120 film stock

Sometimes two glass surfaces pressed together with a neg or a trans in between can cause Newton rings when light passes through.

So much of what used to be great films are no longer available.

Among enthusiasts of the ex-Soviet cameras, Efke is very popular but I have never used it. I do hear complaints of film curling, but that may not be with the specific film you are considering.

I use Velvia and Provia for transparencies. My favorite negative material has been Reala, which is not really high-end but it has always delivered the goods. I have experimented with many other negative materials, but I keep liking the results I consistently get with Reala. If I did portraits or did all my work in a studio, I would prefer the Fuji professional films. Reala can make skin tones a bit ruddy. For the landscapes I usually do, it's excellent.

I've never gotten results I liked with Kodak color films since the demise of Vericolor and Kodachrome.

All of it is hard to find, and I'm having to mailorder both the film and the processing.

I use a Nikon 8000ED scanner, and it will deliver the goods for all but the most demanding applications. Used high-end medium-format CCD scanners can be found for under a kilobuck. For those applications where someone is paying me to make a mural (hey, it could happen), I can always send out the negative to have it drum-scanned. But that is expensive for routine stuff.

I've never had any luck with lab-made scans and photo CD's, etc. My own scans are always MUCH better. Maybe that's a fault of the labs I've used.

Rick "who owns about a dozen medium-format cameras" Denney

Its funny. I'm 23...and never understoof the point of shooting film until recently. It seems like so much effort to get an image on the computer

handheld light meter, loading, developing, scanning, color management, etc. Digital does all this for you, yet here I am dying to get a hasselblad and lug the thing around on vacation and leave the digital at home.

Chemical temp has a big effect on grain structure too. Reticulation, especially when pushing b+w film is all too easy to label as grain.
The one thing I don't miss about 120 is trying load the damn thing in the spool.:o:o:o

haha why? 120 is super easy to load...at least on my yashica?

Anyone tried the mamiya or phase one back? I wonder if its as good as shooting 120 negative or better?

briancmo wrote in post #5612525
haha why? 120 is super easy to load...at least on my yashica?

Anyone tried the mamiya or phase one back? I wonder if its as good as shooting 120 negative or better?

I think he meant loading it onto the spools used in developing tanks. It's not easy, but 120 is easier to handle in the darkroom than 220.

"As good as" when comparing film and digital misses the point. They are different, with different artistic potential, but both completely valid. You might as well compare oil paint to watercolor.

A better question would be: Will a Phase One back support as big a print as medium-format film? I would say yes, when comparing to 6x4.5. Maybe not, when comparing to 6x7 or 6x9.

Rick "who still has a pile of Honeywell-Nikor stainless reels for 120 and 220 in a box somewhere" Denney

silly Q... how is 6x4.5 better then 6x6? Isn't 6x6 a larger format or is this just a ratio and the neg is actually bigger then 2.25 x 2.25?

briancmo wrote in post #5613488
silly Q... how is 6x4.5 better then 6x6? Isn't 6x6 a larger format or is this just a ratio and the neg is actually bigger then 2.25 x 2.25?

It depends on how you print. If you always print at 8x10, there is little difference between 6x4.5 and 6x6. You'll be cropping off the portion of the 6x6 frame that is bigger than 6x4.5 anyway. And the 6x4.5 camera will give you 15 or 16 exposures on a 120 roll instead of 12 (or 10, or 8) for the larger formats.

Some folks like the square. I know I do, for certain situations. And the square simplifies a lot of shooting situations--you never need to turn the camera, for example, so you don't need a rotating flash bracket, etc. Also, setting up an album, such as for a wedding, is much easier and the viewer never has to turn the album to look at a proof. If you print square, the 6x6 proves to be a larger format, and 6x4.5 ends up being 4.5x4.5.

6x7, on the other hand, is a larger format altogether that just happens to use the same roll film. If you print square from 6x7, it's the same at 6x6, but if I want a square format I'd rather just use a 6x6 camera. I have plenty.

Rick "who owns equipment in 6x4.5, 6x6, 6x7, and 6x9" Denney

rdenney wrote in post #5612903
I think he meant loading it onto the spools used in developing tanks. It's not easy, but 120 is easier to handle in the darkroom than 220.

"As good as" when comparing film and digital misses the point. They are different, with different artistic potential, but both completely valid. You might as well compare oil paint to watercolor.

A better question would be: Will a Phase One back support as big a print as medium-format film? I would say yes, when comparing to 6x4.5. Maybe not, when comparing to 6x7 or 6x9.

Rick "who still has a pile of Honeywell-Nikor stainless reels for 120 and 220 in a box somewhere" Denney

Corrrect.
I have hot hands, and my "darkroom" was actually a tent which used to get up about 1000 degrees in the summer. Not exactly a recipe for success.
If the wife heard me whimpering, she would come in and rescue the film for me.
Her record was 27 seconds fron light off, to lid on the dev tank.

Ilford makes fantastic B&W film. I've used them for years, in both 120 format and 35mm.

I would forget about the grain in the big negative, because it is close to nonesistent at ISO 400 and lower. The point is that with the big negative you get so much light on your emulsion that there's enough information to make a very good print...

ISO 25 is way too slow, especially for a yashica A with its 3.5 lens.

I'd worry about stopping it down to about f11 or f/16, then putting it on a tripod, then focusing correctly and only after I'd pay any attention to the film that I'm using.

I'm 23 and I abandoned digital. The old film cameras and a darkroom is the medium of my choice.

You'll also have to print optically, with a very good lens to see the advantage of ISO25, I believe. A scan like the one you linked to gives minimal detail.

briancmo wrote in post #5606040
For some silly reason I really want to play with the finest grain free images.. will I be blown away by efke 25 and kodachrome 64?

Don't worry about kodachrome. There are only a couple labs in the country that still develop it and the film is no longer in production. If you want to shoot extremely fine grained slide film, go for Provia 100F, Astia 100F, or Velvia 50 (all by Fuji) or E100VS (Kodak).

The MOST important factor in grain is format size, because your detail doesn't need to be enlarged much to produce a given output with larger formats. Shooting Delta 3200 on medium format seems to have mild grain to me even compared with ISO 400 films in 35mm. With large format grain is a total non-issue. I shoot a lot of Ilford HP5+ in 8x10 sheet film, and in a contact print grain is not visible to the naked eye; whereas enlarged from 35mm even Efke 25 will probably have quite visible grain at 8x10.

For B&W, there are better things to worry about than grain. Any of the standard "modern" emulsion 100-speed films (Kodak Tmax 100, Fuji Acros, and Ilford Delta 100) will have negligible grain. But the "traditional" emulsion films, like Kodak TriX and Ilford FP4+, which have larger grain, actually have better tonality, which is one of the things that makes us B&W film photographers wax poetic about shooting B&W.

I've shot (and have) a lot of Kodak Tech-Pan, which has essentially invisible grain. Unfortunately it's so ridiculously high contrast (and with a bit of a strange spectral sensitivity) that it's difficult to get good pictures from it.

In the late '70s to early '90s medium format was my main format,,,6 X 4.5 and 6 X 7..Bronica ETRs and Pentax 6 X 7..I later sold the Pentax 6 X 7 but just loved the Bronica..

Ilford Pan F 50 iso for studio B/W
Fujichrome 100 iso for studio and location colour trannies.
Ilford FP4 125 iso for location B/W..Sometimes Kodak Tri-X 400 iso for location B/W..

Processed and printed my B/W,,E6 went to a lab..

I don't think Kodachrome comes in 120..I have never seen it..

I love the old Kodachrome look, but I love modern slide films too. If you're interested you can order Fujichrome Fortia from Japan (the megaperls website). This is sold in 135 and 120, only from Japan, and it takes regular E6 processing. It's even more saturated and higher contrast than Velvia -- its main market is Japan for the cherry blossom festivals.

HTTP response: NOT FOUND | MIME changed to 'image/gif'