A Singaporean [Quitter] in Maesai

A few week ago, I bumped into a former photography student who is currently dwelling into Lomography and we chatted abit.  

He was quite intrigued into this new form of photography, especially the X-Processing (Cross Processing) of film part which Lomographer's like to boast about.

So naturally I asked him why he liked about X-Process as I find the colour casts a big distracting to the overall picture.  (Just my personal opinion)

So he explained to me that you get a unqiue and random colours if you X-process a film and thats why its fun.

So I asked him do you print the photos but he say he never prints it but have them scanned at the labs... hmmmmmmm... Okayyyy.... So what film you use for X-prcoessing I asked, And he go on with using Sensia, Velvia and loved the green tones of Provia.. I stopped him and asked him where he get his expired slide film and how much he got it for and he said he bought FRESH new SLIDE film to X-process...

WHAT??? That is such a real waste.  Why would anyone do this?  Does he understand the theory behind colours?  So here's my point:

If you like colour casts in your photo, just buy those cheap colour filters and attached it to the front of the lens..  And you save lots of money in buying and developing films.. :P

Another way is to Photoshop your negs for those who are well versed in PS.

Its ok to X-process but try using EXPIRED film.. Slide film are wonderful on itself but they have a much limited Dynamic Range so you are not really getting any benefits if you are using a toy cam.  Your hit rate would suffer and you are again wasting money and chemicals.

So why do I X-process? Because sometimes I want that colour cast in a picture, not because its random!  Its actually very predictable!  Sensia 400 will forever be yellow because thats how the chemicals will react.  How yellowish really depends on the exposure or how you scan or print that negative.  The only randomness in the negatives might be colour bleeds which occurs sometimes when there is a very contrasty scene.   And the photo is normally contrasty in X-process is due to clipping of the highlights and shadow details (limited Dynamic Range)

So in short, Lomography has sucessfully brainwashed this rubbish to these Lomographers who are new into photography... Its really a bit sad actually for me to see good film wasted in such a fashion.

Now I understand why Provia was always out of stock in Ruby.... :S 

If you are interested in more on this, you can read up here on Ryan's Photo blog.  He writes much better English then me :P

And My photo gallery has updated with a new album on my new Slide copier.  Do take a look if you are interested. :)

My A900 (DSLR) has been in my drybox recently as there were no photography jobs for me and I was spending more time in my analog cameras. (pinhole and  Hassy). So it got a bit neglected.

I think I only managed to get a small job using my A900 during this past new months and that was to shoot an interior of an office and datacentre.  Pretty interesting experience to shoot in such a constraint place :P

So I was actually tempted to sell my A900 as it seems that  I can't find a good use of its ultra high resolutions (24.5 Megapixels for your info).  Then it hit me one day while I got some slides developed and the scans by the shops were horribly wrong. Ughh! I hate to scan them on my own film scanners as the process is slow and normally I need to calibrate my scanner to get the colours correct.  I need something that could be faster and more reliable.

In my cabinet I have a 50mm Macro lens that I bought cheaply in the 2nd hand market.  Its has a 1:1 lifesize capability.  So I actually could find a light source and use my camera as slide copy machine! 

The light source is a bit simple as I already have a lightbox.  But to shoot 1:1 and I have to keep the lens flat and pendicular to the flat film surface was a challenge.  So I went hunting for a macro rail and managed to find a cheap display set with Cathay Photos.  And viola!  I have my own 35mm Film copy machine!

My Setup

So the process is simple.  I first set the correct custome WB and then just slide the Slides below it to copy them.  Aperture I used is f/11 (to get the maximium DOF in case the film were not flat enough) and I used an old lens barrel (that I salvaged from a old fungus infected lens) to weigh down the film and keep them in place.

The results were fantastic (for my standards of course)!  I have 6048x4032 files of my slides and the colours were 90% accurate! And its fast!  Each frame is just takes at most 5 secs to setup and grab.  I actually wished that there was liveliew for my a900 (those with 5D Mk2 should be even faster.. :P)  Another good thing is that I tried copying MF slides at 1:1 (cropped) and the details were mind blowing.   Its also possible to copy black and white and colour negatives.  Especially the grains on these analog film... yum yum..

Will be posting some "copied" results here later.. need more time to copy :P

Update on Wednesday, June 30, 2010 at 10:14AM by Fatboi

Photo gallery is up! :) Click here to view some samples taken with this setup.