It doesn’t happen too often here in Belgium that we get a nice layer of snow that pretty much covers everything. And when it happens it usually doesn’t take more than a few days before it’s gone. So I did absolutely want to do a shoot in the snow.  I had this image in my head of a guy in a suit in the snowy fields. (Don’t ask me why, that’s just the way my chaotic brain works.) My friend David offered to pose so a couple of days ago we went for a quick improvised 20 minute shoot in the fields behind my house.
I could have shot this digitally of course but I’ve been dying to shoot some posed portraits with the Hasselblad.

Loading film into the Hasselblad back is getting better and faster every time. Only this time … ok it’s the second time it happened, I forgot to advance the film after it was loaded. No harm done, just some lost frames but I really need to focus more when shooting film.

Except for the picture above, all the pics were shot with the sun behind David. The snow reacts as a giant Sunbounce giving fill light everywhere.
The vignetting in the picture below looks a bit too much. It looks ok at full size but I really have to watch out when resizing these kind of vignetted pictures.

It was pretty cold, certainly for David in his suit, so we only shot 3 rolls of film. It’s amazing how many kinds of films that exist and all of them have different characteristics. Until now I pretty much bought the films that were available in local stores but I really want to start trying out different films to see which ones suit me best. One of the films I really wanted to test out was Kodak Tri-X. It’s maybe not the technically best film but I discoverd with this shoot that it has a lot of character.

It seems more contrasty and has more grain (which doesn’t have to be a bad thing). When I saw these scans I just had to think about Reservoir Dogs and decided to call David, Mr. White from now on.

And I promise I will post some digital images sometimes soon
Merry Christmas to you all!

Just after I published my previous blog post about how I’m doing with my medium format film camera, the doorbell rang. The DHL guy seemed to be a bit disappointed when “Stephani” turned out not to be a sexy babe but the last name of a fat photographer. I, on the contrary, was pretty excited by his visit because he brought me my new scanner: the Epson Perfection V700 Photo.

I did quite some research about the options to scan the negatives of my Hasselblad 500cm. Once I’ve learned to work with it, I’ll write a more in-depth review about why I choose it and if it is able to meet my (high) expectations. For now, I’ll leave you with some first impressions.

I must admit that I was pretty sceptical when die hard film fans stated that a well scanned medium format negative could hold it’s own against a digital file from a modern DSLR. But now, I’m not so sure about that anymore. I don’t have enough knowledge and experience yet to make a founded statement on that. Too be honest, I don’t even want to spend my time on doing scientific tests to find out what is best. At the moment I think that you can’t really compare film to digital in a completely objective way. It’s like vinyl vs CD, sure a CD is cleaner but the technical quality of vinyl isn’t that bad and it has something that digital lacks: character. Like cd (or iTunes), I believe that digital is probably the best option for most photography but film still has it’s place if you’re after that certain look.

But back to the Epson V700, here are my first impressions:

- The thing is huuuuuge, it looks more like a desktop copier than a scanner. But it doesn’t look out of place next to a trendy Mac.
- It all feels pretty sturdy and professional.
- It comes with adapters for different sizes of film.
- I read some horror stories about these film holders but I found the MF holder to be pretty practical.
- The MF film holder holds 6 square negatives. That’s better for productivity than the 2 I had on my old scanner.
- Preview scanning is pretty fast
- Scanning time at 1200 dpi is rather fast too
- Scanning time at 2400 dpi takes a bit longer, but I’d rather have a slow but good scan than a fast but bad one. I haven’t tested higher resolutions yet.
- I’ve heard lots of good things about the Silverfast SE6 software that came with the scanner. The more advanced version of this software is supposed to be even better but for now I’ll stick to the SE-version. There’s already way more options in it than I can understand. It’s not “dummy”-software (although it probably has some dummy-mode”. That means that I’ll probably have to go through a steep learning curve but if that makes my scans better, that’s time well invested.
- Last observation for now: I’m blown away with the image quality (I bet you saw that one coming).

I only did a couple of test scans last night. The difference with my old scanner is huge. Not only in the resolution but also in the gradations captured. In the picture above, the little girl was a bit blown out. I tried to scan it for safety, so I got a pretty dull grey image that would give me more options for some dodging and burning. But before the dodging and burning, I cleaned up the dust and scratches.
The image below was shot on color film (Porta 400NC) and converted to black and white, I also did some cleaning up and some minor dodging and burning.

Scanned at 2400 dpi the above image of my wife became a 5115 x 5010 pixel image. That’s a pretty big file hey. Below you can see how much detail is present in a 100% crop. I must say that I found that to be pretty impressive.

Now I’m even more desperately looking for some free time to do some test shoots with the Hasselblad.

So how am I doing with my new/old Hasselblad 500cm? Well, I’m still in love with that camera but I haven’t been able to give it as much action as I would like to. I’ve been so busy that I shot only 8 rolls of film so far (including the 3 test rolls before I bought it).

Here’s one more of the session with my lovely wife:

I also shot some pics with my 5D mkII and the 50mm lens during that shoot, mainly as a digital polaroid to check if the exposure I got from my handheld light meter were correct. Here are some of the digital pics:

I really want to do some posed testshoots soon. But because I just don’t seem to find the time, I played around with a roll of expired film to see how I’m doing with the Sunny 16 rule.

I also tried doing reportage style stuff indoors with a roll of 400 iso black and white film. Just to see how I would do when getting some meter readings every now and then, and then just guess for the rest.

I really enjoy the challenge the Hasselblad throws at me. It makes me think so much more about my images. For the first time in quite a while I feel like a kid in the candy store when I think of all the possibilities and things that I still can learn about photography like:

- discover what films I like best
- start developing my own film again and find out the results of different chemicals with different films
- learn to make decent scans (these scans are all done with my crappy old scanner, but a new one is on it’s way)
- try out flash with film photography
- …

For now on, I’ll try to learn this camera inside out but I’m pretty sure it will find it’s way in my work for some assignments (something I didn’t consider at all when I bought it).

There, I did it, I bought a Hasselblad 500 c/m. Paying good money for a camera that was produced the year I was born, might not seem like a wise business decision. But I believe that an irrational decision every now and then is a very wise thing to do. I don’t KNOW what this strange square box will bring me but I FEEL that it’s going to help me become a better photographer. I bought it out of the love for photography, so it seemed perfect to have my lovely wife Nancy on the other side of the camera for a first Hasselblad photoshoot.

These are the results from the first roll of film (Ilford HP5 plus 400). I will do some experiments with flash soon, but I wanted to use the limited available light on this grey day. I struggle a lot with the controls of this camera. It’s so different from a DSLR but at the same time it also feels rather natural. I’m sure it will become easier soon but I’m already loving it. The huge square viewfinder, using a handheld lightmeter, focusing manually, having only 12 shots before loading a new roll of film (which takes like half a day for me), … it all helps to photograph in a very different way: slower, with more attention to composition and detail.

Having to wait at least a day for developing the film is annoying and great at the same time. I’m used to the instant feedback of digital but the feeling of anticipation when finally looking at the negatives has it’s charm too.

I’m aware that medium format film should be able to give me some very decent image quality. The problem is that a good scan is pretty expensive. I must say that I was pretty surprised (and not in a positive way) when I found out how much my lab charges for the not impressive 1500 pixel scans of the 2 test rolls I shot last week. So I dug out my old Epson 1240U flatbed scanner and tried to scan the negatives myself. I couldn’t find the MF film holder, so I had to lay the film straight on the glass and that gave me some distortion. I’ll try to find it or improvise something. It’s an old scanner but I found the results to be on par with the low res lab scans. Good enough for internet use for the moment.

I loved it, I really loved it and I was so happy I could photograph the most beautiful woman in the world with it. We shot one more roll of black and white film and one roll of color film. I haven’t scanned them yet but if there are some decent shots there, I’ll show them to you.