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Home » Forums » PhotoShare » Comment & Critique - Live, Backstage, Promo, etc

Some oldies from b&w negatives

published by Patonki on Thu, 11/15/2007 - 1:17am

Hey there folks.

Inspired by Kalle's new found interest in the negative format, I dug up some old photos from my years before my first digital camera. Before going all digital, I spent almost 15 years doing mostly black and white shots at gigs, developing the films myself and stuff. I spent a lot of hours at the old dark room thingy, until around 1997 or 98 I bought this negative scanner that was quite cheap but it did the trick. Here's some random samples from that era...


01 Angus Young from AC/DC in Helsinki, 2000


02 The late great Barry White in Stockholm, 1999


03 Bonnie "Prince" Billy @ Accelerator, Stockholm, 2003


04 Mr. E from Eels @ Accelerator, Stockholm, 2000


05 Lou Reed @ Ruisrock 2000


06 Tuomari Nurmio & Alamaailman Vasarat @ Klubi, Tampere 2004 (this photo was actually used as the cover of their album...)


07 PJ Harvey @ Stockholm Water Festival 1998


08 Josh Homme from Queens of the Stone Age @ Provinssirock 2003


09 Skin from Skunk Anansie @ Provinssirock 1999


10 Meg from the White Stripes in Helsinki 2002

So there, feel free to comment, if you feel like it.

Forums: 
Comment & Critique - Live, Backstage, Promo, etc

Submitted by Kalle Björklid on Thu, 11/15/2007 - 5:22am.

Very nice, thanks for sharing. The Skunk Anansie photo has phenomenal lighting, although I must say I have a strong urge for removing the light blobs behind her.

Did you have a favorite film?

http://www.bjorklid.net/
http://www.huumakuva.net/

Submitted by Teemu Juutilainen on Thu, 11/15/2007 - 6:25am.

These are all absolutely great photos, plus a few excellent ones, like Skin, PJ and Mr. E.

I still believe that's the way shooting on film works - it makes one concentrate on the shot.

Live hard, die hard

Submitted by Patonki on Thu, 11/15/2007 - 8:21am.

Kalle Björklid wrote:
Very nice, thanks for sharing. The Skunk Anansie photo has phenomenal lighting, although I must say I have a strong urge for removing the light blobs behind her.

Did you have a favorite film?

Well, yeah, you're a photoshopper, aren't you... I'm not, so I don't have any urges like that, even today, when using the digital, I try to keep the images as "real" as possible, meaning I don't do any of that post production stuff.

I mainly used Kodak TMax 400 but pressed it so it was iso 1600. It was a pretty cheap film and it was easy to find at the time. I still have quite a few rolls of it left, maybe I'll take the old camera out for tonight's gig...

Submitted by Kalle Björklid on Thu, 11/15/2007 - 8:56am.

Unless I'm mistaken, you could do the editing in darkroom, too.

http://www.bjorklid.net/
http://www.huumakuva.net/

Submitted by Patonki on Thu, 11/15/2007 - 10:33am.

Kalle Björklid wrote:
Unless I'm mistaken, you could do the editing in darkroom, too.

Yeah, it's possible, to some extent at least. But I always tried to take such good shots that I don't need to go through all the trouble with editing in the darkroom and/or photoshop, in fact I've never even learned to do either one properly. I guess I'm old school in that sense. I never did any major editing in the darkroom back in the day. And I still try to keep photos as close to the original as possible.

But to each his own...

Submitted by Rene Damkot on Thu, 11/15/2007 - 10:37am.

Very nice set of images.

I've never liked pushing B/W films, due to the loss of shadow detail, but I don't mind one bit here...

Submitted by rockstarimages on Fri, 11/16/2007 - 5:59am.

I think Kodak has a new range of Tmax out. I know they updated the porta range and even though I haven't tested it jet it is supposed to be fantastic. Not a whole lot of grain. Said to be a full stop better than the pervious edition.
And even though the porta is engeneered for mostly portrait stuff the prints I have seen of mixed and low light conditions are fantastic. Should be well worth a try to get that old camera out again.

Stefan Schaufelberger
Fotografie
Switzerland

Submitted by Kalle Björklid on Fri, 11/16/2007 - 6:29am.

rockstarimages wrote:
And even though the porta is engeneered for mostly portrait stuff the prints I have seen of mixed and low light conditions are fantastic. Should be well worth a try to get that old camera out again.

Thanks for the tip (you probably mean Kodak Portra?). I've been wondering if that would be the color film to use in concerts - I've browsed PBase and while I didn't see any (good) concert photos taken with Portra, I thought the tones of some city night shots seemed like it might work in concerts as well. The ISO800 version is rather hard to come by here, though, and expensive (10 euros for one 135-format roll , that's over 14 USD, from the cheapest mail-order shop I know). You get three rolls of good BW film with the same money.
And push processing costs twice as much at the lab I'm using :(. I have to ask others.

http://www.bjorklid.net/
http://www.huumakuva.net/

Submitted by Rene Damkot on Fri, 11/16/2007 - 8:58am.

Kalle Björklid wrote:
I've been wondering if that would be the color film to use in concerts

Slide film: Kodak EPJ (ISO 320 Tungsten slide, takes push-processing quite well)
No stge shots online, but a bad scan of a backstage (flash) image: here
Negative film: Fuji Superia 1600 or Pro 800Z. If you like Kodak (I don't) Portra 800 might be you choice.

If you can find it, Konica 3200 used to be nice. Studio image

Some older discussions on Photo.net: here and here

For B/W, I used Fuji Neopan 1600 (EI 800) almost exclusively. Very rarely a Kodak Tmax 3200 (EI 1600), or a Tri-X pushed to EI 800...

For portraits I did a lot of cross processing: Different negative films reacted very different to that, so it'll take a bit of experimenting. Good old Kodak EPP did okay, as well as some fuji films.

Submitted by Patonki on Fri, 11/16/2007 - 9:42am.

Kalle Björklid wrote:
And push processing costs twice as much at the lab I'm using :(. I have to ask others.

Well, you should start developing the films yourself, then. I don't think it's that expensive to buy the basic stuff, the film reels and a tank and the liquids. That's pretty much all you need...

Submitted by Rene Damkot on Fri, 11/16/2007 - 9:49am.

http://www.digitaltruth.com/devchart.html ;)

Submitted by Kalle Björklid on Fri, 11/16/2007 - 1:18pm.

Tomi Palsa wrote:

Kalle Björklid wrote:
And push processing costs twice as much at the lab I'm using :(. I have to ask others.

Well, you should start developing the films yourself, then. I don't think it's that expensive to buy the basic stuff, the film reels and a tank and the liquids. That's pretty much all you need...

That's what I plan to do, but I have some other things going on right now... I'll use labs while waiting for the time and energy for this to emerge (its actually not trivial to figure out the shopping list for this whole thing (including things like the weights and hooks to be able to dry the films, "accordeon" bottles to restore the liquids that don't like air and so on) - I'm going to mail order everything, it's much cheaper, I'm sure. So, I'll have to gather the info first and so on (I got Ansel Adams' "The Negative" today, by happenstance).

http://www.bjorklid.net/
http://www.huumakuva.net/

Submitted by rockstarimages on Sat, 11/17/2007 - 7:33am.

You could also look around for used labs. I see used labs popping up all the time. It goes up to the point that you can get a whole coulor lab with a machine for processing for under 1000 euros. If you got the room for it that sounds like something to invest in.

http://www.fotoflohmarkt.ch/detail.php?siteid=4891 (in german)
or ebay:
http://cgi.ebay.com/Darkroom-Equip-Set-Enlarger-Timer-Photo-Develop-Finish_W0QQitemZ260181149965QQihZ016QQcategoryZ29993QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

cheers

Stefan Schaufelberger
Fotografie
Switzerland

Submitted by tinnitus photography on Mon, 11/19/2007 - 4:51pm.

wow, these are really good...esp like these: E, PJ Harvey, skin and meg white. well done.

are there any digital cameras (or PS actions) out there which can approximate the look of these b/w shots?

Submitted by Kalle Björklid on Mon, 11/19/2007 - 6:04pm.

tinnitus photography wrote:
are there any digital cameras (or PS actions) out there which can approximate the look of these b/w shots?

There's a PS plugin called Exposure by Alien Skin (Google "alien skin exposure") that has a sort of stock of films that you can use and controlls dedicated in creating BW filmlike photos. It's, well, interesting mostly because you're able to do things quicker than in pure PS and you can save the presets. Then again, it doesn't do much that you cannot do with PS.

This one is done with the evaluation version of Exposure: http://kuvat.huumakuva.net/displayimage.php?pos=-3442

http://www.bjorklid.net/
http://www.huumakuva.net/

Submitted by Patonki on Thu, 02/14/2008 - 8:24pm.

Just a quick hello to all the people of MusicPhotographers.net. My name is Tomi Palsa, I'm a Finnish photo guy, aged 33, and I'm the one who took the photos of this here thread.

Just wanted to tell you that photo number 4 was used on the booklet of the new Eels rarities compilation that just came out a couple weeks ago. It came as a surprise, since nobody asked for permission to use the photo, the photo was not credited on the booklet and so on. I'm just pondering my options here, what to do about it etc.

Well, I gave a print of the photo to the man they call E when I did an interview and a photo shoot with him about a year after I took the shot. I'm not quite sure if I included all the necessary contact info or not, but that still don't give them the right to use the pic without asking me first. I'm going to try and contact somebody that works for the band and we'll see what happens...

Take care you all.

Tomi