Archive for the ‘Howto’ Category

Reloading Disposable Cameras

Saturday, October 17th, 2009

Don’t throw away that disposable camera, you can reload it!

Disposable cameras are a great tool for parties when you don’t want to risk destroying your point and shoot digital camera. Disposable cameras can cost as low as $2 per camera, and that’s with a roll of film!! So in case you lose it, you won’t be forced to shell out 100s of dollars for a replacement.
I understand that film is becoming harder and harder to come by nowadays, but I know there’s a group of us that are dedicated to keeping the medium alive and well.
Well recently, I decided to try this out and it works well.
What you’ll need:
  • Disposable camera
  • Changebag or completely dark room
  • New roll of film
  • Flathead screwdriver

The process:

  1. Make sure the film in the disposable camera is used.
  2. Tear the covering off of the disposable camera exposing the plastic body.
  3. Take the flathead screwdriver and pop open the bottom of the camera.  The back should swing off.
  4. Take out the used exposed film.  Don’t lose the takeup spool from the disposable camera and make a note of which way it was situated in the camera.
  5. Now comes the fun part.  Get a new roll of film.  Go into a completely dark room or put everything into a changebag.
  6. In complete darkness, completely unwind the roll of film.  As you’re unwinding it, start winding it on the takeup spool.  Just make sure that the spool is facing the right way.  Make sure to wind it up really tightly on the spool.
  7. Now put the spool back full of film in the original place.
  8. Place the film canister with the film attached from the spool to its original place.
  9. Carefully snap the cover back on.
  10. Take it out of the dark room or the changebag and you’re ready to go!!

Have fun using your incredibly cheap camera over and over again.

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Posted in Cameras, Disposable, Film, Guide, Howto, Photography | 2 Comments »

Developing Black and White Film – How To

Tuesday, August 4th, 2009

I decided to write up how to develop black and white film. It’s pretty simple if you follow instructions. I’m going to try to get really detailed with every step so you can always refer to this guide for advice and guidance.

Tools needed:
  • Bottle Opener (for cracking open metal film containers)
  • Scissors (for cutting the film off of the spool)
  • Developing Tank
  • Graduated measuring cup
  • Photo chemicals container
  • Funnel
  • Film Clips
  • Stirrer
  • Thermometer
  • Timer or stopwatch
  • Developer
  • Fixer
  • Wetting agent
  • Film squeegee (optional)
  • Patience
  1. Find a completely dark room (closet, bedroom, bathroom,etc), it has to COMPLETELY dark. Test this by closing your eyes for about 20 sec, then opening them and giving them a chance to adjust to the darkness. If after a minute you can put your hand in front of your face and see it, it’s not dark enough. ANY ambient light will affect the film and it will get exposed. I used my boiler room in the basement of my house and just put a towel under the door to block all of the light from leaking under the door.
  2. Acquaint yourself with your developing tank. I have an Omega Universal Tank with plastic reels. I find that the plastic reels are a little more forgiving but they supposedly don’t last as long as the steel ones, I haven’t had any problems yet.
  3. To practice loading film, find some developed film or sacrifice some undeveloped film and load it onto the reels with the lights on. Get familiar with the procedure, and try it with your eyes closed. Once you’re good with that, you can do it in the dark. Finally, once you master that, you can move on to the real thing.
  4. Set up the film canister, the reel, the developing tank, the can opener, and the scissors in a way that you’ll be able to find each of them in the dark.
  5. In absolute darkness, pop open the bottom (opposite the side with the spool sticking out) of the film canister with the can opener. Then take the spool out gently and be careful not to scratch the film.
  6. Still in the darkness, guide the film onto the reel and start loading it on by twisting the reel back and forth.
  7. Once you get to the end of the roll, take the scissors and carefully cut it off the spool. Or you can try to undo the tape. I find that it’s easier to just cut the film off. Just be careful not to cut yourself.
  8. Load the reel onto the rod in the developing tank and seal the lid. The tank is now lightproof so you can turn on the lights. The rest of the steps can be done in the light.
  9. Find out how much liquid your tank holds. It could be written on the tank somewhere. If not, just fill it with water and dump it out into the graduated cylinder. Now you know how much liquid your tank can hold.
  10. Mix the correct ratio of developer to water for the size of your tank. ie: my tank is 20 oz and my developer is 1+14 (1:14), so to do the math: 1/14*20 = 1.428 oz of developer and the rest water.
  11. Your film should have instructions inside the box for how long to develop it. If not, you can look it up here: http://www.digitaltruth.com/devchart.php by selecting your film and your developer and temperature.
  12. Once you find out how long to develop it, stir the concoction and measure the temperature. If it’s way above the recommended temperature, let it sit and cool down. Otherwise developers are pretty tolerant within a few degrees. If you’re having trouble getting the correct temperature, I would mix both the developer and the fixer at the same time in separate graduates to let them get to the same temperature together.
  13. When the developer is ready to go, get the stopwatch ready and pour in the developer into the top of tank. Cover the tank with the red (or black) lid and agitate it for a full minute by aggressively flipping it over back and forth. Then tap it against some hard surface to dislodge the bubbles from the film and put it down. Repeat the agitation process for 10 seconds every minute for however long your film and developer combination require.
  14. Remove the cap on the tank and start pouring out the developer about 5 seconds before the indicated time. If it’s reusable, use a clean funnel and pour it into a storage container. If not, just pour into the sink.
  15. Now comes the stop bath. Some people prefer to use a chemical stop bath, I use plain old tap water. It does the job and it’s cheap. Just fill it with water and put the cap back on and agitate it for about 1.5 minutes. Dump that out once your done.
  16. Next, pour in the fixer and follow the instructions that came with it. Agitate it just as you did the developer. Usually rapid fixers will take from 2.5 – 5 minutes to fix the film or make it not sensitive to light. The fixer is reusable a few times, so you can pour into a storage container for another use later.
  17. Now comes the fun part. You can finally unscrew the whole top to the developing tank. Leave it under cold running water for about 5 minutes to wash everything off of it.
  18. For this last part, I would use distilled water because hard tap water is much more prone to leave water marks on your precious prints as they’re drying. Mix the correct amount of wetting agent with some water. I use 1 drop for 16 oz of distilled water. It sounds like nothing, but it’s a potent chemical. Screw the lid back onto the developing tank and pour in the wetting agent solution. Agitate it for about 1.5 minutes and pour it out.
  19. Now you can take out your reels and inspect the negatives. Gently pull the film off of the reel. Attach the film clips, the weighted one, on the bottom and hang it in the least dusty place in your house. If you have a film squeegee, you can give the film a quick once over. Just be careful not to have any debris stuck in the squeegee or you will scratch the film.
  20. Let it hang there for about 1 – 2 hours to dry.
You have successfully developed your own film!! It costs about $100 for everything new. So after you develop 10 rolls, you’ve already broken even. The more you do it, the better you become. To be honest, the hardest part is loading the film in the dark, the rest is just having a lot of patience to wait for the chemicals to do their jobs.
If you have any questions, feel free to leave them in the comments.

Posted in B and W, black and white, film developing, Guide, Howto | No Comments »

How to Create a Partial Black and White Photo in Lightroom

Thursday, July 23rd, 2009

This is one of my favorite effects due to the effect it has. You can turn any mundane, ordinary photo into something interesting. However, due to its simplicity, I feel that it does get overused.

So proceed with caution, at least in terms of use:
  1. we’re going to import the photo into Lightroom: File -> Import Photos from Disk
  2. Go to Develop Mode
  3. Select the adjustment brush, by clicking on it, or just hitting K
  4. Slide the Saturation down to -100
  5. Press O to turn on the overlay to see what you’re doing
  6. Set the size of the brush
  7. Begin coloring, and press Z to zoom in to get in to those sensitive areas.
  8. Press O when done, to see the final product
Tips:
  • Don’t forget to adjust the size of the brush as needed to get closer to the outline of the subject where you want to leave some color.
  • If only leaving one small part in color, start with wide brush strokes around the outside of the picture
Before:

After:

Posted in B and W, black and white, Guide, Howto, Lightroom | No Comments »

Fixing a Portrait

Sunday, July 19th, 2009
As you can see in this photo, the subject wasn’t completely ready for the shot. She has some food left on her lower lip. Fortunately, this is quite an easy fix and took all of 5 seconds in Photoshop.

Here’s how:

I saved the photo as an original size PSD file from Aperture.

Then, I opened that in PS and I zoomed in to 100%, making it easier to work on just the spot that needed fixing. Next, I clicked on the Spot Healing Brush Tool. I set the size to 19, mode Normal, and Proximity Match.

Then I just colored over the spot and voila, as you see in the next photo, the food is gone.

Posted in Fix, Guide, Howto, Photoshop, Portrait | No Comments »

How to Add a Watermark to Pictures in Aperture

Friday, July 17th, 2009

This is something that has been bothering me for a while and today I finally took the time to figure it out and will now implement Aperture in my workflow henceforth.

Remember that a watermark doesn’t necessarily mean that people can’t steal your images, it just makes it a little harder.
So here’s how to add a watermark in Aperture:
1) You need to have an image as your watermark; I created mine in Photoshop. If you don’t have Photoshop, you can use any imaging software.
This is the design that I created:

I know it’s basic, but that’s all I wanted for this.
2) Save it as whatever format you like, Aperture is able to open most formats. I left mine as a .PSD file.

3) Open Aperture and go to the Aperture menu.
4) Then select Presets -> Image Export. From there you will get a

preference dialog that looks like this:
Notice halfway down there’s a checkbox that says “Show Watermark”. Click that and then Choose Image and point it to your saved watermark file. If you would like the watermark to be the same on all size images, you can leave the “Scale Watermark” unchecked. Otherwise you can check it.
Also, you can adjust the opacity of it.
5) Finally, do this for all the file formats you would export in by highlighting them one by one in the list on the left hand side of the dialog box.
Once you finish that, you’re set! All of your images will now have a watermark in them. If you have any questions, leave it in the comments.

Posted in Aperture, Guide, Howto, Photoshop, Watermark | No Comments »