Q: What smells like a wet dog that has rolled in a dead gopher?

A: Instant coffee and washing soda, that's what.

But its worth it!

I've been shooting digital almost exclusively for the better part of two years now, but I still enjoy the process of shooting and developing film. I think it's the smell. Well, it 'can' smell good. However, if you decide you want to make your own developer the smell goes from pleasant to "Chaz, what are you making... oh my god that reeks!"

The recipe I used is called Caffenol-C and it is a home made film developer. And it smells really, really bad! The large amounts of carbon in the washing soda must react, a la decaying animal, with the instant coffee. The vitamin C speeds up the reaction of the caffeine with the film, so its not an essential ingredient, it only affects the developing time.

I had a half finished roll of Kodak BW400CN that I wanted to develop, and I wanted to know how a 'color' black and white film would do in black and white chemistry. The results are really good. The tonal range and grain is very pleasing for a 400 speed film.

Here's the recipe for the developer:
4 500mg tablets of crushed vitamin C tablets*
1 tablespoon of washing soda (sodium carbonate, not baking soda- sodium bicarbonate)
4 tablespoons of instant coffee crystals
12 oz. of water at ~75 deg F.

* after pouring the developer into the tank, I noticed a white, solid precipitate at the bottom of the mixing glass and suspected it was the vitamin C fallen out of solution or just mutated.

I used a vinegar solution for the stop bath and a dish soap solution for the final wash. For the fixer, I had to purchase it from a local photography store as it can't be easily MacGyver'd.
The Vitamin C is supposed to accelerate the developing time, but I suspected that some of the vitamin C had fallen out of suspension. I used slightly warmer water to keep the developing time unchanged.

I scanned the film and the picture above is straight out of the scanner. As you can see the tones smooth, not bunched up and the grain pleasing, though that might not show at this size.

I'm still debating developing more film this way, or admitting olfactory defeat and going with commercial developer.

The '$' signs are from the scanning software I was testing/using, the free version watermarks images with dollar signs. I suspect that's to let viewers know the picture is worth lots of money. :+)

I like the cut of your jib!

Winter maintenance on the Lady Mayland: 
Halfway through unbending the jib on this cold December morning, I suddenly couldn't find my coffee mug. I wandered the deck, and then the dock.. and then I finally found it.

The task shown in this photo is the unbending (removal) of the jib, which is partially held on by tarred nylon cords tied around metal rings (hanks) that are strung onto the jib stay. The cord is looped though metal grommets on the luff (leading edge) of the sail and then through the metal hanks. To unbend the jib, you just cut away the cord and unfastened the shackles on the head, tack, and clew and try not to let it fall in the water.


After the fall sailing season, the boats are docked over in Fells Point by the main campus for winter maintenance. This involves inspecting, repairing, and stowing the running rigging and sails. There's also scraping, sanding, and painting of anything that needs it. Blocks (pulleys) are disassembled, inspected, and replaced or rebuilt. The engines, two 85hp 4-cyl Cummins diesels, are overhauled and winterized. Did I mention the scraping, sanding, painting? Brightwork (varnish) is touched up, or sometimes redone completely. All standing rigging is inspected, shackles are re-moused, and stays are treated. The list is long and so are the work days. The maintenance period is about three months long and there never seems to enough time to get everything done

Pictured above are some single and double reeved blocks from the Sigsbee, a reconstructed skipjack built with salvaged parts from her namesake. These blocks have had their straps, sheaves, pins, keepers, and beckets removed and tagged. The shells, the wooden housings, are scraped and sanded and are hungry here for painting. The pins and sheaves are cleaned and regreased before reassembly in the shells.

S/V Lady Maryland

The Lady Maryland is a replica Chesapeake Bay pungy schooner. A shallow draft allowed these vessels to carry cargo up and down the bay, which has an average depth of just 21ft. She's painted pink and green, like a watermelon and serves as the flagship for the Living Classrooms' small fleet of educational sailing vessels in the Baltimore Inner Harbor.

Shown here, she is in Chestertown, Maryland in the fall of 2005.

My name is Chaz, and I like boats.

Years ago, I used to walk around with an FM3a permanently loaded with TMAX100 everywhere.
This is from the SOWEBO Arts Festival in 2005.



I mean, how can you not love TMAX?

Here is another,
Pride II just in from a sail- the crew was doing some light repair to the jib.

Glacier National Park 2004

Some guy named Ansel Adams has been copying my work. He must have a time machine or something.
Here is a picture taken at GNP in 2004, John and Anna, you were there! We were only there for a day or so, but several weeks would have been nice too.



As I had mentioned in the last post, film holds more tonal range than digital. I just re-scanned this negative and found that I could over or under expose the scan by over a stop and get more detail than a single 16bit pass could hold. That is to say, the snow has more detail than is shown here, and the trees in the foreground also have more detail. I just chose a middle-of-the-road exposure setting so that the over all picture was OK. That is where film tells digital to take its ball and go home.

Silver Vs. Silicon

Here are two shots, comparing a 10.2 MP camera (Nikon D80) and a 10.2 MP film scanner (Minolta Dimage Scan Dual III).
This test is purely subjective- being performed in curiosity and free time mode rather than lab coat and pen protector mode. The list of differences and variations are in fact longer than the similarities between the two tests. :+)

Here is example A and B:



And now a crop of A and B:



Whats not scientific about this?!
Along the way I realized the number of factors which invalidated this test were so numorous that there was no point in comparing the two anymore.
If you look closely, one sample is definitely grainier, and one has a wider tonal range. These too are misleading, and both can be attributed to the user and not the medium.

Film has a couple things going for it. Silver atoms are small- smaller than the photosites of a CMOS or CCD sensor. This means more detail can be captured on film and reproduced on paper in the darkroom. Film can also hold more tonal range than digital, 7+ stops compared to 5ish.
Digital has some advantages though. Its wicked fast for review and publication! If you need to do post processing there is no loss of data from scanning as with negatives.
Even with these reasons there still isn't a grand canyon sized difference in quality. Unless you have access to very expensive equipment, you won't be realizing the full benefit of film if you scan it for printing as a scanner is just a digital camera. You're just taking a digital picture of a really good picture.

The above images are pretty similar aren't they?
It might just boil down to convenience. Do you have time or facility to develop your film? Do you want to spend time in digital post-processing? Do you need extreme detail on poster-sized prints?


...
And no, I didn't forget to mention which was film and which was digital.

Last of the roll

Here are the last frames from the BW400CN/Caffenol-C experiment:
Bea and Gary

And now, the rest of the... roll

And here are some more of the pictures developed from the roll of Kodak BW400CN.

Slant-o-matic, baby!

It's cold in Canada

I went on vacation several years ago for spring break to Ottawa... Yes, Ottawa, they have a really great Museum of Civilization and I just had to see it. It was very cold that week, snowy and windy. The first shot is a during a snowstorm while walking across the bridge to Quebec where the museum was. I think I was shooting Tmax400 on this trip.

First post

I was standing outside of a building and noticed this bit of architecture above me. It was dark out, and the lighting from below caught my eye. During the day, this is not as interesting.

I may go back and take a daytime photo for the contrast.