Tag Archives: TL-120-1

Ian Andvaag D25 submission

by Ian Andvaag

I’m a bit short on time, so my comments on my submission are a bit sparse, my apologies. My first two submissions this round are from Narrow Hills Provincial Park. I wish Fallen Pine was a half stop darker. What’s your technique for metering? I have a Pentax Spotmeter V, but I don’t think I had very good technique as many of my slides were overexposed when I used it. I mostly use a Gossen Luna Pro F nowadays, but I would like to up my game and learn how to spot meter properly. If any of you have tips or resources, I’d be glad if you’d share them with me.

Jade Lake Ridge. Tl120-1, RDP III

 

Fallen Pine, TL-120-1, RDP III

Next is Cattle Gate, from Grasslands National Park. There is an exposure mismatch that I can detect in the sky, not sure why this is as this was on my TL-120. Maybe the batteries where getting low? Has anyone else experienced this? I don’t think I’ve noticed it on other shots I’ve taken since.

Cattle Gate, TL-120-1, RDP III

Finally, a photo from the Saskatoon Exhibition. I don’t think this is as good as Bob and Timo’s slides of the fair, but I did enjoy going and taking some nighttime photos of the rides a few years ago. I wish I could control the lens flare a bit better, but I guess it comes with the territory when you shoot directly into bright lights.

Mach 3 & Water Race, TL-120-1, RVP 100

Scrutinizing Sharpness (Ian Andvaag A33)

by Ian Andvaag
For this loop, I wanted to get some feedback on sharpness. I’ve been working through some of Mike Davis’ spreadsheets and trying to determine if I’m leaving a meaningful amount of sharpness on the table by using a TL-120 or Sputnik. As I understand it, Mike’s contention is that it is not possible to get critically sharp slides with appreciable depth using standard 60-65 mm stereo base and normal FL lenses. I’m rather surprised by this contention after having seen many fantastic slides taken with TL-120s and Sputniks, but I know it’s easy for one’s eyes to be fooled, and I would guess that 95% sharpness looks close to 100% sharpness. I will say that I was particularly struck by David Lee’s Yosemite Fall slide that was included by John Thurston this loop, which seems impossibly sharp, and was not taken with a standard stereo base. I believe the proper way to investigate sharpness would be to shoot some scenes with resolution test charts at various distances and then to side by side A/B comparisons with the resulting slides in a viewer. I wish I could ask Don for advice, I know he occasionally did tests like this 🙁

 

With all this in mind, I picked out several slides which I personally believe to be quite sharp, and I would appreciate any feedback from others about any perceived lack of sharpness. Cloud Inversion should probably be considered as the “base case”. I believe the nears were around 50′ and I focused around that point, shooting at f/16 I believe. I believe this should secure more sharpness than the eye is capable of detecting in a standard viewer. I don’t really know anything about a cloud inversion, maybe this should better be called thick fog that settled into the valley.  Anyway, it was rather unexpected and interesting to see when I woke up to photograph at sunrise. There is a bit of retinal rivalry in the clouds and shadows as this is a chacha with a tripod and it takes some time to set up the tripod and adjust the framing. Apparently quite a few dinosaur fossils have been found in these badlands.

Cloud Inversion

 

I perceive Gem Lake Reflection to have a high degree of sharpness, however I don’t think it is objectively sharper than any of my other standard TL-120 slides. I believe the perceived sharpness is largely due to the adjacency effects caused by the high acutance first developer, along with the fairly visible grain.

Gem Lake Reflection

 

Bryce Hoodoo, yes this is a Sputnik shot, and there probably is some falloff in sharpness towards the corners, but I’m not sure I can detect it! Maybe the pine needles at the far right are a bit soft. This is a pretty “easy” shot to secure sharpness as the deviation is quite low, (the nears are rather far away) but I would be surprised if I changed the aperture off the default f/22 hyperfocal setting. I do think the rock and ground appear sharper than the objects in the far distance, but I’m suspecting that this is more due to the haze and lack of high spatial frequency information in the distance rather than the Sputnik having overly relaxed hyperfocal markings, although it could be both!

Bryce Hoodoo

 

Camping Breakfast was shot at f/22 using the standard hyperfocal markings on the TL-120 and I used the entire range (the near distance was 3 meters). I might be able to detect the smallest lack of sharpness in the specular highlight on the blue water bottle, but I’m not sure. I think the exposure was 1/8 of a second, so the people are probably not perfectly sharp. Yes it was posed!

Camping Breakfast

 

In my opinion, Cloud Inversion does seem ever so slightly sharper than the others, but I’m not entirely convinced it is because of the more conservative DOF tolerance, but rather that the size of the plants at this distance provides a fairly high frequency subject and the low angle of the sun provides fairly high contrast, while non-hyper shots typically have inherently less high frequency detail.

 

So what do you think? Do you use the standard hyperfocal settings on your lenses? Or do you stop down one extra stop? Or some other technique? Ok, enough nerd talk. Sorry to ruin a perfectly good post with all this talk of sharpness! I certainly don’t think it’s the most important aspect of a successful MF3D shot, but it is fun to discuss.

“Paper Or Plastic?”

by Steven Lederman

I had my slides all mounted and ready to ship a week ago.  They had been titled, scanned, and fit into (seamed) sleeves.  The problem was, they wouldn’t fit into the Dragon Folio box.  It was then I noticed that every other slide in the box was mounted in cardboard. Mine were in plastic mounts.  Instead of remounting my original four, I decided to save them for the next loop of Folio A.  I mounted four new selections, all in cardboard mounts;

“Same As Surly Curs” – the title is a crossword puzzle type of clue (the answer is “growlers”).  This was shot  during what is possibly the least-known photography celebration; “World Toy Camera Day”, observed on the third Saturday of October.  I employed a Holga 120 CF stereo camera with add-on wide angle lens attachments (which add vignetting) and a roll of Provia 400 to shoot a few photos on my deck to honour the occasion.  Developed in a Jobo processor in my basement using Tetenal Colortec E6 chemicals.

“DISC-guises” – this image is one I originally considered a focal point failure, but I revisited it, mounted the chips and decided to submit it anyways.  It was shot with a TL-120-1 on APX 100  film, and sent to dr5 for Dev1 processing.

“How To Winterize Your Vehicle” – I’m fairly certain that this was captured on one of a handful of trips to Mclean’s Auto Wreckers in Rockwood.  When I feel the urge to go explore this vast car graveyard, I call ahead, then I bake something with beer for the Mclean’s proprietors to gain my admission – chocolate stout cake, raspberry beer blaster cookies….you get the idea.  It’s either bake them something beforehand or share your photos with them afterwards, and sharing photos is just too much damned work!  Shot with a TL-120-1 on Fuji NHP 400 negative film, then cross-processed in Argentix (Arista) E6 chemicals using a Jobo processor in my basement.

“The Jazz Standard” – this title is also a crossword puzzle type of clue (the answer is “Autumn Leaves”).  This is a pinhole image, and I captured this just prior to Hallowe’en 2018, using one of Todd Schlemmer’s terraPIN Oskar^2 stereo pinhole cameras on a GorillaPod.   I seem to recall that the exposure was somewhere around the 1 min. 32 sec mark.  Todd’s cameras are 3D printed using environmentally-responsible materials.  This roll of Fuji RVP was developed in a Jobo processor in my basement using Tetenal Colortec E6 chemicals.

SILL LIFE

by Steven Lederman

SLederman-SILL-LIFEThe textures of the various elements on this empty store front caught my eye while I was exploring Toronto’s Junction district earlier this month.  A guy came out of the apartment adjacent to the store and said; “what are you shooting? Cityscapes? This is my store…I guess I should paint it, huh?”  I looked up from my crouched position and said; “no! Not on my account!”  Maybe I’ll go back and shoot a couple of rolls of black ‘n’ white film before the owner decides to turn this derelict store into apartments.

This image was captured with a stock TL-120-1, on Velvia 100 shot at 200 and then home-push-processed in my basement.  The Velvia 100 was actually 22o format – I’ve worked out a winding sequence for the TL-120 that allows me to use 220 film in it as long as the little aluminum sliding door stays closed over the red window.  When I started using 220 film in my TL-120-1 I forgot about the aluminum sliding door and had an entire roll come out with transparent red balls embedded in the images.  I gave the useable ones titles with the word “Mars” in it, i.e. “Mars Needs Gas”.  Each image on the roll looked like it was being invaded by the planet Mars.

Misty Waimea Hills #3

by Bob Venezia

Misty Waimea Hills #3Some months back I was trying to figure out how to use a neutral density graduated filter with my TL-120. I knew I could get the round, screw in type, but that limits the composition of the image. At some point I had a brainstorm that the cokin style X-PRO series filters were big enough to fit over both lenses. So I found a used filter holder and it was indeed big enough to fit over both lenses. Next I had to find someone who had X-PRO sized ND grads. The place I found was in the UK and they claimed they had Lee Filters in X-PRO size. I thought this had to be a misprint because I could find no evidence anywhere that Lee had ever made such a filter. But after several emails to the UK company, the rep assured me they filters were real, so I took the plunge. My best friend friend build me a mount for my camera and we devised a system for getting the filter set properly (since you can’t see through the taking lenses).

This image has some gratuitous depth in the foreground which I included because a hyper didn’t make sense with the TL-120. Other than that, I really like this image. It was taken on the road that goes up Waimea Canyon, just past the 3 mile marker, on the island of Kauai. I used a 3 stop ND grad to darken the sky. It also got me some misty hills which is an effect I’ve always wanted to capture.