[Leica] Neopan 1600 (was Leica M8 does a wedding)

[mark at rabinergroup.com (Mark Rabiner)]

> Anybody else who uses Neopan 1600, feel free to chime in.  (Hello, Daniel
> of the Fading Nordic Light!)  :-)
> 
> --Peter
> 
Before I did so much digital Neopan 1600 was my default street shooting or
location call it film. I'd go from there to the 100 for high rez and studio
strobe 35mm stuff and hardly ever use the 400 which I also think of as high
rez. Just not as high. I was totally a Fuji black and white film shooter
other than the 220 Plus x I'd shoot in my Hasselblad and twin lens
Rolleiflex. Best flesh tones of any black and white film. I'm actually
serious I do think of such a thing. Flesh tones. High tones which make
people look good. Apparently both Avedon and Penn thought so too I found out
more recently.

I don't think its tricky to shoot. Or not more tricky than any other black
and white. Unless the prevailing thought, or myth, overexposing black and
white is not something I casually do or recommend doing. An under exposed
neg can make for a great darkroom print. And over exposed neg is never going
to. Muddy hightones in a print equals death. Concert scenes are easy to over
expose without a spot meter or spot setting. Or M5. With any film at any
asa.
So I'd err on the side of under. Your eye when looking over almost any shot
goes right to the highlights and could care less about how much detail is in
the shadows.
But you can scan an over exposed neg and redo the curve in Photoshop and
make a perfect inkjet print out of it every time. Or any over exposed neg
from your body of work that you never could get a decent darkroom print out
of. Or just select your high tones in photoshop and separate them.
No more crushed highlights hand me the pliers.

In the past years with all the digital my gallons of mixed up chemicals go
to waste time after time so I just have been shooting first color neg to go
to black and white. Then c41 xp2 what I think of as mono chromegic which
makes even better black and white prints I was surprised to find. I have
about 20 rolls I need to bring and and I'll have someone in Manhattan make
scans on cds or DVDs once I find out who that person should me. Many from
Germany last week.  Makes Disneyland and J. R. R. Tolkien's Hobbit-land and
Oz all look like dust bowl blues. L. Frank Baum was from German Ancestry by
the way. Its tiny cobblestone streets and castle after castle on the Rhine.
And all the houses are like Hobbit Tudor houses.

I just checked and Tolkien is a German name.
http://www.tolkiensociety.org/tolkien/biography.html

Turns out Disney's dad was irish Canadian
But his mom was German.

My point is Fairyland = Germany.

The people there who do not look like goddess's and gods look like gnomes
and brownies. Sprites and pixies. (this is supposed to be a compliment)

Oh and I bought a roll of Agfacolor 200 from a cute Kiosk when I ran out.
Maybe the Austrians saved Agfa too.

I've been shooting black and white mode with fine jpegs on top of my NEF's
and enjoying it about as much. With the Kiosks and the pixies.

So lets see we've got the Nef's and Jpegs and gin, jinn, imp, deev's format.
Nix format with dwerger compression.
Harpy algorithms.
Afreet, barghest color spaces.
Flibbertigibbet Photoshop filters and
Pigwidgeon plug-in's.

Its all obviously part of the German Enigma.
Requiring an .ULTRA extension.


Mark Rabiner

JFK runway

http://rabinergroup.com/

Stay tuned next week for markrabiner.com