Welcome to 1908!

[David]

So last Thursday I took my Mamiya/Sekor out and the battery in it must be weak because it was WAY off with the metering. So, again, almost an entire roll came out unusably thick. As a potential remedy, I bought $14 worth of plumbing supplies -- a 2" PVC connector, a 2-4" expander, and a 4" cap. With a drill (my table saw stays at my brother's house), I carved out two amazingly level slots in the expander's sides. These slots are directly across from each other. Then I used two 1.5" wide clear plastic pieces, such as are used for picture frames, to form a negative sandwich. With two small clamps, I pressed the negatives together and -- TA DA -- a negative holder for photographing negatives. How, you may ask, does it fit on my macro lens. Well, I'm glad you asked. When I took the Nikon to the tanning bed, I accidentally dropped the UV filter on the ground taking it off. That cracked it and I had a spare 72mm ting. That ring fits PERFECTLY on the 2" connector piece. Some Krazy glue will keep it there and the off-gassing is no issue since there's no glass to fog. A couple step-down rings and it's set.

So here's the first lesson-learned: Don't use textured plastic. Even if it doesn't look textured, as the stuff I got didn't, if there's any modicum of texture, it amplifies exponentially when the negative is photographed. You'll see what that looks like shortly.

Second lesson learned, use a saw to cut horizontal slats, not a drill. The drill takes too long.


Here's an unformatted image capture from the K-7. At f22 (only f11 and above returned sharp results), this required a 30-second exposure. So with this I cropped the image to the frame and then used the curve function to make it a positive image. Want to see the results?


The white around the edges comes from vignetting on the negative. Not the negative, but vignetting caused by the plumbing-parts negative holder. To reduce internal glare, I had to use electricians tape to make a smaller opening for the light (no large drill bits for the PVC cap at the apartment.) The opening was a bit too small.


From a technical standpoint, this was probably the best capture.


This, however, is my favorite. It's what happens when a bunch of seagulls are hanging out on the rocks below the walk and your colleague makes hawk noises. The seagulls freak the heck out.


This is probably my favorite result. I just like the composition.

So, all these examples were from very thick negatives. How might this translate with a properly exposed negative? Good question.


Here's a properly exposed negative. Well, slightly over exposed. This was scanned on the Epson Perfection 1670 and had some gamma adjustments to correct overexposure.


Here it is from the plumbing contraption.

Here may be a third lesson learned: Had I been able to do this outside during the day instead of with the camera pointing up at the kitchen light, the results may have been better.

[mmelvis]

Some interesting results from the hand crafted adapter. Any pictures of the final product?

[Drack]

Wonderful results