Doing iPhone selfies is one thing... but sitting in the studio, trying to make quick-and-dirty studio self portraits - in high resolution - shows you a world quite different. it is like wandering around on a world map or planet map on my face skin *LOL* Hair not cut for 3 month, no shower for the day *rolling my eyes* Well, well wrinkle, winkle star... - those are the perks of aging. Now even present in this studio...

I am just not used to see myself like that up close - because the last times I have done that, was back in the days with Daniel. As we made a lot of studio photography in 2011-12 when we used the (other room) studio, including made self portraits. And that's been a while... something like 13 years ago.

Speaking of old times; like the lady in the movie 'Titanic' said
"The reflection has changed a little".

I am however happy, as long I look "Ralf-ish"

I made a bobo...

In the previous self portraits (previous page), I forgot a setting; all of the frames were made with wide open aperture ƒ2.4 on the Pentax 67 Super-Takumar 105mm. There is a switch, which needs to be in manual mode - setting the active aperture. if not put in manual mode, the aperture stays always open, no matter what value you put in. No wonder the chromatic abberations were pretty severe... Somehow, i never noticed it.

I upped the ISO to 400, and stopped down to aperture ƒ9.5 - which means the sharpness of that lens is really excellent including the fine micro details are visible - without minimal chromatic abberations. I had to increase the ISO due to that the bluespot light was actually a notch to weak.

A bit weak blue background spot ?

Well, well. But that's OK. It doesn't need to act like a very strong blue background spot, but be a bit more discreet. Now with a digital camera, things are a bit different, I remember that when i used the blue background spot with color film, i made it sometimes too blue / too strong. I guess overall, I tended to make images with stronger colors, when i printed them in the darkroom.

With digital image files - everything is more subtle and rich, as you get so many more nuances to work with. Therefore my digital images are usually not as contrasty or dark, as they used to look like when darkroom-printed on traditional photo paper.

Anyway...

it is fun to experiment. Even if i do not truly enjoy self portraits today in 2025, compared to let's say 20 years ago. But at least I can continue to learn while experimenting with different lighting situations.