a tale of two scanners

i've talked about alt scanning methods elsewhere but i wanted to do another side-by-side comparing an epson perfection v500-scanned b/w image and a window-scan of the same image. the scanned images were taken with the diana mini, using expired efke kb 400 and diafine developer. the jury is still out on window-scanned color images (i don't always love the blues that come as a result of inverting the image) but i love it for b/w images. in particular, i love the rich sepia tones it provides the images--after, of course, i've inverted the images in photoshop. because window-scanning involves taking macro photographs of the negative, it also allows for more freedom and variation in the way the negative is photographed--close-up, at an angle or on a bend, etc.--and whether it's over- or under-exposed.

coinky-dink

what a huge coincidence. this new lot of expired film arrived yesterday and shortly after i finished the post on found/expired films. the lot included a snapshot kodaguide, one roll of verichrome 120 (exp.feb '51), one 35mm roll of plus-x pan (exp. jan '58), one 35mm roll of plus-x pan (exp. mar '68), one roll of 35mm super-xx safety film (exp. jan '55) and one 35mm roll of tri-x. I'm not sure of the exp. date on this one since the box is missing. what's more, there's no leader here, so i suspect the film has been exposed.

as for the coincidental part: when i bought the lot, it appeared as though the silver canister (far left) was empty. when the lot arrived, i saw that it contained a roll of developed b/w negs. BONUS! more images to add to my found film set. If the green cartridge in the center of the image also contains exposed film, that could mean 56 more images for that set.

i've window-scanned a number of the negatives (featured below) and I also epson scanned a few last night. the problem is, I don't want to cut the negatives into sections so i was only able to epson-scan the first and last three images on the roll. hmmm. what to do?

It's odd to look at images someone else has taken. You wonder who they were and why these images? I'm considering developing the tri-x later today to see if my guess is correct here--that the film inside is, indeed, exposed. what are the odds that it's held up, will develop, etc. if it has been? I suppose in a worse case scenario, I could develop the film and find that it hadn't been exposed. . .I'd be kicking myself then for not running it through a camera. So it's a gamble (and i"m not a gambler)--I can develop the film and hope for the best or I can run this through one of my cameras and hope for the best in terms of decent double exposures. UPDATE: I decided to develop the roll of tri-x and it was no bueno. It looked like the film had been exposed--there were shadows on the film--but no images showed up (or turned out). boo.

on inverted (or inverting) images

Ctrl+I in photoshop will invert an image. Here, I've put together some before and afters. The first image (above) is the color negative as photographed with the digital camera, the one below that is the image after inverting it in photoshop. With the bottom pairings, I grayscaled the photographed negative and then inverted it.

alt scanning--a comparision

the image to the left was scanned in the "normal" way--with my epson perfection v500 scanner. the middle image was window scanned with crumpled wax paper beneath it. the image to the right was scanned using the viewlex previewer jr. the original tree image was taken with a banner camera--a diana clone. i really like the way the b/w images window scan--in nice, rich sepia tones.

alternative scanning (part 2)

As ever, flickr has been the most amazing learning tool. I saw this image posted by a contact and wanted to learn more about how it was created. As an aside: My general method when using flickr as a learning tool is to seek out images that appeal to me and learn how the composer made them--most times this has to do with finding out what type of camera, film or processing technique they used and if I can afford the camera, film or stuff for processing, I'll give it a shot. 200+ cameras later, I was happy to find something to experiment with that allowed me to repurpose or remediate the negatives I had on hand. And that gave me reason to use craft supplies that I'd normally never have occasion to use. Following these directions and after looking at the most amazing collection of scanned negatives I've ever seen, I rigged up my own lo-tech scanner (my kitchen window) and starting experimenting with different textures--pages of my manuscript, crinkled wax paper, bubble wrap, textured craft paper, pieces of a plastic milk carton. The general method involves taping a texture to the window, placing the negative over that, and taking a macro shot of the negative and then inverting the negative in photoshop.

Since I was almost finished with my book manuscript at the time I learned about this technique, I decided to pull out some old vacation negatives and place those atop pages of the manuscript. I then started experimenting with different materials place below and on top of the negatives--there's a sampling below and still more here.