The First Roll

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kularski/sets/72157623654258769/ 

My first roll has now been developed and scanned. I am happy for the most part, since this was just a test roll, I am happy to be able to identify the subject in each shot. I am a little disappointed that the shots came out as bright as they did. They could have been a little more even in my opinion. I believe the problem lies in that I was using an average exposure meter mode (it looks for 17% grey over the frame). I am considering using a spot metering or center weighted metering for the new roll. I feel a bit like I am starting over with photography. I have become too reliant on the instant gratification method of shooting photos. If something doesn’t look right, just adjust and shoot again, simple. Unfortunately I did not get that benefit with these and therefore all I can do is try to do better with other rolls. Another thing I did not anticipate was the impact of depth of field on film. On some images using f/1.8 mattered, making them almost indistinguishable, but on others, because of subject position, it wouldn’t have mattered if i was at 1.8 or f4, most of the object was focused. Finally, my scanning sucked. I need to go back and redo like the first 20 or so exposures. First some were scanned at 1200 DPI, others have an issue with their colorspace (scanned as color), and yet others are just off-center with the negative scanning frame. There is room for improvement there, but so far I have uploaded everything as it was first run through the process.

I am looking forward to the 2nd roll. I have no intention on taking an entire month again for the new roll. I intend to get started on it soon and spend at most a week filling it up. I have all of my software ready now, so there is no excuse for not going out with the camera and enjoying it just as I do my digital camera (even if i do need to be anal about records).

Developmental Results

I finished shooting my first roll of film around 7pm on the 4th (like 6 hours ago), and now I have developed my first roll. I was a little worried at first because I had never developed film before or anything even close.

I mixed 1 liter of working solution of developer, indicator stop bath and fixer, and 1 quart of the Hypo Clearing Agent (enough to make a full gallon of working solution).

Originally I had intended to wait until I had finished securing light away from my bathroom, but then tonight I discovered that my closet was even darker already, so for the first roll I decided to give it a shot. I set up my table with everything I needed in the closet, my reel and tank on the left, film, opener and scissors in the middle, and my tank lid on the right. Just as with my practice roll, the hardest part was getting the film canister open. It took a little while, but I got it (although, the canister didn’t fully survive). I popped the roll out with minimal trouble (although, it was more “springy” than my 9 year old practice roll of Kodak C-41). Cutting the leader of was easy enough, got it pretty straight too, but had to do it twice, as I didn’t get it all on the first attempt (another area the Kodak C-41 is different). I fumbled around with the reel for what seemed like 5 minutes, but was probably more like 30 seconds, trying to get the feeding started. In my trial runs in the daylight the Kodak C-41 tried to curl and refuse to go onto the reel, but in the actual loading the Fujifilm Neopan 400 there were no such problems. There was some hesitation at the end from the film being tight on the spool and of the reel getting full (practice was 24 exposures, actual is 37). Right as I was getting the reel into the tank I realized something, I could see the white hangers in the closet, and make out shapes of my shoe boxes on the shelf. “Uh oh” was my thought, I was sure that because I could see the hangers that the film had been ruined by the tiny bit of light that was coming in from one corner of the door. I decided to finish up, putting the funnel in place and the lid tightly on the tank. I moved into the light to collect myself and prepare my work area for the developing process. I mostly used my own blog entry as a guide, that and my handy stop-watch on my Casio G-Shock (I’m a nerd). I worked through the process, although partially wondering how such a crude system as a daylight developing tank could actually keep light out (since mine has the funnel thing inside for even-filling, and not the lid with the cap). I was super diligent in my agitation, which I also worried about potentially being too much agitation. I worked through the steps, pretty much worrying about light until I had finished off a full 10 minutes of fixing. After that point it was mostly just following the procedure and trying to not worry about what the final result would look like.

I finished off by adding 8 ounces of water to the tank and adding a splash of wetting agent, then swirling it for 30 seconds. At that point I dumped the tank and pulled out the reel. I was a little scared of what I saw at first, because things looked very dark. Apparently wet film looks dark when there are multiple layers of it. I nervously pulled the film off of the reel and began to notice that my pictures were there, exactly as I had framed them over the last 30 days, almost perfect it seemed. I had a little trouble with frame 36 coming off of the reel, it tried to hang on, but I managed to right it and get all 37 off without a problem. The roll is now hanging in my bathroom from a shelf by its clips (and weights), patiently drying.

In the morning someone will need to cut them film, then I will sleeve it and consider scanning it.

What to call it?

I am at the moment rewriting one of the key features of ExIf 35, its ExIf writing tool. I am switching from the .NET Image class’s PropertyItem stuff to .NET’s Bitmap Metadata class. I am making this change because of a recent compression issue that has come up with using the Image class. It is also believed that the metadata class is more useful since it will work with all of my metadata that I am fighting with (all my enemies in one basket).

Now, the conversion isn’t really the issue, but having to relive some of the stupidity that has been left in ExIf, or its implementation, on the other hand, is a concern for me. In ExIf there lives two properties, ImageTitle (0x010D) and ImageDescription (0x010E). These two were designed as a pair, and were supposed to be implemented as such. In the present day of metadata reading though, it would seem that everything uses “ImageDescription”, and nothing cares for “ImageTitle”, even when the field that the utility claims to show is “title”. It is also interesting to note that once ExIf evolved, it was decided that there should be a title space, so “DocumentTitle” was born, several properties down the list. Now, ExIf has 2 titles and a description. It doesn’t really matter though, because nothing much uses either title space, everything wants to read and write description. Microsoft complicates this by throwing their own XMP field into the mix, “Comment”.

I remember now why I was glad that this portion of the code was finished, so I wouldn’t have to face the back end of ExIf again.

Problems with Images in C#

I am encountering a not-so-happy issue with programming in .NET for something that works with images. Because I write metadata and I don’t just read it, I am encountering issues regarding image quality and compression. If I let the happy little framework do things its way, I end up with files of reduced size. If I change the quality setting to be 100% (which I interpreted as “don’t fuck with it”), I get files that are much larger. I am intending to work only with metadata, not the images themselves, so I am at a loss as to what is going on here. I would really like to be able to directly copy the data from one file to the new file (since .NET requires a new file for each time a modification is done). I am so pissed off right now, since I have been releasing software for the past few weeks that will reduce image quality if allowed to overwrite the originals, and because I wasn’t using real files until now (just my sample images, which are simple geometric forms, under 10KB), I had no clue it was doing it. I knew a long time ago that my first pass (ExIf) was doing it, but I had no clue it was going on with the 2nd pass (XMP).

The Developing Process

To get myself prepared for developing my first roll of film I am outlining the steps required here.

Step 1:

  • Set up tank (cleaned), reel, bottle opener, film and scissors in light-proof room
  • Turn off the lights
  • Open film canister and gently remove film roll
  • Cut off half-width leader on front of roll
  • Load film on to reel
  • Cut end of film off of the roll
  • Insert reel into tank
  • Insert center column and funnel
  • Lid tank tightly
  • Turn lights back on

Step 2:

  • Fill tank with clean water, agitate for about 1 minute.
  • Pour out the water
  • Load the developer. Start developer timer. For my Neopan 400 and my Adorama developer (which acts like LC29), the time is about 6 minutes. Tank needs to be agitated for 10 seconds or so every minute to keep fresh developer on the film.
  • At end of time, empty developer.

Step 3:

  • Rinse the tank with fresh water once or twice
  • Pour in stop bath solution (mixed in 1/63 ratio with water for Kodak Pro Stop Bath)
  • Rinse again

Step 4:

  • Pour in fixer (1:4 mix for Illford Rapid)
  • Fix for 5 – 10 minutes, agitate for 10 seconds every minute
  • Empty tank and rinse again

Step 5:    

  • Washing
  • After rinsing, pour in hypo clearing agent (1:4 dilution)
  • Wash for 2 – 5 minutes
  • Rinse

Step 6:

  • Wetting agent.
  • Pour small amount of wetting agent into tank, fill with water, agitate for 30 seconds
  • Pour out wetting agent.
  • DO NOT RINSE

Step 7:

  • Dry.
  • Remove reel from tank
  • Remove film from reel
  • Clamp both ends of film, hang to dry
  • 4 – 8 hours

Some details are a little sketchy, particularly the diloution stuff, but once I get closer to time for that I will work out the details.

Image Rotation in ExIf

ExIf rotation makes no rational or logical sense. Below is code that rotates an image based on its present position in increments of one quarter turn (90 degrees) at a time.


private
int rotateImg(int currentOrientation, int rotate)

{


int next = 0;


int prev = 0;


switch (currentOrientation)

{


//1,6,3,8


case 0: next = 6; prev = 8; break;


case 1: next = 6; prev = 8; break;


case 6: next = 3; prev = 1; break;


case 3: next = 8; prev = 6; break;


case 8: next = 1; prev = 3; break;

}


if (rotate == 1)

{


return next;

}


else
if (rotate == -1)

{


return prev;

}


else

{


return next;

}

}

Public Politeness

An experience I just had makes me question whether or not people understand the concept of being polite in public anymore. In a university library, on the first floor, behind the book racks you would think that there would be an air of quiet and a relaxed academic environment… well, mostly there is. Now, add to that a person diagonally to the right behind you by maybe 6 feet chomping on corn chips. Also, to that add someone who has not turned off their Windows system sounds or bothered to mute their laptop, but sounds like they are navigating through their entire file tree. Now, on the opposite side, a few more feet back, add another person typing on a keyboard that is obviously not soft touch with her long fingernails hitting the keys in a rapid pace. Also, said person is on the phone. The academic usefulness of the environment has just fallen several points.

What has happened to being polite in public? Maybe I am just overly considerate, but if I have to eat in a public place that isn’t a restaurant, I tend to pick foods that are quiet (and usually have low aroma, but that’s just paranoia), and I always mute my laptop sounds, just because not everyone needs to know when I have mail (yeah, that was the other one, some guy logged into AOL and had mail, I shouldn’t know this information). I can’t really complain much about the nails and the keyboard, just situationaly unavoidable, and I probably sound a little loud on my keyboard as well since I tend to type based on emotion. Talking on a cell phone in a library I guess is more of a peeve than being rude, but at the same time, libraries are places to read, work and reflect. It is what it is for the purpose of some isolation.

Star Ratings Suck

As a person that is being rated more and more often lately in varying areas and on multiple sites, I am starting to really despise the star rating system. First of all, the system is entirely anonymous from the recipient’s perspective. This means that it isn’t possible to determine the difference between the overexciting rating of a friend or the hateful ratings of an enemy. Second, it is too easy for someone to rate something that they have not seen/used, just assigning a rating arbitrarily. Finally, if someone gives 1 star, you know they didn’t like it, but how useful is it to know someone didn’t like something? It puts things into a situation of thinking that people don’t like it, so therefore, just give up, as opposed to having actual comments and being able to respond to those comments by making changes to the way things are done in the future. Without an opportunity to improve, sharing artistic or technological creations with the world is pointless.

Last Few Tweaks

I believe that the majority of ExIf 35’s major goals have been implemented now. I just spent the last hour working in support for tagging/adding keywords to images. It’s a little feature that I didn’t really give much thought to at first because it’s not something I do with my digital photos. I have added it as a possibly useful feature at some later point when usefulness maters. I have tested the mechanism’s output with both ACDSee and Flickr, both of them accept the way that I have done it, which works for me as a test of success (since those are the primary things I would care about tags in). I have also refined the handling of the 0XA300 (File Source) ExIf tag, as well as its related fields in other specs (“DigitalSourceType” in Iptc4xmpExt, and a duplicate for the expected output of ExIf in /xmp/ExIf35 as “FileSource”). The application is almost finished being written for its original goals. Before I begin working on any new goals I will have to get another developer to help me go through, clean up some code and then perhaps get that developer (yeah, if he reads this, he will know who he is) to use his wonderfully talented aesthetic eye to help me plan a few ideas for menus or other UI elements to allow the expanding of functionality of the application.

I guess once I finish with the next build all I have to do for the next little bit is try to work on the webpage for the app, which at the moment is very much too bare: http://exif35.pcfire.net.

Making Preparations for Developing

I have shot almost half of my first roll of film, not a lot by any means, but I feel that I am now in a position where I should begin preparing for developing. All of my stuff is here already, but I now have to begin preparing for actually doing this. Getting all of the stuff together was no big deal, but now I’m nervous (in an excited kind of way). I have never done anything like this, and so far everything like this has been easy for me, and all of my art has been very low risk, but things could go wrong here and I have to prepare myself for that. My biggest worry at present is the fact that my developer solution doesn’t list information for my film and my developer is not listed on the master developer list; therefore, I have had to guess at the developing time for my film (guessing 6 minutes from available info). I had to locate a developing solution on the master list that matched the qualities for the film and time combinations listed on my bottle. It turns out that based on that information, my developer is a good match for Illfotec LC29 in a 1/19 mixture. My developer recommends a 1/19 mixture itself, which makes their data match even better, so I just hope that it is right. Unfortunately there is no way to tell until a roll has been developed and fixed how the timing will work out. All that can be done is a time adjustment on future rolls. Now I just have to teach myself to put film on the reel and set up some sort of orderly procedure for the developing process (I smell another software development project coming for timing the processes).

My equipment is here.