No more snap

I'm again on Naxos, working in a quiet environment on some python code manipulating PDF files. Yesteray I worked from 9 to 5 and after work friends came to pick me up by car and deliver me to... the beach. Currently there is a kind of weird weather. There's almost no wind, high humidity, temperatures higher than usual. It's still fine with me though, compared to Athens it's really, really easy here. Especially if you can get to the beach after work.

The water yesterday was spectacular. We were on a beach where usually surfers and kite surfers rule. Now they are on leave. The water was cristal clear. It had that famous blue of the Aegean, only more so. I've got no underwater pictures of it though. My Pentax W60 broke again on Sunday. Same problem as last year: The shutter button is stuck. Sometimes it thinks the shutter is pressed down, sometimes it's stuck on "not pressed". No way to take proper pictures like that. I should start to drag the Arca-Swiss to the beach and buy a Nikonos for the underwater work.

10.8. - 21.8.: Switzerland

After being in Paris (and the Normandie), I was in Switzerland too. My father had a big party, lots of family to meet, nice. The plan was also to do some hikes in the mountains, but due to the gray, rainy weather, few of that we actually did.

We went to see some places in Appenzell. We got a good thorough soaking of rain in the Toggenburg. Some of the last days we went to the Ticino. Took the funicular (the steepest in Switzerland) up from Piotta and roamed around the alpine lakes up there. Slept in the wonderful hut capana cadagna, also ate there very well. The picture is the look from the backside of the hut in the evening. No vintage cameras for me up there, we only had the trusty Pentax W60. Sadly we had to go down the next day, but at least we had a wonderful hike.

7.8. - 8.8.: Normandie

OK, I was lying. I wasn't actually all of August 1st to 10th in Paris. The 7th and 8th of August we went to the Normandie, together with Saad and his wonderful family. We went to see Honfleur and Etretat. These are both kind of touristy towns, but still they are nice.

We had rain on the first day. Didn't keep us from exploring Honfleur. The second day in Etretat was supposed to be sunshine, but when we got up, it was all gray skies. So off we went anyway. We went walking around town, then walking on one side of the town along and on top of the cliffs. We even went for a swim, it was cold but cool!

When we slacked on the beach after swimming, the sun came out. The suncream was in the car. By the time we got back and had some coffee-analogs and crêpes on the terrace of a cafe, I had a slight sunburn. So what, two days with a red head isn't so bad. I've burned through lots of film on Saad's Mamiya. Since we handed the camera around, there are also some shots that I don't remember if I took them or if Saad took them. What the heck, photography was fun there!

1.8. - 10.8.2010: Paris

From August 1st till August 10th I was in Paris. I had the chance to play around with Saad's Mamiya C330, a medium format (6x6cm film format), twin-lens reflex camera. It's an incredible good camera, but it weights a ton. I didn't have much access to the Internet. Instead I had a really good time.

Setting the Focus Distance on the Epson V700 Scanner

The biggest problem with the otherwise quite splendid scanner Epson "Perfection" V700 (pretentious little product name there) is hitting the right focus distance... and keeping the film flat. Here are some little hints to solve part 1 of that riddle, to find the right focus distance.

The usual procedure is to make a series of test scans, setting your film carrier to each of its three possible heights (or, if you bought the Betterscanning holder, an binary search through a lot of different heights).

The problem with that is, assuming you're using large format (or even "baby large format" 6x9cm, like me), that you won't really be able to see any grain to focus on. So you'd have to rely on having a sharp negative. But how sharp is sharp? When I tried it at first, I didn't know if I'd hit the edge of what's possible with the scanner or if my negative was really not that 100% sharp. So here is what I've learned.

First, switch off any ICE (or in VueScan "infrared") dust removal. It will give you a slightly reduced sharpness, which makes your job to find the right focus hard. It will also speed your tests up a bit, since the scan head doesn't have to make two passes.

Second, use a large resolution, even if it's more than you usually would need. 3200 spi (samples per inch, also called "pixel per inch" sometimes) is probably safe. To save some time, I set the output format to JPEG and only 24bit RGB. I learned to resist the temptation to try to do something that you can later use at the same time.

Third, the real secret: Use a color negative with some parts that are underexposed (e.g. stuff that is in the shadows). You will get big, fat grain in those parts. See how the grain looks in the "ghosts" of these people there? You can see that you have the right focus distance, even though that part of the image is not technically "sharp".

This is a small piece of that big picture, some people looking at the sunset. The scan is done at 1600 spi, you'd see it even a bit better at 3200 spi. (The small sample pictures are at 100% of the 1600spi scan resolution and not sharpened.)

Here is the same piece of the image, with proper color correction and "curves" adjustment layer applied. The grain has disappeared, because well, it's in the shadows anyway.

Fourth, for once, dust is your friend. As much as we hate dust on our scans usually, here it helped me quite a bit. Because dust has 100% sharp outlines most all the time. So when you see a little spec of dust that is sharp... well, you're quite close to the optimal film focus height. The difference of the height of the dust spec probably won't matter much.

As for the 2nd part, getting the negative flat, I can't be of much help there yet, still fighting with that!

No Gazoline

The owners of gas transport trucks are on strike. It's happened before (e.g. 2008). Today is the third day with long lines in front of gas stations. Their problem is the "economic measures" the government puts on them. The tourist season does not seem really much of their concern - or rather, they may counting on it leading to maximum annoyance of everybody.

The streets are much quieter then they usually are. People use their cars as little as possible. There doesn't seem to be much understanding for the truckers, given that the economic stuff they will now have to put up with is not at all much worse than what everybody else is facing (and some people got it really a lot harder).

So I bought a Scanner

For quite some time now I had been contemplating to buy a scanner. The thing is, where they develop my films (Tόλης / Tolis in Μπενάκη street), they scan them. But those scans are below the possible resolution with 6x9cm negatives and quite often, shadows and highlights are clipped. Whenever I had taken a night picture, that scanners automatic setting got way off too.
So, finally I searched for a shop that had an Epson V700 on short notice, called for the order and received the box on Wednesday. It was 30€ cheaper than the quoted price, nice surprise. Only thing missing was the power cord, but I found a spare one at home.
Since then I have been fighting with the beast in my spare time. I went several times through highs and downs, praising and cursing me for my decision to buy my first own scanner ever.

On the upside, the machine produces huge scans from my negs (e.g. 80 megapixel are no problem). Even better is that I have no more clipped highlights, I get files with 16 bit per channel. The end of banding and washed out skies.
The downside is that this machine needs some awkward checking and setting of the focus distance - and even with that you have to check and double check each scan for focus, due to the film holder, it being a flatbed scanner, the negative's tendency to curl and flap - all that. The scans from Tolis are much sharper. Still good scans are done for the Epson's money, if I had the cash, I'd have gone for a dedicated film scanner.
For scanning software I forked out some more money for Vuescan, a 3rd party software that works with almost all scanners and does a great job.
So, here I am, happy with my new toy and ready to learn a lot more and ready to fill up some hard disks with huge files - a 6400 ppi TIFF in 48 bit RGB fills up a meager 1.7 gig on disk (never mind that 6400 bit is really beyond the scanner's true resolution).

Προφήτη Ηλία και Παγωτό στο Ιντερνέτι

Χτες ήταν η γιορτή του προφήτη Ηλία. Όπως είναι το έθιμο, ανεβήκαμε με τα πόδια σ' ένα εκκλησάκι πάνω στον Υμηττό. Είχαν φωτίσει το μονοπάτι, το ξέρω και πολύ καλά, γιατί πάω συχνά για φωτογραφίες εκεί. Κανένα πρόβλημα δηλαδή. Πέρα από αυτό είχε και ωραία δροσούλα.

Στην δουλειά είχαμε μια ωραία έκπληξη χτες: Ένα site που φτιάξαμε επί πολύ καιρό μπήκε online. Δεν το είχα φτιάξει εγώ, αλλά στην τελική φάση ανέλαβα κάτι σαν το τεχνικό project management. Έκανα βεβαίως και κάτι bug fixes στων κώδικα. Το site είναι σε flash, κάτι που δεν είναι ακριβώς η πρώτη επιλογή μου... αλλά παίζει τώρα. Οπότε αν ψάχνουμε την Häagen-Dazs στην Ελλάδα με τα παγωτά τους, μπορούμε τώρα να την βρούμε στο haagen-dazs.gr. Ένα πολύ μεγάλο ευχαριστώ σ' αυτήν την φάση πρέπει να πω και στον φίλο μου τον Javier, a.k.a. graffic που μου βοήθησε με κάποια απίστευτα τεχνικά προβλήματα.

Yes, I'm Back in Athens

Last Sunday I returned from Naxos. On a boat filled to the last place. Lots of tourists too, so I guess the tourism industry can't complain that there are no tourists at all. It was good to leave in a place that's easy to get to from the port in Pireus. After traveling by boat it's nice to get home fast and take a break.

On Monday I went to the National Garden (next to Syntagma square) with the Arca and took lots and lots of (well, for the standard of working with the Arca... about 27) pictures of Vana Xenou's sculptures there. I got the films developed and (rough, low quality) scanned on Tuesday. I think I did a good job, except for the last few one's, when I was too tired after a day out in the dust and the heat. The main point was to be at each sculpture at the right time when the sun would peep through the large trees around everything... and then get a good point of view and don't f* up the composition. Maybe I'll post some pictures somewhere.

The duration of the exhibition was extended to somewhere in September. Plenty of time for a pleasant stroll through the park to see some sculptures!

Second Week of Work on Naxos

My second week on Naxos is slowly coming to an end. I've managed to go for a swim three times (twice on the weekend, once on an evening). I've worked 8 hours every working day. Not too succesful... I think I could have done better. But I've slowly overcome some obstacles in the code, which is something too. Now further changes will be a tiny bit slicker and with every step they get easier.

Most evenings I was out taking pictures with the Arca. Not as persistent or productive as I was in spring. A bit more relaxed and lazy and very happy. When I was taking that picture in the little church yard there, I was so happy and relaxed, I thought I wouldn't care much if I didn't get to take the picture. It was such a nice moment in itself. In the end I found a good angle for a picture I think - and even though I took some time maybe I didn't totally miss the best light.

I still can't manage to go and take pictures in the morning too. Sleeping in the country side is just too sweet and relaxing. Makes it hard to get up. During the daytime it's too hot to go photo walking in the landscape. It's OK to take the occasional picture in a village, but with the midday hours I'm more productive working on the computer in the coolth of the house.