A Black & White Manhattan on Film

[Benjamin]

<span style="font-size: medium; font-family: tahoma,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"]Not long ago I have all my film during my trip to the east US developed and scanned. It was a long process in the darkroom all by myself and even longer facing my iMac and Nikon film scanner... Finally, I have put everything together and the pictures are now ready to show!



<span style="font-size: medium; font-family: tahoma,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"]I used my Canon 1V-HS along with the EF 16-35mm f/2.8L II lens all the way, and the film loaded was Ilford HP5 400 Plus. It was a bit too fast to use ISO400 films on a sunny day, but the HP5 film was the only film handy. I get to use f/11 and f/16 often to slow down the shutter a bit while getting desired DOF for landscape. Overall, I get the result I expected.


<span style="font-size: medium; font-family: tahoma,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"]So, here is the Manhattan I saw from my viewfinder.<span style="font-size: medium; font-family: tahoma,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"]..





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(Wait... This is the Harvard Square in Cambridge, MA... Well, the day before I arrived in NYC)





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(Standing in the middle of the road to look at the Empire State Building)





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(A door full of danger)





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(To build from the ground up - once the WTC towers were supposed to be here...)





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("I Love NY" for $10)





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(Wall St. but no traffic)





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(A Manhattan Dock with the Statue at a distance)





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(A Manhattan Skyline - with all kinds of people...)





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(The Statue and people with cameras)





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(Our symbol of freedom)





<span style="font-size: medium; font-family: tahoma,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"]I<span style="font-size: medium; font-family: tahoma,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"]'d like to hear how you think of the pictures. Plus, I like the feeling of film.[]


<span style="font-size: medium; font-family: tahoma,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"]Benjamin

[powers_brent]

I like a lot. I miss shooting wide angle. Everything I do lately is at 50mm or 100mm. And yes the look and feel of film is amazing.

[Oren]

Yes, something in it looks special, but being the person that I am, I have to stop and think: is it really special or this is just because that you said it was film? ...I have no idea, do you have some picture of anything of the above which was taken with your DSLR? If so, convert it to B&amp;W and post it here so we can tell if the film is really that special and not just because "film" means something old for us.

[Daniel Browning]

Great photos! I like them, even the one dutch angle shot.

[Benjamin]

Thanks a lot for the comments![]

Yes, something in it looks special, but being the person that I am, I have to stop and think: is it really special or this is just because that you said it was film? ...I have no idea, do you have some picture of anything of the above which was taken with your DSLR? If so, convert it to B&amp;W and post it here so we can tell if the film is really that special and not just because "film" means something old for us.
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Unfortunately I only have my film SLR with me on the day I took these film pictures, my 50D was with me on other days but I only used digital to take pictures of people including myself and the content of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. So not really anything comparable to be posted here...


I indeed have done lots of convertings from color to B&amp;W on my digital works, some of them are also in my album on this site. I find digital have very gentle tone and it has better resolution (a lot better comparing to HP5 400 film) at low ISOs. On the other hand, however, film has better dynamic range. This is why I'd like to use negatives when I have to shoot in harsh lighting conditions. (i.g. bright day with highlights and shadows just like in Manhattan) The blue sky always gets a blow out into completely white on my 50D when using the parameters suitable for ground subjects; film copes with this much better in my opinion and gives certain detail on both highlights and shadows. I think just for this reason along I will need to get help from film often.


The other thing I find film is different is the grain it produces. When I'm looking at the digital B&amp;W prints, I can tell
from the grain (noise rather) that the picture is made from a digital camera. But when i enlarge directly from the negative onto a
8x10 darkroom paper I get a completely different kind of grain - it looks more natural not like man made, but that's only how I feel.


I haven't post my Velvia 50 shots yet. Slides have fantastic tone and purity in my opinion especially when PROPERLY scanned. I need to twist the settings a bit on my 9000ED scanner and I'll post some of them later when I get the effect i wanted. I'll be completely satisfied if the scanned pictures appear exactly like how they look on the light box.


PS: I also find I concentrate more on actually taking pictures when I use film because a film camera actually has much less parameters to set once it's loaded with film (i.g. no ISO, picture style, WB/shift, etc...), plus, you never spend time review your shots after taking them[]


Ben