During our stay in New York I shot some images with the Yashica Mat 124 which I shared on the blog a few days ago, however I also shot one roll of Kodak 400 BW in my Leica R camera. Today some of my favorite shots from this roll, scanned with the Reflecta MF5000 and Silverfast Studio Ai.
As you all know I love shooting film, there is something special about it.
I won’t say it’s better than digital, just different.
I do have to add that we recently switched from the Epson V750 scanner to a Reflecta MF5000 and that difference is pretty huge, I dare to say that the scans from my Mamiya RZ67ProII actually out resolves my 36MP Sony A7r but then again you can’t really compare the two, where digital is razor sharp film is very detailed but not “razor” sharp, it’s just ….. well pretty sharp. But that is judged on screen, as soon as you print it does look razor sharp and in essence that’s where it counts.
For me shooting film is that “different look” it’s a bit more organic and I love the large frame from the RZ67ProII, I use that camera also with my Leaf Credo60 but on the RZ it results in a pretty severe crop (although the Credo is actually slightly bigger than a 6×4.5). With film all that is gone and you can enjoy the huge real estate the camera gives you.
These shots were done during a shoot with Nadine on location and were shot with the RZ67ProII with a 110mm f2.8 lens (closed down because we used strobes) on FujiFilm RPII positive film. Development of the film I did at home with the appropriate E6 chemicals.
One tip if you are into film, make sure you invest in good scanning software, this makes a HUGE difference.
I’ve been using Silverfast studio for quiet some time and when I switched from the Epson software to Silverfast the difference was very noticeable, now with the Reflecta MF5000 Silverfast really shines, it’s not the fastest to learn software but if you scan in basic mode you pretty much are good from the get go, if you dive into it there is however an enormous amount of extra detail to be extracted from the files.
These files were scanned with one pass (double pass gives you a bit more dynamic range), and are straight out of the scanner, only thing changed is a slight touch up of the skin.
I’ve already been a huge fan of “plastic bullet” for the iPhone (and now iPad).
I also asked many times “why not something like this via Photoshop, or via a stand alone program” and yes I know there is the great Alien Skin exposure 3 in which you can emulate all the film types you would ever wish for, and there is the great NIK and OnOne software, both with great options. But somehow the “clickyerdy click” method of plastic bullet is just great, just press and wait till it’s cool and every time the outcome is different, just like with a real toy camera.
Much to my delight plastic bullet is now available for the desktop under MacOsX. Today I showed it to some of my students and one even considered buying an Apple for this one alone (ok this was a bit over exaggerated, but let’s say he REALLY loved it).
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