Photography is a fascinating blend of the technical and the artistic - science and art. It is a field that takes years to master, and I thought it might be interesting to discuss it as many people have an interest in it. I am able to provide information about this field, and if anyone wants to learn something about it, I would be glad to help.
I am very interested in photography.
I’m glad to hear that! It is a fascinating field. It is the most competative field in the world. Professional modeling is the no. 2 most competative filed in the world. Photography is about 178+ years old. Today it is being overtaken with digital technology. However, the average digital camera that is available to the general public is capable of creating an image that is far, far lower in resolution than emulsion photography. That will change in the coming years. There are digital cameras that begin to approach the resolution of emulsion films, but they are so expensive that only corporations, highly paid professional photographers, and the very wealthy can afford them.
Emulsion films are made of layers. Color film contains an extra layer for color, in which color couplers are laiden.
The Camera Obscura is the first known example of a camera that projects an image. It is over 400 years old and was used by artists during the Renaissance to project an image onto a wall, which was then painted over or sketched over. It was simple, and comprised of nothing more than a small hole in a wall of a room of specific dimensions. However, the projected image was upside down! This is because there was no such thing as a lens for it at the time to flip the image right side up. An image is created by controlling two things:
- the intensity of the light which strikes the light sensitive material (film, digital CCD) and
- the length of time that light is allowed to strike the light sensitive material.
The combination of these controls creates an “exposure”.
In emulsion films, light strikes the extremely finely ground silver particles (microscopic) in the emulsion layer. The light reacts with it to create a chemical compound called “silver halide”. Halo means “light” in Greek. So the silver + the photons of light = silver halide. This is then placed in a developer solution which chemically changes the compound to silver bromide, which can be fixed into a permanent image by another chemical process and may then be viewed in normal light without changing (at least noticably over considerable time). Exposure to sunlight fades photographic prints because the light continues the process of chemical reaction. This is why it is best to exhibit or store photographic materials (prints, slides, negatives) in low light levels. Professional photographers store thier materials in a way to eliminate light and oxygen as much as possible, such as in acid-free plastic sheets in darkness.
Film comes in 2 types: Negative and Reversal. Negative is self-explainatory, while reversal means a positive image, such as a slide, which can be viewed with the eye without reverse image processing.
If you have any questions about photography, I will gladly try to answer them.
Just a little question here. If you take a picture with the average film lets say fujifilm film, is there a limit to which you can blow it up without losing quality? Does the type of film drastically effect the quality? As a side question, how many megapixels would you say is needed for a digital camera to compare with proffesional film cameras?
Yes, there is a limit, which is why pros tend to use bigger film than 35mm, and use the slowest film possible (slow film has smaller grain sizes). I belive, although I could be wrong, that 15 Megapixels is the equivalent of an average film.
When I had access to a darkroom & too much time on my hands, I was seriously into B&W photography. One of my favourite films was Ilford Delta 3200. I found the grain size & shape aesthetically pleasing, I could take shots with almost infinite depth-of-field in sunlight (right up to f64 with no troubles), and I could shoot at night handheld using natural light. I used Kodak TMax developer, which worked excellently. At the other end of the scale I used Ilford Delta 100, which is one of the finest-grained films available. Great if you need that, but an absolute bar steward to print, cos the grain is almost invisible so it can be difficult to focus it on the paper.
Another fun one is the Kodak 400-speed B&W film which is dye-based and is processed as colour (C41 process). If it is used to print on colour paper, the prints are sepia. What I did was shoot a roll, take it to the local 1hr photo to process the film, then do the prints myself. It’s also difficult to print, cos of the lack of silver-based grain, and the fact that the negatives are slightly purple (difficult to see through a pink multigrade filter!)
Camera Obscura just means “dark room”. Cameras take upside-down pictures as well (I’ve just checked), btw, despite the existence of lenses (to clarify - the image is projected onto the film upside-down).
Interestingly (trivia, really), unexposed b&w paper is white & goes dark on exposure & development, but unexposed colour paper (C41 process) is black & goes light on exposure & development.
One of my favourite things was to do proper solarisations - half-way through development, blitz it with a dimmed flashgun & you can highlight the edges & invert a lot of the contrast if you get it right, like this (scanned on a crap document scanner):
This takes a helluva lot of things to get right, cos the paramenters are vast (grade, initial exposure, when you hit the flashgun (you can use any light, really), how much light you give it)
Photoshop supposedly can do a similar thing.
Black & white film has finner grain than color film, so it can be enlarged a bit more than color, but the difference is not so great that you can enlarge it much very more than color film. The slower the speed of the film (the less sensitive to light it is) the tighter the grain, and the more you can blow it up and still have acceptable sharpness. If you are using 35mm color film (I will assume) you can enlarge it to about 16x20 inches and still have acceptable sharpness. You could enlarge it more, but the image would become grainy looking.
If you are using medium format film, such as 6x4.5, 6x6, or 6x9 cm, you can enlarge it far more. For example, if your negative had a picture of a person on it from head to toe, you could enlarge it so that you have a print of a person that is life-size and it would still have acceptable sharpness.
BTW, the finer the grain of the film, the easier it would be to focus through an enlarger because the image has better resolution, and this assists the eye in determining the clarity of the image.
About sepia toning B&W images:
Although sepia toned film can be had by processing dye based B&W films in the C-41 process, getting a good sepia tone print from B&W film requires using a sepia filter and color paper in the darkroom, or using a sepia toning chemical on the paper instead of the filter. If you process B&W film in Kodak’s C-41 process, the sepia tone of the film will be fairly weak, and the results will likely be inconsistent because of variations in how much the processing chemical solutions have been used and their temperature. When you process B&W dye based films in color processes, you also increase the graininess of the image in the film. This also increases the contrast of the image, perhaps to an undesirable level. If you are wanting to make prints that look like they were made over a century ago, increased contrast takes away from the effect, whereas lowered contrast would better create this impression.
A better alternative is to use color film and request sepia filtration from the lab, although many 1 hour lads cannot offer this service, and you might have to have the film sent off for processing.
About depth of field with high speed films:
You can acheive infinite DOF with any standard film when photographing a scene that is some distance in depth, such as one that is a few hundred meters deep or more. This is because deep scenes require you to focus the lens to it’s hyperfocal distance (the distance at which all things to infinity are in acceptable sharpness). This is common even with Kodachrome 64. It only requires using an acceptably fast shutter speed. The apeture of the lens has no effect per se on DOF at infinity, however all photographic lenses produce their sharpest results at medium apetures, and not at f/64 for example.
True, but the Camera Obscura also produced an image which is upside down, because, as I said, it had no lens to invert it!
The image is flipped by the camera lens at it’s rear nodal point (a point in space behind the lens).
Camera Obsrura
Interesting. The contrast is restored & the edge enhancement is inverted.
The test strips when doing solarisations are always interesting - from one strip to the next, you go from normal contrast to inverted contrast (provided you’ve got the other parameters correct!). It’s quite striking.
It is a strange image that results eh? BTW, you are not inverting the contrast, you are inverting the image entirely. But I think you meant to say that in a different way (the light and dark). Inverting an image does not effect it’s level of contrast.
It takes at least 24 megapixels to compare to the resolution of high resolution emulsion film. You can fit hundreds of microscopic silver clusters into the space of a single computer pixel! The biggest limitation to digital photography is the printing process. However, even the best computer printers in the world cannot produce the same results as even 35mm film printed to 5x7 inches. At least, not yet! The number of megapixels that a digital camera produces relates to the size of the image, not the actual resolution per se. The higher megapixels produce sharper images because as they are scaled down (squeezed) into a smaller area, the image has more “dots” to make up the image. From this, you can see that the viewer or printer is the real limiter of the sharpness of the image - how small the pixels are, such as in a monitor, or how close and small the dots of ink are that a printer squirts onto the printing paper. High quality digital cameras produce images that contain more information than can be printed.
Digital photography has a few disadvantages in the minds of experienced photographers. Although it is cheaper (for the most part) and more convenient, it lacks the ultra resolution of traditional films and it is a less romantic process. However, digital photography also has it’s advantages.
An interesting fact: The photographic process of creating an image with light is considered a theory, because the process of light changing the silver salts is not something which can be observed. It happens too fast, so it is considered a theory, even though scientists understand the chemical process… in theory! This is why creating an exposure on film is called “The Theory of Exposure”.
You can take digital prints & have them printed on proper photographic paper - a lot of modern photo printing machines scan the negatives & then expose the paper using lasers, and you can feed these machines directly with a digital file (I can take any standard media to the photo shop near me & have this done). The best prints I have are such digital prints from slides, done at the time of processing.
The cheapest place I’ve found to do that is Wal-Mart actually. They have 2 different kind of machines for that. Except they don’t do it from slides there.
what do you prefer ironman,the digital photography or the normal photography?
what do you prefer ironman,the digital photography or the normal photography?[/quote]
I prefer emulsion film photography. This is because I most of my experience is with it, and I like having an image that can be enlarged to 16x20 or more without much loss of detail. With most digital cameras that are available to the public, you would have a more grainy (pixelated) image at that size. Digital cameras that compare to the resolution of 35mm today cost thousands of dollars, although soon that will not be the case.
The camera below is the one that I use the most. It was made in 1978. Despite this, the camera is remarkably advanced. It was a ground-breaking machine. It was the 1st camera in the world to have 6 exposure modes, and it has a host of other advanced features, such as Data Back, Polaroid Back, Large Capacity Film Magazine, Sequence Timer capability and others. With the Motordrive MA (attached in the photo below) which has 3 speed settings, it can make 5 photographs per second. A particularly useful feature of this camera for photographing things outside of the studio setting is the stopped-down metering. This allows light metering and/or automatic exposure while the apeture is stopped down manually to whichever f/stop you desire to use for control of depth-of-field. I prefer Canon for 35mm because they are highly durable, more ergonomic than any other brand, and because Canon has for 35 years been the leader in innovation for camera design and features. Canon has made more advancements in camera design than any other brand by a considerable measure. Canon also makes some of the best lenses in the world. For example, a 1975 Cannon 50mm f1.4 FD s.s.c. lens has resolution that is seldom beaten by camera lenses to this day. The sharpness is extraordinary.
It is very important to know however, that with photography, it is not the camera that makes a great photograph, but it is the photographer. Many of the world’s best photographers use the simplest cameras, often with nothing automatic about them whatsoever. A skilled photographer can make a better photograph with a manual camera than a novice with the most sophisticated camera in the world. Despite the automation in my cameras, I often use them in the manual mode where nothing is automated. This is true especially for studio work, where it is always used manually, and light intensity is measured with a hand-held light meter.
Here is a portrait I made of my best friend’s grand daughter a few years ago, and a graphic which shows the set-up used to make it. The quality of this jpg is low because it was scanned from an 8x10 print on a cheap scanner by someone else. Had I made the scanned file, it would have been sharper. I did not want her wearing the gloves in the image, but she wanted them, so I let her wear them to please her.
I thought I’d provide more information on photography for anyone interested. The illustrations are created by me unless stated otherwise. All of the text comes from my head, period. I paid big money for my education in photography, so getting the info here is a cheap deal! 8)
However, the information I will provide is condensed, as I have no intention of writing everything there is to know about photography, as that would take thousands of pages. So, these “lessons” are concise but thorough as need be.
Note: the pentaprism and viewfinder of a camera are not depicted in the included illustration.
THE SINGLE LENS REFLEX CAMERA
The camera is basically a box. In 35mm cameras, the film goes into the camera body, unless you attach a special back for it called a Film Back, which can hold up to @ 250 exposures on a spool. In medium format cameras the film goes into a seperate magazine that is attached to the back of the camera body.
The camera body houses the reflex mirror, focusing screen, film plane, electronics, film transport mechanisms, and often the film and shutter. The film plane is a plate or guide with an opening for the area of film to be exposed. The film is fed with rollers across this flat area and held lightly in place against it by a spring tensioned plate behind the film. The opening is the area of exposure where the image will be created.
There is a sequence of actions which take place when you press the shutter button in a camera. First, the iris diaphram (which creates the “apeture”), a set of very thin titanium leaves (explained later) close together to create an opening of a specified size. This diaphram controls the intensity of the light which enters the camera by varying the size of the hole in it’s center.
Once the diaphram has “closed down”, the reflex mirror is flipped upwards out of the way and held up against a cushion. This moves it from the path of the light entering the camera. Then the shutter opens allowing light to strike the film. Once the light entering the camera has been allowed to strike the film for the specified amount of time, the shutter closes, and the iris diaphram and reflex mirror return to their normal positions. The film may then be wound to prepare for the next exposure, moving the exposed image away from the image area across the film plane.
When you look into a camera, you are looking through a piece of special class called a pentaprism. The pentaprism is super clean optical glass which flips the image so that it apprears correct to your eye. The actual image that you see when you look into the camera is the image created by the lens which is focused upon a piece of glass called the focusing screen. The Focusing Screen is also optical glass with a microscopically fine “frosting”. Have you ever seen a glass door on a store which has an image or words etched into it? That is very much like the surface of the focusing screen. The frosting is much finer however, and when the lens focuses the image, it is focusing it upon the frosted surface of the focusing screen. You might think of the focusing screen like the screen of a projection TV (or a copy screen). The image is focused upon it’s largely transperent surface, and you view the image from the other side.
The image is focused by the lens and diverted upwards at a 45 degree angle by the reflex mirror to the focusing screen. From there, the image is viewed by looking through the viewfinder window, through the pentaprism, at the focused image on the focusing screen. The distance between the center point of the mirror and the film plane is exactly the same as the distance from the center point of the mirror to the focusing screen. In this way, when you focus the image upon the focusing screen, it will also be in exactly the same focus upon the film when the reflex mirror is lifted out of the way.
There are 2 kinds of shutters in cameras:
- Focal plane
- Between-the-lens
A focal plane shutter rests directly in front of the focal plane (film plane).
There are 2 kinds of focal plane shutters:
- cloth focal plane shutter
- titanium blade focal plane shutter
The cloth shutter is made of black, soft, lint-free, light-tight cloth that slides from left to right (looking at the camera from the back) across the film plane to reveal the film. It closes in the oposite direction. As the shutter opens, the material is rolled up onto a spool.
The titanium blade shutter opens by flipping leaves of titanium upwards, in the same manner as the reflex mirror, to reveal the film. As the blades lift, they are themselves also lifted on their spindles so that they rise as they are flipped upwards. This is so that an image of their thickness (spindles) is not made on the film.
All shutters are extremely delicate devices, and should never be touched by your finger or any other object.
A between-the-lens shutter is made exactly like the iris diaphram which controls the intensity of the light striking the film. Like the iris diaphram, the between-the-lens shutter resides inside the camera lens. This kind of shutter is found only in large format and medium format cameras. 35mm cameras use focal plane shutters.
The shutter, like the iris diaphram (it actually IS another iris diaphram) opens completely to allow light to enter the camera, and closes completely to prevent light from entering the camera. The biggest difference between the shutter and the iris diaphram is that the iris diaphram opens to create a hole “apeture” of a specified size, depending on how much light is needed for exposure, while the shutter always opens completely. The shutter in a camera opens so fast that it is invisible to the eye. Typically in 1/10,000 of a second, or much less!
It is important to remember that all of the devices in a camera are delicate and should never be touched with your hand. They should only be touched by certified camera service technicians. For example, the surface of the focusing screen is exceedingly delicate, and it’s microfine etched surface is very easily scratched. If you have debris or lint on it, you may gently blow it off with a light pull of the trigger of a can of compressed air from no closer than 8 inches. Gentle brushing with a camera “blow brush” is also acceptable, but compressed air is a better 1st choice for cleaning. Never touch the focusing screen with lens creaning tissue, as even such soft tissue is too course for the delicate surface of the focusing screen.
Nice medal ironman 
Thank you Erwin. 
Same to you!
It takes at least 24 megapixels to compare to the resolution of high resolution emulsion film. You can fit hundreds of microscopic silver clusters into the space of a single computer pixel! The biggest limitation to digital photography is the printing process. However, even the best computer printers in the world cannot produce the same results as even 35mm film printed to 5x7 inches. At least, not yet! The number of megapixels that a digital camera produces relates to the size of the image, not the actual resolution per se. The higher megapixels produce sharper images because as they are scaled down (squeezed) into a smaller area, the image has more “dots” to make up the image. From this, you can see that the viewer or printer is the real limiter of the sharpness of the image - how small the pixels are, such as in a monitor, or how close and small the dots of ink are that a printer squirts onto the printing paper. High quality digital cameras produce images that contain more information than can be printed.
Digital photography has a few disadvantages in the minds of experienced photographers. Although it is cheaper (for the most part) and more convenient, it lacks the ultra resolution of traditional films and it is a less romantic process. However, digital photography also has it’s advantages.
An interesting fact: The photographic process of creating an image with light is considered a theory, because the process of light changing the silver salts is not something which can be observed. It happens too fast, so it is considered a theory, even though scientists understand the chemical process… in theory! This is why creating an exposure on film is called “The Theory of Exposure”.[/quote]
But is it not true that megapixels relates to the size of how big you can make the picture with out losing the origional quality. For instance a 2 megapixel camera can produce 1600x1208 pixels. The megapixels does not always determine quality, it determines the size, but it is the Camera that determines quality. How well a camera can process it, how good is the ccd. So my question is, if you take a Digital camera that can produce 6x10 inches with out losing quality, and you take a film camera that can easily produce the above. Print both on photographic paper and compare them, will their really be a differance? Of course you are not going to use crappy cheap digital cameras, so lets say, use an Olympus.
You can easily print digital photos on photographic paper, I think any one of your 1 hour booths will do it. At least Fujifilm does.
Thank you Erwin.
Same to you![/quote]
thanks bud