Kate and I have been working on a cooperative project to learn some Chinese characters by creating art inspired by them. The idea was to use one character a day as the inspiration for a photograph or a piece of writing. We are almost two months into this project, but she has been keeping up with it much better than I have. You can see some of what she has done here.

One from the archives.

City Hall, Columbus, IN | Hexar RF, ZM Biogon 35, HP5@320, Tmax Dev

Last week I wrote that I’m standardizing on one lens, one film, and one process until I learn something. The something to be learned is scanning and post-processing. I’ve always approached scanning like it was that part of the imaging chain represented by a cloud labeled magic. This approached demanded a processing regime geared towards producing low contrast negatives with well controlled highlights. For the most part it works, but I’m looking for improvements. I chose HP5@320 in Tmax Dev at 68F for 6 mins because it’s produced some great photos for me, but it’s also resulted in some scans that were miserable failures. I’m hoping to trying to get the percentage of miserable failures downs and maybe make the great photos even better. Sticking to one lens is just for the sake on wanton asceticism.

With the film stock and process set, that leaves me free to experiment with various scanning and post processing techniques. I’ll be giving VueScan another look, and I’ll be investigating Colin’s work with ColorNeg. I’ll also be looking at improving my Photoshop skills (Did you know that the curves tool can be used to draw something other than an S curve; who’d have guessed?). Lightzone will also get another look, as I’m not sure that I approached it the right way initially. And if my old ScanDual IV happens to die anytime soon, I guess I’ll be looking at other scanners as well.

Garden Walkway, Columbus, IN | Hexar RF, ZM Biogon 35, HP5@320, Tmax Dev

When I’m done with all this, I might well go back to what I’ve been doing for the last couple of years, but I’m hoping I’ll have learned enough to deal with some of the problematic scans that come up on every roll. Along the way, it’s fairly likely that some of the images may not look quite right. I’m not quite starting over again, but it’s something near to that, so there’s likely to be some false starts. You’ve been warned.