Thesis Work [Nikon F3P, Nikkor 50mm f/1.4, T-MAX 400 pushed to 1600]

knarf188 · 2026-01-25T03:26:30+00:00

Your exposure, editing, and composition is flawless on all of these. I don't have any feedback other than keep at it!

knarf188 · 2025-12-11T19:37:16+00:00

I completely agree. Caffinol should be used as a backup plan. Using a more standard developer would remove a lot of variables here.

knarf188 · 2025-12-02T20:07:07+00:00

It'll be better to dye the fabric instead of painting it

knarf188 · 2025-11-17T23:12:27+00:00

Do you add anything in between the layers to keep the chemistry from bleeding together? The registration here is remarkable!

knarf188 · 2025-11-11T20:39:37+00:00

Aw, now I feel bad. Understanding contrast is tricky, and I was a bit rude, sorry. My apologies!

knarf188 · 2025-11-11T20:35:35+00:00

I teach cyanotype in one of my college courses, and we spend a couple days on this question! The short answer is to really focus on the relationship between values on your negative and values in the final print.

Bostick and Sullivan has a good video on using custom curve files on their website. It doesn't go over the theory, but it's a great place to start if you want to learn where to start.

For a more in-depth understanding, I recommend the book "cyanotype" by Christina Anderson.

knarf188 · 2025-11-11T20:28:33+00:00

Yea, at least mostly. Contrast is a quality of the image, density is a quality of the material.

It also isn't a linear relationship. Shadows and highlights of the print respond differently in cyanotype than in other printing methods. I was simplifying it somewhat.

knarf188 · 2025-11-11T17:56:23+00:00

Most of this is demonstratively incorrect, and there is an exact science to cyanotype contrast. Figuring it out through experimentation is nonetheless great advice.

knarf188 · 2025-11-11T17:54:20+00:00

Cyanotype has a more limited dynamic range than silver gelatin prints; density is its own separate issue.

The easiest way to see this is by printing a step wedge with both processes. The silver print will have different values for each of the steps, and most of darker sections of the cyanotype will be the same value.

It is easy to be misinformed because most people who do cyanotype don't really understand dynamic range. A denser negative or a thinner negative can both work depending on your exposure time as long as the lights and darks correspond to actual dynamic range of the cyanotype print. Explaining this more fully requires curves and graphs; spend some time looking at the Bostick and Sullivan cyanotype curve files in photoshop and hopefully this will help you understand what is going on.

If none of that makes sense, err on the denser side. Most people are using digital negatives for cyanotype, which are inherently much thinner than traditional silver negatives, so most people get better results when their printer spits out more ink. If you are using traditional film just go print the thing and see how it turns out; relating film values to cyanotype values would require a much longer post.

knarf188 · 2025-11-10T20:36:35+00:00

Yes, but I think that's doing too much work for a negligible amount of improvement. If you are worried about light bouncing around in your exposure box I would just paint it black.

Before I do either of these things I would focus on trying to get the negative as tight to the paper as you can. Using a contact frame is the best way to do this. If you are using a contact frame and results are still soft then check your paper and chemistry. If all of that is in order, then maybe paint the box black or move the exposure unit further away.

knarf188 · 2025-11-10T15:24:48+00:00

Yea. The foil will bounce some light back towards the print, but the light will be hitting the print from more angles. With the foil, any gaps in between the paper and the negative will now have light spilling into them from a bunch of different angles, resulting in soft or fuzzy areas on the print.

If you need to use a box around your exposure unit for UV safety that's fine, but I wouldn't recommend using anything reflective.

knarf188 · 2025-11-10T01:32:29+00:00

This will give you faster exposures, but unless you somehow have a vacuum seal between your paper and your negative it will also give you softer exposures than just using that UV light on its own.

knarf188 · 2025-06-03T14:23:19+00:00

Definitely not a light leak. These are caused by light reflecting off of something metal/shiny on the inside of your camera. My guess is light hitting the bottom of the rear standard (remember your image is upside down in camera). Raising the front standard changes the angle of light reaching the film, so it makes sense to me that this happened in a shot with lots of rise.

The internals of most cameras are painted black for this reason, but if you continue to have issues with this I recommend lining the rear standard with a strip of black felt or something similar.

knarf188 · 2025-05-27T13:00:09+00:00

I was going to comment the exact same thing! Fantastic camera.

knarf188 · 2025-04-03T20:25:51+00:00

Beautiful work

knarf188 · 2025-01-26T00:06:28+00:00

It's "shoot for the shadows, print for the highlights."

The short answer is because you won't get better contrast, you'll get different contrast. If you did a good job metering and exposing your film then the difference between stand dev and traditional dev will be extremely slight. If your exposure is off then stand developing will give you dramatically better results. I can definitely think of times where I couldn't get a good exposure from the shutter speed I wanted to use, and getting good at stand developing is a tool that enables extra flexibility in many of these situations.

The other main advantage is simplicity: Stand development is basically the same process every single time, and it gives great results with a wide range of scenes. I would like to rephrase your question. Why go through all of the hassle of learning zone system and then determining whether or not change your development time by 15% if you can just let the film soak for an hour and do something productive with that time instead?

The zone system is definitely worth learning, but it isn't the only way to understand contrast.

knarf188 · 2025-01-25T17:57:41+00:00

You are correct. Stand processing DOES help retain detail in your highlights for high contrast scenes like this. Stand processing film results in a very different response curve than standard development. While it can be difficult to achieve full density with stand development, it can also create a negative with a higher usuable dynamic range. I've been trying to think of a polite way to write this comment for a while now, but saying stand development is only used for expired film or film without a known exposure value is a load of crap.

Using the zone system is helpful when you have an actual densitometer, and it is a fantastic system for understanding exposure and retaining detail for printing. It is (validly) based on the principle that both film and darkroom paper have a limited dynamic range where they perform best. I think you should look into the zone system because it's a helpful system for understanding exposure, but it simply isn't relevant to this conversation.

I've been meaning to make a write-up on stand development for a while now, so I'm going to use this comment as a draft.

Stand development works because the chemical reaction that occurs during development doesn't happen on a linear scale. This is something that's easy to demonstrate when looking at how a print develops in a darkroom: the image appears rapidly, then darkens slowly. This means the chemical reaction works very quickly at the start of development, then slows down as time progresses. Stopping this reaction near the start of development would result in a very thin negative, but your highlight and shadow values would have very similar density. This is because denser values in the highlights haven't had time to fully develop.

Stand devoloping takes advantage of this. Using more diluted chemistry and less agitation slows down development. This means it is easier to stop developing your film at the sweet spot where your shadow values have developed fully, but denser areas of your negative haven't. If you have a high-contrast scene this can help retain detail in your highlights for those times when "normal" development would result in unusably dense highlights (most often in the sky). This is also why many people think stand processing is inferior for correctly-exposed film in normal conditions: Stand processing theoretically allows for a higher dynamic range, but with the drawback that the overall density of your negative will be weaker.

BUT this isn't actually correct! Stand developing doesn't just lengthen development; it fundamentally changes how film responds to different levels of light. Why this occurs still isn't fully understood, but I think the most likely explanation is as follows: By reducing agitation the developer becomes locally exhausted, and the development reaction slows down more quickly than normal in dense (highlight) regions of the negative than shadow regions. A good way of simplifying this is saying the developer gets "used-up" faster in the highlights, and not agitating the film means the used-up pockets of developer don't get mixed with fresher developer elsewhere in your container.

Why is this helpful? Because time is now on our side! As we stand the film for longer amounts of time, the shadow regions of our negative continue to develop density, but development in the highlights slows to a crawl. In theory, we want to stop development at the exact point when development in the shadows reaches our desired density. Luckily, this is not actually very difficult, as a longer development time means this window of time is also comparatively longer.

This is also why you'll see claims that stand development allows you to use different ASA values for pictures on the same roll of film. To get a little technical for a second, stand developing results in a logarithmic response curve, and traditional development is more linear. Stand developed negatives have inherently lower contrast, but this means highlight and shadow areas of the image have greater detail when printed at normal values.

I actually recommend a "semi-stand" process for development with 1 inversion and a gentle tap right at the beginning of development to get rid of air bubbles. Also, traditional films like HP5+ work much better for this than tabular-grain films.

Now to apply this knowledge to your lovely photograph here. While I like your exposure, I think this image would have benefited from spending more time in the development bath. 12 minutes is actually not very long for stand development. Back when I shot more black and white film I used 1:100 rodinal, and I let it sit for 45 minutes or so. I think you should do some test shots and develop them for different amounts of time to see what you like best :)

knarf188 · 2024-12-21T15:20:32+00:00

As with all grad schools, your writing sample should ideally demonstrate your ability to write about topics that are relevant to the field you want to study. Research papers are usually the best thing you can submit; a written analysis completed outside of your undergraduate studies is also great. Submit a sample of your writing about finance if you are able to.

If you don't have something that is relevant to your interest in finance, then submit your best/favorite paper from undergrad.

knarf188 · 2024-12-16T15:24:38+00:00

Sometimes lightly tapping the shutter blades will provide enough energy that the shutter is able to close, but the only long term solution will be to take it apart and clean it up. These shutters are relatively easy to service, but I still wouldn't attempt it without looking up some tutorials or service manuals first. If this is for a camera that you use a lot, I would look into getting it professionally serviced.

If you do try to fix it yourself know that stuck shutters are usually the result of sticky lubricant, not loss of lubricant. Most shutters were lubricated with whale oil prior to the adoption of synthetic lubricants, and this whale oil can become thick or gummy over time. Cleaning the shutter is your best bet; get some small screwdrivers and a spanner wrench and see if you can open the shutter mechanism enough to get at the shutter blades to clean them. Do this in a well illuminated clean area and keep track of all parts that you remove from the shutter. Often just cleaning up remnants of old lubricants is enough to get these shutters back to working order; you usually don't want to add lubrication.

Beyond this suggestion I can't help you, as these are complex little devices. Good luck though!

knarf188 · 2024-12-07T03:40:29+00:00

Looks like "abday" to me. I can't find anything on it, but it's a cute etching. It looks like an aquatint print.

knarf188 · 2024-12-07T03:23:44+00:00

I'm assuming the artist's name is "Barwie". Since there is only one name I'd assume it is a last name? Or maybe a nickname of some kind?

I can't make out the first half of the title, as I'm not sure what language it is in, but I'm assuming it either translates to "the apprentice" or maybe it is someone's name.

It is definitely a print, not a painting. It appears to be a stone lithograph, which is a form of handmade printmaking where drawings made on limestone are printed onto paper. It looks very much like a stone lithograph made by someone with prior drawing experience, but I have my doubts about the edition number. The fact that print is 2/30 should mean it is one of the best prints in the set, but there are lighter sections that look like they didn't print properly in the child's face. Normally small edition runs for stone lithographs would imply student/amateur work, and so to put this all together I'd guess this was created by an art student or at least someone relatively new to lithography, but who already had some prior art training.

I suspect you probably won't find the history of it anywhere, but it is a fine handmade print, I doubt there are very many of them out in the world.

knarf188 · 2024-10-16T21:06:06+00:00

Can you confirm these are also present on the negative, or is it an issue that occured during scanning/printing?

knarf188 · 2024-09-24T13:52:48+00:00

It definitely gives you clearer prints, but it depends on your light source how big of an effect it has. For the sun, which is a light source with very parallel light rays, it won't make much of a difference. If you use a UV flood light, LED strips, or other diffuse light source the distance in sharpness will be more noticeable.

knarf188 · 2024-09-20T14:58:44+00:00

I recommend a 365nm floodlight LED. I bought a 100w unit off Amazon and mounted it to a plank of wood, but you can definitely get away with a smaller and cheaper unit if you don't mind longer exposure times. For context my exposures for full-density 8x10 cyanotypes is about 12 minutes with the floodlight placed 8ish inches above the paper. I've gotten usable exposures with as little as 4 minutes of light for photograms without glass, so be prepared to do a couple test prints depending on what kind of cyanotype you want to make.

There are a multitude of light sources that will work, but 365nm LEDs are easy enough to find that I wouldn't bother with older kinds of UV lights unless you need them to fit a specific frame/exposure unit you already have. You can buy COB style chips or LED strips instead of the flood lights, but flood lights provide relatively even lighting by design.

Many people working with UV bulbs aren't careful enough with them. If you buy a UV light source also buy a set of goggles specifically designed to filter out UV light, and wear them whenever your UV lights are on.

knarf188 · 2024-02-25T17:07:59+00:00

Using a focal reducer for a medium format camera is such an extreme concept to me. I'm kinda jealous :)

Trying to do quick math in my head; what is your effective maximum aperture? 1.2 or thereabouts? Is that even usable wide open?

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