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Petzval + colour film

Posted: Mon Nov 08, 2010 11:59 am Etc/GMT-1+01:00
by Charles Twist
I recently bought an old lens of the Petzval design from Andrew Plume who has been very helpful. It's quite a different experience to the sharp modern lenses with their flat planes of focus. It's also far more absorbing than using a cheap plastic lens or bit of bottle glass because the focussed areas are sharp - in fact remarkably sharper than I anticipated. I tried b&w film which gives an interesting olde worlde feel and noted the very low contrast. So I thought, I'd give E6 a go and also C-neg film. The contrast in colours adds a lot in my view. The glass in the lens has a definite colour of its own which I have cancelled out in both the following examples.
The first one is taken on Velvia 50. Vignetting is due to the considerable movements I applied. There is a bit more picture on all sides, but the Epson film holder clipped them off - they can be retrieved with a better scan.
Image

The second picture was taken on Portra 160NC. The mixed lighting was interesting... Orange and green overhead, blue from outside; the lens is slightly yellow; and conversion from neg gives a cyan cast.
Image

Any comments? Improvements? Suggestions on how to develop this aspect?
Does anybody have any experience of selling this type of picture?
Regards,
Charles

Re: Petzval + colour film

Posted: Sun Jan 23, 2011 12:32 am Etc/GMT-1+01:00
by timparkin
It's something I've wanted to play with for a while, just been trying to find out how to get a good lens for it (might have to just try samples from ebay and then resell if crap).

Have you taken a straight shot wide open (i.e. no movements) - I'd like to see one taken in the woods to see how it swirls.. (three dimensional branching structures make nice swirly shapes).

Tim

Re: Petzval + colour film

Posted: Fri Apr 15, 2011 1:52 pm Etc/GMT-1+01:00
by CarlRadford
timparkin wrote:(might have to just try samples from ebay and then resell if crap).
Tim
Note to self - don't buy a lens from Tim :)

Re: Petzval + colour film

Posted: Wed Apr 20, 2011 12:53 am Etc/GMT-1+01:00
by sapata
Charles Twist wrote: Any comments? Improvements? Suggestions on how to develop this aspect?
Does anybody have any experience of selling this type of picture?
Regards,
Charles
Hi Charles...

I particular like the first one, it's quite beautiful the way the lens get almost everything so sharp in the first plane and make a complete "mess" on the backgroung. I would also have done in B&W as in my opinion works better with these kind of lens.

Re: Petzval + colour film

Posted: Fri Jul 29, 2011 12:07 pm Etc/GMT-1+01:00
by Andrew Plume
Hi Charles

I prefer your first image - oh and thanks for 'the plug' for me, certainly appreciated

best regards

andrew