Webinar Topaz plus discount

/2 Comments/in , , /by

A bit early for the blogpost but I did not want to let you wait till tomorrow.
In this blogpost you can see the webinar I did for Topaz (feel free to leave a comment on YouTube) with loads of tips plus a demo of the bundle from Topaz (and Clarity of course), the reason I post this so quickly is the following :

 

I Just got a notice that our friends from Topaz are running a deal till Sunday with $100.00 off on their bundle. Use the code july4 on http://www.topazlabs.com/716.html to get the discount. The bundle is great of course, but also check out clarity, it’s the one plugin that totally took me by surprise and is now part of my workflow 🙂

Scanning

/1 Comment/in , /by

Last week we talked a lot about vintage cameras and having fun with these.
Well one thing that’s very important when shooting with film is getting it into the computer, right?
Otherwise we won’t have any results to show.

1286348956_126487108_1-Pictures-of--120-Film-Kodak-Ektacolor-Pro-160-1286348956

Now one could of course hold up a negative to the sun and make a picture with your iPhone, and although that sounds like a lot of fun (it actually is), it won’t give you the results you want. If you want to get the files in your PC/Mac you will need something else… a scanner. Now I’m not a scanner expert, let me put that first, so everything you read are my experiences and my opinions, feel free to add and say if something’s wrong, you won’t hurt my feelings 😀

 

Different types of scanners
There are many different types of scanners you can use, some you can already buy for below 100.00 but to be honest I think it’s a shame to scan with those the results are subpar and don’t really offer more than maybe webuse. A step up are the flatbed scanners, these are often a lot better and resolve more detail. Personally I love the Epson V700/V750 but later more on these. Another step up are the dedicated negative/film scanners like the highly recommended Nikon Coolscan series. If you really want to re mortgage your house you can also go for a drum scanner, but these are very expensive and require a lot of experience. For me the Epson V700 is the weapon of choice, it retails for a nice price and it does it work very well.

B000EZY16W_image_A

 

Read more

Sony Event Vught

/1 Comment/in /by

Juni 30th I was invited by Sony to speak on their “Sony event” in Vught.
The first idea was to do a full live shoot with Nadine but because there were so many people interested they decided to put more people in the room and I made some adjustments in the form of a seminar plus live shoot so I could do everything in the “small” space.

 

These images were shot during the live shoots, do realize that there was no room for sophisticated light, so we just had some fun with what we had. I would like to thank everyone that visited our seminars and really made my day a great experience, including some great strawberries 😀

Nadine Jun 30 2013-236-Edit

Read more

First successful developed roll of film

/5 Comments/in /by

If you followed my social media stream the last few weeks you know by know that I’m very active with vintage photography. I’ve been shooting film every since I got the RZ67ProII but not often. The last few weeks I’ve been shooting more and more film, not because it’s better than digital, but because it’s fun and it forces you to think differently. Now the easiest thing to do is of course to bring your roll of film to your local lab and have it developed, but where is the fun in that right? So I decided to do it myself, how hard can it be….

 

The first roll of film I tested was (what my son called) an Epic fail.
Hummm maybe it was still harder than expected.
Being the person I am I could not wait to test it again, somehow if something works I can wait, but if something goes wrong I have to try it again as soon as possible. So the next day I shot 2 rolls of film during a workshop, one film was a standard 100 ASA film Sensia from Fuji and one Fuji 400H Pro. Now the problem is that the Sensia is a so called E6 film and the 400H pro a so called C41 film. Or in other words, they are NOT compatible and need different chemicals.

 

However I’m not shooting film to have perfect images, that’s why I asked people to send me film that was over the date, I’m shooting film to find unique looks. One of the things you can do with color film is the so called cross processing, meaning you can develop an E6 film in C41 chemicals and …. well it’s like polaroid you never really know what you’re gonna get, which is right up my alley.

 

After the first epic fail, it was a bit exciting to test the second time, I did found out what I did wrong by the way, I forgot to turn the tank upside down every 30 seconds (was not in the manual, so before you RTFM first visit YouTube). After I did turn the tank every 30 seconds the images came out great. Today I show you some of my favorite shots from this roll of film. Scanned with the Epson V700.

 

Now one thing I have to add to this.
A lot of people will be a bit afraid when the start shooting 35mm that the resolution is not enough, with 400ASA film there is “a lot” of noise in the images when scanned on a high resolution etc. however at the moment we have some A2 prints from these images hanging in the studio and everybody that sees the images actually think they were shot with digital medium format because of the look of the images, when I tell them it’s a scan of a 35mm negative that I scanned and developed myself… well let’s say the market for second hand gear will be a little bit better 😀 And it is fun… so go out and start shooting it. That “old” stuff was not as bad as you might think.

 

Model : Esther

Esther Jun28 Pro400H (3) (2) 7

Read more