BLAST CLEANING EQUIPMENT

This is a reproduction of and old photograph I had originally shot on Kodak Ektar 25.Arguably the best color negative film Kodak ever made.It was slow ,color reproduction was dead on and had virtually no grain. It was a darkroom enthusiasts dream , you could push it 2 1/2 stops and pull it 2 stops in processing alone , plus the 7 stops of film latitude, you could do wonders with this film.

A little history .

Originally this was shot using a travel studio lighting setup using a Speedotron D402 kit 400 watts of very clean light.. That much hasn't changed. The main light was a Chimera medium softbox AS the background.The foreground light came from 2 large fill cards. I shot the scene with a Bronica ETRS with a 150 mm lens . Worked out pretty well back then . It was a straight on shot with no liquid then. I sold hundreds of the photograph.

Digital changed all of that , with the original setup , I was constantly getting way to much flair , maybe a real testament to Ektar 25. So out of necessity I had to change things up a bit.

Here is what I did and what I used :

Nikon D90
Nikkor 18-105 zoom kit lens. Yeah I know but I like the versatility of the lens.
Lighting: Speedotron brownline D402 with 2 M90 heads set at half power asymmetrically.
Background (main light) Bare bulb with reflector. 100 watt seconds
Fill: 2 foam core flags with 2 sheets of printer paper to control the specular highlights. 50 watt seconds.
( I was lighting close in my very small living room) I didn't need high watts per second.
2 sheets of white foam core , 1 sheet of plexiglass , 4 sheets of printer paper to blend the background/foreground ,and the Peppers.
Triggered by an old Quantum Radio Slave 4
Trengove Studios aqua gel.
POST was done minimally in Adobe Lightroom 2.5.Mostly for the graduation in the bottom .The border comes from Paint Shop Pro X2.

Hope you like it and the history and description.

© 2009 All rights reserved. This image may not be used in any manor without my express permission .

Cokin Filters

I’m still late uploading these, this one is for Tuesday and the tin mine miniature ornament was taken on Tuesday, then I added it to the Cornish landscape background which is an old image. The day was pretty much the same as other days spent at home trying to catch up on things. I had created two masters for my Christmas cards, or rather 4 masters as each card is printed 2 sides. I printed out an initial specimen of each card and although the text came out okay, none of it was in black as the black printer head is faulty of course, but the photos did not come out as well - from a distance they didn’t look too bad but on closer examination they had lines across them. I tried deep cleaning but that didn’t do any good, I even tried re-aligning the head but the pattern sheet I had to print out to choose the best (most solid) setting from didn’t have a best setting! So now I have 3 options - go ahead and print the cards even if they are not perfect, although they could get worse. Buy a new printer now - I was waiting to see if the prices went down after Christmas. Buy some Christmas cards!