It is early morning of New Year's Eve.

Sal and I are planning to have some photo session in my new Photo Studio at home. I have no clue what exactly we will be doing - but the plan is to do something, between fun and serious. I did already get the new colors for painting skin.

Clown Series - revived

With the thought that perhaps doing a Sal version of Per-Olof's "Clown" series from 1992-1994.

Extreme shallow DOF portraits

I also would like to do some portrait with extreme shallow DOF, like with the Canon FD 85mm ƒ1.2 L lens - similar to what Daniel and I did on him back in 2012, with his EF 85/1.2 L lens on the EOS 5D Mark II camera.

Loose thoughts

But these are just loose thought ahead of this afternoon's / evening's photo session. The background spotlight I have not yet gotten, so it will have to be without. Alternative I can always "fake" it via Photoshop, or at least giving it a blue feeling in the background.

I love that new life of old color negatives

how the old negative like the main photo of Per-Olof in red and green light - can after 32 years reach such a lovely quality due to the digital tools available to us in 2024/25.

I mean it is really much better than what I remember. Plus you can really fine tune photos into a never seen brilliance, almost close to the memory of color slides.

Bringing color negatives onto paper via RA-4 color papers, sometimes had its perks. The new RA-4 process somewhere introduced around 1990/91 was light years easier for the hobby darkroom user at all level - bringing brand new life to all kind of color work.

And yet, there were of course problems from time to time, attached to the darkroom work itself. Processing wasn't an issue really, but it takes some time - to make test strips until you reach the final, preferably neutral color balance. This was however most easy / tolerant with images that had strong, dominating colors (like the main red/green photo of Per-Olof). it was a bit more difficult with more general photos, with gray areas, sky or other more gentle nuances. Here even slight color casts can be annoying to the naked eye.