MorseBlog

On my pursuit of negative space images, I find these are hard to plan for and one must try and be alive to the idea when they happen. This one I captured on my regular winter walks through town. I was shooting in a black and white mindset with my Fuji GFX 50s ii digital camera set to a 65:19 aspect ratio. This is my favorite setup to use. Presetting the camera in this way mimics some of my film exploits and lets the mind settle on a certain style by removing choices. Fixing the aspect ratio forces a compositional dynamic that opens up possibilities for me as much as it forces a constraint. In this case the low cloud and fog between the screen of winter trees and the mountain created this veil of mystery and lets one's mind imagine the whole scene. The screen of trees provide some tonal weight to help ground the image.  I had this image converted to a 6x7 medium format negative using the services of Gammatech. This allows me to put it in my 4x5 enlarger. I set the condensers for the

I received another set of negatives from Gammatech the other day. This time I I had the negatives made on 6x7 medium format film. I was partially following my reasoning from another post on the subject where I concluded that medium format would probably yield good images at a more reasonable cost than 4x5 film. Unfortunately, I opted for 6x7 as it maximized the fit of some Xpan (65:24) aspect ratio images but I continued this onto single 4:3 aspect ratio (native Fuji GFX ratio) images and of course I cannot fit these completely in my 6x6 enlarger.  I decided to make a couple of prints cropped square anyway. The print turned out pretty well.  I started with a square 8" x 8" crop from 9 1/2" x 12" Ilford MGFB Classic paper. For some reason that I don't recall I have two unopened 50 sheet boxes of the stuff. This gives generous 3/4" borders and a large blank border on the bottom which lends a kind of balance to the print. So, I retained this 3 1/4" botto

In this update I attempt to print a couple of the images from the composite negative I made with Gammatech. I will discuss the pitfalls and potential issues with this approach.  Eight 65:24 Images on one sheet of 4x5 film In the original post I made a composite 4x5 negative from 8 different 65:24 aspect ratio digital images from my Fuji GFXs ii camera. Each of these has the Fuji Acros film simulation applied as well as a 'strong small' grain simulation. Each image is virtually full resolution, being scaled from the native 8256 pixels width on the camera to 8192 pixels to fit two across on the film at the Gammatech full resolution (16,384 pixels). Each image is 58mm wide so could fit (just) in a 6x6 enlarger. Challenges with Multiple Images on Same Negative This many images on one negative while very efficient in terms of cost does present some challenges in the enlarger. There is not room in the 4x5 negative holder to center the desired image. This means I am printing off cente

This is a continuation of a series of posts on making film negatives from digital files. (The previous post is here ... ) The purpose is to allow me to print the images in my darkroom. In summary, so far, the experience has been quite good.  My next print from film made from digital images uses the film made by Bayeaux in London. This was made on Kodak LVT equipment at RES40 or 40 dots per mm or 1016 dpi. I combined two images on a 4x5 image per their instructions. They returned 3 copies on an 8x10 sheet of film. No matter, I cut one copy away and loaded it into my 4x5 enlarger and started the process of making test prints. The negative is actually two images with a 65:24 aspect ratio. Image for Bayeaux Version I started at f22 as with the previous image and confirmed my suspicion that this negative was denser than the previous image and ended up at f16.  Soft Filter Test (#00) Hard Filter Test (#5) My first stab after basic test strips was soft filter at 11 seconds and a hard filter t

This is a continuation of a series of posts on this subject, Part 1 and Part 2 links.  I am back in the UK now and have started to look again at my 'film from digital' project. I have also received the images from Bayeaux in London.  Bayeaux had some trouble with their Kodak LVT equipment but finally sent me my images. For some reason they ended up taking my nominal 4x5 images and printed them 3-up on a single sheet of 8x10 film.  I am not sure why they did it this way. Did they have trouble with 4x5 film availability or printing on 4x5 film. Also, why 3 identical images? Not sure but I got what I paid for so no complaints as far as that is concerned. Initial inspection indicates the negatives may be slightly denser than Gammatech but certainly look printable.  The first negative I took to the darkroom was the one shown below from Gammatech. This is the monochrome version of the image I framed last week described in this post .  Blog Post Cover Image I decided to start with a

A couple of weeks ago I began to re-explore getting film negatives from a digital file . The motivation was to take some of my newer digital images and print them in black and white in the darkroom. I explored two different vendors Bayeux in London UK and Gammatech in Albuquerque, NM. I outlined the difference in offerings according to the information on their websites and some correspondence via email.  By the time I wrote the post I had given up on Bayeux as the gentleman there never responded to the file I sent. I thought perhaps I had offended him with some of my comments or questions. However he got back to me a couple of days ago to say that the film was done and he wanted to know where to ship it to. They had had some problems with the Kodak LVT machine and had to call in a technician to repair it.  Meanwhile, Gammatech was immediately responsive and printed and developed the film in a couple of days.  Today I received a parcel from Gammatech and inside were three sheets TMAX 1

I am revisiting this subject of how to put a digital image onto a piece of film. The motivation for this is to be able to make silver gelatin prints in the darkroom from digital images. Since I bought my Fuji GFX 50s ii digital camera, I have been blogging about it recently and would like to use some of these images in the darkroom. I can print these as c-prints and inkjet however getting a print dialed in with cycle times between versions is problematic. I admit I have difficulty being satisfied with the commercial printers I have used. Somewhere between the consistency of the process and my inability to visualize the print from the screen has frustrated me. In the darkroom one goes through a series of trials until one has a print one is satisfied with. This can take between 2 and 20 prints depending on the objective and the quality of the negative.  I was recently watching a YouTube video of a master printer in Britain, and he mentioned to the ham-handed interviewer that he used a c