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Towards autumn and winter, I will start scanning more color & BW negatives again. I stopped in mid January 2023, when i got sick - and never picked it up since then.
In the mean time, I have made a few changes, and on top, the new big version of Negative Lab Pro 3.0 has come out - finally after 6 months delay. It should be very interesting, how the new scanning software has evolved. I also bought a new LED flat panel - albeit again with unknown CRI - but whose borders are totally encased with black plastic - which means, it doesn't leak any light out from the side. That is of course very good.
I will have to test the LED panel, if it causes any interferences - like what happened with the much more expensive Slim Plano from Kaiser - which has a high CRI (color purity), but introduced one hell of ugly patterns in my color negatives - basically destroying the scans (making them unusable)
So, i went back to my old Huion LED panel - which despite unknown CRI gives me excellent results. That panel i taped with black tape all around, so it would diminish the light leaks of the panel.
The image of Sal (2016)
is a long time exposure I made with the huge, bulky medium format PENTAX 67 II camera, back in the days afoot of Mount Etna in Sicily. He was half sleeping on the roof top of a very old winery building which he had rented for a couple of days.
So, I painted him with a flash light while the camera shutter stayed open. The tricky thing was to get the correct focus... Back then I had no focus aid (a sort of magnifier, which makes setting focus on the Pentax 67 II much better. Bulky and roundabout, but you set the focus exactly where you want it). Before that, i often noticed that my focus often wasn't where I wanted it to be. Especially with bright lenses like the Takumar 105 mm f 2.4 and the Takumar 55mm f 3.5
Pentax 6x7 SMC Takumar 55mm f 3.5 (wide angle lens)
The latter is quite unique. It's rendering style is amazing, with a cinematic feel. The background gets partially blurred out in a very handsome kind of way due to the brighter f 3.5 aperture. Normally wide angle lenses have apertures like 4.5 or even 5.6
It is a humongous lens, with a diameter of 10 cm - glowing in a kind of ever so slightly yellowish way. It is absolutely amazing !
One of a kind.
The equivalent fullframe focal length of this 55mm lens, is somewhere around 22-26 mm. It depends of how you measure. But it is clearly a moderate wide angle type of lens for the 6x7 film format.
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