Peashooter B&W's

[GeneW]

I affectionately call my Olympus Stylus Epic my 'peashooter'. It looks so incapable of serious work yet it has a good lens. I prefer the Olympus XA with its manual focusing but the XA I purchased from Rick is still in the mail so I took my peashooter out with a roll of Neopan 400 to see what it could do. It was a rainy day in the city (Toronto).

World's Biggest Bookstore (that's its name)


Edward & Yonge Sts (half a block from the bookstore)


Taxis lined up at Union Station


Union Station, lower level entrance to GO Concourse (commuter trains)


Yellow Bus (me just having some Photoshop fun on one of the frames)


Developed in Rodinal 1:50 and scanned with a Minolta 5400 scanner

Gene

[PeterW]

Hi Gene,

Well, now you know what the Peashooter can do on a rainy day - and it does it damn well! As for looking capable of serious work, the deciding factor is 'is the person behind the camera capable of serious work?' And the answer here is YES!

I've never tried Neopan film, but I like the tonal range, and I like the way the Peashooter coped with extreme contrast in the interior picture of Union Station, not a trace of flare that I can see from the illuminated signs.

Rodinal has never been my favourite developer. Whenever I've tried it the definition was excellent but the negs seemed to have a slightly 'gritty' look which suits some subjects but not all. But I can't see that here. If you hadn't said you used Rodinal I would never have guessed.

I still prefer ID11/D76, but I've got some Rodinal left, and it's said to have good keeping properties, so maybe with my next B&W film I'll give it another try. I've got a roll of HP5 in my 1936 Contax II at the moment, so when I've finished it I'll develop it in Rodinal and see what the results are like.

Oh yes, I love your bit of Photoshop Phun. Nice pen and wash effect.

PeterW

[byuphoto]

I love the photos also. Great work. Peter i too love Neopan but use D76 for mine. Gene, did you ever try the Maco/Mitsubishi I sent?

[GeneW]

Thanks Peter,

I find Neopan very like Tri-X overall, but with slightly tighter grain and not quite as capable of being pushed. I'm happy shooting either one though I have a slight preference for Tri-X.

Rodinal was never a first choice for faster iso400 films a short while ago, but the grain has tightened up so much from the manufacturers that it now makes a good, if somewhat gritty image from these films. The 'new' Tri-X (TX400) looks especially good in Rodinal, if you don't mind a bit of grain. Still not everyone's cup of tea though.

But... I made a discovery. Because my little digicam exhibits so much 'noise' at higher iso settings, I'd been using the free version of Neat Image to tame its 'grain'. I almost bought the licensed version with more features, but instead bought Noise Ninja because it's equally good and comes in both Windows and Linux versions (I run both). My discovery is that if I apply just a wee bit of noise cleanup, it's as if I changed developers and used something finer grained. I applied that small touch of NN on these images and they came up looking non-Rodinalish. The good part, for me, is that if I don't use NN, I get the really gritty look when I want it. Rodinal has wonderful shelf life -- measured in years, some say decades. And because it's not thick, like my other fav, HC-110, it's easier to mix.

BTW, I like HP5 too and used to shoot a lot of it before the problems at Ilford. Now, for some reason, it's the most expensive B&W film in the shop so I buy the less expensive Neopan and Tri-X.

I'm glad you didn't mind my Photoshop playing. I've been doing a fair bit of that lately -- examples on my flickr site.

Gene

[GeneW]

Thanks Rick. Not yet, but its turn is next. I've been shooting B&W in my Nikon SLR lately and am about to try out the Maco/Mitsubishi.

Gene