Ecuador and the Galapagos

I have just put up a new gallery with shots from Ecuador and the Galapagos.

Film Gallery from Galapagos

Hope they are enjoyed.

I also shot a couple of rolls of SCALA underwater, I am waiting for them to come back from the lab, so I will update the gallery later (assuming, of course, that there is anything worthwhile on the SCALA).

Craig,

Pardon my ignorance, but what is SCALA?

Cheers

James

Actually, probably should be Scala (don't think it is an acronym)

Scala is a high speed black and white slide film made by AGFA. It can be push processed to 1600 ASA, with a base speed of 200 ASA.

A short article describing the use of this film to photograph deep wrecks can be found here, written by Leigh Bishop. I exposed one roll at 400 ASA and one roll at 1600 ASA, the 400 at Darwin's Arch and the 1600 at Cousin's Rock, using ambient light only. It can only be processed by two or three labs in the US, so it takes a long time between shooting the film and seeing the result.

Craig,

These are some nice shots. Thanks for the link - again, I get to sit here in my office and see beautiful photos from the Galapagos...sigh.

So now that you have shot both formats on a trip, you can make some comparisons right? :-)

What would you say your number of keepers and percentage of keepers is from each dive - film vs digital?

And I guess I have to ask what you think a keeper is - I'm thinking suitable for large format printing???

Cheers

James

What would you say your number of keepers and percentage of keepers is from each dive - film vs digital?

 

And I guess I have to ask what you think a keeper is - I'm thinking suitable for large format printing???

Well, James, that's an interesting question B)

In essence I am going to paraphrase the comment I made on my gallery announcement at DDN. At the time, the film gallery had 33 shots in it, while the Digital gallery had forty shots in it. With the addition of the black and whites the film gallery is now bigger than the digital gallery, but it is worth noting from the content of the galleries that I have proportionally more topside shots in the film gallery than the digital.

I know from the file names on the olympus that I made about 15% more exposures with the digital than I did with the film camera. I kept about 30% of the digital files, and scanned about 20% of the finished film. So my keeper rate for the digital is indeed higher than the keeper rate from the film camera, and it is markedly higher for the underwater stuff.

(Actually, the underwater keeper rate from the 3040 pounds the film camera into the ground mercilessly, which is ironic when you consider the cost of a 3040/pt-10 next to a Nik V, 15mm Nikkor, Ike SS200, arms and cables, all the film and the frickin processing cost :angryfire: (which was a bulk deal of $6/roll process and mount for the E6 films)).

There are a couple of complicating factors in what makes a keeper. I throw out with extreme prejudice pretty much anything that is out of focus or motion blurred, though in the case of the topside stuff I did keep and scan the Blue foot booby and flightless cormorant shots in spite of this prejudice. They have motion blur that is detectable on the high resolution scans but is not really noticable once they are sampled down to web resolution (next time, I need that yummy looking new 200-400 f4 AFS VR lens Nikon has just announced ).

If by keeper you mean things that I would not feel embarrassed submitting to a picture editor or as a part of a magazine article submission, I have probably 10 keepers total from the trip, and they are all film. I would love to write a piece about the many seastars around Isabela, but I think I would be pushing it to submit it with the paltry little 9Mb files from the 3040.

Keep in mind also that I shot more "macro"/closeup stuff with the digital, while the film stuff is purely wideangle/CFWA. I am sure it is no surprise to anyone that letting the camera do the work with exposure etc in the closeup shots yielded more correctly exposed and lit images than eyeballing strobe distances and angles with the 15mm and manual exposure control. If I had been trying to pull off HerbKo style blue water background CFWA with the digital, I am pretty sure my keeper rate would have been quite a bit lower on the digital.

I suppose the most important observation, though, is that I am now trying to sell a kidney so I can finance a dSLR and housing and still afford a trip back next year.