Found Slides, Shades of Blue

Vintage color film slides from the '80s, found, scanned, and post-processed for web publishing.

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I was rummaging through my boxes of storage boxes of camera and photography paraphernalia and came across a stacked album of slides taken 30+ ago when I was very much younger and had been traveling around a bit during my study and early working years. I was also working on the Canon CanoScan 9000F Mark II at the same time and decided to start scanning some of the slides and see what I came up with. The 9000F Mark II, though some find it a bit of fuss to work with, is actually a delight to work with.

If you are having the same problem as I was, my recommendation is to use only the IJ Scan Utility and the Scan Gear option. In the setting for Scan Gear, make sure you enable the 'Enable large image scan' option if you are going to scan 120 films, then use the Scan Gear Advanced Mode to set up the 'Scan Area' size for the film size option.

The images here were uploaded to my image editor, Olympus Viewer 3 (OV3), where I gave them all a once over with individual tweaks including Auto Tone Correction, Tilt Adjustment & Crop, Shading Compensation, Tone Curve, Brightness & Contrast, Hue & Saturation, Sharpness & Blur, and Noise Reduction.

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Olympus-Pen FT, In the Garden

Half-Frames: Film photography favorites, image making with an Olympus Pen FT, the half-frame SLR, catching the essence of the garden.

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My first In The Garden session with the Olympus Pen-FT, fitted with an Olympus F.Zuiko 1:1.8 38mm lens. The camera works OK, except for the exposure meter, which was about 7 stops out of whack. Exposure to the first roll of shots was then by trial and error, based on the best of my Sunny-16 knowledge.

The Olympus Pen-F system (Pen-F, Pen-FT, Pen-FV series), introduced by Olympus in 1963, was the only half-frame SLR and the smallest full-system SLR ever produced. It was in a class of its own, a unique system with a smooth, sleek, minimalist design. The Pen-F does not have the characteristic SLR bump to house the pentaprism as it uses a system of mirrors, including a primary that moves vertically out of the light path when the shutter is released.

Olympus Pen FT, F.Zuiko 38mm 1:1.8

The Pen-FT (1966) follows the introduction of the Pen F (1963) and comes with a single-stroke film advance, a built-in self-timer, and open aperture TTL (through the lens) exposure metering, among others. The TTL metering uses a semi-silvered mirror that splits a portion of the incoming light to the metering cell, resulting in a viewfinder that is dimmer than that of the original Pen F.

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Olympus-Pen EF, Image Aspect Ratio

Half-Frames: Film photography favorites, image making with an Olympus Pen EF, looking at the 3:4 image aspect ratio.

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While most of us take pictures in the landscape or horizontal format, half-frame cameras are inherently designed to capture images in the portrait or vertical format. Half-frame cameras capture images in the 3:4 aspect, an uncommon ratio, seldom mentioned except maybe when talking about images that are a bit too fat, a ratio that is difficult to work with, or image frames that are difficult to fill effectively.

The film format for half-frame cameras is 24x18mm on a regular 135 film, which is half the size of a normal 35mm frame measuring 24x36 mm. With a half-frame camera, one can shoot and capture twice as many images on a standard roll of film - 48 shots on a 24-exposure roll, 72 shots on a 36-exposure roll, and so on.

Olympus Pen-EF

Holding the camera horizontally with both hands is also the norm for taking photographs. The camera will normally rest in the grasp of the right hand, with the index finger used to press the shutter release. On a more complex camera, the left hand will normally be used to focus the lens and make other adjustments, such as aperture and other settings necessary for the correct exposure of the shot.

On a simple point-and-shoot, the left hand will just be a support to hold the camera steady. With half-frames, this is the same stance you will be holding the camera with, the difference being that your image will still be shot in the vertical frame. Rock steady images in a 3:4 image aspect ratio.

The scanned images, which were done by the processing lab, were post-processed on Olympus Viewer 3 (OV3) and tweaked with edits including Auto Tone Correction, Brightness & Contrast, Gamma, Hue & Saturation, Sharpness & Blur, Unsharp Mask, Noise Reduction, and cropping of the doubled-scanned images into single images.

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Nokia Lumia 720, Sun In Your Eyes I

Mobile Photography: Image making with a Nokia Lumia 720, the drive home after a hard day's work.

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Sun in your eyes means also that you are looking to capture lens flare as part of your creativity, or will it be just silhouettes? Direct sunlight does make metering tricky, and if you are using a DSLR for the shoot, you will want to use the 'spot' metering mode and meter off a mid-tone area for even exposure.

Bracketing is also a technique you want to use. If you are on a planned outing for sunset or sunrise shots, plan well for the season and location, and execute it sequentially. Scout the location a day or two before the shoot, anticipate what the weather will be, lay out and set up your gear properly, play the shots in your head, plan for it as meticulously as you can, and sit and wait it out.

Nokia Lumia 720

Keep shooting, light changes are remarkably fast, and your scene can look vastly different after just a few minutes.

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