July 2023
I felt like shooting some film, so I fitted a 20mm f/2.8D to my F3 and drove to Beechworth, an historic gold mining town in north east Victoria. I had no particular plan in mind. I simply walked down the main street and recorded anything that interested me.
20mm suits me as a walk-around lens. It is, like most classic Nikkor lenses, Fuzzy as a Muppet™ wide open but improves dramatically on stopping down. I normally shoot it at f/5.6, or f/11 if I want more depth.
I also shoot this lens on my D6, utilising the DxO correction module to minimise chromatic aberrations, distortion, vignetting and far-corner softness. DxO allows very good quality images from f/4. In return, I have a relatively inexpensive lens that weighs only 270g. I don’t need extra speed or weight on my photographic random walks.
Ilford XP2Super is a chromogenic film, developed and scanned at my local camera shop in Albury. I shot this roll at E.I. 400, box speed, and let the F3 operate automatically in Aperture Preferred mode.
The simple 80/20 centre-weighted meter has never failed to give me perfect exposures. The massive R&D that companies have put into colour matrix metering, first for slide films and later for digital cameras is unnecessary for colour and B&W negative film. Nothing that complex is really necessary. With XP2 Super I just set the film speed on the box and shoot.
I use DxO Photolab to alter the mid-tones and shadows a little, then crop. The Luminance denoising slider allows me to have as much or little grain as I wish. I avoid the common "plastic wrap" look that spoils so many digital images. I like the natural, random grain of film, and XP2 Super gives me the look I want with a minimum of effort.
Contrast can be changed using the ClearView Plus slider. It’s not as flexible as altering individual colour channels in an original RAW image, but does give me a little more choice.
Images on this page have been given a 10% sepia toning, the only option available in the main DxO application. Other tonings are available with DxO FilmPack, something I want to explore. Although that software is designed to convert RAW files to jpg images that mimic traditional film stocks, it can also manipulate films scans.
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