Week 29 – Only I Could Underexpose a Roll of 3200iso – Ilford Delta 3200

Just trust the meter on the app on your phone, what could possibly go wrong. Famous last words if I ever said them myself. I'm not exactly mad at the results, but I'm not exactly what one would call "happy". 

According to everything I had in front of me, I was able to shoot comfortably at 1/60th of a second while being a little less than wide open. So in theory I should have had much better exposed images. But sometimes these things happen. Maybe there is something a little more that I need to learn about 3200 iso films.  

Looking back at these images (because I totally forgot to write copy for them when I put them in the queue to be posted last month) my only other wish was that I took more time to focus properly. Especially in these low light conditions.

DJ System Fail – 2015

After seeing what Stan and I were able to do last week. Another friend of mine from the old Shelter days (RIP) Cody aka DJ System Fail said he wanted to get some photos done as well.

This shoot was special for a few reasons (and I have a feeling I know what you are going to say "Oh hey, look, another black background shoot" well yes. But more important than that this was my first time working with a full frame mirrorless camera).

My first shoot shot on a truly "professional" piece of equipment. Granted I am borrowing it from my day job, but that's a whole other story. (Also long story short, I'm pretty happy with the results...except that somehow in the middle of shooting it switched from RAW to JPEG and I lost some ability to edit in post.)

The most exciting thing from this shoot is after capturing digital photos. We decided it was time to shoot the final "official" roll of my 52 rolls project. After I develop this roll I will probably need to re-name the blog something to the effect of "The GREATER THAN 52 Rolls Project". Those photos will be developed today, and will probably be hitting the blog the first week in November. So be on the lookout then. 
 

Week 27 – DragonCon 2015 and Team Tank – Cinestill 50D

Ok, so after much deliberation I figured out how to best display all of the photos I took at DragonCon. Instead of subjecting you to 9 weeks of updates for the 9 rolls that went through my camera over Labor Day weekend...I'll condense it into 4 weeks. And since Dragoncon is very much a cosplayer driven convention I'll devote most of October to the photos I took (even though relatively few of them are of people in costume).

2 weeks of updates will be single rolls of film, for the two new ones I tried. Then I will have a "mega update" containing all the color photos, and all the black and white photos. 

This entry will cover the second half of the parade from Saturday, and the mini-shoot I did with Team Tank, a wonderful TankGirl cosplay group from here in Atlanta.

And now a few from the TeamTank shoot:

Development Notes:
Standard Processing using Fresh Unicolor C41 Kit

The DIY Backdrop Test 2 (and Build) – Justin – 2015

I'm going to take a few moments and walk through the construction of the DIY backdrop project (It's really a lot more simple than you would think). I believe total cost for me was around $22.00, but that included two backdrop stands that I already had.

It all started with this video:

In it there is a section where it mentions the IKEA Tupplur blind.

Originally I wanted to go with a grey one instead, but since there was an open box deal on the large black, I got it instead. I'll probably go back in the near future and pick up the grey one.
After I got it home I removed the spring driven auto-winder (I guess that's the best way to describe the part) and found that there was a 3/4" tube running down the center. That tube just so happened to be the same diameter as my backdrop stand, so I had to run down to home depot and grab some 1/2" electrical conduit (about $2.30 for a 10' section).

They cut it down to size for me, and helped me find some screw on ends that formed an L shape (about another $1.50 each) that I used to mount on top of my backdrop stand.

Short of using a little black spray paint to dull down the silver, the final product looks like this. The diagram approximately (and totally not to scale) looked very similar to the one below.

Using an LED Panel that I borrowed from a friend of mine (and totally need to return, sorry Vivi) to provide a back light to the background, and my studio strobes (modeling light on, with a closed umbrella since the camera I am working with has a different flash mount than I am used to) as my main light. I was able to get some pretty interesting lighting situations. I probably need to look into some various gels to take some of the blue LED tint out, but other than that I am pretty happy.

Justin stepped up to help me out with some more testing of the background, and using what I learned from shooting Stan yesterday, this is what we were able to achieve. 

© 2006 – 2023 UNEXPhotography and Blake Griffin.

Privacy Policy