PhotographyAttic – Page 4 – Photography Gear Guides, Techniques and Tips

How to process scanned colour negatives

In the last article we showed you how to make a custom slide duplicator for 35mm negatives and transparencies. And the first problem you will encounter when you start scanning your colour negatives is how to convert the result to a positive digital file.

When you use a proper film scanner it has built in settings that convert the negative to positive automatically, but the digital files from a slide duplicator look just like the original – negative image with an orange colour.

We’ll not go into the colour – you can find all those technical details here: Why is colour negative film orange?

You may think it’s simply a case of pressing the invert button in your image editing software. That does make the photo look positive, but the orange inverts to a blue colour and that needs fixing.

Here’s how I process photos in Lightroom. You can do similar with most image editing programs.

Below is the imported negative in Lightroom. Scroll down to the tone curve. Notice the line in the graph goes from bottom left to top right.

Click on the bottom left corner and drag to top left, then click top right and drag to bottom right. This inverts the image – notice the blue cast.

Using the WB dropper click on a neutral part of the image to adjust the white balance. I chose the black hair of the boy facing us. This makes the colours more natural. Now adjust the tone sliders to beef up contrast darken shadows and brighten highlights.

The result is a fairly good conversion of your digital negative

DIY negative copier for Olympus OM-D

If you’ve moved over to digital from film, chances are you will have a collection of film based photographs – either negatives or transparencies. If you don’t have a film scanner you can use your digital camera to digitise these old films.

I decided to do that using my Olympus OM-D. The problem I had was that the usual slide copier, such as the Aico Zoom Slide Duplicator or similar products from the likes of Jessop, Ohnar and Kenlock, is that they were designed for full frame cameras. So when the copier is mounted onto an OM-D (using a T2 mount and Adaptor from Micro 4/3 to T2 camera fitting) the image is cropped and you can only copy the centre (or edge if you adjust the frame position). You cannot copy the full frame.

An alternative is to make your own copier. I dug out the Tamron 90mm f/2.5 macro with Pentax K Adaptall 2 attached, and mounted it on the Olympus body using a micro 4/3 to Pentax Adaptor.

Any macro lens with 1:1 capability will be suitable. Attach the macro lens, turn the camera on and move the slide away from the lens until it comes into focus on the camera’s LCD. This give you a rough indication of position needed for the slide/negative.

Cut a piece of tubing (postal tubes are perfect) to the necessary length. Now find a way of attaching the tube to the lens. I used a combination of stepping rings from the 55mm of the Tamron lens up to 58mm which was the external size of the tube. The tube squeezed into the inside of the ring and locked in place. If this hadn’t worked I would have super -glued a 55mm Cokin series A adaptor to the end.

You can now position the slide negative at the other end of the tube. A budget option is to use Blu Tack to hold the slide frame on the front. You could mount negatives in a frame too. As I have a lot to copy I decided to take off the carrier part of the Aico Zoom Slide Duplicator and mount that on the front of the tube. This ensured a faster throughput of film.

The carrier has three small screws holding it in place on the duplicator. These can be loosened so the whole front section slips off. Don’t unscrew fully as the screws are tiny and fiddly to get back in.

With the custom duplicator assembled it’s time to get to work copying. You can use a household lamp as backlight illumination, or a flashgun, or sunlight. You need to diffuse the light so it’s even across the film surface. The slide duplicator carrier has a diffusing plate built in. If you’re just mounting the slide on the front of the tube put a sheet of white cloth, or several layers of tracing paper in between the film and light source.

Use the camera’s zoom focus magnifier if it has one to focus accurately, making sure the film is centered in the frame and not cropped at any edge. Adjust exposure using the LCD as a gauge. Do a few test shots to check focus, framing an exposure before rattling through your library.

In the next article I will explain how to process the copied negatives. How to process scanned colour negatives

Photograph the Blood Moon

On the 15th of April you’ll be able to photograph the first of four total lunar eclipses. They’re sometimes referred to as blood moons, because of the colour the moon becomes as the eclipse takes place.

You;ll need a camera with a fairly long lens (unless you crop later in an image editing program) and a tripod to keep it stable. You also need to set the camera to manual exposure or the moon will be over exposed. There’s a full article here: How to Photograph the moon.

Photographers utilise 3D printing technology

3D printing could be the photographer’s savior. These clever devices print from 3d map files using resin or powder that’s built up in layers to form complex shaped objects. These printers cost thousands of pounds a few years ago, but now you can pick up a home printer such as the CTC 3D Printer (below) on eBay for less than £600.

And as the popularity increase so does the resources to help you print.

For most the biggest stumbling block will be the design and creation of a 3D printable file, but help is at hand – online specialist forums are growing where members share plans. There’s even a special site called thingverse.com where projects are posted along with photos, illustrations, plans and tips from the creators.

Photographers will benefit because you may have lost a cap or cover for your camera or lens, need an adaptor to convert from one lens fit to another, or a bracket to hold a flash or accessory. All these, and things that have never been invented, can be printed.

Here at PhotographyAttic we hold stock of many obscure camera accessories and photography items that haven’t been manufactured for decades. Our stocks are limited, but the 3d printer will provide an alternative .

On thingiverse there’s already a Quick release system for a tripod
along with various camera adaptors and body caps such as this Canon body mount for EOS camera

There are brackets for go-pro cameras, stands for taking mobile phone selfies and even cameras such as this 120 format pinhole camera

The current cost is still too high for many of us, but prices will inevitably fall and I bet it wont be long before the 3D printer is under £300 and many households will be printing replacement remote control battery covers, parts for toys, ornaments etc. And photographers will become part time inventors. The future is interesting!

Digiscoping – bird photography with spotting scopes

Wildlife photographers often wish they owned a longer lens of 500mm or so to taking close ups of birds and other smaller creatures. And often they may already have such a lens in the form of a spotting scope. By attaching the camera to the rear end of the spotting scope you create a lens with a similar magnification to that of around 800mm
This technique is referred to as digiscoping.

You need to buy an adaptor to attach the camera to your spotting scope. These are often specific to the spotting scope and with the exception of a few

camera brand adaptors, they usually all have a T2 mount thread at the camera end. So you buy the adaptor, attach it to the scope and then screw in a T2 adaptor that’s specific to your camera mount. We have the T2 camera mounts here at PhotographyAttic

Camera specific scopes such as the Pentax PF80D need the PF-CA35 which has a direct camera mount.
The Nikon Fieldscope range including the EDIII A need the FSA-L1. Nikon also produce the FSA-L2 for exclusive use on EDG Fieldscopes

Opticron have a wide range of scopes and several adaptor combinations all requiring a T2 mount at the camera end. See the Opticron Telephotography and Digi-scoping page for more details

Swarovski also have a range of scopes and a really informative page on digiscoping: Equipment – spotting scopes, cameras, etc. You need a T2 mount with their systems

Barr & Stroud supply a spotting scope adaptor for their Sahara and Bresser Safari spotting scopes. T2 mount required. This adaptor also fits some Helios, Bresser, Meade and Praktica spotting scopes.

Leica’s DSLR Photo-adaptor allows T2 mounted SLRs to be attached to the Leica Spotting scopes

T2 adaptors do not have any form of electrical contacts so you have to use your camera’s manual or aperture-priority mode. As the spotting scope doesn’t have apertures you just point and shoot and the camera will set the correct shutter speed. You could use the ISO setting to adjust shutter speed and increase the ISO for a faster shutter speed.

Focusing is manual. Focus the scope like you normally would but take more care on accurate point as the lack of depth of field will mean you have to be spot on to get a sharp photo. Also the increased magnification will make it difficult to hand hold so it’s better to use a tripod.

Further reading
Peta Pixel have an interesting article comparing the use of a Spotting scope against a Canon Super telephoto

Interesting Camera Concepts 1: Digibinos

In this occasional series we’ll take a look at design concepts that have tried to revolutionize the way we take photos. The first in the series looks at digibinos. A hybrid product combining binoculars with a digital camera. Pentax came up with the innovation announcing their DB-100 model in March 2002.

Having a camera combined with binoculars wasn’t a new thing. Tasco produced a 110 film version back in the early 80s. It wasn’t a success, and neither was the Pentax .

What the Pentax had was interesting – a pair of 7x magnification binoculars and a digital camera with a focal length of 280mm (on a 35mm camera). What let it down was the low resolution of the camera at just 0.8Mp and the build quality. For £300 it felt like you were getting a cheap digital camera with a budget pair of binoculars that didn’t have the flexibility of normal compact binoculars. You could adjust the size for different width eyes by push pulling the case, but they didn’t feel as comfortable as ordinary binoculars.

The LCD viewing screen was also smaller than digital cameras at the time.

I was taking photos remotely the other day and used binoculars to view the distant scene. It made me think that having a camera built in would be a good thing…but I’d want the clarity and depth seen through the binoculars to be recorded by the camera. I still believe there’s a future for this kind of hybrid technology, but it has to be smarter than the previous attempt.

Pentax DIGIBINO DB-100 Announced – New Story

Vintage cameras given new life

Illitt Vintage collects and restores vintage rangefinder cameras, replacing their original leather trims with beautifully crafted wood veneers. Veneers are made from Mansonia, Mahogany, Walnut and Cherry, each one being uniquely patterned to ensure each camera is equally unique.

The cameras look gorgeous and models restored so far include an Argus C3, Canon Demi EE17, Canonet QL17, Fujica V2, Konica Auto S2, Konica SII, Minolta AL, Minolta Hi-Matic 7, Minolta Hi-Matic 9 and Minoltina AL-S.

Once restored the cameras are used by Illitt Vintage and results are displayed in their online gallery. Cameras are made available for sale too along with some stylish camera straps. Ilott Vintage Store

Photographyattic has a few vintage cameras here if you fancy trying your own DIY restoration project 35mm Cameras for sale

Try using other materials such as leather or soft plastic.

Bird photography

To be successful with bird photography you either need a very long lens or a shorter lens with a remote control (or hide) so you can position yourself far enough away to avoid frightening the creature.

The long lens approach needs to be around 500mm allowing you to magnify the bird so it appears substantially more than a spec on the photo.

The shorter lens approach (300mm or less) and you probably need to hide (in a hide), or use a remote control. This is the approach I took for this shot of a blue tit preparing to nest in a box in the garden. I’d watched the bird’s activity for a few hours and noticed it landed on a particular branch of the nearby tree. So I mounted the camera (an Olympus OM-D EM1) on a tripod and focused on that particular branch. It was about a meter away from the branch and using the 40-150mm gave me a reasonable crop.

The focusing was set to manual so nothing could cause it to shift out of focus and the exposure was also set to manual adjusting to ensure that highlights on the bird wouldn’t be blown out.

I used a Hahnel Gigi T Pro II remote control and attached the receiver part on the camera flash shoe and plugged the cable into the camera.

I could then take the transmitter and sit out of sight, triggering the camera when the bird landed on the branch. To make things easier I used a pair of 8×21 binoculars. With these I could look at the bird and fire when it was in the right position, and then look at the camera LCD as it flicked up the preview of the shot just taken.
To get a cleaner background you should ensure that any background bush is further away from the landing position, also use a large aperture to reduce depth-of-field.

If you don’t have a modern camera with an electronic socket for a remote release you can buy an air release with a bulb to trigger the camera via the cable release socket.

Here are some cable releases and remote controls

Dreamy Camera Cafe

You’d be forgiven for thinking this was some kind of April Fool joke but it’s genuine. In South Korea there is a photo enthusiast who’s built a cafe in the shape of a huge Rolleiflex, twin lens reflex camera.

The windows of the two floor building are its lenses, and decorations throughout the cafe are photos and camera displays. It looks like a photographers dream place.

See Dreamy Camera Cafe on Facebook

Blog with photos of Dreamy Camera Cafe

Linear or Circular Polariser?

In the early days of the polarising filter there was just one type – the linear polarizer. The circular type arrived when the cameras with advanced metering (and later focusing) systems became popular. The Canon T90 and Olympus OM4 both had new advanced TTL metering that would be affected by the way a linear polarising filter worked. So a circular polarising filter had to be used instead.

Later, when autofocus came along, some systems got confused by the affect of the polariser. So, as a rule of thumb, use a linear on old manual and semi automatic cameras and circular on newer modern multi menu models.

If you do have a linear filter and a modern sophisticated digital SLR it will still work, but you may get inconsistent exposures. This is easily rectified by looking on the LCD preview and reshooting with necessary compensation applied.