you read it right.
i made myself a close up attachment for my graflex slr. i did this a handful of years ago because i wanted to do macro work, or at least “magnified” photographs and couldn’t put a long lens on the camera because of bellows extension. so what did i do ?
i took one of the handful of old junk lenses i had lying around, and assembled something that i could stick in or on or over my camera. i have done this with a few different lenses i use with the slr, and it is fun. the depth of field is nearly gone so you have to be careful what you focus on. you also need to realize that depending on where you have the bellows cranked open to, your lens to subject distance will change, and the magnification will change as well … so the image might end up looking normal not magnified.
this is something i made exposures of last week and assembled as a tri chrome moments ago. i know the colors are a little weird, i kind of like this sort of charm, like a bad fotomat print 😉
because i had excessively expired film and developer i decided to stop down a little bit and make very long exposures.
i am not sure what F-number i stopped down to, my sunshade blocks the numbers, so i will just say 1/8 a turn ..
and the film was exposed for around 15seconds each exposure.
home made close up lens, expired film, and developer
originally …
i made 4 exposures, 1 with NO filtration and 3 others ( RGB ) and i was going to make a trichrome image of these coffee cups that look like stacked bowls but i ran into a little trouble. while i love making exposures and i love processing film, i had no way of identifying the negatives after the film was processed. i suppose if i was some sort of superhero i could look and know what was what, but there is too much stain in the film for me to be able to see which is which. this can sometimes be a problem when processing 36 sheets of film at a time, and they get a little jumbled up 😉
so, instead of spending hours trying to ID the film, or making many many attempted trichromes with photoshop like some sort of mind bending puzzle i decided to take one of the images and hand color it, 4 different ways. i used christmas colors and had some fun.
so, here are a few hand colored photographs.
hand colroed black and white
feel free to poke around on imagekind if you see something that you like they are less expensive than me making the prints by hand 😉
i haven’t posted here in a few months for a variety of reasons. but i am here again with a handful of photographs … as seen in a few other of my blog posts, i have been having fun making trichromes.
they are FULL color photographs made using separation filters ( RBG ) and panchromatic black and white film. about 30 years ago my uncle ( a professional photographer in western massachusetts ) told me about making trichromes but i didn’t have access to a color darkroom, so i never made any. NOW, since i am able to compile the images using photoshop i am making them often. i even have a polaroid 500 portrait camera and i have started to make portraits and stereo tri chromes.
here are a few images .. they don’t have any hidden meaning, they are just fun. oh, in case you wanted to know the vital statistics … they were all taken with expired black and white film which was hand processed in a combination of coffee based developer ( sumatranol ) and ansco 130.
so far i have posted a handful of trichromes i have made but using digital technology
… that is making b/w images using a digital camera ( not film ) and assembling them
in photoshop. none of them have been using film which would just be a few added steps
exposing / processing and scanning .
the results are pretty much the same as with a digital camera, except you get the signature of the lens.
so, instead of my nice sharp nikon glass, i get soft german glass from my ancient 1930s rolliecord.
and instead of an instant image, you get a film made image processed in coffee and print developer .
grain, tonality film base, stuff people love to try to emulate with a variety of digital programs, instead of
just breaking down and exposing the film in the first place ( something that i think is kind of funny)>
thrichrome fun
trichrome fun
in addition to the 3 views 3 negatives approach i have fiddled around with just taking 1 negative scan
and making 3 duplicate files each with 2 color channels removed for the most part …
and i assemble the 3 black and white images in PS again to make a tri chrome
i did this and posted it on DPUG.org and someone mentioned that i was sort of just toning the
image using the color channels, which i had never thought of like that before …
trichrome fun
making trichrome color images is a bit addictive
it is so easy and fun with a digital camera, it almost makes you feel guilty how much effort
is spent when film or plates are used. and it makes you feel even more guilty and in awe of
people who spent a long long time mastering this process with color paper, or making dye transfer or gum prints.
i have film i exposed ( haven’t processed it yet, shame on me ! ) which will be almost as easy as using a digital camera
instead of files that are immediate, i’ll have film that i expose with the colored filters.
that’s about as difficult as i will let this game get, i won’t be making contact prints onto color paper,
or matrix sheets &c, i’ll just scan the negatives, get files to merge in photoshop which will take barely longer than it takes to scan the
files with a scanner.
the last few uploads were made in bright sunlight, or kitchen light ( bulb )
i took some portraits but since my subject wasn’t nailed+taped to the chair and the expression glued on their face
and it takes 3 separate exposures, well, my results were a bit sub-par … i have some ideas how to fix that …
these uploads are soft afternoon overcast light. 
can’t not take photographs of my favorite drink
went to the lighting supply guy today
east coast lighting, nice folks !
i got some gels to match the swatchbook numbers i had
and took a few more b/w images with my digital camera
i tried a few color ones as well, converted to greyscale but they didn’t work …
just a little fun before i start using film
decided to make my first tri color image today
this was made using a digital camera
but i plan on using up my film making color images from black and white
its a lot of fun
there are handfuls of tutorials on the web that show this
the main trick is the images have to be exactly the same size and align perfectly or it will look
a bad …
you take each image with a red green and blue filter
and drop them into a color file’s channel’s
and after each negative is dropped on ontop of the other
you have something that looks like this
( or better, this was taken with filters that didn’t cover the lens, of a terribly backlit subject )
