Some fun with film

A few months ago, I bought a Nikon Film SLR from a friend at the Foothills Camera Club. My first roll was some black and white C41 process Ilford XP-2. I wasn't overly inspired when I was shooting and the look of the black and white on the prints was rather blah. This image of my boots was one of my favorites.

The nice thing about the film is that its relatively cheap and easy to develop if you need to use a lab since its C41 which is what color negative is. (I.e. what you can take to ANY photo lab).

I had also purchased a roll of Ilford HP5 Plus. I loved the results I got. Of course I should have. After taking in the other roll to get processed I went out shooting on Stephen Avenue with the HP5 plus loaded. And it was 20 degrees below Celsius. I was using my 70-300 mm lens that day. The problem with it is that it has no aperture ring so everything was shot at f/22. (The camera body isn't new enough to control the aperture either) Fortunately, since its such a long lens I was able to control depth of field easily enough.

Can a machine rate your images?

So I am back...hopefully with more posts per week than before! So here's a quick one.

Can a machine rate your images? The makers of Acquine (Aesthetic Quality Inference Engine) believe it can. http://acquine.alipr.com/

User have thrown some really well known images at it with strange results. The famous Afghan Girl that is one of the most famous National Geographic magazine covers ever gets a modest score of 78.1 My own personal best shot at DP Challenge and ribbon winner at the Foothills Camera Club gets a 96.9.

So what does this mean? Nothing really. The engine can be somewhat fooled. A larger image does better. (e.g. I rated my image using a link from the FCC website and the score drops to 93). In a thread on DP Challenge, users have indicated that bumping up saturation will also increase scores.

That being said, looking through the top rated images on Acquine, I think that the shots are pretty good with most being exceptional.

Last One Out, Please Turn On The Light

Its crazy. Darkrooms used to be found all over. Its hard to find them any more. Their demise in the face of digital reminds me a lot of gradual disappearance of grain elevators here in Alberta. There is just something magical and special about the old film days. Taking a roll of film and with one part science and one part alchemy breath life into it and turn it into a print.
Here is a photo essay on some of these fading icons:
http://www.richardnicholson.com/darkroom/