what a big day!
so glad to be vacationing during vacation. went to port townsend today, and shot a dizzying amount of film. some will go up on my flickr account. will be developing some tonight maybe so…so so tired…everyone is worn out.
yay. developing my own black and white now. incredibly easier than i first had thought.
cross reference:
hey this is part of what vacations are for!
i love full frame…
everything is now mixed. waiting on the tank. maybe tomorrow?! first roll developed?
i know gangs of my contacts already home develop, but to those who aren’t…if *i* can do this, anyone should be able to.
the smell of the fixer was the most familiar…oh yeah i’ve done this before! never on my own though…and i got waaaay to close tonight while mixing it (since water was cool, i had to beat a bit of the crystalled powder into dust)…got me coughing all evening.
following the instructions at chromogenic.net
i’m nervous about this, in particular, given no guidance on temperatures, and if should heat my mixture? or simply just take its temperature and make a best guess at the development times given on the site referenced? perhaps it’s discussed in the comments…
(more examples in my flickr stream)
thoughts on my ring flash, since i’ve gotten a number of queries.
a few weeks back i got a bug for checking out a ring flash unit. if you didn’t already know, a ring flash is a type of flash that mounts to your lens in a circular fashion. from what i understand it was originally designed for macro photography, to aid in eliminating shadows (and glare).
i’ve seen the effect for ages, and hadn’t known what created it, until i checked a photo by jeremy cowart
and read the subsequent comments. i had resigned myself to the fact that i couldn’t be able to afford one. then i came across an article that shows how to make your own ring flash…WORD! but yeah i’ll never get around to that, and yeah it looks silly.
enter ebay. through the wonder of ebay i found an inexpensive ring flash unit, the phoenix RL59N (N presumably for Nikon). for (a bit) less than $100
i could get into the high fashion photography club. :)
ordered it, got it. the first problem i had however, is when i fully seat the thing on my Nikon D70 (it was claimed to work on several Nikon models, of which the D70 wasn’t specifically mentioned, but many cameras “around the same” were…), i got a blinking warning. look up in the manual, and found out that it blinks when the TTL mode of the unit and the camera are incompatible. solution? turn off TTL mode on the flash unit. that’d be cool, if this thing
had one but it didn’t.
somehow i found out that by slighty unseating the flash unit, i got it to the point where it was not working in TTL mode anymore (who knows how safe it is, but i’ve not experienced a short yet :), and the flash works!
Nikon makes a Ring Flash unit, the SB29(S), which, to my knowledge *will* work just fine on any of the Nikon units, providing TTL capability (among other features i’m sure) but it is about $2-300 more expensive. however, if Auto TTL is important to you, then you’ll probably want to cop it. me, it’s a digital camera for cryin out loud, i can take pictures, look at the view screen,
and adjust accordingly:)
in short, i really like this flash. what i don’t like however, that may be quite a bit better on the more expensive unit(s), is that the recycle time is *really* crummy (IMO nearly 30 seconds), the way i have to seat it is obviously hacky, and it is made for 52mm thread…the SB29 is 62mm, which would work a bit better stepping up to the 67mm of the D70 kit lens (haven’t used the step ring from 52-67mm yet to try).
i haven’t used it for “heavy duty” work, but for the results i get, i’m quite pleased, and i didn’t have to spit out tons of cash for it.
any other questions are welcome!
