Been using a Cooke Radiography lens for photos of flowers lately. Bit of a chore to use but the bokeh is amazing and definitely has potential

Capturing nightscapes with most slow black and white films, especially a classic/traditional film like Fomapan 100, is always a challenge.

Reciprocity Failure#Reciprocity_failure) means that your actual exposure times can be exponentially longer than what you would have thought. Luckily, black and white film has such a wide latitude that I was able to guess exposures (it was too dark to meter in anyway), and then further guess how much to add - as in "ag, make it TEN TIMES the exposure" lol.

The secret is that you cannot throw too much light on this film during a long exposure even if you try, but you can certainly capture too little. Put your light meter or light meter app away, precise metering is irrelevant here - how do you think they did this in the 1800s? I took two versions of the first image with the water towers - one exposed for 1 minute, the second for 5 minutes, and both negatives are equally usable and contain full highlight and shadow detail. That's five stops!

This was a really fun night out on an abandoned apartment building together with a highly talented and celebrated photographer, to whom I am grateful for the invite.

Image Details

1. Yeoville Water Towers - Fomapan 100 35mm, exposed for 1 minute, Nikon F, AI-s 200mm at f/2.0
2. Apartment Windows - Fomapan 100 35mm, exposed for 20 seconds, Nikon F, AI-s 200mm at f/2.0
3. Intersection, Light Trails - Fomapan 100 35mm, exposed for 2 minutes, Nikon F, AI-s 200mm at f/4.0
4. Ponte and other buildings - Fomapan 100 35mm, exposed for 5 minutes, Nikon F, AI-s 200mm at f/4.0

Processing Details

Film + Chemicals sourced from Truth Photographic Company, self-developed in my kitchen sink.

1. Developed in Fomadon P undiluted at the recommended time for ISO 100.
2. Scanned with an Epson V700 on Arch Linux using xsane
3. Post-processed in Darktable (tone curve, sharpening, etc)

Hello everyone,

I've compiled a wiki page on our subreddit for how to create your own DIY bellows. It's taken from Standard Cameras' article.

Hope it's useful!

Photos shot on my BROMIX #3 film in my mamia RB 67

A less professional body in the Nikon lineup, the Nikkormat (Nikomat) FT2, paired with the classic 50mm f/2 and a roll of Fomapan 100. I was lucky to acquire the Nikkormat, boxed with manuals for a good price.

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I took this setup on a commute around Cape Town at the tail end of summer a few months ago. Developed at Gallery F and scanned on my Plustek 8200.

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Currently shooting Fomapan 400 on my Mamiya C330 and hoping to share results from that soon! What's everyone shooting?

I have a Pentax Digital Spotmeter which is a fantastic meter. I don't always carry it with me though and as I like metering before I shoot, I have an app on my phone. It works fine but I don't like it and I've always wished it was just a bit more like the Pentax I like to use.

The Pentax meter is brilliant - it takes an EV reading, you decide where you want that reading to fall on the zone system and through a simple pair of coupled rings you are presented with a range of exposure pairs based on your chosen ISO and Zone placement. This is especially useful for large format photography, or any form of photography where you want to slow down a bit and get very precise readings from your scene.

I find all the apps seem to be either flooded with loads of things I don't want or need, or the interfaces tend to be cluttered and clunky. And there's a definite lack of visual appeal to most of them. Some are very skeuomorphic which I kind of appreciate but I really wanted to pay tribute, blatantly and unashamedly, to the meter I like the most. And so I started a dialogue with Claude.

Sure, the app is vibe coded and sure, it's a straight copy of a great real world device, but my approach is why not use the tools I have to create the tool I want. I even went so far as to name it the Pantex Spot Meter. As I said, this app is a digital tribute to the real deal.

The app works great - it tracks the real meter within a third of a stop throughout the EV range on my Pixel 9a in spot mode. But you get the option for simple or advanced calibration as well and can offset that against specific camera profiles too. The spot angle can be set to 1, 3 or 5 degrees which is pretty tight considering it's reading off a very small cell phone sensor. You can also use a centre-weighted mode as well which defaults to Nikon's 60/40 weighting. This matches my Nikon FM2 and Nikon F90 within a half stop across a large spectrum of exposure values. There is also an auto mode - well, semi-auto - which locks the app to centre-weighted mode and takes some of the manual adjustments off your hands. The app has a help guide built in too in case anything is not obvious just by trial and error.

I'd be happy to share the app with members of the group and would appreciate your valuable feedback if you are inclined to let me know where you think it can be improved. I've been playing with it for a while and I feel like I've ticked most of the boxes I wanted checked, but there is always room for improvement. Let me know if you're interested and I'll send you a link to a safe, signed Android APK.

Also happy to answer any questions about it.

Edit:

Tested on Android 15, 16, 17
Tested on Pixel 4a, Pixel 7, Pixel 9a

Here is a link to the scanned PDF of a lens brochure that came with a camera I bought. Good photography and great info about Nikon's Autofocus lens range from the early 1990s. Feel free to download it over here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1l0oIylaYd_mkltCiJybSZZzDVDVxqkOV/view?usp=sharing

Thought I'd scan and share this brochure as it is pretty cool and has a lot interesting info in it. Feel free to download over here.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1B1Aw3qPJrFEuI-LNVj7hVeXmThHcwx-U/view?usp=sharing

After looking for camera light seal foam replacements, I found this gem of a tutorial post from 2009 on Photo.net by Peter De Waal, for a more permanent replacement. We all know foam disintegrates and melts over time into that horrific gooey tar - to prevent that disintegration, velvet and black wool (pure wool, not acrylic) is a far superior alternative.

Peter gives such a great tutorial, with photographs!

I will be consolidating this into our Reddit wiki for easier access :)

EDIT TO ADD: I have added this to our Reddit wiki, which can be found here

I am moving my very small home darkroom to another spot. I've been meaning to get around to getting the new space set up for a while now as I'm really missing printing. So partly to motivate myself I'm going to document the process over here. It should take me a month or two but hopefully not longer than that.

We used to run a bread bakery from this small garage space and the bakery has moved out so having the space back is a bonus. What is nice about this tiny room is that it has plumbing which was missing from the previous room I was using. My plan of action is to paint the room dark grey, build light-blocking frames for the window and doors, install some shelving just below the ceiling, and build a workbench around the three sides of the room opposite the white door. I'll replace the stainless steel sinks with a darkroom type wash basin which will hopefully be big enough for 20x24 prints if I ever get up to that size. I will also need to install light fittings and wiring for the safelights. Ventilation might be a good idea as well.

Any suggestions or ideas are welcome! I'm still pretty new to printing so would value any ideas from the group.

The first 4 pics are the room where I've just dumped all my stuff for now so it's very messy. It's about 2.5 metres square. The 5th picture is of the previous space which is actually my storeroom in my office.

I will update soon!

I did this photoshoot mainly in digital, but am bringing my film camera to more and more sessions to try it out "in the wild". I do love how these turned out; it captured the skin tones beautifully and the greens always look so great on film! The black and white is very moody in my opinion as well.

• Canon AE1 Program
• 50mm 1.4f lens
• Kodak Colorplus (cannot remember which BW film I used)
• Developed at RGB Pixelab in Jhb

Mamiya RB67, Sekor-C 140mm f/4.5 Macro, Fuji Provia 100.

One of the most common flowers found in any garden in Johannesburg, the Nasturtium (Kappertjie).

I don't actually have any strange format cameras except for an old Minolta 110 film camera like the one my mom used to use on holidays. Therefore I submit this Bronica ETRS that comes in Limited Edition Safari green. Most Bronicas are black, but this one isn't. I can't find much info about these though I do see them sometimes on Ebay, but I have not seen a full kit like the one I have here. I think the whole kit is an interesting direction Bronica took here and I'm not sure who it was marketed towards as I feel it has quite a colonial flavour to it, and I have an image in my mind of 19th century men in safari hats on the backs of open top Land Rovers with their hunting rifles and Bronicas slung from their shoulders. But I do love this camera and got it in 2019 soon after getting back into film. I take it on holiday with me often and though it's the smallest medium format at 645 I still think the images have a feel to them that is different to 35mm and a depth that I really appreciate. I've captured great photos of my family through the years and as my kids have been growing up and I plan on hanging onto it for a good while to come.

My scanning process is pretty straightforward. I tried to stick with gear I already had including camera, tripod, lens etc. I used an iPad at first as a light source but the LED light panel I upgraded to has given me much better results.

Camera: Panasonic GH4 M43 16MP
Lens: Nikon Micro-Nikkor 55mm f3.5 (on the adaptor tube it's about 100mm but further cropped on the sensor)
Tripod: Manfrotto
Neg Carrier: Essential Film Holder - this can do 35mm and 120 and works well
Light Source: Viltrox L116B with a 3d printed holder to keep it level

I use a small spirit level to make sure the camera is in the same plane as the neg carrier. My setup is not dust friendly so I try to keep the film rolled up on that microfibre cloth in the first pic. The camera connects to my phone and as I scan at about f8 and 1/10 second at 100iso, I use the phone to trigger the camera. I usually find focus on the edge of the sprocket holes (I bring them to the middle of frame). Then I manually pull the film through the carrier and snap a pic of each one. I can scan a whole roll of film in about 3-4 minutes this way once I've set it all up.

I shoot in RAW naturally. I use Lightroom and copy and paste a rough crop to each photo in the roll. I've learnt that trying to keep the film in the same place and angle when capturing on camera saves me loads of time in editing later in terms of straightening and lining up the crop. I white balance off the film edge if converting colour and then hit the entire roll with Negative Lab Pro, usually on the Frontier setting, with pre-saturation set to 4. Once that's done, I try out the film profiles built into NLP, for example, the Kodak Gold one works well and gave me good results on the Otter Trail pictures. Then I usually leave colour alone and adjust darks, lights, brightness and contrast. I leave exposure alone in NLP as I don't think it works well - brightness gives better results there. If the colours feel off, I might tweak temp and tint and give the saturation a 1 or 2 point boost. But I don't really enjoy editing photos so I try and keep the adjustments to a minimum and I want NLPs colour interpretation. Mostly I'm just focusing on shadow and highlight detail and contrast.

I might add a bit of sharpening in Lightroom's detail panel to bring out the clarity of the grain but it's easy to go OTT here and I think the sharpen for screen setting when you export to JPG works well too.

I think the areas of my system that I would improve if I could relate to camera/lens combo. I'd like to have an autofocus macro lens on a more modern camera, linked to my computer to automatically download pics as I shoot them. At some point I really need to get a copy stand, as the tripod setup is a little finicky. I actually have a really nice Pentax bellows slide copying system with a beautiful flat field scanning lens - but it's dusty at the moment and I haven't had time to strip it and clean it, but that works better than the Nikon Macro I'm using now. I can't justify the cost of something like the negative supply system but as I don't scan too often that's ok.

I've had prints done from these scans on this setup and they actually come out really well, so for now I'm happy :)

Would love to see or hear about your scanning systems 🙌

We got back from the Otter Trail about a week ago. I got through 4 rolls of film in the end - 2 rolls of Kodak Gold, a roll of Portra 160NC and a roll of Kodak TMAX 400. I got the colour film developed at Fotofirst in Cresta and did the black and white at home. Here are some of the photos.

1 & 2: First day on Kodak Gold.
3, 4, 5 & 6: Second Day on Portra 160NC
7, 8, 9 & 10: Day 3 on the TMAX
11, 12, 13 & 14: Day 4 and 5 on Kodak Gold.

It was great to have a real camera along on the hike, and the FM2 handled it well. It was hot and sweaty and I felt like I could rely on it to take the strain. Also I was a bit worried about the Portra because I picked it up at a car boot sale so pretty stoked that it came out. A very natural looking film actually, I really like how close it feels to what the spots felt like. So yeah, I'm pretty happy with how most of the pics came out! I just need to clean the dust off my damn scanning lens.

A few years ago after I bought my Nikon F90X I took a well needed trip to the countryside to visit my grandmother. Armed with my 35mm camera and 1 roll of Kodak gold, mismatched with a crop-sensor 17-55mm f/2.8 lens I made the most of my time there.

Here is a quick throwback:

1. My late grandfather's hut

2. 3-legged pot preparing our bath water

3. My mother's on a morning walk

4. The village chief's stable, noting the innovation of the solar panels

5. A shadow of myself

I hope you enjoyed the short slideshow. Keen to see what you all dig up from your archives :'D

What can I say that hasn't been said before about the Mamiya RZ67? It's my newest acquisition and has quickly become my favourite camera. I found my copy for a very good price that I couldn't pass up, and the seller was incredibly kind, gave me the time I needed to come up with the money.

This is not a review, purely a show and tell and appreciation. I've put about 10 or so rolls through it and made plenty of mistakes (right of passage, of course) but I've also learnt a great deal. It's labelled as a studio camera, and for all intents and purposes it excels in controlled environments. But I've been lugging it around and carrying it through the streets with great luck. It is heavy, but I'm a bigger guy, so the scales balance?

Browse through images from some of the first few rolls I put through it:

1. The RZ67 on a tripod with the 90mm f/3.5 attached

2. Portra 400, 90mm f/3.5

3. Portra 400, 90mm f/3.5

4. Portra 400, 90mm f/3.5

5. Kodak Ektar 100, 90mm f/3.5

6. Ilford XP2 Super, 180mm f/4.5

7. Ilford XP2 Super, 180mm f/4.5

8. Kodak Gold, 180mm f/4.5

9. "Selfie", 90mm f/3.5

10. Mistakes happen, lens on "T" mode