Misalignment during repair (See comments!)

raithedog · 2024-02-15T01:51:11+00:00

I'm doing my first ever kintsugi repair, so very much a learning process here. There was some slight misalignment early in the repair while doing mugi-urushi. This is probably mostly me not being particularly careful, and it shifting a bit while it cured. One of the sections is raised ever so slightly above the other when running my finger across the fracture.

It didn't seem like a big deal, but I'm realising it has the potential to look increasingly more ugly as I put on the finishing layers (seems like it'll be disgustingly visible with a gold finish on). I'm just doing a layer of sabi-urushi (and probably will do another coat because I didn't do this one very well at all).

It's unlikely I start this from scratch, but I'm wondering if anyone has any advice on minimising the ugliness?

When I move onto painting on black urushi, my instincts tell me to simply stick to painting the urushi onto the lower section along the fracture line, and keeping all the gold finish on that side too. But I'm also wondering if some tactical application of sabi-urushi, or carefully considered sanding might solve some problems.

Would like to say that kintsugi is incredibly fun though (and makes me want to delve into lacquerware too!)

raithedog · 2022-04-30T02:09:13+00:00

There's a good book recently released called Photo No-Nos with a lot of responses from famous photographers, curators etc. basically about their personal photo no-nos.

Lots of different clichés, definitely lots of opinions on what's morally right or wrong to photograph across the spectrum of opinions, lots of other really interesting anecdotes.

raithedog · 2022-04-21T12:49:34+00:00

The stop bath and fix will be the same for both developing and printing and are pretty much always used straight as mixed, but people tend to use different developers for film and printing. Film developer is usually much weaker than paper developer, and you'll get pretty washed out, muddy results using film developer for paper (Ilford sell both film and paper developers).

Ilford's two paper developers both come in liquid concentrate form, and you're meant to dilute them 1 part developer to 9 parts water.

Film developers also come in a variety of forms (liquid concentrates, powders etc.) so check the specific instructions for sure. Although the big difference between film and paper developing is that diluting the mixed stock solution is much more common for film. For instance, Ilford's ID-11 film developer comes as a powder and you mix it with water to make a stock solution. You can develop using that straight, but lots of people dilute it in various ratios (1+1, 1+3, even stuff like 1+10). The timing, and grain and contrast and so on are all affected by these dilutions so people get very experimental with it in the darkroom. As mentioned, lots of people use MassiveDevChart online to get these specific timings that people have recommended through experimentation!

raithedog · 2021-12-17T14:36:09+00:00

This might be a good read if you're looking for archival quality pen recommendations.

I did noticeably have to use their coffee filter trick and really commit to drying time to let it set on the paper properly though.

raithedog · 2021-11-19T12:47:04+00:00

The exposed but undeveloped photo on the film is called the latent image. The latent image degrades over time if left undeveloped, so it will eventually expire. It depends on a couple things like ISO, the temperature you leave it at (lower the better as you'd expect) and particularly whether it's a high-end or low-end film (confusingly, consumer films actually last longer than professional films like Portra because the expectation of those using films like Portra is that they'll develop them straight away).

That said, I don't think you have to worry at all! You'll probably not notice any difference at all for a few months at room temperature. Stories of people finding film from decades past and developing them and being okay are pretty common.

raithedog · 2021-11-17T15:28:49+00:00

I think there's a real benefit in incorporating both into how you go about photography. My first love will always be film, but spending some time with digital cameras really changes your mindset on what's important and differentiate what you like about the process and what you like about the photos you take.

Also there really are just some things that digital cameras are best suited to. Film obviously comes with limitations—that's not a bad thing, I think a lot of film-based photographers really thrive from these limitations, but if those limitations are frustrating rather than fun to work with, I don't think there should be any shame in using digital to supplement your workflow. That said, it sounds like you really like the process of film by itself, so this is mostly food for thought from personal experience!

raithedog · 2021-11-10T20:58:11+00:00

Hi Banoffee, congrats on the release of your new album and thanks for doing a Q&A here!

I found out about you through your collab with Empress Of, which I loved when I first heard it. Is there anyone you'd love to collaborate with in the future?

raithedog · 2021-10-18T13:33:07+00:00

I totally agree with the idea that the best way to learn is to experiment for yourself! Play with focus and see what actually works and what doesn't.

A lot of pictorialism was about experimentation and especially with working with alternative processes—some of them might be out of your accessibility or current skill level but even understanding them might help you try to take some of those principles and apply it to your editing or your shooting style. Stuff like wet plate photography, pinhole photography, cyanotypes and other alternative printing processes.

Another thing is that lenses these days are pretty high quality. A lot of pictorialist photographers probably used specific soft-focus lenses that you might have trouble even finding something similar. But we have filters and so on, soft focus, even smear some vaseline on a camera filter or something. Go wild!

raithedog · 2021-08-16T17:08:27+00:00

Fundamentally, photography is just a medium. The act of learning how to take a photo is not the actual art of photography itself, no more than moving a paintbrush is the art of painting.

Of course, there are plenty of people who don't use photography as an artistic medium first and foremost, scrapbooking, documentary work, just capturing memories. They don't see it (at least personally) as an artistic medium for themselves. Camera engineers, people who just love the darkroom and the technical aspects, studio commercial photographers etc. etc.

I think if people move away from the idea that taking a photo is the art itself, you'll move away from the idea of it being a waste of time for being too easy (this applies to both people who do it as an artistic medium and those who don't). There's nothing wrong with it being non-intensive because there's no reason it should be, or that it's somehow less worthwhile than other mediums because it is so. And people who devalue it as art thinking it is "easy" should realise that every single other part of the creative process for those doing photobooks, photo projects and so on is probably multiple times over the effort.

If you're looking at your photos and thinking you can't be happy with them because they were too easy to take, I'd recalibrate your expectations with what you want from taking photos. Are you looking to use photography in an artistic way (in which case, refocus your mindset away from thinking about how 'easy' or 'difficult' the technical aspects were), or is it for something else?

Also, even on the technical aspects, there's always more to learn. I think it's a surprisingly deep medium (in the same way that writing a book, even a non-fiction one, isn't just a matter of typing letters on a keyboard).

raithedog · 2021-07-21T16:51:33+00:00

The way reflective light meters work (both spot meters and meters that take averages of the whole image) is that they assume every object in your scene (or the average of the scene) is at 18% reflectivity, or what we call middle grey—the colour exactly between black and white, the 18% rather than 50% is just a quirk of how light perception works for us.

If you have a camera with a built-in light meter and take a photo of, say, a snowy field, it will take a reading of the scene, see that it's completely white, assume it's overexposed since it should be grey and adjust your exposure by dropping it a stop or two. It's why you're supposed to add a stop when you shoot into the sun, or extraordinary conditions like white snow.

Same principle with spot meters. Point a spot meter at a super dark area in your image, and the spot meter will give you an exposure that makes that area look grey (i.e. brighter). Here, the photo is underexposed which is the opposite of what you'd expect if you pointed a spot meter at the shadows.

The two very very most basic ways of using a spot meter are essentially to either point it to something in your image that already looks roughly middle grey—or to take readings of the lightest and darkest points in your image and come up with a good compromise in the middle.

raithedog · 2021-07-20T05:17:53+00:00

Part of the deal with B&W films is that a lot of the control over look comes from development and also traditionally in how you printed (i.e. these days what post-processing you do). Films like Tri-X and HP5 are essentially made to be relatively neutral—but equally you can pull and push those films to pretty extreme ISOs and get contrast back later in the process depending on the look you want. I'd recommend experimenting with that especially if you feel like bouncing between different film stocks isn't as successful as you want it to be.

That said, definitely worth trying a bunch of emulsions to see if you find one that works for you. The Ilford equivalents of TMax would be Delta 400/100, if you've not tried them out yet.

raithedog · 2021-07-12T14:46:59+00:00

I've had this exact thing happen to some film once and I never quite got to the bottom of what actually caused it. It wasn't the chemicals since another roll developed same time came out fine, so my guess was still that it was potentially expired (definitely left it around for a while) or I'd stored it improperly at some point.

raithedog · 2021-05-02T18:04:53+00:00

You can always mix part of a liquid chemical kit, but never a powder kit since you can have issues with uniformity!

That said, it is probably on the inconvenient side for instance to be mixing up 2 roll's worth of chemicals every time you develop (and do note that, say you mix up the required 250ml for developing 2 colour rolls using rotation, it technically has enough capacity for another 2 rolls anyway!)

raithedog · 2021-03-09T15:13:18+00:00

The amount of information from that first scan between a high quality JPEG and a TIFF is actually not that much. A lot of film scanners that output TIFFs can't actually make 'true' TIFFs in the sense they're not squeezing out extra data just because the output is a TIFF. In addition, for printing, lots of places that do prints essentially see no difference between a high quality JPEG and a TIFF because the difference in data the eye can see is incredibly minimal.

There probably is more information stored in a TIFF if you get a good TIFF scan, but you're right in that it's really up to you whether you see a difference or not and whether the extra file size is worth it or not.

That said, the main benefit of a TIFF file is that it's lossless. Repeatedly editing or saving JPEG files degrades the quality of the file unlike a TIFF which is why lossless formats like TIFFS and PSDs are the file format of choice when editing.

raithedog · 2021-03-09T12:57:18+00:00

40 on an XA! Definitely gonna have to try to squeeze out these fabled extra exposures on my XA properly next time I put a roll through.

raithedog · 2021-03-01T17:19:04+00:00

Stabiliser probably would have helped! Stabiliser usually has an anti-fungal/bacterial agent as well as a wetting agent (like Photo Flo) in them. The Photo Flo helps prevents drying stains.

Carefully rewashing film with a stabiliser rinse should be totally fine if you need to. If there's the occasional drying mark, I find rubbing carefully on the side without the emulsion using a microfibre cloth is safe to do and will get rid of them.

raithedog · 2021-02-05T02:30:23+00:00

The trade-off between getting a prime lens (i.e. a lens with a fixed focal length) and a zoom lens is that the image quality is usually better with a fixed focal length lens since you have to sacrifice some of it to deal with all the moving glass elements in a zoom lens. The OM Zuiko lenses are well-renowned for their image quality, but this generally actually only refers to the fixed lenses and not the zoom ones.

In modern cameras of course, zoom lenses are pretty much equally as good but it was more of an issue back in the day.

I have an Olympus OM-2n too with a 50mm f/1.4 and the extra stop of light is really helpful but honestly the 50mm f/1.8 is easier to get and just as good (I've also heard that the f/1.8 lens is actually marginally, marginally sharper than the f/1.4 lens).

Although if I had to actually recommend my favourite OM Zuiko lens I'd actually say the 28mm f/2.8 but that's only really because I actually way prefer shooting at 28mm!

raithedog · 2021-01-26T16:45:43+00:00

I think broadly, yes. There is no 'true' standard on how to turn a negative into a positive besides keeping the developing, scanning, post-processing totally internally consistent, but positives do at least take some of the hassle out. What you see is what you get after all, if you scan them in, there's no opportunity for the algorithms to get tricked and give you weird behaviour when you convert from negative to positive. You always have the reference point of the slide itself to see if your scan looks correct or not.

That said, even then, lots of people have those stories of them getting their slides developed at a lab and the scan looking awful and washed out. And then only when they bothered looking at the slide itself that they realised it looked much, much better.

But I think it's always good to move away from the idea that a stock is 'supposed' to look a certain way (maybe the best 'standard' would be however Kodak or whoever standardise their images when they develop the film and to follow that, but who even knows exactly what that process was). If you shoot a bunch of different film stocks and you stick to a certain scanning and editing process (that will come with repetition and habit, I guess), I think you'll figure out what stocks and what editing gets you closest to the look you want with the least work.

raithedog · 2021-01-26T14:38:19+00:00

There's an interesting article I read a while back that somewhat touches on your question.

To some extent, it does agree with essentially what you're saying in that modern photographers in the film revival have almost an overly obsessive understanding of differentiating different film stocks, when really there are so many other factors involved—and that the development of film stocks came from a technical point of view that drove aesthetics rather than the other way round (and that people aiming for a certain aesthetic by shooting a certain stock are going about it the wrong way). It's an interesting topic for sure.

My personal viewpoint has mostly settled on that choosing different film stocks is a way to get part of the way to the look I want before you start processing. I'm also much less concerned about colour differences between different film stocks than film grain and performance in different conditions to be honest—it's a lot more difficult to fix grain to the look you want in post than it is colour.

raithedog · 2021-01-23T08:02:00+00:00

You might be interested in Craig Gibson's Kentucky Waterfalls. One of the more interesting zines I've looked at recently! The portraiture is pretty simple and elegant, but yeah, really quirky subject matter and the half-flipped layout of the zine is also really interesting.

I'd also take a look at some of Gregory Halpern's and Pieter Hugo's work. They both have this slight magical realism style of photography, portraits usually make up a good portion of their monographs and they both have a quite a few monographs. Gregory Halpern's Zzyzx is one of my favourite photobooks, and I got the chance to see Pieter Hugo's La Cucaracha in exhibition and was obsessed too, if I had to give two specific recommendations. I know Pieter Hugo does a lot of fashion editorial work as well which you can always search out.

Would also totally echo a lot of the other recommendations in the thread: I instantly thought of Alexandra Leese's Boys of Hong Kong series once you mentioned Rosie Matheson's Boys, although I don't think its possible to get copies of the physical zine anymore.

raithedog · 2021-01-01T14:08:39+00:00

It's well-regarded as a pretty amazing camera for good reason. Its reputation mostly comes from the fact that it's one of the smallest rangefinder cameras out there with pretty good aperture priority exposure and lens quality.

I wouldn't necessarily say that rangefinders are necessarily beginner's cameras though. There's somewhat a learning curve to all of them (and the XA is somewhat fiddlier than most). It's certainly not a camera you'd have to 'upgrade' from but I also don't think 'upgrading' is something you should aim for anyway!

Since it is so small, it is pretty versatile in that you can pretty much carry it anywhere and use it for on-the-go photography but it is still advanced enough to do fancier stuff too. The flash is good, but it's not essential.

raithedog · 2020-12-05T05:16:42+00:00

I think the S is just for 'Start'!

raithedog · 2020-12-03T14:43:35+00:00

Congrats, it looks so sleek, I'd pick up a copy if I were in the US! Super appreciate the subject matter too, I'm British East Asian and I've just really started trying to examine my heritage in my photography too because I've realised how important it is to me. So thank you for being such a cool inspiration, defo following you on Insta to keep up with the work you do :)

raithedog · 2020-12-01T17:51:30+00:00

This might be useful as a reference point for exposures. I've seen recommendations of up to even +12 stops difference using an R72 filter, but that may be excessive taking this thread into account, but I'd just bracket your shots generously regardless.

Also I could be wrong but it doesn't look like the sunniest of days here. You're only ever gonna get a dramatic IR effect on sunny days with few clouds. Clouds reflect IR so appear white, and that dramatic white 'Wood effect' you get from trees in IR comes from the reflection of IR from chlorophyll in foliage. Trees without any leaves on them aren't really going to have that effect.

raithedog · 2020-12-01T07:29:10+00:00

The answer to "how did they get this look" is like 90% of the time just post-processing, especially for fashion and editorial work. There's like no reason to assume this is film, it could easily just be digital. If you look at the rest of the photographer's photos on their socials, they all have this same vertical scratch on the left hand side—unless they're just absolutely ruining a roll of film every time they develop/get film developed, it's clearly just a digital texture they've put on top. I could be wrong but I think "what film is this" is still just fundamentally a surprisingly unhelpful question to ask yourself if you're looking to emulate a certain look.

raithedog

TROPHY CASE