I have been using a digital camera for 7 years and it got me wondering, could I really return to using film?
I figured that if I returned to a 'film' camera, I would want to emulate my digital workflow as much as possible and to create jpeg images for my web and also images for my digital picture frames.
The supplier of the 'Kodak Ektar 100 - Colour Negative Film' was Harrison Cameras and the store of choice for film development and scanning was Jessop's in the UK.
Camera & Use
The Russian
built 'fully manual' Zenit-E SLR has an exposure meter built into the
top housing. It has a Helios 44-2 58mm Lens (Zeiss Biotar f2 Clone)
and a (nightmare to remember)
pre-set aperture ring. Operation consists of - point the meter/camera at
the subject, match the small ring to the needle in the meter viewer and
read of the meter settings on the body scale - next you set the shutter
and then the f stop 'aperture of choice' on the lens, open up the
aperture secondary ring to let more light into the lens, focus using the ring on the
lens and then remember to
close the secondary ring to finally set the aperture. The viewfinder is huge and the magnification
is amazing. I pre-set the aperture at f8 and closed the secondary
aperture ring,
then I set the depth of field scale so that infinity was just to the
left of the f8 scale marking on the right. The shutter was the only area
that I adjusted thereafter for all my shots - the 58mm Helios lens was
quite restrictive for composition but I was not really concerned with
accuracy of overall focusing and I certainly was not expecting any
images of 'quality resolution' from the Zenit-E. It turned out fairly
reasonable. I would have liked to use the only other film camera that I had - a Zorki 10 Rangefinder, but the shutter was jammed.
Film
I had
extensively read up on 'Film' and finally chose Kodak Ektar 100
(ISO:100)
Negative
36 Exp Colour Film. It seemed to deliver the quality of colour and
was deemed to have a very fine grain. I bought 5 rolls (over the web) from Harrison
Cameras in the UK and paid £22.50 inc vat.
Jessop's Lab Film Development and Scanning After I ran a roll of Ektar 100 through the Zenit-E, I took the film to Jessop's in Edinburgh to have the negatives developed. I found that for an extra £2, Jessop's would scan them automatically to CD in the development process (Low Res+Medium Res and High Resolution = 3637 x 2433 jpeg, which gave me a 12" x 8" at 303 PPI. Jessop's offered to develop the roll of film and provide me with 'cut sheet' negatives or negatives left as a roll. The cost of a 36 roll developed and scanned with negative index prints was £6.50 inc vat. I still completed my own tests on my own scanner - to compare the quality.
My Own CanonScan Scanning
I brought
the negatives back from Jessop's and popped one in my scanner, set it
for 4000dpi and scanned it to tiff format. The result was not brilliant
but I persevered and manually adjusted the focus of the scanner until I
was able to obtain the same result as Jessop's. I scanned and saved to
tiff format and converted for the web to jpeg. It was nice to know that
I could match Jessop's and now had the option of home or lab scanning!
The
Following
26 'Medium Size File'
Images
are the high resolution scans direct from Jessop's and post processed as
follows = Adobe CS2 copyright stamped, brightness slightly reduced,
downsized/bicubic sharpened for the web (all ticks on). Some of the images have been
cropped to test the 'crop noise' headroom. Recently I downloaded a demo version of
Nik Silver Efex Pro
- so I used the pre-set samples
in the software to change some of the images to monochrome
and also apply antique settings.
There is no download software but if you click on an image (wait for a long time loading) then right click and select 'save picture as' option to file.
Film
Film Negative Development &
Scanning
Home
Scanner
Post Processing
Finally
Second Hand 'Film' Cameras Associated Articles -
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Richard Lawrence |
