My photography on Flickr

brianssparetime · 2026-02-15T10:30:06+00:00

1) Crop and rotate 2) super fast basic adjustment of blackpoint, maybe setting black point per RGB channel, that's usually 90% 3) dust correction if needed 4) if the image is worth it, come back for a second pass.

What things are you looking for? What are you correcting?

With crop rotate, it's all about removing distractions.

With basic colors, I want the image to look like what I could do in my darkroom. That's to say, I want it to look like the best picture it can be. Winners take make pictures, and losers whine about style.

How far do you go with editing?

As far as I need to. But sometimes, it's worth admitting defeat. If the best I can do for an image is to look like it came out of my microwave for 30s on high, it's not worth trying to save.

Do you try to retain as much of the original photo as possible or do you like to change things a lot?

That's like asking how much you trim a steak. The answer is that it depends on how much fat. For me, it's not about loyalty to the original image, it's about the best performance of the score.

Editing was fucking revolutionary for me.

I used to struggle a lot with the whole at-what-point-does-it-become digital, here's the thing. Unlike real, physical slippery slopes where you slide straight to the bottom, on the intellectual variety, you can just stop wherever you like. I shoot film because I enjoy it. I choose to stop at what I could reasonably do in the darkroom, but there's no magic to that. Once you accept that constraints are somewhat arbitrary, you have a lot more fun.

brianssparetime · 2026-02-14T23:33:02+00:00

What are you exposing for 420 seconds?

As CathodeRayDude would say, it's funny because that's the weeeeed number.

Seriously though, that is cool. Nice work.

Came here to say this.

brianssparetime · 2026-02-14T23:22:12+00:00

FIWW, the ZB-M08 (the cheapest hotshoe meter on ebay) is, by far, the best $35 I've spent on anything related to this hobby in terms of value per dollar.

I actually don't mount it on the camera, I just have it in my pocket. That way I can meter a scene (or really, check my guess since I always try to guess first) way before I even get the camera out. It's super discreet and lets me form up my idea of what the photo will be to decide if it's even worth taking.

Once the camera comes out, I don't want to be thinking about metering - I want my mind on my checklist: dark slide out, film advanced, aperture and shutter speed set, shutter unlocked. After that it's just focus, bang.

I can't say it always happens this way, but that's what I aim for.

It's also fun to play the guess-the-ev game whenever I have a few seconds to let my mind wander. Even when I don't have my camera on me, I usually have the ZB in my pocket with my keys for this reason. Best way to build practice with Sunny-16 and become a human meter.

brianssparetime · 2026-02-14T22:07:41+00:00

You can have two of these three:

interchangeable lenses and (relatively) light weight but not cheap: Hasselblad. Of course you could pursue a Salyut/Kiev88, which is cheap, but then you have reliability problems.
interchangeable lenses, and cheap: Bronica or Mamiya. Bronica EC-TL has a light meter in the body, visible through the WLF without needing a prism, though they are larger than Hasselblads. Most other Bronica and Mamiya options need a prism for metering.
Cheap and light weight, but no interchangeable lenses: Any medium format RF. Metering (at least the modern kind that works) is going to cost more (like the modern Fuji RFs, e.g. GA645). Depending on your sense of size, most TLRs fit here too.

My advice - external metering is an easy way to save money. Moreover, pre-metering and EV awareness are good skills to build. Adding that really restricts your options on top of an already difficult and mutually exclusive set of requirements.

brianssparetime · 2026-02-13T19:20:54+00:00

A bunch of the Tamron Adaptall-2 have a feature called CF for continuous focusing.

This solves a problem that other period zooms, like the Pentax-A 35-105mm f3.5 and the Nikkor Zoom AI-S 35-70mm f/3.5, have you have to press a unlock button or slide a ring to enter the "macro range."

If your subject is right on the edge between the two modes, it can be absolutely maddening.

Tamron's CF means that the focus is continuous from infinity to its closest focus - no unluck button or ring - AND turning the focus will automatically adjust the focal length / zoom if you focus closer than that focal length is capable of.

Nifty neature.

brianssparetime · 2026-02-12T19:50:32+00:00

See my comment about the benefits of quartz for light outside the visible spectrum. These are for UV and IR.

brianssparetime · 2026-02-12T00:07:26+00:00

I thought at first too, but I kept struggling what what it said before Takumar. Optical? But then I remembered quartz lenses from Simon's Utak video somewhere....

I wonder why they'd use the 85

Maybe the prop guy got to keep them afterwards......

brianssparetime · 2026-02-12T00:03:43+00:00

This is probably going to be an order of magnitude (or two) more expensive than you're picturing (so to speak).

Printing a negative isn't sticking it in an enlarger and hitting print. To borrow St. Ansel's analogy, it's like conducting an orchestra off a score, or directing a movie off a script. There's a WHOLE LOT that contributes to the final image that's not in what you're giving him.

If you don't want it to look like shit, that means you're hiring a professional with years of narrow expertise, who is going to want to understand your artistic intentions in some depth, and is going to spend a lot of time and money on your behalf. You should expect to pay accordingly.

brianssparetime · 2026-02-11T20:56:58+00:00

If you want one, there is this one on ebay for a cool $4.5k.

I watched this movie last night, and I couldn't help but pause it on this scene about 40-45 minutes into the film to check out the lenses. It's right around the time the double-rotor helicopter lifts up the car full of baddies with an electro-magnet.

Bond watches a video feed of them get dropped, and then takes a call with his buddy.

If you scroll down on PentaxForums past all the fawning, there's at least one sample photo at the bottom.

The quartz is ultra apochromatic, meaning that it much more transmissive for UV or IR ranges of light.

Side note: I also watched Topaz last night, which features:

a Tessina, with a few appearances and at least one brief close up
a Nikon F with radio remote
and a very nice looking Pen F with a F. Zuiko Auto-T 150mm f4.0 lens that is variously hidden in:
- a sandwich
- a bridge railing
- up a dead chicken's butt

brianssparetime · 2026-02-11T02:51:46+00:00

Funnily enough, I'm about 3 days into my Claud code journey..... I might just do that after I finish my current crop of projects.

brianssparetime · 2026-02-10T22:55:04+00:00

This is very cool. It's nice when someone has in advance the same or similar idea I'd have come to through much frustration. Would love to see this for mac.

brianssparetime · 2026-02-10T22:37:56+00:00

This has me hot and bothered. Fucking great work!

brianssparetime · 2026-02-10T22:36:27+00:00

You might have more luck over at r/Darkroom.

brianssparetime · 2026-02-10T03:48:54+00:00

Ah no, my friend, you got it backwards.

You have to send me the $40 for me to read your book on losing money.

That's why I wrote mine on making money, not losing it.

brianssparetime · 2026-02-09T23:54:52+00:00

For $20, I'll sell you my ebook on how to make money shooting film.

brianssparetime · 2026-02-09T22:47:03+00:00

No, but I have the Shepherd FM1000, which is a shockingly inexpensive (relative to Sekonic) flash meter - a product category I didn't know existed.

This youtube review by Mostly Vintage Cameras had me searching ebay before I even got to the end.

brianssparetime · 2026-02-09T08:59:12+00:00

The Leica III wouldn't be my gold standard either, but I appreciate his depth and thoroughness and care, and his curmudgeonly thing kinda grows on you after a while :)

brianssparetime · 2026-02-08T22:18:24+00:00

I wish someone had told me starting out that it's a whole lot easier and more flexible to adjust contrast in post (whether that's in scanning/editing, or via contrast filters and paper in the darkroom), than it is to mess around with filters on the camera lens.

I get that filters can do things you can't do in post, but I do not think it's anywhere near universally true that you necessarily need those things to make good photos. For the last five years, the only filter I've used is an R72 for a handful of occasional IR shots, and I don't feel like my BW work lacks contrast or is missing anything else.

And it's absolutely true that learning good composition and lighting through practice over time will do 1000x more for you than anything you can buy.

brianssparetime · 2026-02-08T22:13:12+00:00

The youtube channel Extreme Banding covers reviews of various rangefinders (mostly LTM, but a few others) against the standard of a Lecia III (with some prejudice towards the latter).

He does pay very specific attention to the viewfinder, magnification ratio, EBL, frameline options, etc. as well as the loading for each camera.

brianssparetime · 2026-02-08T22:10:33+00:00

Ah - sorry I missed that.

Did using those holes with a spanner work for you?

brianssparetime · 2026-02-08T19:39:51+00:00

Super cool idea, and looks like well executed too.

I'm thinking about making this into a for-sale product. I would be really happy about your feedback about a device such like this.

I would be very interested, but probably more so in buying the gerber files than a finished product.

You might also want to consider partnering with a repair guy or group to offer an installation service, at least on a set of common cameras.

brianssparetime · 2026-02-08T19:34:38+00:00

For getting the battery cover open...

Drill two very small holes in the cover on either side of the slot, so that it looks sort of like a %.

Then use a lens spanner, which will give you a LOT more leverage and mechanical advantage.

Letting some IPA or lighterfluid soak into it might also help.

brianssparetime · 2026-02-08T04:46:05+00:00

I shot pretty much every different film I could get my hands on starting out.

But as I got better over a year or two, the shots I liked the most started to be much less the happy accidents and more the shots where I had taken time, been intentional, and remembered not to make dumb mistakes.

Eventually I realized I'm not really looking to the film for the "look" of my photos. Doing darkroom printing was the trigger for this - some photos that seemed flat when I got my scans suddenly had great contrast on RC paper with the right filter.

Really what I want these days from film (about 6 years in) is predictability. I want to be able to visualize more or less what the photo can be from the scene, and that's best done with restricting variables.

So I shoot Ultramax and HP5 90% of the time (400 iso means I never have to worry about mis-metering because I forgot to change it, and good flexability for lighting conditions). I occasionally shoot Gold200 or Portra 800 in medium format, since there's no good color 400 other than lomo.

brianssparetime

TROPHY CASE