hello, was happy to buy it with the flash and the manual at $5 this weekend. I’m glad i have the manual since it explains that to dial the film ASA setting you must put the focus at infinite, that helps quite a lot! :)
1. Go outside in full sun. Point your camera at something brightly lit, and press the shutter button while listening and observing your camera’s lens. The shutter should be very fast and the aperture must look tiny. If your camera defaults to ISO 100 film, it should fire at about 1/125s with an f/16 aperture. It’s often the smallest aperture and highest shutter speed.
2. Go indoors and turn off your camera’s flash. Point it at a dim corner (some cameras will need a certain minimum of light, so look for the darkest spot your camera will work on). Your aperture should look the largest and the shutter should stay open noticeably longer, between 1/15th of a second and 2+ seconds.
3. Your camera isn’t working right if: a) it does not show a noticeable difference in shutter speeds between the outdoor sun and dim indoors, b) if your camera’s shutter is unexpectedly slow in the sun (i.e., like in this video: youtube.com/shorts/A0RTrKh…), c) if your camera’s shutter is unexpectedly fast indoors.
Note that this test does not verify your camera’s accuracy — just whether it works or not.
If you haven’t yet seen Dustin’s Kodak factory tour, you should. It’s a three-part documentary that’s enchantingly informative and awe-inspiring.
When I saw this video, my appreciation for colour film production increased tenfold. I also found the series therapeutic — it helped me realize that film photography is greater than me, greater than Analog.Cafe, and it is still likely to last beyond my time.
There’s a lot you can do to clean up even the worst examples of scratches on film.
I’ve recently fixed an image that came out appallingly bad. I needed it for my review article (analog.cafe/r/peak-design-…) and couldn’t re-shoot it in time.
Cleaning this frame up was a gruelling process, but I wanted to document it on video to give some context for what the process may be like for whoever is about to attempt something similar.
I’ve compressed about three hours of my recorded work into this 15-second video: youtube.com/shorts/F-6kp5t….
There’s a ton of choice out there. Mju II is a versatile camera that can shoot anything with a DX code.
If you prefer to use the built-in flash as little as possible and have the least motion and lens blur in your photos, an ISO 800 film will work well. I really enjoyed Portra 800 (analog.cafe/r/kodak-portra…) although it is on a pricey side.
If you like fine grain in colour, Kodak Ektar can do that for you and it also tends to produce saturated, contrasty images (analog.cafe/r/kodak-ektar-…) — although you may need to make some colour corrections in post if you’re shooting portraits.
I’ve also recently reviewed ColorPlus (analog.cafe/r/kodak-colorp…) which is the cheapest colour film on the market. Not everyone likes its colours, but good scans can create neat old-school-looking images.
There are a bunch more reviews at analog.cafe/film-photograp… or if you have any ideas on the kinds of images you want to make, I can give you some more options to consider.
I haven’t mentioned any slide and effect films, but those could be cool to try too — if you haven’t shot them before.
This was a perfect and uncanny timing because I just purchased this camera for myself for a trip to San Diego. I have not received it yet but I can’t wait to start to use it.
Do you have any recommendations for 35mm film I could use out in California or for daylight and night?
Hi Dmitiri, many thanks for your review. Your comments on the dynamic range are very interesting because I think I found the exactly the same while doing film testing with a densitometer.
I wanted to find the base ISO (Zone I) and development time for a Zone VIII exposure of Delta 400 in Adox XT3 (similar to Kodak XTOL). I used replenished stock (i.e. not 1:1 / one-shot).
Using my setup and development practices, and contrary to ‘popular belief’, I found a base ISO of 320. So, at least in my case, XT3 is not speed enhancing for Delta 400. This can be due to a difference between XT3 and XTOL, or my choices and development routine, but it could also be that in another developer, like HC110, I will find an even lower base ISO for Delta 400, e.g. 250 or even 200.
I didn‘t find a lot of information on the Net that suggested the same, but when I read your consideration of the Delta 400 characteristic curve, you‘re essentially saying the same: overexpose Delta 400 (a little bit), and try to control contrast e.g. using a colour filter (for FP4+ I practically always use a Hoya Y2 Pro).
I would like to add that an adjusted development time can be used to not blow out the highlights. I didn’t complete my testing of Delta 400 for all EIs, but for EI 320 I think I will end up at 07:30 min. in XT3 stock. My routine is: replenish 70 ml per 135 or 120, 20 degrees Celsius, with gentle inversion initially for 30 sec. followed by 3 gentle inversions every minute (max. 10 sec).
Yeah I feel that way sometimes about Lomo films too, particularly the effect ones, like Purple. I’m usually happier when I approach the shoot as an experiment with an eye for the palette I know the film can give, kind of like shooting black and white.
They’ve actually just released a new colour film. Do you think you’ll try it?
Dmitri: I don’t know if you already talked about this, but here is my comment. Every time I’m shooting a lomography film the results are far from what I expected. I don’t know if it is because I’m not doing it right or if there is something wrong with this brand.
Here’s a step-by-step of how I got to the image that I felt was good enough to headline the review:
1) First photo, where the lens is in focus (you can see the serial number clearly), but the body is out of focus due to the narrow depth of field.
2) Second photo I took of this camera with the body in focus (notice the light meter bubbly texture above the lens — it’s in focus, whereas the lens is out of focus/writing is blurry).
4) Colour correction via Color Balance adjustment layer. Here I also blended in the blurry background from image #2 as the auto focus-stacking had seriously screwed it up.
This photo of the Kowa E camera I reviewed recently is my first attempt at focus stacking with Photoshop.
The process is very simple if you have the app. There are just two steps:
1) Edit > Auto-Align Layers
2) Edit > Auto-Blend Layers
Focus stacking is a technique of combining multiple images of the same thing taken at various focus settings. This is useful for photos of objects taken up close with large apertures as those factors combined create a very narrow depth of field (more about it here: analog.cafe/r/what-is-aper…).
In my case, I had two photos, one had the lens in focus (with the camera body blurry), and another was focused on the body. Neither looked good on their own.
Surprisingly, the focus stacking technique worked well, despite the difference in geometric distortions and perspective, as the photos I had were taken on a half-frame SLR (analog.cafe/r/my-olympus-p…), hand-held. The only thing the app struggled with was blending the blurry background, which I ended up blending in from one of the original photos manually.
Notice the tip of the pentaprism bump — the dark artifact behind it is the result of Photoshop not coping well with the samples I gave it.
Both are tiny full-frame zone-focus foldable point-and-shoots that cost less than they are worth. I’ve had them for many years, and the articles had to have a bit of a refresh in terms of sample photos and some spelling issues (Balda is hard to spell).
I don’t, but I’m certainly planning to in the near future. I’m hoping it’ll help me refine what I wrote here and maybe come up with a more systematic colour correction step.
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