What do Film and Vinyl LPs have in Common?

Dust and scratches!

Just like records, you have to protect negatives from the elements, and just like records, film carries a static charge that attracts them. Happily, my retired DiscWasher has been given a new lease on life. The Zerostat gun is great for neutralizing the static charge on film, and the record brush great for removing dust without scratching it.

I recently rescued these item from my archives and put them back into service. I have other anti-static brushes as well that also work wonders.

Data Transfer in a Flash

My how far we’ve come. I have vivid memories of the days when transferring files between computers was referred to as using the “sneaker net”, and 5-1/4" 44MB SyQuest Disks were a big deal because they were better than hauling around 32 3-1/2" floppies. When the 88MB version came out, we were in heaven. The slow and somewhat unreliable 100MB Zip disk by Iomega was the next big thing that eventually put Iomega out of the removable media market. Today we have solid-state, no moving parts flash memory and life is better because of it.

The USB “Thumb” drive was shear genius from the onset. Exquisitely tiny and universally compatible, they have quickly become the defacto standard for read/write data storage. But not all drives are created equal, as I've recently learned.

I’ve been using 4GB drives from a well-known, third party brand for quite some time now, with no problems whatsoever. Until one went bad on me and I replaced it with an 8GB version that was slow as a dog. Now fully entrenched in this new techology, SanDisk is about to become my Goto brand.

I’ve been using their SD cards for quite some time now, so it seems natural to transition to them for USB drives. I recently purchased an 8GB Cruzer Glide and it’s smaller, FOUR TIMES faster than the other brand, and consumes so little power I can mount it using my keyboard’s USB port!

These come in many different capacities, and there are advantages to each. Smaller drives are faster, and if one does go bad, there's less data to lose. These are great for transferring data between devices, for temporary storage, and for backup. What they’re not good for is permanent data archiving, as their circuitry consists not of transistors, but of tiny capacitors, which have a tendency to break down over time. So, the optical disk as we now know it (CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-RW, DVD+RW, BD-R and BD-RE) will be around for quite some time.

Macro Me, iPhone Style

Fingerprint taken by using a water droplet at a macro lens.

Being a macro enthusiast, you can imagine my excitement when my friend and expert Starbucks barista Carlos Cespedes came to me with this question; “Is it true you can put a water droplet on you mobile phone camera lens and take closeup images of insects?” “Well, let’s find out”, I said, and proceeded to locate a droplet of water to prove him right.

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Presby Memorial Iris Garden 2012

Purple Iris

Our return to Presby Memorial Iris Gardens for the first time in years did not prove as eventful as we would have liked. We checked the previous week to see if the irises were in bloom, but not much had developed since then. We’re now thinking they might peak toward the end of this week. We did however manage to get off a few shots of some early bloomers.

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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.