(Part 2) Best products from r/AnalogCommunity

Did some research, here's I think my bargain basement lighting kit, and good reviews too.

• $50 Neewer flash with wireless trigger. a nice manual flash that comes with a wireless trigger. You put one trigger on the flash, and the other in your camera's flash shoe, and bam, radio triggered flash.
  
• Neewer stand/shoe/umbrella kit for $33. It comes with three umbrellas.
  
• Rechargeable batteries for your flash. I've had good luck with my Energizers, and they are cheap at $13 for a charger + 4 AA's. I'd buy two of them because the cheapest price on a 4 pack is $11, so why not spend the extra $2 for the charger to have a backup charger.
  
  There, you're good to go for wireless flash for ~$100, manual flash power, works with any camera that has a flash shoe.
  
  If you can only spend $50, then just get the flash separately for $30 and the batteries. Then you can get the radio triggers, light stand, and umbrellas later when you have the money to spare.
  
  Also, eventually, you may want to get a larger umbrella - I use an Impact 60" convertible umbrella. Big, beautiful, soft light. I have two of these; they have 4.5 stars on amazon, great umbrella. They are a little unwieldy though; 60" is a big umbrella to deal with.

That looks a little like fungus but it could just be a horrendous amount of dust. It doesn't look like the typical haze which tends to be really even. I just took an Elmar apart last week to clean it. It's really easy.

You need a set of these:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0013HFYKK/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00QRPWCN0/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1

The rubber cups unscrew the black central ring on the front of the lens. That frees the trim ring with the name on it, a tension washer and a spacer underneath. Then you can spin the lens out with the spanner.

Once it's out you can open the aperture all the way and carefully clean the inside of the rear element group with a q-tip moistened with naptha (lighter fluid). Do the same for the front element. Clean them up with a microfiber cloth and reassemble. You'll still have dust inside but it'll be way way less. Reassembly is reverse of disassembly. Go slow. This lens is easy to take apart so if you don't like how it looks when you get done it's easy to redo it. Be careful around the aperture. It's likely you'll get some naptha on it when cleaning the lens. Just let it dry (open and close it a bunch of times) before reassembly.

edit - this is a great lens. Well worth cleaning.

> wasting my precious film

A real waste would be the film expiring in the camera body because you never shot anything on it.

On the other hand, I'm sympathetic to what you're saying. In fact, the feeling that film exposures are scarce is what keeps me in film photography as a hobbyist - whenever I play with other people's DSLRs / my own mirrorless digital I'm just firing off at anything. Knowing I've got a fixed number of exposures left on the roll and maybe one other roll on my person at the time forces me to slow down and think about why I want to take the picture. Maybe that means I should be more thoughtful even when holding a digital camera, but hey whatever I'm doing this for fun, so I figure whatever makes me happy. Plus there's the experience / suspense of taking the roll to be developed and seeing the results, etc. I'm probably preaching to the choir here at this point.

Maybe taking some time to learn on a cheaper film - you can get four 36-frame rolls of Ultramax 400 for like $15 - and seeing the results will help you feel more confident, without feeling like you're wasting "precious" film. (Note: I'm not here to slam Ultramax. It's just cheap, and it works. Whether or not you think it's "good" is another question entirely, and honestly I don't have enough expertise to argue / have an informed opinion.)

Overall though, remember, you're here to have fun! You don't owe the film, this hobby, anyone else, or even yourself anything. Be thoughtful as you shoot, learn, take advice, do research, but if you're afraid to take any pictures you'll never get better at it or enjoy yourself. The worst case scenario is the whole roll sucks and you spent $20 learning thirty-six ways to not take a good picture. The next roll will be better.

You have to buy it used, but Portrait: Theory is a very good book.

A bunch of great photographers talk about how they work, down to the gritty details about film, lighting setups, posing, etc. And of course lots of great images.

The light seal job wasn't terrible! I got this Foam from amazon and it worked perfectly. Nail polish remover worked best to get the old foam off and I used tweezers to set the foam in hard to reach places. If you have any questions feel free to PM me!

Personally I would keep it as a shelf piece, but I'm as much of a fan of film box graphic design as I am of the actual product inside said box.


Having said that, you could still give it a go regardless. This discussion on Flickr deals with developing a slightly different version of your film (Isopan F instead of IF).


As for shooting it, might just be easier to buy a reloadable cassette (if you don't have one) and use that. Sometimes the packaged films are already mounted to their own spools, other times it's just straight up rolled (depends on maker). If it feels like the film is already on a spool you could just pop open the reloadble cassete, remove the spool, and replace it with your film on the spool (in the dark obviously). Be sure to slide the film leader out before you seal it with the cap.

I got one before the summer and it's been great! I definitely suggest this film! It's cheap and delivers pretty nice results. They also make a 100.

Well, I found this. https://www.amazon.com/PURPOSE-ADHESIVE-GENUINE-LEATHER-AVAILABLE/dp/B07C442KT3

I'm not sure you'll end up saving money... I'm assuming you were hoping to find smaller sizes. Just to throw another name in the ring, I just got new skin for my XD from Hugo Studio, worth every penny. Good light seals too.

The L-110 in my experience gives the same results as HC-110, and with the same dilutions and times that are listed everywhere for HC-110. It also has a consistency between water and milk, which makes it much easier to measure and mix. I don't have hard numbers for the shelf life of the L-110, but I opened a bottle of it last october when I ran out of HC-110 syrup and it was still going great when I processed a roll a couple days ago.

​

It is also available through amazon prime in the US. Make sure you get the L110, not the L110R (which is the replenisher)

Could be worth it? The thing that is tough is that they have no photos of what the film is. Could be something really great, could actually be garbage. Especially cause the seller sells a lot of film I would be wary that it is garbage. People know that expired but usable film has value so if it was usable they would probably listed as expired film instead of practice film. You also aren't getting that much of a savings for such a mystery. For example on Amazon 5 rolls of Ektar 100 is $32 which is only $13 more bucks for a really high quality film. I do like purchasing expired film for that cheap cost but would rather get something where I can see the photos of what I would get!

Old oil and stuff likes to dry and thicken with age. I recommend something like this Nyoil to loosen up the aperture coupling arm. I recommend using like a needle tip or syringe to apply the oil to get the lube where it needs to go and nowhere else. Manually move it to and fro through its range of motion until it loosens up.

Also do your homework before using this oil anywhere else on your camera. Stuff like long exposure escapements are finicky when it comes to oil viscosity and might be even more out of whack if you use the wrong oil on it.

Lens Rentals did some testing on CPL filter a little while back, this initial one with mid to high range filters, and this one with some cheaper ones.

A Hoya one will be fine, but you can spend more if you want to. Roger basically says in second link that all filters do their job of filtering polarised light, but the better ones let more light through and have better coating to reduce flair, ghosting, reflections, etc.

I have a Hoya Pro-1 Digital that i used for years with no issues and Marumi EXUS (tested in that first link) that i got later when i wanted a 67mm filter to cover all my systems. I did a little test between them myself after reading that blog and couldn't really see any quality difference on the images. Marumi definitely has better transmission, only cutting the light by 1 stop, where my Hoya cut it by 1.66 stops; not sure where his 91% light transmission number comes from on that first link though.

The only other one i've used recently is the Amazon Basics CPL, which is probably the cheapest non-chinese junk one you can get. In a word i'd describe it as 'shit', has yellow and magenta casts and kills 2 stops of light, almost ruined the Ektar i shot it on.

Anyway don't go super cheap, but you don't need to do super expensive either. Thing is with stuff like filters if you get good ones and don't break them, they will probably last decades.

I think you may be making this more complicated than it needs to be. B&W is very forgiving, and a few degrees drift one way or another won't really make a noticeable difference.

You don't need fancy sous vide wands or complicated arduino setups. Get yourself a large igloo cooler and some cheap digital thermometers. I use these.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MYZZQVV/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_uCjIzbTXNT9FP


Fill the cooler with water, float your bottles of chemistry in there, and bring the water to the correct temperature, and you're good to go. The cooler will keep the water at the right temp for longer than you're developing, but even if it doesn't, you can just drop an occasional ice cube in to maintain it, or, if you're doing c-41, just add some hot water from time to time.

I use this setup for B&W, C-41, and E-6 without any problems whatsoever. I develop in the bathroom in my garage and it doesn't have any heat or a/c, so it's 90° in the summer and 50° in the winter, and this $25 setup works perfectly fine.

Ansel Adam's books are amazing. The Camera and The Negative are really good. The Print is also good but not really relevant to a hybrid work flow. Still neat reading though.

You're gonna need chemicals

Other materials:

• Developing Tank
  
• Dark Bag
  
• Accurate thermometer (I use a scientific thermometer)
  
• Measuring beakers or graduated cylinder of 1 L
  
• Funnels
  
• Three 1 L liquid containers (I used soda bottles)
  
  I was able to obtain most of these except the developing tank, dark, bag, and chemicals cheaply. But the FPP does offer a full kit for sale through their store.
  
  They also have a pretty helpful video, and there are a bunch of walkthroughs online. I'll list a couple.
  
  
• Petapixel
  
• Fstoppers
  
• DIY Photography
  
• Even B&H has one
  
  The first guide has you warming your chemicals in a bath, I use a home depot bucket.

I've found a changing bag like this to be really helpful when diagnosing problems. You can't see but you can feel around to see if the takeup reel has film or not.