Steve's Old School Shot Of The Moment #4

Since Kiki is busy working on her month of sweaters, and I am in the middle of several knitted baby items, how about a photography post. Knitters, feel free to ignore this one. I promise not to cry when our average visit length drops to 10 seconds.

This is the 4th installment in a continuing series of posts where I show some old photos & usually end up whining about the elimination of all my favorite films and techniques. Click here for the previous installments - #1, #2, & #3.

Keeping with tradition, today I am going to cry about a film that was discontinued shortly after I discovered an unusual technique that it was perfect for. The film is Konica 3200 speed print film. The technique involves cross-processing the film in slide film chemicals. With the correct exposure (approx. 800 ASA if anyone has any of this left), and a high contrast image, this film would produce a slide that has positive highlights and negative shadows.

The results are quite striking and unique. This process worked best when this film was out-of-date by several months. This was a good thing, because it meant the film was 1/2 price, and since it was on its way out, you couldn't get any fresh stock anyway.

I have tried this technique with limited success with other print films. High speed films seem to work best, but I have yet to find one (including Konica's 1600 speed) that produces such consistent results.

This shot in Times Square is one of my favorites that used this technique. It is titled Night Vision. The one below is another image of this type that I have displayed in shows. Boy I miss this film!

I know, I know, stop your bawling, can't this be done in Photoshop? It can, and I use it on occasion. You use the Invert function and layer the positive and the negative images selecting which part you want to be which. To get that print film mask look, add some reddish-orange to the negative part.

The advantage of Photoshop is that you can be very selective in which part of the images stay positive and which go negative. It can be used very subtly to change colors of the image. The below Katie Klimt-like is really taken with a blue background. It also helped me achieve that Klimt gold I was going for.

In the shot below, again blue wall, and the sheet was pink. I also mixed the positive & negative to get that almost black & white skin-tone on the legs.

I find the photoshop images a little more sterile & less organic feeling than the film version. I also miss that gorgeous grain of the high speed film which is exaggerated even more by the cross- processing.

Hope you enjoy these little diversions from our usual knitting content. There will be more knitting soon. But since Kiki suggested I post for a while, I plan to continue showing some of my favorite pictures of my beautiful wife (she is the model in all of the above).

Steve