Recent content by trypdal

Fantastic image, regardless of camera. Great eye. Reminiscent of the work by Joel Sternfeld IMO.

Not really no, I've personally stumbled upon plenty of Orange marches in Edinburgh for instance

That's true historically, but I'd argue the learning landscape today is completely different. In the past, dodgy advice was confined to the walls of a photo club and quickly corrected by someone with a working darkroom. Now a YouTuber with confident delivery and slick editing can broadcast...

Your instinct is right. "Try it until it looks right" is going to be slow and painful at best. But once again, and in all honesty, IMO verification comes later. Right now, trust the published times for your chosen film/developer combination, be precise with temperature and agitation, and shoot...

Fair point, but I'd argue the Zone System is at its core those basics formalised. Without it, where else do most people encounter this material systematically?

Interesting thread. Here's one more take. I think there's an important distinction between learning technique for its own sake and learning enough to diagnose problems correctly. I, like many of us on here, collect monographs (in fact I need to order a new bookshelf, MACK and Steidl keep coming...

@Barney, great to hear "The Negative" is clicking for you. It's, I think, a decent book once you get past the dated/verbose language. To your question: the target density for Zone V is not film-specific. It's a constant determined by your printing/scanning system. For a diffusion enlarger it's...

In hindsight, and in spite of all the social media/armchair photographer criticism, it's remarkable just how good the Pentax 17 was (is) and how many things they got right, already at release stage. The know-how was all there I suppose. I think that if they had released a 35mm camera instead of...

Blast from the past. Back in 2017/18 they sold film, I used to buy a 5-roll brick of medium format Ektar 100 or Fuji Pro 400H for 25£ from here - madness!

Generally accurate IME although I suspect a bit of cut & paste going on on Foma's side on those tech sheets...Check out the spectral response curves - they seem to be identical across products, only shifted around a little? Also they have no Y axis labels..

I have an unpopular opinion on this. I used to own an F100. I won't bother you with the details but my experience is that it's built to a price point, and has plastic in critical bits where it should not have plastic, and where the F90X does not have plastic. Eg. the rewind crank is plastic (I...

As another F90X user - I completely agree. I actually bought at some point an EOS 3 and a couple of USM lenses after hearing how superior Canon AF is to Nikon's. Well you know what, I've put this to the test with a key use case - two toddlers playing around in the garden. Fast, unpredictable...

What you say is true, but in fairness to that film (a wonderful one, I use it routinely) it's an easy 160EI with a number of general-purpose developers - e.g. with both Xtol (the curves you link to above show data for Foma Excel, Foma's Xtol clone) and Ilfosol (the curves you link to above show...

Yes, on Fomabrom 111, wonderful. Unlike standard B&W, the "grain" (dye clouds really) is in the shadows, the highlights look grainless. Difficult to describe, you need to see it.

XP2+ exposed at 200 and developed in C41 is extraordinary imho. I've never seen anything quite like it. E.g. absolutely grainless pure highlights. I should really shoot it more. I should stress that IME for the magic to happen it really needs to be developed in C41 chemistry. Cross processing...