#scan from analog print

[ultralowoxygen]

La foto che credeva di essere in bianco e nero. by Michele Nicoletti Via Flickr: Avere corpi analogici senza finestrella per inserire il cartoncino del rullo può portare a certe conseguenze, quando si dimentica la macchina carica per un po' di tempo :-) ... Ero convinto fosse caricata a fomapan 400, vedendo impostati gli iso a 200 con rimanenza una decina di scatti (perchè la fomapan 400 la espongo sempre a 200 iso). Invece al termine del rullo...sorpresa...:-) Analogica eseguita con Canon EF, obiettivo Canon FD 50mm f1.8, pellicola kodak Gold. Scansione con reflex digitale canon eos 60D, sviluppo del raw e inversione con negative lab pro.

[juniperdugong]

Be my first? - Wonwoo

WC: 824 || Genre: Fluff || CW: Some swears, despite the title, there is only a smidgen of suggestiveness || Wonwoo x fem!reader (established relationship)

A/N: This is a quick little thang that could be (very much insinuated to be) a pt.2 to this lovely fic that's gotten so much love

"How do you like it, baby?"

Wonwoo wrapped his arms around your waist pulling you onto his lap. Resting his chin on your shoulder as he watched you in amusement.

"How do I like it? I don't just like it, I fucking love it, Nonu!" You quickly turned around to meet him face to face. The goofy smile adorning your lips makes him sit tall and proud knowing that he's the one who's made you like this.

You pepper his face in light kisses as you fumble with the box. You've long discarded the gift bag at this point and Wonwoo sighs knowing that he's gonna have to pick it up later because you'll inevitably forget to clean your mess. He just enjoys being showered in your physical praise for the moment, pushing all other thoughts to the side.

Finally, you get it open. Your face gleaming with joy as you hold your new treasure. Excitedly you dart between your present and Wonwoo's face, like a puppy asking for permission from its owner to run around the park full speed. He nodded gently and you were off to the races!

The Instax mini evo instant film - a beauty of a modern film camera that you've eyed since its release.

To be honest you weren't as into film and photography as Wonwoo but you always admired the look of some of the older analog film cameras he had. You expressed a slight desire to get into the hobby but only if you could do it digitally... the only thing stopping you? You absolutely hated the way modern cameras looked. Of course, the aesthetic shouldn't matter when it comes to equipment but it mattered to you just enough to not commit to photography, although you'd never admit it.

But with the Instax mini, you could basically say FujiFilm read your mind and came out with the perfect product for you to fulfill your oh-so-selfish desire of looking like someone who knows their way around a camera. All of this of course to impress your handsome nerd of a boyfriend, Jeon Wonwoo.

"Be my first?" He looked at you quizzically before scanning his own body with his eyes, "Baby, we've already-"

"No, you ass. I meant let's take the first picture together..." You hit him on the chest lightly before skimming over the manual for a gist of how everything worked. He gave a small chuckle and a light peck to your cheek, relaxing into your shoulder once again. "Sure, pretty girl. I'd love to be the first."

Once you're sure you've got down the basics you raise the camera above your heads, making sure your angle is perfect. "You better smile very prettily for this, Jeon Wonwoo." you say through gritted teeth as you hold "the perfect poised smile".

"Of course, I won't dissapoint, angel." He tucks your hair behind your ears on the side that he's resting against, puts on his best smile, and reaches up to meet the hand you're using to hold up the camera.

"What are you do-" Before you can get your question out Wonwoo uses his other hand to push your head towards him, catching you in a kiss. His timing is perfect because just as you're about to push him away he snaps the photo.

Immediately he takes the camera from your hands and prints the picture. You stare at him in complete shock at his audacity. "Wonwoo~" You whine as he holds an iron grip on the device you're so desperately trying to get back from him.

"Just a second... and... Got it!" He all but tosses the camera onto your lap as he hastily grabs at the photo once it's printed. The content laugh that comes out of him as he sees the result has you fuming.

"Let me see!" You snatch it from him and cringe at what you see next.

Wonwoo with his perfectly sculpted face, eyes closed gently, leaning in ever so gracefully and meeting you. You who had your eyes wide open in shock and lips pursed out of habit, but they more so resemble duck lips than anything else.

"You should put that in your phone case, baby." With a look of complete and utter dissatisfaction and disgust, you look at your boyfriend, who is thoroughly enjoying your reaction with the biggest smile on his face. You punch his chest, he pretends to be hurt for a second before returning to his state of euphoria.

"Yeah? Since you seem like it so much maybe you should put it in your phonecase." You hold the picture up to his face, a chuckle coming from him as he beholds his masterpiece once more.

"I'm good, I've already got the perfect photo in mine." He flips his phone over and thumbs at the cutout frame of a photo strip, your first kiss. "Plus, it's your first picture with your new camera, cherish it, baby."

A/N: Not proofread!! A little something something because I was in the writing mood~ A question to any fanfic authors who read this, what's your word count per day? Me personally, whether it's a part of a longer fic or not, I average about 1000. This fic was actually written with like an hour and a half. Anyways lovelies, let me know what you think!!!

Please Reblog and Comment (They act as power-ups for me)

Taglist (OPEN): @bemybabiibish @bath1lda @porridgesblog

[artsicfox]

Made a fan animation of Spot from the Spider-verse movie

I made this animation by doing the camera and key poses in Blender, sketching the base out in CSP, printing that out and using analog materials to draw every frame and scanning those back into the computer

[sirfrogsworth]

When I got to this photo in Katrina's collection of vintage family imagery, I was pretty stumped as to how to approach it.

There is a major problem when you zoom in to 100%.

The paper it was developed on has little micro bumps. When it was scanned, the light from the scanner caused a highlight on one side of the bump and a shadow on the other. This causes a pattern which is nearly impossible to eliminate using traditional techniques.

The easiest way to fix this is actually quite clever. You scan it once, then turn it upside down and scan it again. The second pass reverses the side the highlight and shadow appear on, so you can combine the images in Photoshop and blend them together, essentially canceling out the bumps. It's weirdly analogous to noise canceling headphones.

But I don't have access to the physical copy of this image.

So... now what?

Enter Fast Fourier Transform or FFT.

This is a filter that uses extra fancy math to recognize patterns in the image and eliminate them. There is a pretty good filter for Photoshop, but it does not work easily with newer Macs with Apple Silicon. I really did not want to figure that out, and I also was too tired to go downstairs to my PC. However, I learned that a Photoshop competitor, Affinity Photo, has this filter built in. So, I downloaded a trial copy and started the process of trying to figure out how to fix this image.

It was amazingly simple. It brings up these star patterns and you just paint black circles over every one but the center. It literally felt like magic. (Full screen with sound recommended)

So once I did this process I ended up with this...

The paper still had a rough texture but it was much easier to work with using traditional techniques. I started with a black and white conversion and meticulously went through the photo zapping scratches and flaws and balancing tones and sharpening facial features. All of my photo restoration tricks were needed.

I eventually landed here...

I then thought maybe I should match the sepia tone of the original print, so I got to here...

I think the black and white looks nicer in this instance, but I always like having options and this is the most faithful representation of how the photo originally looked.

But there is something else I have been playing around with lately. Photoshop has these experimental neural filters that use cloud processing to do various tricky enhancements. Most of them are in beta and they can be very quirky. But they have a colorizer that tries to detect people and things and adds color to them. Not every black and white photo is a good candidate. I have found these professional portrait photos work decently, but the filter is very hit-and-miss. And there are tools within the filter to help you make a miss more of a hit, but often I have to accept the photo isn't going to work.

But I decided to give it a shot with this one and surprisingly, the colorizer got me most of the way there.

I can work with that.

The one thing it does well is skin. Manually painting color onto skin is tricky and requires more skill and knowledge of traditional painting techniques than I have. But if a filter can do that part for me, I can do the rest.

So after my touchups, I got the image to here.

All I have left to do is my standard color enhancements to make them a little less ghostly and a little more human.

And I present to you where I started and the finished product. I encourage you to flip back and forth.

I'm not sure how, but I was able to go from an image I thought was impossible to edit to a beautiful colorized memory for my best friend's mom. I cannot wait to show her.

[tildeathiwillwrite]

The Thief has Now Committed Arson

The Watcher and the Thief, Chapter 2 Scene 2

June of Doom Day 14: "What were you thinking?" / Surrender / Human Shield / Outmatched

Prompts List | Masterpost

Tales from Valaria Masterpost

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Fandom: Original Work

Words: 1800

Tag List: @juneofdoom @fourwingedsnake @whumperofworlds @pigeonwhumps @mr-orion

@scaewolf

CW: deception, thievery, being watched, monster, scratches, claw wounds, stress position, explosion, fire, book burning, arson, swearing

A/N: You read that correctly.

----------

The Draigo archives was a majestic building, second only to the Council chambers with its detailed stone pillars and intricately carved architecture composed of both wood and stone. Rift mentally calculated the cost of the construction as he entered through the massive double doors made of thick, dark wood inlaid with reliefs. 

This building alone was worth almost as much as the entire city of Valdove, by his estimation. The Draigo could certainly afford to miss one of their fancy little gemstones. Even if it was supposedly rarer than a kind-hearted magician.

Rift chuckled to himself at the analogy as he surveyed the archives. Shelves upon shelves packed near to bursting with books and tomes and scrolls sprawled before him, a nearly endless maze of knowledge. Artifacts rested on open display on wood and stone pedestals scattered throughout the archives, not even a barrier of glass between them and potential onlookers.

It was almost too easy.

Almost.

He had to find the damned gem first.

His employer had given him a detailed description of the specific gemstone he wanted stolen. Notably, it didn’t even appear to be a gemstone at all, but rather a pretty shard of opaque sea glass, yellowish orange in color. Of course, his mysterious employer had refused to clarify, so Rift was left to wonder why in the depths it was so valuable.

Rift was unlikely to find out even after he delivered the cargo, so he put the thought out of his mind and entered the archives proper, casually strolling through the standing bookcases and pretending to read the titles printed neatly on some of the spines. He subtly scanned each artifact display that he passed, seeking a gemstone that matched the description.

He was so engrossed in his search that he nearly ran into the Draigo woman before noticing her. “Oh!” he exclaimed, grabbing her arm to stabilize her as she stumbled back in shock and nearly fell into one of the nearby bookcases, “my deepest apologies, madam! I was so captivated browsing the tomes that I didn’t see you there.”

“Thank you,” she said quietly, tucking a lock of curly red hair behind her ear, “I must apologize as well. I assumed we wouldn’t have any visitors until after the meeting ended and Miss Sorro returned.”

“Of course,” Rift agreed, chuckling softly, “I would be at the meeting as well, except I have only  just arrived from a long journey.” He lowered his voice conspiratorially. “If I may be completely honest, the last thing I want after my journey is to sit in a crowded meeting hall listening to a bunch of stuffy officials talk in circles.”

The woman smiled at that. “The only reason I’m not there myself is because Miss Sorro—Skylyn, the head archivist—is attending on behalf of the archives and there always has to be an archivist here.” She shrugged. “Everyone volunteered, but she chose me.”

“If she’s the one in charge of this wonderful place, I certainly trust her judgment.” Rift gave a slight bow. “My name’s Theodoric Graves, and I am an agent from the far east stronghold.”

“From across the ocean?”

“The very same. I’d always heard wonderful things about this archive, so I decided to visit while waiting for the meeting to end. And you are…?”

“Oh!” The woman blushed. “My apologies. I’m Amari Kieran, acting head archivist. What sort of business brings you from so far away?”

Rift shook his head. “Unfortunately, that information is classified.”

“Oh… of course, that is to be expected. Apologies for prying, my curiosity got the better of me.”

He shifted from one foot to the other, nervousness curling in his stomach. How much longer was the Council meeting going to last? “Say… I’ve heard many things about the artifacts displayed here, and I’m very curious about some of them. Why don’t you show me around the archives for a little while, until the meeting ends?”

“Oh!” Amari brightened. “I don’t think the meeting will last for much longer, so how about I start with my personal favorites and we go from there?”

“Sounds perfect.”

“Okay!” She spun around and started walking, not even checking to make sure he was following behind her. Rift almost had to run to keep up, her pace was brutal.

The first artifact display they stopped at was a stone mask, carved with intricate symbols that Rift recognized to be runes. “This one here,” Amari began, “belonged to one of the Cardinal Points, the magician of the south herself. The runes are incredibly complex, and….”

Rift tuned out most of her words, pretending to nod and listen while keeping an eye out for the gem. He’d already clocked most of the items he saw as objects of immense power or historical significance, sometimes both, setting them at hundreds of millions worth of gold each for the right buyer. Shame he was only here for one item….

Amari finished whatever she was saying about the mask and moved on, walking just as quickly to the next artifact, this one several rows of bookcases deep into the archives. “This gauntlet is composed of a metal rumored to grant its wielder strength equal to that of ten sang.”

Rift blinked in shock that wasn’t completely feigned. “I… what? Ten sang? From a glove?!”

Amari nodded earnestly, smiling at his surprise. “Indeed! No other artifact has been found across all four strongholds that matches its worth. Of course, we can’t have something like that out in the world to be used for evil purposes. Its first documented appearance was in the year….”

His stomach churned as his eyes darted around the archive. Why was he so nervous all of a sudden? No one else was around but Amari, and she had no intention of harming him, no knowledge of what he planned to do.

So why did he feel like he was being watched by unfriendly eyes?

Amari moved on again so suddenly he almost didn’t notice her departure, swiftly vanishing ever deeper among the maze of knowledge and danger. When he reached the display she stopped at, his mouth almost dropped.

There, draped on a smooth chunk of stone, was the gemstone he sought. It truly did appear to be made of sea glass, yellowish orange in hue. The gem was attached to a thin chain of dark metal and didn’t look anything more than a pretty necklace. But Rift’s employer wanted it, so that was what Rift was going to steal.

“What’s this?” He finally said, shoving down his excitement.

“It doesn’t appear like much, does it?” Amari asked, noting the look on his face. What she thought of it, he couldn’t guess, her expression of excitement remained unchanged.

“No, it doesn’t.”

“Then why do you want it so badly?”

Rift blinked. “I’m sorry, what?”

Amari’s expression was now cold as ice. “You came here searching for something. Something to steal from the archives, while everyone else is busy at the Council meeting. You deceived everyone you came across, and you attempted to deceive me. Explain yourself, and perhaps I may let you live.”

Rift forced out a laugh. “I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about, Amari. This is ridiculous.”

“You’re right. It is ridiculous.” Her eyes narrowed. “Ridiculous how a common thief such as yourself thinks he can just waltz into the archives and take what he wants!”

“A common thief!” Rift exclaimed, heart pounding in his ears. “Quite the accusation.”

Amari’s eyes darkened, and this time when she spoke, a lick of flame darted from her lips. It winked out immediately. “You continue to lie to me. You had your chance.”

Before Rift could ask what she was talking about, she snapped her fingers. The sound echoed eerily throughout the archive, bouncing off the stone walls and floor. For a long moment, nothing happened. He wondered if she was bluffing.

And then he was tackled from behind.

Rift cried out as sharp talons dug into his left shoulder, slicing through skin and muscle and sinew and scraping against bone. Pain coursed across his nervous system as his arm went numb and the claws that wounded him began to lift him off his feet and into the air. 

White light streaked across his vision as he screamed, fire flowing through his veins, burning in his shoulder and at his right side.

Wait. His side? That was where… where….

Rift slowly reached into his pocket, his fingers closing around the strange object given to him by his employer. It was hot to the touch, like it had been left in a flame for too long. Why was it burning…?

Oh.

Oh!

Rift slowly, the movement sending more pain through his shoulder, more white light through his vision, ever so slowly, withdrew the object from his pocket and, before he could second-guess himself, flicked it behind him, at whatever creature was holding him in place.

No sooner had the object left his hand before an explosion rocked the archive. Rift was flung out of the grasp of the creature and slammed bodily into the stone pedestal, ears ringing, the scent of singed something filling his nose.

He groaned, shoulder throbbing, head pounding, the taste of heat and ash in his mouth as he opened his eyes to find himself surrounded by fire. Starving, ravenous fire that surged towards the bookcases, hungrily devouring the tomes and scrolls that rested on their shelves. Amari was nowhere in sight.

Rift quickly got to his feet, gritting his teeth as his head spun, and frantically searched for the gemstone. His eyes finally found it, lying on the ground a few feet away. He scooped it up and shoved it into his pocket before immediately taking off at a sprint despite how his body screamed at him to stop, to bandage his wounds, to do something other than run.

But if he didn’t get out now, he would never leave.

Either the fire got him, or the Draigo did.

He passed by the gauntlet on his way out and snatched it from its pedestal. “What were you thinking?” He cursed himself as he altered his course and grabbed the mask as well. “You’re just asking to get yourself hunted down!”

He was dead either way.

Disguise or no, he didn’t believe Amari wouldn’t track him down with whatever abomination from the depths she’d used to catch him. Which was why he needed to get as far away as possible with his prizes before the Draigo regrouped.

He’d blown up the Draigo stronghold.

Celestials.

He was so fucked.

[badbatchenthusiast]

how to do well at school

(work smarter not harder)

i’m trying to compile a list of what’s been working for me academically especially with all the fun side effects of being autistic in the education system (and the variable motivation/executive functioning that comes with it). queuing this forever so i remember to apply these, but if they help you feel free to let me know how it goes!!

1.) Print out notes.

To be fair, this only really works if you have access to a reliable printer, but I imagine a sizeable percentage of people do. For me it was definitely worth investing in one. This is enormously helpful for several reasons:

no need to make notes in class - it’s all there, in front of you, like subtitles to the lesson. makes it so much easier to follow the class and if you miss a day because you’re ill/not coping/have zoned out for 30 mins, you’re not missing valuable content you’re going to need to read up on later

annotating pre-printed notes with little details the teacher is saying adds valuable context and information, and allows you to write in analogies/mnemonics/key evidence/links to other parts of the course in a really different style to the main notes so it doesn’t get confusing to read (annotating hand-written notes can get messy)

having a physically printed copy makes it feel more real, and therefore less likely to disappear in your mind, than just electronic notes. handling actual paper is also less tiring than sitting with a laptop/tablet in a lesson and typing (especially for me)

having that day/week’s notes pre-printed over the weekend makes you feel much more organised and is hours less work than doing pre-learning by handwriting notes

if you type up the notes yourself into a table on word with key word/subtitle/question on one side and definition/answer/explanation on the other, you’re transforming the textbook information into new information, which is very valuable revision and will help with keeping it in your mind; it’s like flashcards, but in note form, and helps chunk content into more manageable pieces

i struggle with processing speed. listening to information *and* comprehending it *and* taking notes at the same time is too much, especially when people talk much faster than i can write. having it all pre-written means i can focus on just understanding and consolidating, and by the time we’re set homework i don’t have note-completion and content-learning to do on top of it

it helps with understanding of the course, in terms of what you need to cover in which topics and what’s coming up next

the best thing about this is it allows for a lot of flexibility in terms of how much time/effort you put into it. on days where i have the energy to sit and learn, i’ll make detailed notes on an upcoming topic with bulletpoints from the textbook and added links to our wider reading, or google context to anything i don’t get. on days where it’s not happening, i’ll copy paste from a reliable revision source/scan a page of the book and be done.

2.) Copy out answers before attempting questions yourself.

definitely one of the least motivating things when doing questions is not knowing how to start, or how to get the answer. a quick way to fix that and get more confidence is to copy out/annotate pre-written example answers or solutions from the textbook or mark scheme. this gives you a sort of blueprint to follow, and makes your time less wasteful if you’re often going straight into questions only to get half of them wrong.

youtube videos with example problems are also really great for this. pause the video before the solution starts and try to work through as far as you can, and when you get stuck unpause and finish copying out the working. doing this before starting homework gets you a higher grade on them and means you’re not wasting time getting things wrong, learning it incorrectly, and only finding out when you get it back.

for essay-based subjects, asking for exemplary answers to annotate is also very helpful. note down use of structure, sentence starts used, anything that you find is good about it and helps it meet the criteria. then, try and write a response to a different question in the same or similar style. get that marked, get feedback, try again.

3.) Practice questions are worth more than anything.

don’t waste time making hundreds of versions of your notes or exclusively rereading flashcards/the textbook. this might be helpful for content learning early on, but long-term retention and exam technique only come with practice. it’s annoying, sure, but works like a charm. so:

test yourself regularly - identify gaps in your knowledge and work to patch them, then test yourself again

get a feel for what kind of questions are usually asked in exams and write your own, then answer them - this, with time, will make exams predictable, or at the very least make you better at understanding what questions want from you

if your teacher lets you have extra practice questions marked, use them as an incredibly helpful source of feedback for improvement so there’s not such a steep learning curve with the first few assignments. if they don’t, use assignments intelligently to see what gets you marks and what doesn’t, then use the feedback on that to revise your technique and improve. if you do badly and don’t learn from it, this is a waste.

for the most part, teachers are on your side and want you to learn. if you’re stuck and don’t know how to answer questions/get correct answers, chances are there’s someone you can go to.

4.) Interesting information is your friend.

draw diagrams. make mindmaps. add pictures to your notes. colour code by topic. highlight things. annotate little fun facts. anything to prevent notes from becoming walls of off-grey text that you can’t be bothered to read. this also has the added benefit of being more interesting to do. so if you have a process to learn, make a flow chart with funky shapes. if it’s context you’re adding, make a timeline or spider diagram. type in memorable little comments or jokes that will help you understand things. copy out graphs and models and doodle important people’s faces. this sticks.

and if you’re feeling really outlandish, make some memes! even if they’re really bad. but for information you absolutely need to know and simply have to memorise, a bad rhyme or punchline will make it much easier to keep in your head, especially when it’s associated with something you enjoy and already think about a lot. finding creative ways to transform information helps the learning process tremendously, even if you just end up writing fanfiction of your favourite characters learning it too.

5.) Have a routine.

set out clear and consistent times to do work, where it’s hard to get distracted. any time spend working (if you’re working smart) stacks up, so that 20 minute train ride where you’d otherwise be scrolling? do some reading. organise your notes. do a problem or two.

consistency is key with learning. our brains aren’t made for storing irrelevant information, so keep everything relevant. to be fair, sometimes this does require an interest in learning not everyone has, but if you can engage with your subject critically and start thinking about it in your day-to-day life, getting into the habit of noticing things and going “oh, this key thinker would’ve hated this magazine” or “woah, i know the equation for the motion of this pen i just chucked” i think makes a real difference between doing well and excelling.

using spaces where you won’t be tempted to other things is also useful. if you have responsibilities when you get home, spend an hour at the library. meet your friends after 5, until then you’ve got homework. keep mealtimes, sleep and work schedules consistent and it’ll be harder for you to forget or have other things come in your way. this doesn’t need to be hours and hours, either; an hour a day that you can sit and reread your notes when you have a spare moment, bullet point an answer to an exam question to test yourself, annotate information you missed, do some wider reading, watch a youtube video on a topic you didn’t get — this all stacks up, and quickly. working smart is using the time you have as usefully as possible, and that starts with finding time you’re currently not doing much with.

[sammeltassensammelsurium]

35mm analog double exposures - REDUX EDITION

So, I was underwhelmed with the quality of the scans I got from the lab the other day. For reasons they only gave me 1024x1536px scans. Too small for the A3 wall calendars I want to print.

I have a box full of 35mm negatives from the 90s.

My dad's always eager to buy me new gear, because we bond over that.

My birthday's coming up.

Enter via the parcel guy: https://reflecta.de/de/pc-unabhaengig/476-reflecta-x33-scan.html

Above are the first 4 of that 36 shots roll. Cropped to 3x4 aspect ratio as opposed to the original 2x3. I got everything else in 3x4 these days...

I think I'm gonna put the second one up on my wall. One of my walls. Anyway. Yes, it was shot in landscape format, but rotated to portrait orientation it really looks more like an abstract painting than a photo of a specific thing. I really like that.

[rachaelmayo]

This is a color variant for Opal Sun which I completed in 2014.

Linework and pencilwork are below the text block, for those who are curious about different "phases" of a project.

This dragon design was inspired by the architectural and ornamental art of Bali and parts of Indonesia. I love the architectural flourishes that look like flames, feathers, plants, and dragons (as well as the way dragons and serpents from these areas of the world are depicted).

The original Opal Sun was done without any inking, so I printed off the pencilwork and went over it with Micron pens. I scan each major stage of a project, as I like to keep records and also may make use of earlier phases, as I did here. I'm glad I did, as I've been able to repurpose the pencil drawings as lineart for my coloring books. The image above is a test-drive that makes use of the "analog" line drawing.

I wanted a different, but similar, range of colors for this version of the dragon. If I remember correctly, the wings were the first thing I colored, and I used them to determine the color range of the rest of the dragon's body parts. It wound up with more of the pinky-lavenders than is normally my wont, but I liked the effect of both the colors and the gradations, and so kept them.

I made this with ink, Prismacolor pencil, one "druzy" acrylic shiny bit, and some Photoshop tweaking. (The black background needed to be "smoothed", as the scanner seemed to pick up every stroke of the colored pencils.)

Below is the linework before coloring (but after I cleaned it up in Photoshop), and also the original pencil drawing that I used for both versions of Opal Sun.

[thedalatribune]

© Paolo Dala

The Soul Of The Craft: Negatives

...from film’s first plummet in the 2000s, to its resilient return in the early 2010s, to its rediscovery by yet another new generation of shooters in the 2020s.

But in this latest renaissance - born of Covid-era lockdowns - Cohen has noticed one of the practice’s most precious components has been lost.

“They don’t pick up their negatives,” Cohen said of his customers, guessing that maybe 10 percent of them return for the rolls. Behind him, a colleague corrects him: “Five percent.” Another, laughing: “Zero percent.”

Across the world, the small cadre of commercial film lab developers describe similar conundrums: stacks of forgotten envelopes, limited storage space and warring impulses - to tidy the clutter, or preserve the creative souls of forgetful photographers. After all, it’s the strips of film, not the prints, that are legally the artist’s original work.

Put simply: Whoever has the negatives has the mechanism to reproduce the work but not the copyright to do so; the artist sans negatives has the right but not the means.

It’s a concept that has been battered in the age of digital cameras, then left for dead with the advent of iPhones. Dinosaurs of the photography game, negatives are the original images that are burned into frames when film loaded into an analog camera is exposed to light. They once were the primary deliverable when processing a roll of film.

In the digital age, most shops where people get their film developed will scan the negatives into a computer and just email the photographs to their customers.

“Negatives would’ve never been forgotten before, because people had to pick up the digital copy,” said Richard Damery, a developer who has worked at Aperture Printing in London for 15 years. “They can now have everything uploaded to them. They forget about the negatives.”

It can be hard for some to imagine (or remember) a time when a photograph involved more steps than just the instant gratification of looking down at a screen.

That’s especially true for much of Gen Z, the driving force behind the contemporary film resurgence. The industry has boomed in the years since the pandemic, and not just with upmarket brands like Leica; the classic Fujifilm disposables are back, too. For many young shooters, the anticipation and delayed payoff of film are a welcome salve to the 24/7 exposure of apps like Instagram...

Andreas Olesen, a professional photographer and co-owner of a lab in Copenhagen, said he still struggles to throw out people’s negatives even long after they’ve been abandoned. For him, they’re the soul of the craft.

“The negative is the score, and the print is the performance,” he said, paraphrasing the photographer Ansel Adams. Olesen has played with the concept in his own work; one of his projects, “Estate,” used a series of negatives his wife discovered in an antique shop to tell the story of a midcentury family holiday.

The forfeiture of negatives is far more consequential phenomenon than clerical clutter. It’s at the heart of unresolved questions about copyright and artistic ownership.

The likelihood that any passing film hobbyist will posthumously be elevated as the street shooter of a generation - well, it’s small odds. But perhaps it’s less about potential fame than creative diligence. After all, Olesen noted, there’s something timeless about negatives. In 50 years, his grandchildren may not even be able to access a hard drive or a CD with digital files.

Ali Watkins The Lost Art of the Negative

[vintageslideshow]

dammit, look what fell into my cart today

It happened again: today's thrifted slide/neg/print scanner is a Kodak P461. With the Kodak name on it, you would expect high quality.

But no, not quite, it was made by Pandigital in 2010, and they produced many fine products in the "best try" category. (Eight years later I still can't find my Pandigital e-reader that uses Android 3.) But with a $6 pricetag I can't complain about whatever I get. So this beast can scan prints up to 4x6 at 300dpi or 600dpi and slides at 1200dpi. The only things missing from this box are the manual (this is what the Internet is for) and half of the included MicroSD card, plus they pried the SD card adaptor open. Uh, okay, that's some pent-up aggressions there, so I'll just use one of my stray SD cards, thank you. Also included for some reason was a Targus SD card reader, so maybe that's just a swap or peace offering for the destroyed storage. Happily included are the calibration sheet, the slide and film adaptors, and the three cleaner accessories, along with the power cord and USB cable -- this scans to the SD card and runs on four AA batteries, but can be plugged into the wall and connected to the computer to either use the card as a memory device in My Computer or (with Kodak's drivers, which were on the destroyed card) saved directly to the computer. Another one of those "no computer needed, just give me a photo and I'll scan it to the card" doohickies. The difference between this Kodak (and last time's VuPoint) and most other standalones is this thing actually does scan rather than just take a photo. So you'd think the pictures would come out better?

Using the same slides for demo as I have used in the past...

Same issue -- despite scanning at 1200dpi they come out a bit jaggy despite the original being an analog film photo. Okay, so now let's try the print from a previous test also:

I will grant them credit that the sensor calibrator sheet works. I will also tell you that no matter how many times and ways I have cleaned it (by the instructions: use the cleaner tool; by geek standards: use canned air) there's still dust on the result that isn't on the print, just a lot less streaking than in the previous three runs through; the right photo is a zoom so you can see the dust more clearly.

But like the VuPoint, it automatically senses the edges incorrectly. Side-by-side are the result of scanning the last Hippies slide and what the thing really looks like according to my Epson scanner:

The purpose of the purple across the bottom is padding I put so the two images would be the same length and centering... thus you note that the top is the top, the right side is the right side, the left side got cropped by about 40 pixels, and the bottom was cropped by 117 pixels. I have no complaints about the color this time, though. The grain, yes, and the fact that it cropped the tail for no reason, but not the Kodak's slightly 'cooler' take and better balance that reduced the sunny golden tone and clarified the people in blue in the background to make the photo more aesthetic.

So I rate this one a bit higher than the last one, but still a quick and dirty amateur solution rather than anything you should rely on.

[bonyfish]

The two hobbies of mine I am the most immersed in right now are analog photography and tinkering with Linux on this scratch-and-dent refurbished no-longer-a-chromebook that I bought, and I find that kind of funny. Juggling tech from 1974 and tech from 2021. That said, given the amount of scanning and 3D printing that's currently happening in my film hobby, the levels of technology are not all that dissimilar. They also overlap in that I've purchased two heavily discounted pieces of tech and am now very tenderly getting all up in their respective businesses.

[kolajmag]

FROM THE ARTIST DIRECTORY

Vibrant, Narratively Rich Scenes

Northampton, Massachusetts, USA. Lachlan Thompson creates works of art that blend analog and digital materials and techniques to create vibrant, narratively rich scenes. Much of their work begins as analog collages, assembled through photographs, magazine collections–particularly political and psychological publications, as well as hand-me-down writings from largely transgender and other marginalized authors. They then scan their analog work, and digitally layer and manipulate it. When sourcing digital materials, they are particularly focused on using publicly available imagery, such as stock images and materials from digital archives with an emphasis on materials sourced from marginalized creators. Some pieces interweave their own personal poetry within them, while others manipulate resonate words from those of shared identity. Read More

*****************************

Kolaj Magazine, a full color, print magazine, exists to show how the world of collage is rich, layered, and thick with complexity. By remixing history and culture, collage artists forge new thinking. To understand collage is to reshape one's thinking of art history and redefine the canon of visual culture that informs the present.

SUBSCRIBE | CURRENT ISSUE | GET A COPY

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[ashutterdarkly]

Film Photography and Digital Correction

I see a lot of people online with really strong opinions about digitally touching up film photographs. The two extremes of the scale are "I touch up every photo, taking the actual photograph is only half the process" and "I wouldn't dare touch up my scans, if I need to adjust anything in post I took the photo wrong, and it would tarnish analog purity of the photo". I've been thinking about this recently, because sometimes I get a photo (or a roll 😢) where I think a color correction, a crop, and maybe a little dodge-burn. To Correct, or Not To Correct?

To Correct

Photography is old. The digital camera itself is older than most of the film photographers out there, and film is older than your great grandparents. The first digital camera was Kodak's prototype in 1975, and the first commercially available digital was released in 1990. If you see a photo from before 1990, it's a film photo. We had plenty enough time to figure out darkroom techniques to improve our photos, and a great negative was nothing without good printing technique. All those tools in image manipulation software like crop, dodge, burn, and mask? Those are darkroom techniques in the digital age. The symbols for each tool usually reflect the darkroom tools that were used. Saying that digitally correcting a shot is wrong is to say the same of darkroom technique.

Not To Correct

With enough practice, you won't need to do quite as much correction. Getting your exposure dialed in just right for the stock you're shooting, improving your framing skills, and finding the right glass for your style of shooting mean a lot. What matters is if you the artist like the results. If you find a stock that you really enjoy and practice with it enough to get it dialed right in and can pull results that you're really happy with right from the raw scan, there's no need to do anything to it. Even if the white balance is a little off, or the exposure isn't quite right, or whatever nitpick they have. You don't need to emulate the perfect and exact balance and exposure and stabilization that a modern digital will push out five times a second. It's not worth it, and it's not why we're here.

[tomorrowingray]

Hi all, this one was the last for a while, I'll be taking a break. I've been working a lot on building a darkroom (and I started a new job back in September), so I had less free time to shoot. I want to take the holiday season to shoot some more photos again! I hope to be back here in January.

Now that the darkroom is more or less ready, I want to experiment with shifting my usual workflow from just scanning and processing in computer to doing things more in the old way. Of course I want to make a lot more prints - should be a lot easier now that I don't have to do it in the bathroom - but I've been thinking about dabbling in an end-to-end analog workflow with contact prints and all.

As I've been shooting more large format, and I'll be taking more time to work in the darkroom, I'll likely have a decreased capacity in terms of raw output of photographs, but I think that may not be such a bad thing. It may be time to focus a bit more on quality than quantity.

I definitely want to keep posting my work here regularly, but it may happen that there won't be a new photo every single day. We'll see how it goes.

Thanks for following me so far, and see you soon!

[theclo4ked1]

Photo Dump: I'm not retro because it's trendy (is it still trendy?)

^ Digitized scans of some of my many prints. The left is a still life of my desk, the next two are my hand to a mirror, inspired by Cindy Sherman's Film Stills.

Months ago, I dove into the wonderful world of Film Photography, or Still Photography, Black-And-White Photography, which ever of these mean using a film camera to expose rolls of films to create exposures that are then chemically soaked and... Well, it's a long ass process; I'll tell ya hwat, boi. I have no nostalgia for film cameras, I didn't know what exactly I was getting into, I thought it was more of digital photography stuff I used to do, but no, this was the real deal. I learned about exposure time, an fStop (I'm still a lil' stuck on it but), shallow and deep focus, a light meter, and other things some may take for granted on their smartphone cameras—I sound much older than I actually am, no wonder they call me a boomer :P It's all analog, baby. Before studying film cameras, I used my digital camera as my preferred method of taking photos, it even has an added bonus of being waterproof. I still use it from time to time, it's not like it's obsolete, it's just that I was lent a film camera at the time. For the curious, I'd used a Nikon N6006, it has an automatic zoom and focus mechanism so it's a little easier to use than a more manually controlled camera like a Yashica FX-2, which was the film camera given to our family by my great-grandfather—I'll get back to this later. But, back to the matter, it pays to learn about and to use a film camera to appreciate the photo process. You'll come to appreciate figures such as *does a pooh voice* mmm, cccindyyy sshhherrmannnnn... Cuz that how I remembered her name, but I ended up forgetting; nonetheless, I briefly studied her and her Untitled Film Stills; really interesting stuff.

She served as an inspiration for the last roll of film I had done. I have my portfolio (you've seen it above), a binder, and from this experience, I did six rolls of film with a total of... ~180 exposures and over 85 prints from those exposures because I gave some away to peers as what I called "gift prints". The film used to take every single one of these pictures was 35mm Kentmere PAN 400. Like I implied before, I have no nostalgia or prior experience for this kinda stuff, so I can't say "Ah, good ol' Kentmere P400!", but it's said that these rolls are suitable for high-speed, general purpose black-and-white photography. In my experience, these rolls would come with either 24 or 26 exposures. I preferred 24, but when I felt gutsy, 36. Below is a loose compiled list of my counting, and you may notice the exposure numbers are either one over, or exactly the numbers stated above. I don't know how I did that, but I'm glad I had extras.

1st roll, 37 expos, 12 prints plus roll call

2nd roll, 25 expos, 13 prints plus roll call

3rd roll, 37 expos, 26 prints plus roll call

4th roll, 36 expos, 13 prints plus roll call

5th roll, 24 expos, 9 prints plus roll call

6th roll, 24 expos, 13 prints plus roll call

The "roll call", for lack of better term, were prints of all my exposures from one roll lined up on film. I can only share these three pictures because a majority of these prints involve private things, not like pornography, but y'know, I have a lot of portraits of people whose identities will remain anonymous because I respect them. As good as those photos are. There's a fourth that came before this post, of a friend, that's posted not on Tumblr, but on my former-Tumblr extension Instagram page that I won't delete until after August. Anyways, I found my niche in still life compositions and portraits. When I asked people if I could take their photo (and if they consented), I'd ask them to do the thing they were doing before I approached them, like this one of my peer reading in a chair. The "acting natural" look is what's most appealing to me, it shows people's character, even more so complimented with good composition, which I think I got a handle on—love me some Rule-Of-Thirds—and it helps in making the picture feel more realistic. On the rare occasion, I would have someone pose or act for me; few times I'd have to get somebody IN MOTION.

That's enough history and study. The future on the other hand... My great-grandfather's (but we don't call him that) Yashica: very old. After the whole experience in Still Photography, I wanted more, even though I don't have a darkroom or the chemicals to start development. I remembered a camera in our basement, complete with a strap, a case, an attachable flash (I think it's down there somewhere), and a long-ranged zoom lens. After uncovering it, I fiddled around with, snapping imaginary photos since it didn't have film. I was able to get it open by pulling up the hand crank. It was dirty and sticky, apparently so sticky that the shutter mirror got stuck after a few bouts of testing it. Tried as I could, the handle that rolls the film for another exposure was stuck, and even though I could open the camera, I couldn't meddle too much for risk of breaking something was high. I looked up any forums posts and the camera's manual to see if there was any hope, but alas, there was none. OR SO I THOUGHT! I found a camera shop some towns away that also offers camera repairs. It was about an hour of driving, so in early June, I made a plan to go there. I walked up to the guy behind the glass counter, and awkwardly asked if he could help me out. I really wanted the camera fixed for sentimental reasons, but he suggested to just a buy a newer Yashica model; less expensive with more features, like an automatic battery-powered film winder, also by Yashica. It was able to get a "discount" because Granpa's old camera lens was still in good condition, so the lens that came with the new camera was replaced and will go to someone else.

Addendum, Jul. 17, 2024. I've wanted to include the model of my new camera but I was blanking on the name, and I didn't feel like taking it out of its carrying case because there's this one latch that's a hassle to pull off without feeling like I'll break something. This new camera is a Yashica FR II.

That store also came with a roll of, you won't believe it, 35mm Kentmere P400 film, with 24 exposures no less! He seem impressed I knew about it, and this gave me the impression that he must've thought I came to the store because "old and vintage camera for nostalgia I wasn't even a thought at the point in time to exist and enjoy it".

Tangent/Addendum. Jul. 17, 2024: I've said it before: I have no nostalgia for this, I just find this interesting, and grayscale photography appeals to me in the artistic sense that these tones convey a different feeling than in colour. For those history buffs out there, black-and-white and monochromatic photography, like cyanotype, was all they had at the time... Uhh, I could be wrong. I just know that autochrome was invented much later, and the pigments and the starches and things and... Another reason I enjoy film photography is that you get to touch your pictures: the photo negatives on the film rolls. That's your picture in 3D space (sorta). It is not a print, that is your picture in RAW FORM. Well, no, if you just took out your film roll in raw form, it would get burnt by the slightest light and you'd lose all your would-be photos. That's why we have to load our film onto a reel in a pitch-black room, easier said than done by the way, which is then loaded into a canister for chemical processing, i.e. development. So, it's more PROCESSED/RAW FORM than RAW/RAW FORM.

I wasn't offended, I don't remember, and I don't care to remember because we got to talking thereafter, and I recounted the long and boring process I went through just to get the film developed, stopped, fixed, the works; how it would always take about an hour or so. After the business was done, I thanked him and went back to the car. I sat there admiring and getting a handle on my new camera. Meanwhile, nearby, a group of high-schoolers were walking by in fancy outfits. I asked if they were getting ready for graduation, which they were, so I said "Oh, congratulations!" I felt older than I actually was, but in this instance, I was older than them. They are similar to who I was. They're moving on to another chapter in their lives... I decided it was time to go home, so I packed my camera as safe as I could in my backpack, and drove off.

Come a short time later that month, after I gently cleaning the camera's exterior and part of the interior with some alcohol and loading the film as best as I could... The counter wouldn't go up, so I kept opening and readjusting the beginning end of the film strip that's always exposed so you can load it properly. The thing about film photography: you're betting on the film to be okay. You are blind, you're going to have to trust that the film is doing fine and that your capturing EXACTLY what you think you are...if you're using default program settings. Trying to figure out where the "start" of the film was, I pulled the film out slowly. I pulled a little more. I pulled a little more. I pulled, it was all this purple gray, which isn't how I remember loading the film into my lent Nikon. I've come to the conclusions either I messed up the film or that the film was left in the store for far too long. And about the counter being presumably broken, Yashica cameras are apparently known for their faulty mechanisms... Oh no. Thanks for reading!

[waynejay]

Voltrium Systems - Unravelling the Nuances: Line Scan vs. Hyperspectral Cameras

Understanding the fundamental disparities between line scan and hyperspectral cameras is paramount in today's tech-driven landscape. These two imaging marvels, although serving analogous purposes, harbour intrinsic differences that can significantly influence their application scope and efficacy. 

Let's traverse these disparities and unearth the practical implications of each camera type.

Line Scan Cameras

Line scan cameras, a stalwart in industrial imaging, operate on a simplistic yet potent premise. Unlike conventional cameras capturing entire scenes in a single frame, line scan cameras meticulously scan objects line by line, akin to a scanner traversing a document. This incremental approach enables line scan cameras to capture high-resolution images of objects in motion, rendering them indispensable in myriad industrial settings.

The operational essence of line scan cameras lies in their capability to capture continuous streams of data, facilitating seamless integration into production lines for quality assurance and process monitoring. From inspecting conveyor belts in manufacturing plants to scrutinising web materials in printing presses, line scan cameras emerge as stalwart sentinels, meticulously scanning for imperfections with unwavering precision.

The utilisation of line scan cameras extends beyond industrial precincts, infiltrating realms such as medical imaging and aerial surveillance. In the medical domain, these cameras facilitate precise diagnostics by capturing intricate details of anatomical structures with unparalleled clarity. Similarly, in aerial reconnaissance, line scan cameras aid in mapping terrains and monitoring environmental changes with remarkable acuity.

Hyperspectral Cameras

Venturing into the realm of hyperspectral cameras unveils a paradigm shift in imaging capabilities, characterised by spectral enlightenment. Unlike their conventional counterparts, hyperspectral cameras transcend the boundaries of RGB imaging, delving into the spectral intricacies of objects to unravel a cornucopia of compositional insights.

Harnessing the power of hyperspectral imaging entails a meticulous interrogation of the electromagnetic spectrum, dissecting objects into a multitude of spectral bands for exhaustive analysis. This granular approach enables hyperspectral cameras to discern subtle differences in materials, unveiling concealed details imperceptible to the naked eye or conventional imaging systems.

The applications of hyperspectral cameras span a diverse spectrum, ranging from precision agriculture and environmental monitoring to pharmaceutical analysis and food quality assessment. In precision agriculture, these cameras serve as discerning arbitrators, detecting crop stress, nutrient deficiencies, and pest infestations with unparalleled precision. Similarly, in environmental monitoring, hyperspectral cameras unveil the ecological tapestry, delineating pollutant concentrations and ecosystem dynamics with remarkable acuity.

Implementation Considerations

Implementing hyperspectral and line scan cameras necessitates a nuanced understanding of their operational requisites and application nuances. In industrial settings, factors such as conveyor speed, lighting conditions, and object geometry profoundly influence camera selection and deployment. Calibration procedures and image processing algorithms play pivotal roles in maximising the efficacy of these cameras, ensuring optimal performance and reliability.

Innovations in camera technology continue to burgeon, ushering in a new era of imaging prowess. However, navigating this deluge of advancements mandates a judicious evaluation of application requirements and technological capabilities. Whether it's harnessing the precision of line scan cameras for quality assurance or delving into the spectral intricacies with hyperspectral imaging, the quest for imaging excellence beckons.

Performance Evaluation

Assessing the performance of line scan and hyperspectral cameras entails a multifaceted evaluation encompassing various metrics:

Spatial resolution: Evaluate the ability of cameras to capture fine details and discern objects with clarity.

Spectral resolution: Assess the spectral fidelity and discrimination capabilities of hyperspectral cameras across different wavelength bands.

Temporal resolution: Measure the speed and efficiency of cameras in capturing dynamic scenes and fast-moving objects.

Signal-to-noise ratio: Gauge the signal quality relative to background noise, indicative of imaging fidelity and reliability.

Image processing efficiency: Analyse the computational prowess of cameras in processing and analysing captured data, facilitating rapid decision-making and insights extraction.

Future Perspectives

The trajectory of line scan and hyperspectral imaging holds promise for continued innovation and evolution:

Advancements in sensor technology and image processing algorithms will enhance the performance and capabilities of cameras, unlocking new frontiers in imaging excellence.

Integration with artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms will augment the analytical capabilities of cameras, enabling autonomous decision-making and predictive insights generation.

Miniaturisation and cost-reduction efforts will democratise access to advanced imaging technologies, fostering widespread adoption across diverse industries and applications.

Synergistic integration with complementary technologies such as LiDAR and thermal imaging will enable comprehensive multi-modal sensing solutions, enriching the depth and breadth of insights gleaned from imaging data. Embark on a journey of imaging excellence with Voltrium Systems. Explore our comprehensive range of machine vision products, meticulously crafted to elevate your imaging endeavours to unparalleled heights.