Fuji

Week 26 – I Hope These Turn Out – Fuji Superia X-Tra 400 (+1 Stop) (Exhausted C41 Chemicals?)

Pixie from last week also introduced me to Clockwork Calamity (Zivity profile, still just as NSFW as last week). And we had a great shoot (albeit very bright and sun-hurty) where she was cosplaying as Black Canary (Set totally should be live on Zivity if you wanted to throw me a few votes ;) ). 

Seeing as how I have been having a hard time getting models to work with, I wanted to make sure I snatched up the opportunity to get some more people into the blog. The sad, and very unfortunate thing is I really should have taken my own thoughts to heart in "week 24" and bought new C41 chemicals. The negatives turned out SUPER thin (or at least look that way before scanning them). I'm not sure if I will get anything that remotely looks like the correct colors out of this roll.

As I'm prepping this blog post I am about to purchase more, so hopefully my Dragoncon photos (Spoiler Alert...they start NEXT WEEK!) will be processed much better. Also we are up to 41 rolls as of this update! 

(Ninja Edit: Yep. It was totally the chemicals. The DragonCon Color photos turned out great!)

Ninja edit: Excuse my language, but HOLY SHIT. I bashed on Photoshop for the longest time and seriously saw it as a crutch and not a tool. But after seeing what I was able to recover from these images I am seriously impressed. I bet someone much more skilled than I could have even done a better job. I mean, look at what came out of my scanner from these:

I guarantee you they look worse in "person". I'm willing to accept the loss in sharpness that I had to take in order to get rid of the scanning artifacts in order to rescue even a few of these images. Especially considering I was trying for a result more like this (taken on my digital camera):

Development Notes:
Unicolor C41 Kit - Probably exhausted

Week 24 – Rainy Days (and lack of models) Always Gets Me Down – Fujicolor 200 (Expired?)

Just a reminder that even though a new roll of film shows up here every week, that doesn't mean that they were all shot sequentially. Excluding last week's entry the majority of this roll was shot maybe 2 or even 3 weeks after the work with The Imperial Opa. Not for lack of trying mind you. Every week I try and lock down someone to shoot with, and usually I'll get a few people who are interested. But rarely can I lock something down 100%. 

Mostly I blame my weird schedule where my "weekend" just happens to be at the beginning of everyone else's work week. Therefore it's hard to just find someone I know who is available (and not working a regular job like everyone else). Being a photographer that prefers to shoot people, its very taxing to come up with ways to fill a roll of film with things that aren't people. Also it's harder than I thought to keep photographing the cat and have it be interesting. Hopefully I won't have too many rolls like this. 

(and even though I may jinx myself here...I'm hoping future Blake was able to capture some great images in the upcoming weeks both with the models he HOPEFULLY has booked, and Dragoncon).

Now the images themselves this week...something is not quite right and I can't put my finger on it. The negative looked fine, maybe a little bit thin. They scanned well. However when it came time to adjust color things just looked off. It could be any number of things, including chemicals getting exhausted. Anyone out there using the Unicolor C41 kit have any advice? Is my scanner borked or on the wrong settings? Any ideas would be helpful. I'll even include one of the "raw" files at the end of the entry to see if it's just me. 

Development Notes:
Standard Process Unicolor C41 Kit
Possibly reaching the end of its life
Scanned and "Color Corrected" using Photoshop

And for any of you wanting to help me troubleshoot what is going on. Here is a link to a raw tiff scan (the file is too big to reliably host here)
https://app.box.com/s/fljganhybev6tdr57gxoikgp0ns69mgd

Week 10 – Nicky – Fujicolor Super HQ 100 (Expired?)

Its just my luck that I find a film stock completely by accident that I really like, only to find that its been discontinued. I purchased a few rolls of this Super HQ in a film lot on ebay. I THINK I have found more of it on Amazon, and am debating on if I want to pull the trigger or not. But I really do like the colors it captured. 

I am super happy with how this roll turned out. After a few failed experiments with color I was glad that this one came out the way it did.

Shout out to Nicky from Nicky's Eye View for being my model this week. She not only does a great "Blue steel" but she is a great photographer herself. Follow her on Instagram or Tumblr. 

I still need to work on my scanning environment. Way too much dust and cat hair is floating around in my apartment. 

Development Notes:
Standard Development
Unicolor C-41 Kit

Week 3 – Old Camera, Modern Flash – Fuji Superia X-TRA 400

Most of this roll (about half) was an experiment. The camera I'm using has an external flash port. The studio lights at my day job have a cable to hook into said flash port. So why not put 2 and 2 together. Using a digital camera as a light meter (since I didn't have one that could sync with the flashes) I composed a shot in our studio and had two of my co-workers step in as models. 

The rest of this roll was from walking around work and shooting more "abstract landscapes" much like my test rolls. 

Unicolor C-41 Kit:
Standard Everything.
See Week 2 post for more details.

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