to be harder to come by. So even more reason to perfect the ability to achieve similar results in the digital domain.

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Redscale the Post-Pro Way

Wild Grasses. Canon PowerShot SD780 IS.
Full-color image, post-processed.

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Rescale Pansies

Redscale Pansies. Nikon N80, Kodak Gold 200, rated at ISO 100.

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X-Pro at Storm King Art Center

Last year’s expedition to Storm King Art Center took place on a strange day. Soon after our arrival, a storm began to brew, so we sought shelter in the outdoor cafe. As we finished our lunch, the clouds opened up. After a brief but intense shower, the sun emerged and gave way to some photo opportunities.

Shot with the Nikon AF-S 50mm f/1.4G, I found the detail and background bokeh to be quite pleasing. The bulk-loaded Kodak Ektachrome 100 was exposed at ISO 100, and I couldn’t have wished for a better result.

It all started when I cleaned out the freezer and discovered I had three 50' bulk rolls of Extachrome Plus 100, one 50' bulk roll of Ektachrome slide duplicating film, and several bulk-loaded canisters of Ektachrome 100. I couldn’t bring myself to toss this stuff until I at least saw if it was usable in some way. Expired film naturally lends itself well to cross-processing, so I decided to lock and load with the Storm King Art Center in my sights.

Unfortunately my yield was not as I had hoped for due to the weather, so I had some frames left over. I shot through the rest of the roll with some street photography in NYC.

The stark contrast contributing to the blown-out highlights is typical of cross-processing. For this series of photos, I adjusted the recovery just enough to eliminate the clipping overlay. This preserves the blown-out effect, but adds a little detail back into the highlights. The photos are grainy, and using noise reduction just defeats the whole purpose of shooting X-Pro. The potential for creative color variations with post-processing are enormous.

I’m definitely seeing some great potential here. The film costs nothing and expiration is no longer a factor. On ice, I should be able to keep this stuff in stasis indefinitely. With a reasonably good scan, the images can be processed in Adobe Camera Raw and I can achieve very good results. I can leave them as shot, or can attempt to take them further.

I refer to this as the “Schindler Effect” from the movie Schindler’s List. A lone red object in a sea of, in this case, green. X-Pro is great for making reds stand out against the surrounding colors, especially in landscapes.

These images are essentially straight from the camera. But, the exposure could easily be improved upon at the risk of taking away from the X-Pro effect. These images also have the potential of yielding very expressive black and whites.

If you’re not in love with the color, you have the option of creating black and white or toned grayscale images with some interesting variations. The color shift and contrast in the X-Pro image yields contrasty black and whites with a unique take on tonal balance. You can tame the highlights with copious amounts of recovery, and further tweak them with a tone curve if needed. There are all kinds of contrast variations possible with the many tools in Adobe Camera Raw.

D90 Redscale Revisited

Encouraged by the results with the X10, I set out to attempt the same Redscale effect with the D90. And while it’s entirely possible to achieve a similar effect with a 10,000K white balance on the D90, the results are not nearly as pleasing.

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Redscale in the City

Well, the X10 looked like it had redscale potential in my initial tests. Then I brought it into the City. At night. In Times Square. Wow.

That the X10 was able to capture some remnants of color in its fiery orange images was a pleasant surprise. it's one of the things that make film redscale photography compelling. But I had no idea this would happen...

As it is, the Fujifilm X10 responds differently than you’d think to various colors and light sources, most notably deep, saturated blues and cyans. It’s a striking contrast to the yellows and oranges in the rest of the image.

Reds often turn magenta, adding yet another dynamic. But the results vary widely from scene to scene, making for some enjoyable shooting:

Redscaling the X10

White balance works a little differently on the Fujifilm X10 than it does on the D90. Once you set it, you can push it further with the WB Shift.

If you set the D90 to 10,000K then start playing around with the WB Trim, it can drop down below 10,000K. On the X10, any adjustment you make seems to be in addition to the overall setting, which makes for some interesting possibilities. Like Redscaling simulation.

Set the Kelvin WB to 10,000K, then set the WB shift to +9 (red) and -9 (yellow). (the WB is still indicated as 10,000K) then, set the film simulation to Velvia, and bring the color saturation all the way up. You can also play around with sharpness and contrast.

In-Camera Redscale Effect with the Fujifilm X10

The results are some interesting redscale simulations, better than I can get with the D90 using an orange filter. Unlike using a filter alone, more color separation information is captured, making for a more faithful redscale effect. you get nice greens, and the reds pop from the oranges. The highlights turn to a bright greenish yellow just as with film.

The really cool thing is you can set this all up in one of the two custom presets, so you can switch over anytime. Minor post-processing gets you very close to the effect you get with film.

Just another cool thing about the X10.

Collateral Damage

Collateral Damage

The favorite neighborhood posting place for Garage Sale signs.

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What Digital Can’t Do, Part One: Redscale

From the moment I learned about redscale, I was intrigued by the simple ingenuity of using the film base itself as a filter by loading it into the camera with the emulsion facing backwards. With the appropriate subject matter, the aesthetic could be quite compelling, and it seemed a wonderful reason to continue shooting with film.

But curiosity got the better of me, and when I accidentally used a Cokin Orange #A002 filter, (which I usually reserve for adding contrast to black and white images) on a color image, I noticed a similarity. So now I’m on a quest to find a way to shoot redscale with a digital camera. And the orange filter gets me in the ballpark.

Digital image captured through an orange filter; first attempt at digital redscale.

The results vary widely depending on the white balance, exposure, and the camera’s contrast, hue, and saturation settings. So, with an orange filter installed, I can get many different effects. An incandescent white balance, somewhere at the low end around 3500K, yields a shapely, “colorful’ image comprised of browns, reds, oranges and yellow-greens. A white balance towards the high end of 6,000K, such as flash, yields a saturated, relatively monochromatic image comprised of reds, oranges and yellows. The results can be quite unpredictable, not unlike redscale film, but they can also be quite controllable as well. For example, I might shoot a cityscape at 2500K to get as much shape and color variation as possible, while a sunset would look spectacular at 5500K, where it would display an intensely saturated collection of reds, oranges and yellows.

The first thing I noticed about my attempt was that it was a lot brighter and a lot cleaner. Despite using an orange filter, the neutral highlights were yellow, just like rescale film. But I also learned that using active D-Lighting was a no-no. It lightened the shadows, and forced browns to become a bright, saturated, shapeless red. So there is much work ahead to perfect the technique.

Could I make the image look like redscale using Photoshop? Pretty much. I’ve already created an action to convert a regular image to “redscale” using the channel mixer. But I really want to try to get it as close as possible without any post processing.

Do I think it will ever faithfully reproduce the effect captured on redscale film? No. Can it capture the overall feeling of a redscale film image? Maybe. Is it worth pursuing as a creative form of digital photography? Definitely.

Will I continue to roll my own redscale and perfect the technique on film?
Absolutely. And here’s why…

   

Kodak Gold 200 rated at ISO 100, redscaled.

To be fair, these images are a bit underexposed despite rating the ISO 200 film at 100. Next time I think I’ll keep the same rating, but open up a stop. The digital image on the other hand used used active D-Lighting, so it’s not a good example either. But, I think there’s potential.

Incidently, the square format image was photographed with the Nikkor 16-85mm f3.5 (a DX lens) on the N80 body. As you can see, if you crop it for a square format, it removes the vignetting and works just fine. So, it makes a nice, super-wide lens for my Nikon film body. I could also have cropped it for a 16mm x 24mm frame size, which also would have eliminated the vignetting and given me a landscape format.

Happy Worldwide Pinhole Day!

Nautica

Today, April 25, is Worldwide Pinhole Day. I had grand plans of attempting an infrared pinhole landscape, but the ensuing rain ended all that. So I decided on an indoor still life instead.

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Getting Back to Basics

Before the lens came the aperture. The very first camera, the camera obscura or “dark box”, is nothing more than an aperture on one side of a light-tight box. The camera doesn’t get much more basic than that. Hence, my fascination for pinhole photography. If you can take a compelling photograph with a pinhole camera, you can take a picture with just about anything.

Color photo taken with a homemade pinhole camera on 4x5 film

Pinhole Photography really makes you think about the image you’re capturing, not the equipment you’re capturing it with. There’s only one setting to master; time. But there’s so much to be learned—patience! With time and patience, you can capture an image using a box with a hole in it. With time, patience and thought, you can create a photograph.

Being a completely different medium than film, digital photography requires almost no time and patience to capture an image. But to create a digital photograph, you need just as much if not more thought. The good news is once you get to know your equipment, the thought goes into the making of the photograph, and not the process of capturing the image.

Color photo taken with a Nikon D90 and Lensbaby Composer/Pinhole optic.

Pinhole photography lends itself well to the digital medium. It requires just as much time, patience and thought as its film-based counterpart, but affords more potential for free experimentation. The experience gained can then be applied to capturing pinhole images on film, with a much greater resolution.

I find the softness of pinhole photos intriguing. To me, they’re not exactly out of focus; they’re out of time. Because they can depict extended periods of time in a single frame, they seem to come from a different dimension. Even sharp pinhole photos taken in large format with an optimally-sized aperture have a quality I cannot quite describe.

So, now that I have a digital camera with an interchangeable lens that I can replace with a pinhole, I can become truly prolific in my pinhole work. With no reciprocity failure, the exposure time has been substantially shortened. With no color shifts, color pinhole photography becomes much more feasible. Under the right conditions, I can even do it handheld. The need to compare it with its film counterpart will no doubt resurrect my interest in 4x5 pinhole.

But, I will need a remote cable release (which is now wireless, of course) so there’s another thing to order.

Looking Back: Lensless Polaroid Photography

During the quest for my next lens, I Unearthed my 4x5 pinhole camera, and came across this pinhole photo, captured on Polaroid 4x5 B&W film. My partner has been instrumental in providing me with a vast outdoor studio of endless treasures to capture. And the lighting is so good. This is one of them.

4x5 Polaroid Pinhole Photo

When you think about it, Polaroid was the predecessor of digital. It solved so many of the same problems. It was great for pinhole work, because the quality of the professional film was so good, and you could see your results almost instantly. The experience with exposure translated to film, so once you nailed it with your Polaroid, you simply swapped out the back and captured the image on an equivalent speed negative film. But in and of themselves, the Polaroids were so good, they would merit their own genre: 4x5 Polaroid Pinhole. This image is over ten years old and still looks as good as the day it was captured.

Sadly, this film is out of production for now. I say for now, because the resurrection of Polaroid is inevitable, but what will come of it in the form of film types has yet to be seen. As I write, new film and cameras are in the works.

There’s always Fuji instant film, so I’m not going to toss my Polaroid 545i back just yet. But last I checked, no B&W. Yes, I could shoot color, and convert to B&W the same as I do when shooting digital B&W. But if I’m going to do that, it seems I might as well just shoot B&W negative film.

It’s more about the fact that you produce a single, original, print. It truly is one of a kind.

My initial plan to resurrect my 4x5 pinhole work is to use the D90 to gauge exposure, then shoot 4x5 B&W negative film, which I can process myself. A pinhole body cap made to match the 4x5’s focal length and some math to compensate for reciprocity should make this feasible.

Color’s not out of the question, but I think I’ll leave that up to the D90. The resolution won’t be as good as 4x5, and there’s a physical limit to how wide a view I can get before the mirror strikes the back of the pinhole cap. But the color will be stunning.

Stop!

Lensbaby Composer, Pinhole Optic