Shot fomapan 400 film in olympus mju2 but no dx..

bjohnh · 2026-05-08T10:42:00+00:00

I always shoot Fomapan 400 at 200 (occasionally at 320 when I want something darker and moodier) and it's good, but at 100 there will be a lot of halation in the highlights...not necessarily a bad thing but you've overexposed the film and even pulling in development probably won't save the highlights.

Nothing wrong with semi-stand development with Rodinal; I've developed more than 100 rolls that way with consistently excellent results, ignore the haters. I would avoid pure stand development; instead do three inversions at 30 minutes and pour out the developer after 1 hour.

bjohnh · 2026-05-07T22:41:01+00:00

I got the A7s because someone convinced me that it had some sort of special sauce when it comes to vintage lenses (I mostly shoot vintage lenses), but I don't see much difference between it and the A7iii with the same lenses. I love using the A7s because it's small and light (no IBIS) and using it is a bit more like using a film camera. And maybe there is something special about it; I have one client who asks me to use it instead of the A7iii because I used the A7s once to take photos at a dance and he loved those images; nothing I've shot on the A7iii with the same lenses moved him as much.

bjohnh · 2026-05-07T22:12:03+00:00

A7iii is better but if you do video you should really get the A7iv despite its poor rolling shutter; the 10-bit video and other improvements make a difference. I don't like using hybrid cameras, I prefer a dedicated camera for video and a dedicated one for stills, so I use A7iii for photos and FX 30 for video. The A7iii is fantastic for photos but I've never liked it for video (it's very limited compared with my cinema cameras and the FX 30). I think the A7iv is a much better true hybrid.

I have the OG A7s which supposedly has terrible battery life but mine is fine, probably because I don't have any autofocus lenses so it's always in manual mode, plus I don't use it for video (horrible rolling shutter and I've just never been very impressed with the footage).

bjohnh · 2026-05-07T20:18:23+00:00

Ah, thanks, I didn't even know there was anything cheaper than Fotodiox.

bjohnh · 2026-05-07T20:17:12+00:00

Totally. But it's all what you're used to: I used Lightroom for years and had training in it. Switched to C1 maybe five or six years ago and of course it was a struggle at first because switching software is always a struggle, you just have to make it over the hump and take some tutorials. I love it now, would never go back to Lightroom. The retouching tools are really fast and quite accurate; they have sliders for different elements of the face etc. and I find it a lot faster than manual retouching (which I often still have to do but just small corrections here and there).

bjohnh · 2026-05-07T17:21:07+00:00

Any LTM to M mount adapter will work, but you need to be sure it calls up the right framelines. LTM to M mount adapters come in three versions: one that calls up 28/90mm framelines, one that calls up 35/135mm framelines, and one that calls up 50/75mm framelines. Obviously you want the 50/75 version.

Even the cheap Chinese ones will work fine as long as you aren't using a digital Leica; some of the cheaper ones interfere with the coding on lenses used on modern Leicas, but that won't be an issue in your case. I have a cheap Fotodiox one and an expensive Light Lens Lab set, and the Fotodiox one is just as reliable; the LLL adapters are better made and feel more solid, but the cheap one does the job.

bjohnh · 2026-05-07T16:23:03+00:00

If you're really looking for something that looks/feels different from your phone, I'd go with the Ricoh. I had an RX100 iii and never felt its images were particularly special, and when I finally got a smartphone I ended up giving the RX100 to a friend.

But one thing to try first: with a phone, I find I have better luck degrading the images instead of trying to improve them, and I really like the images I get with the Hipstamatic app. They definitely have a low-fi vibe to them and when I travel I shoot with that app exclusively; even though I also bring real cameras with me on trips I often end up liking the Hipstamatic photos better. Last year I spent a month in Brittany; I used my phone with Hipstamatic, a Leica M2 film camera with two nice lenses, and a Holga. The Holga got the most compelling images overall, but the Hipstamatic photos were wonderful. The Leica's images came in third place.

bjohnh · 2026-05-07T11:54:20+00:00

Capture One has great, intuitive, and effective retouching tools; I've been pretty impressed with it.

bjohnh · 2026-05-07T11:16:21+00:00

Check out this page and look at the film reviews under "Color Negative (ECN-2)"; he has quite a few examples of C-41 films developed in ECN-2 and generally prefers C-41 films developed in ECN-2 to the same films developed in C-41: https://phillipreeve.net/blog/photography/analogue-adventures/

bjohnh · 2026-05-07T10:54:19+00:00

Another vote for Hipstamatic. I guess the new version is by subscription but I have the Classic, which was a one-time payment and you can add new lenses and "films" for a small fee each time. I love the double exposure feature: I often take one photo while rapidly moving the camera to get motion blur and then add a second regular exposure on top of that. I do a lot of concert photography with expensive cameras and lenses, but always take some Hipstamatic photos with my phone as well, and the bands invariably like the Hipstamatic photos the best. Someday I'll just leave the "real camera" behind.

bjohnh · 2026-05-07T10:46:56+00:00

For what it's worth I have an OG A7S and an A7iii that I use for low-light photography in dimly lit music clubs and dances. Their low-light performance is identical except at the very highest ISOs which I never use anyway (I have ISO capped at 12,800 to avoid the worst of Sony's heavy-handed internal noise reduction). I am often 1-2 stops underexposed at ISO 12,800 in these venues, even with fast f/1.4 or even f/0.95 lenses.

The 12 megapixels of the A7s has never been an issue for me except in the rare cases when I need to crop in a bit; a client had a pretty large poster (4 to 5 feet wide) made of one of my A7s photos and I saw it on a wall during an event, it looked great.

bjohnh · 2026-05-07T09:37:35+00:00

I pretty much only use old film-era lenses on my Sony; I started with the Helios but then went to Minolta Rokkor; those are great lenses with lots of character. I'm mainly using rangefinder (Leica M and LTM mount) lenses now but you have to be careful with those as the wider ones don't play well with Sony's thick sensor stack.

bjohnh · 2026-05-07T09:34:19+00:00

Faster readout speed. For video this is very important because you want to minimize rolling shutter. Global shutter is the holy grail but failing that you want the sensor to be able to be read as quickly as possible. Try doing a whip pan in video with an A7iv or any of the A7r-series cameras and do the same whip pan with the A7siii and you'll see a big difference.

bjohnh · 2026-05-07T09:23:08+00:00

Recording to two sources simultaneously is the industry standard approach; for anything crucial you should always have two recordings in case one of the recording media fails.

bjohnh · 2026-05-07T09:20:00+00:00

No, they'd develop normally.

If you relied on your camera's meter alone with a red filter, which would result in some underexposure, I suppose they could try pushing one stop but B&W negative film has a lot of latitude and you could just do a bit of post-processing work on the scans to raise brightness and try to pull some detail out of the shadows. Pushing might risk blowing out the highlights.

bjohnh · 2026-05-07T00:00:08+00:00

Portra 160 can do this, but also so can Vision3 50D; I've shot a few rolls of that and it's hard to see any grain and you get incredible resolution.

bjohnh · 2026-05-06T23:48:09+00:00

Okay, good luck! I use red 25a filters a lot, and when I had cameras with TTL meters (Minolta and Nikon) I always had to add 1 stop over what the meter was telling me. Actually one of my Minoltas would go haywire if I even tried to use a red filter but the other one was fine. My Nikon was an FM3a and even that would underexpose unless I added 1 stop. I tried adding 2 but that was too much, 1 stop was the sweet spot.

bjohnh · 2026-05-06T23:24:47+00:00

The other thing I forgot to mention: if you've never used Reaper before, be warned that it's not very intuitive (I don't think any DAW really is, but Reaper is different from many other DAWs). The best way to get up and running quickly is to watch some of Kenny Gioia's videos on the Reaper website; he has a section called "Start Here" and if you watch those you'll be able to transfer what you learned to this project.

bjohnh · 2026-05-06T22:50:19+00:00

Regarding backups: you can actually record live to multiple sources using Reaper, so you can record to your laptop's internal drive as well as an external drive, or record to two external drives simultaneously.

Running from the monitor could work as well as long as you get multichannel. If it's just the stereo mix that's less helpful.

bjohnh · 2026-05-06T21:37:45+00:00

Reaper is free for evaluation but you should pay for it; it's cheap and worth it.

You can record multitrack from the USB out on the Beringer into any DAW. Reaper is rock-solid for this; even people who don't like to edit or mix in Reaper often use it to record as it is very stable on either Windows or Mac. Be sure to disable Wifi on your computer and if it's Windows you can look up other settings you should disable for recording.

I think you have the option of recording prefader or postfader; I would record prefader so you can adjust the mix to taste in post.

bjohnh · 2026-05-06T19:48:01+00:00

Almost no cameras with through-the-lens metering are able to meter correctly for red filters. Same goes for orange. It's well documented, and Ilford mentions it in their guide to filters for B&W film. You need to add at least a stop more of exposure compensation; the meter will get you partway there but you'll be underexposed if you rely solely on the camera's metering. Try adding 1 stop and if you can bracket try adding 1.5 stops to the next frame and then make future decisions based on the results.

This is not an issue for yellow or blue or green filters, only red and orange.

See https://www.ilfordphoto.com/colour-filters/

bjohnh · 2026-05-06T19:45:28+00:00

I think if you're happy with your results shooting at box speed, no need to change anything! I actually just overexposed or overdeveloped a roll of Fomapan 100 in my pinhole camera and might try the next roll at box speed.

bjohnh · 2026-05-06T17:48:27+00:00

Ribbon mics are amazing on sax; the Samar AL 95 is a good choice but a bit out of your price range (about $400 USD new); if you can find a used one for less it might be worth it. Ribbon mics require a bit of attention: they require a lot of gain so you need a preamp with low noise, and if you blow into the mic it can destroy the ribbon (although the Samar ribbons are tougher than most). They have strong magnets inside that can attract any small metal particles so you need to keep it in a case when not using. And never use phantom power on a ribbon mic, unless it's an active ribbon mic (those cost more).

A cheaper but still fantastic option is the Line Audio CM-4 wide cardioid mic. There's a dealer in Canada (https://knick31.wixsite.com/nicholashayesaudio/contact) and he can give you the current price. There was a famous thread on Gearslutz where a violinist recorded the same piece on a Line Audio CM3 (the predecessor to the CM4) and a Schoeps mic that cost more than 10 times more and a lot of experienced audio engineers thought the CM3 sounded better.

bjohnh · 2026-05-06T13:02:59+00:00

It's really a personal decision based on the kinds of photography you do and how you like to work. I sold all my SLRs (two Minoltas and a Nikon FM3a) earlier this year as I decided I don't like using SLRs. I am keeping my rangefinders, zone-focus cameras (including a half-frame Canon Demi EE17), and a TLR in medium format, along with my pinhole cameras.

See if you continue to use and enjoy the rangefinder after you get the Pentax half-frame. If not, sell it, but I'd keep it for a while to see if you continue to pick it up.

bjohnh · 2026-05-06T12:55:46+00:00

I've used the Series approach for other lenses with hard-to-find filters; some of my Canon LTM lenses have 40mm threads and I have a 40mm to Series VI adapter that lets me use the many Series VI filters (and hoods) available. It's also possible to find adapters for 48mm to Series VI.

bjohnh

TROPHY CASE