35mm film

Color film pushing disaster

Blog, Pocket Full Of Fatcaps

“Color film pushing disaster” what a nice title for a punk song or for a B-movie, isn’t it?

I was at a squat to see Darko play, they kick ass live, between other support act there were also the SOCS, great Bluesy driven Punk Rock from italy! In my bag I had my Yashica FX-3 Super 2000 loaded with a roll of Agfa Vista 400.

Well, I had already pushed the Vista 400 to 1600 ISO (as you can see HERE) and I decided to try and push it to the extreme: 3200 ISO.

I know that the “rule of thumb” of pushing film is to limit it to three stops and no more… But I was a drunk punk at a punk show so: who cares!

In addition to the many things that could go wrong (grain galore and reciprocity failure) the lighting was terrible: soft, diffuse and warm!

Even worse I was using color film so, the colors themselves, will probably go mad or went dull or be gorgeus: this is part of the unpredictability of pushing/pulling film!

Not happy with the possible defeat and having to finish the roll I’ve tried to take some pics at another live show with Red Car Burns (some post and some hardcore that You need to check out!!) and The Twerks (a bit of punk and some powerpop with a topping of 70s).

BTW the lights sucked even this time.

As you can see in the following gallery everything that could go wrong… it did!

The Twerks
Red Car Burns
SOCS
SOCS
Darko
Darko

Well, thankfully we are in 2016 and we can use our computers to try to recover the images! Again (just like HERE) the B&W is the “great savior” of us poor film enthusiasts. You can see the black and white processed image at the end of this post.

Note: I think I’ll try this extreme pushing of my beloved Agfa 400 with better lighting conditions 😉

The Twerks
SOCS
SOCS
Darko
Darko

 

 

Downtown Boys & dealing with red lights + color film

Blog, Pocket Full Of Fatcaps

collage_20151029150140835_20151029150930490_20151029181026558As a big fan of H.P. Lovecraft I know Providence in Rhode Island, and when i travelled to New York i managed to find some time to go there, where Cthulhu lives 😉

For me this was the only reason to know something about this city, but now, Downtown Boys are another good one!

They planned a gig in Milan and (fortuntately) I was there taking some film pictures. The venue “Sotto la Sacrestia” is not so big, so i took up my Yashica EZ View with its 30mm lens.

You can understand my disappointment when i noticed that the show was lighted only in red!!!

Fortunately I choose a P&S camera with AF and built in flash (Yashica EZ View) and I didn’t need to take care of the adverse light situation, but, once scanned the negatives, i noticed a subtle reddish glow on the skin of the musicians making them appear like boiled lobsters!

I was also using a roll of AGFA Vista 400 (that has warm and saturated colors) and so the effect was further amplified

Artifacts

Artifacts caused by adjusting only the red channel to increase skin brightness

As we all know B&W is the “big saviour” for this kind of things so i decided to convert all the photos!
Here it comes the second problem: the areas lit by the red lights were darker than usual! I’ve tried to brighten them by boosting the red channel but was unsuccessful! This because the neighboring areas, illuminated by the white light of the flash, were not affected by this adjustment causing horrific artifacts!

In my opinion, the best thing to do, was to boost the white balance temperature to have all the warm colors affected with a “red veil” and then boost the red channel to increase the brightness.

Scanned color film (Agfa Vista 400) -> B&W straight conversion (dark skin tone) -> B&W with WB & red channel correction

In the sequence: scanned color film (Agfa Vista 400) -> B&W straight conversion (dark skin tone) -> B&W with WB & red channel correction

About the band:

Their gig was a blast: english and spanish lyrics, politically driven, punk attitude and a saxophone!!! yes a saxophone, I never thought I could love so much this instrument in a punk band! I must say that their show was so engaging and full of energy that I regretted very much not to know the lyrics to sing out loud!

Check the photo gallery scrolling down and do yourself a favor: listen to the album and go see them when they play nearby!!!

https://www.instagram.com/p/BGYY0BMnM-1/?taken-by=buzz.mg

 

 

 

Brooklyn: film backstage for the Pois Gras’s shooting

Blog, Built To Last

While I was working as a lighting technician for Pois Gras, for a shooting inspired by the film Brooklyn, I took the opportunity to make a quick test with my Fuji DL-200 II and an Agfa Vista 400 film.

I just wanted to evaluate how this film reacts to the warm light of sunset.

The photos become more vivid and saturated and the colors richer as the sun was declining and the warmth of the sunlight increase.

You can read the Pois Gras post with the beautiful photos by Paola Saia here: Un look new vintage ispirato al film “Brooklyn” (sorry only in italian)

Thanks to Isabella Novati who posed, to Sara Pamio who took care of clothes and accessories and to Paola from Pois Gras who personally made makeup and wigs.

Yashica ML 50mm f1.9 + Agfa Vista + Bad Frog

Blog, Built To Last

I was at a free live show in Piacenza and in my bag i was carrying one of my “Photo Shove” film cameras and my Yashica FX3 super 2000.

On stage, in the town square, the Bad Frog was entertaining the audience with their italo-punkrock but unfortunately, in a location like that, it was virtually impossible to hope that there was some pogo or crowd surfing.

Thanks to the headliners rigs, the light set was more “professional” so I decided to take some pics with my SLR: I was testing a roll of AGFA Vista 400 pushed to 1600 and a 50mm f1.9 ML Yashica lens!

We must consider that I was shooting at F1.9 and F2.8, so my DoF were approximately between 1 to 2 meters and that the manual focusing in this low light conditions is really hard to do.

However I’m surprised about the results! Both the lens and the film have returned god colors and sharpness!!

Next time I’ll have to take more shots and try to push the AGFA to 3200! (HERE you can read about the first failed attempt)

Oh and I’m on the hunt for another ML Lens (maybe a 24mm)!

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