I even got my landlord to take a photo with my pinhole!!!

By Ryan Matthews
Taken from the top of the triplex

Film vs Digital

This to me is a very exciting and unknown world. There is just that something about the quality and mood of film that just cannot be reproduced by a digital camera. Being a bit of a digital camera nerd myself, I never really used film cameras. So here was my chance! Big thanks to Emma 2 who was willing to pose for me with hats from the night before.



When i was done scanning the film, it was evident that the white balance has not the right one! I had been given a 400 ASA film, and I no dot remember the WB. Since I was always in the digital world, I could not even start where and how to get those filters that correct white balance. This is just a notion that does not exist for me! I tried to correct both photos, but the film one is now a little too blue, but it was very magenta when I got it. If I remember correctly, I put the digital camera to shady WB. I find it a little too warm, but my computer is far from being calibrated and I tried to, but to no avail.

The contrast is similar between the two pictures since this was taken on a shady day. There is less detail in the black pants of the film picture since it is out of focus, compared to the digital photograph.

Although, it is possible to see a lot more detail in the fur of the film photograph. Film negatives have been known to have a much greater dynamic range than digital. This means that it is possible for our eye to see a greater range in tonality, especially in the shadows and highlights.

The fine detail is better resolved in the film image. This is to be expected, since the sensor is much smaller than a 35mm piece of film (in my camera). But this depends a lot on the scanning.

And the grain. Of course, grain and noise are two completely different things. Noise is created by wild electrons and grain is actually grain of emulsions. There is no comparison.

Then again, as I said the mood and feel of film is just something special(when you are good at using film, which obviouly i lack!)

Pinhole Photography, From FAIL to WIN

After a few failed attempts and a few bad photos, I finally got some results. Now the mail man hates me because I had to chase him away since he was standing in front of my pinholes... Since the weather lately has been all over the place, it was hard to find the correct exposure for the pinhole. Being very annoyed and having an extra 2$ from the night before, I decided to buy two new boxes and bracket the exposition. 15 min later, I had three pinhole cameras(I am getting quite fast at making those, from dollorama boxes, soda cans and black spray pain... and lets not forget the most important of all, DUCT TAPE!!!) To my surprise, all of the prints turned out good!

Also I made for myself, what I like to call, a gettho-ass darkroom. Here is my contraption



Here are the results,
1. 1m40 sec (pinhole with two holes)


2. 2 min 30 sec

3. 3 min


It's really amazing to observe the non distortion of the lines with this wide angle!!!

Paper Negative Portrait

For this assignement, I decided to use a medium format plastic Holga camera
I used the instructions from the photo technologies blog to figure out the exposure time needed.
We assume that the working F-stop of the Holga is F11 for ISO 3. I took a reading with my DSLR at ISO 400 for F11 which gave me 1/13th of a second. The amount of time needed to expose the paper correctly would be (1/13)*(2^7) which was 9 seconds.

My roommate stayed as still as he could under the stairs for this photograph. It was then scanned and inverted

Thanks to Simon Ethier

A second paper negative portrait was taken, this time of Jerome, smoking outside the collecge. The same technique was used to calculate the exposure. Before the paper was loaded, it was crumpeled. Why one might ask?! Just for fun I must answer!



Now, how does this differ from a pinhole? It is much more different as (I am talking here about the Holga) it is MUCH more portable, easier to load, requires sorter exposition times. On the down side, the size of the paper used is limited and it is hard to get the image in perfect focus.

This is a Holga (not mine) (well the one i used os not even mine)

Wet Plate - Fear of Asphixiation

Wet plate photography was the first widely used negative crating process. This mean, it was the first time a photograph could be produced again and again.

In this (literally) breath taking photograph by Quinn Jacobson it is possible to see a women with her head wrapped in sran wrap. She is obviously not happy with what is happening to her. Screaming and search for air she is.

I chose this photograph because I feel it illustrated the urgency of the wet plate photography. Everything has to be done in 10 minutes. Like a fish out of water, if the wet plate dries, it dies.

This picture makes me feel extremely uneasy, almost chocking as i look at it.

Autochrome

Color photographs were produces as early as 1907. The autochrome process was invented by the Lumiere brothers in France. It was produced by layering red, blue and green potato starch of a glass plate with silver emulsions. This edible sounding process produces amazing results and luckily, a great collection of these fragile artifacts remain, this being an example, kept in Belgium.
The colors autochrome produce are amazing. They have a trong haze and particular softness making them look like paintings.
In this photograph there is a young girl holding a flower and wearing a crown of flowers on her head. She looks soft and happy, her mood very much emulating the aesthetics of this particular photographic process, which was probably part of the intention of the photographer.
I very much appreciate this photograph, it has a define religious conotation, but without the popular props used to portray such a scene. The girl looks a little sad at first, but on a closer inspection, she seems to be smirking, which made me smile.

Pictorialism - Critique

Gertrude Käsebier was a strong advocate for women as photographers as it was shown in her work, with motherly figures and themes. She adopted the pictorialism current of the early 20th century, where pictures emulated paintings by their softness and themes.

In this photograph, the focus is soft, the figure of the mother is white, pure and etheral She is guiding lovingly a gender natural looking child out of door. It is also possible to see in the background a painting that seems to emulate the scene that is happening in the foreground


The second photograph os by Joyce Tenneson. Most of her photographs were taken using a 20x24 polaroid. She used a different medium, but her representations are similar is theme and aeathetics. Again, the womanly figure is the main theme, again making a visual reference to religious paintings, of the women as white, pure and motherly. The women as a kind protector can also be observed in many of her photographs, where a woman embraces a child.