Tag Archives: TL120-1

Paul Gillis d26 Submissions

by Paul Gillis

When I received the Dragon Folio, I realized that I hadn’t taken any MF stereo images since it last came my way.  (Shame on me!)  So on a beautiful sunny afternoon in early October, I took my TL-120 (original 80mm lenses) down to the National Gallery of Art in the center of Washington, DC.  I shot 3 rolls of Provia 100, mostly at f/16, 1/60 sec.  I didn’t totally flub any of the exposures, but many of my 18 pairs were marred by excessive contrast, usually with my main subject being too dark.  I have some very powerful battery-powered strobes, which could have helped some of those pictures.  But I imagine the security guards would have chased me away if I’d shown up with an assistant & flash units & no commercial photography permit.  I don’t think they even allow tripods unless you have a permit, so these were all hand-held.

It’s a very sad state of affairs that there are no longer any E-6 processors in the Washington, DC area.  I tried out a lab in Manhattan called the Color Resource Center.  Their price was very reasonable ($7.50/roll + $6.75 return shipping), and I thought they did a good job, with a fast turnaround.  But the post office really fell down on the job, taking a full week to get my package from the DC suburbs to NYC.

Paul Gillis Image #1 for Dragon Folio d26

NGA Sculpture Garden

Two Modern Sculptures in the National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden.  On the right is Four-Sided Pyramid by Sol Lewitt, from 1999.  I couldn’t figure out the name or the sculptor for the tall piece on the left.  To me, this slide looks okay in a viewer, but perhaps it will have too much disparity for some people.

Paul Gillis Image #2 for Dragon Folio d26

National Archives

The South Entrance of the National Archives Building, seen from the Sculpture Garden across Constitution Avenue.  I wished that my camera had a wider lens for this shot.

Paul Gillis Image #3 for Dragon Folio d26

Flowers in the Sculpture Garden

I think these may be some of the same flowers seen in the foreground of my first image.

Paul Gillis Image #4 for Dragon Folio d26

Fountain, National Gallery of Art

One of two matching fountains on either side of the great staircase to the South Entrance of the National Gallery of Art’s West Building.

“PHOTO WALKS” – Steven Lederman’s d25 Submission

by Steven Lederman

I belong to a number of Photo Walk groups here in Toronto. Participating in a Photo Walk is a great way to get one’s steps in, socialize with like-minded folk, and maybe use a camera that hasn’t been taken out in a while. If one is not driving, one can join one’s aforementioned like-minded friends in quaffing great flagons of beer after the walk, get sotted and beligerent, tip over tavern tables in anger, and tell everyone in the room what one REALLY thinks of them and their pretentious little point ‘n’ shoots.

“BETWEEN A ROCK AND A HARD…….ROCK”.
Captured during an excursion with the (Toronto) ANALOG FRIENDS photo walk group. TL-120-1, Kodak E100SW

“A STREETCAR NAMED RETIRED”.
Made on a solo photography jaunt. Sometimes you don’t want to be with others and their YouTube Influencer cameras. TL-120-1, Kodak Lumiere LPP

“CURB APPEAL”.
Snapped during a pleasant meandering with the TORONTO FILM SHOOTERS photo walk group. Sputnik, very expired and damaged AGFA APX 100 (Foma-R reversal kit)

“DOWN BY THE BAY”.
Photographed during a chilly Fall cattle drive with the TORONTO PHOTO WALKS (TOPW) photo walk group. There was an actual theme set for this photo walk, which was “Towers and Reflections”. Stereo Samulette, Kodak E100S

Paul Gillis d25 Submissions

by Paul Gillis

Sinks of Gandy, Randolph County, W.Va.

Paul Gillis submission #1 for d25

Upstream Entrance of the Sinks of Gandy (wide view & closeup).  Gandy Creek flows right under a ridge extending out from Yokum Knob, emerging back into daylight about half a mile to the east.  The cave has been well-known & heavily visited since at least the 1830’s, although it was never operated as a tourist attraction.  (You can read about it in Wikipedia.)  It’s one of my favorite places, although I slipped on the wet rocks & hurt myself rather badly while wading around to take these photos.  At least my camera survived!

TL-120, Provia 100F.  55mm lenses would have been great for this.

Mouth of Thorny Creek

Paul Gillis submission #3 for d25

Thorny Creek emptying into the Greenbrier River, Pocahontas Co., W.Va.  The old railroad bridge in the background carries the Greenbrier River Trail, popular for hiking & cycling.  This is about 4 miles upstream from Marlinton.

TL-120, Provia 100F.

Fallen Tree on the Bank of the Greenbrier River near Thorny Creek

I think I was on an exposed gravel shoal for this one, not actually wading.  Those rocks sure get slippery!

TL-120, Provia 100F.  Probably f/16.

Ian Andvaag D25 submission

by Ian Andvaag

I’m a bit short on time, so my comments on my submission are a bit sparse, my apologies. My first two submissions this round are from Narrow Hills Provincial Park. I wish Fallen Pine was a half stop darker. What’s your technique for metering? I have a Pentax Spotmeter V, but I don’t think I had very good technique as many of my slides were overexposed when I used it. I mostly use a Gossen Luna Pro F nowadays, but I would like to up my game and learn how to spot meter properly. If any of you have tips or resources, I’d be glad if you’d share them with me.

Jade Lake Ridge. Tl120-1, RDP III

 

Fallen Pine, TL-120-1, RDP III

Next is Cattle Gate, from Grasslands National Park. There is an exposure mismatch that I can detect in the sky, not sure why this is as this was on my TL-120. Maybe the batteries where getting low? Has anyone else experienced this? I don’t think I’ve noticed it on other shots I’ve taken since.

Cattle Gate, TL-120-1, RDP III

Finally, a photo from the Saskatoon Exhibition. I don’t think this is as good as Bob and Timo’s slides of the fair, but I did enjoy going and taking some nighttime photos of the rides a few years ago. I wish I could control the lens flare a bit better, but I guess it comes with the territory when you shoot directly into bright lights.

Mach 3 & Water Race, TL-120-1, RVP 100

Scrutinizing Sharpness (Ian Andvaag A33)

by Ian Andvaag
For this loop, I wanted to get some feedback on sharpness. I’ve been working through some of Mike Davis’ spreadsheets and trying to determine if I’m leaving a meaningful amount of sharpness on the table by using a TL-120 or Sputnik. As I understand it, Mike’s contention is that it is not possible to get critically sharp slides with appreciable depth using standard 60-65 mm stereo base and normal FL lenses. I’m rather surprised by this contention after having seen many fantastic slides taken with TL-120s and Sputniks, but I know it’s easy for one’s eyes to be fooled, and I would guess that 95% sharpness looks close to 100% sharpness. I will say that I was particularly struck by David Lee’s Yosemite Fall slide that was included by John Thurston this loop, which seems impossibly sharp, and was not taken with a standard stereo base. I believe the proper way to investigate sharpness would be to shoot some scenes with resolution test charts at various distances and then to side by side A/B comparisons with the resulting slides in a viewer. I wish I could ask Don for advice, I know he occasionally did tests like this 🙁

 

With all this in mind, I picked out several slides which I personally believe to be quite sharp, and I would appreciate any feedback from others about any perceived lack of sharpness. Cloud Inversion should probably be considered as the “base case”. I believe the nears were around 50′ and I focused around that point, shooting at f/16 I believe. I believe this should secure more sharpness than the eye is capable of detecting in a standard viewer. I don’t really know anything about a cloud inversion, maybe this should better be called thick fog that settled into the valley.  Anyway, it was rather unexpected and interesting to see when I woke up to photograph at sunrise. There is a bit of retinal rivalry in the clouds and shadows as this is a chacha with a tripod and it takes some time to set up the tripod and adjust the framing. Apparently quite a few dinosaur fossils have been found in these badlands.

Cloud Inversion

 

I perceive Gem Lake Reflection to have a high degree of sharpness, however I don’t think it is objectively sharper than any of my other standard TL-120 slides. I believe the perceived sharpness is largely due to the adjacency effects caused by the high acutance first developer, along with the fairly visible grain.

Gem Lake Reflection

 

Bryce Hoodoo, yes this is a Sputnik shot, and there probably is some falloff in sharpness towards the corners, but I’m not sure I can detect it! Maybe the pine needles at the far right are a bit soft. This is a pretty “easy” shot to secure sharpness as the deviation is quite low, (the nears are rather far away) but I would be surprised if I changed the aperture off the default f/22 hyperfocal setting. I do think the rock and ground appear sharper than the objects in the far distance, but I’m suspecting that this is more due to the haze and lack of high spatial frequency information in the distance rather than the Sputnik having overly relaxed hyperfocal markings, although it could be both!

Bryce Hoodoo

 

Camping Breakfast was shot at f/22 using the standard hyperfocal markings on the TL-120 and I used the entire range (the near distance was 3 meters). I might be able to detect the smallest lack of sharpness in the specular highlight on the blue water bottle, but I’m not sure. I think the exposure was 1/8 of a second, so the people are probably not perfectly sharp. Yes it was posed!

Camping Breakfast

 

In my opinion, Cloud Inversion does seem ever so slightly sharper than the others, but I’m not entirely convinced it is because of the more conservative DOF tolerance, but rather that the size of the plants at this distance provides a fairly high frequency subject and the low angle of the sun provides fairly high contrast, while non-hyper shots typically have inherently less high frequency detail.

 

So what do you think? Do you use the standard hyperfocal settings on your lenses? Or do you stop down one extra stop? Or some other technique? Ok, enough nerd talk. Sorry to ruin a perfectly good post with all this talk of sharpness! I certainly don’t think it’s the most important aspect of a successful MF3D shot, but it is fun to discuss.

Paul Gillis d24 submissions

by Paul Gillis

Willow in the West Virginia Hills

This crooked old tree is near the Smokehole Gorge in Pendleton County, W. Va. It’s right behind an old farmhouse that my caving club has used as a field house for many years, about a mile up a very rough gravel lane from the South Branch of the Potomac. All 4 of these slides were taken with my TL-120-1 on Provia 100.

Hillside Shack

Not really a shack, but a storage shed, very close to the willow tree above.  Late afternoon in the fall.

Neptune Fountain

In my opinion, Washington’s most impressive fountain.  Officially called “The Court of Neptune”, it is in front of the Library of Congress’ Thomas Jefferson Building, facing the U.S. Capitol.  The bronzes were sculpted by Roland Hinton Perry, and carvings on the masonry of the grotto were done by Albert Weinert.  Perry was inspired by the Trevi Fountain in Rome.  It was finished in 1898, shortly after the Jefferson Building opened.

A Nereid Riding a Hippocamp

One of the two sea nymphs riding mythic sea horses in the Neptune Fountain.

 

“Paper Or Plastic?”

by Steven Lederman

I had my slides all mounted and ready to ship a week ago.  They had been titled, scanned, and fit into (seamed) sleeves.  The problem was, they wouldn’t fit into the Dragon Folio box.  It was then I noticed that every other slide in the box was mounted in cardboard. Mine were in plastic mounts.  Instead of remounting my original four, I decided to save them for the next loop of Folio A.  I mounted four new selections, all in cardboard mounts;

“Same As Surly Curs” – the title is a crossword puzzle type of clue (the answer is “growlers”).  This was shot  during what is possibly the least-known photography celebration; “World Toy Camera Day”, observed on the third Saturday of October.  I employed a Holga 120 CF stereo camera with add-on wide angle lens attachments (which add vignetting) and a roll of Provia 400 to shoot a few photos on my deck to honour the occasion.  Developed in a Jobo processor in my basement using Tetenal Colortec E6 chemicals.

“DISC-guises” – this image is one I originally considered a focal point failure, but I revisited it, mounted the chips and decided to submit it anyways.  It was shot with a TL-120-1 on APX 100  film, and sent to dr5 for Dev1 processing.

“How To Winterize Your Vehicle” – I’m fairly certain that this was captured on one of a handful of trips to Mclean’s Auto Wreckers in Rockwood.  When I feel the urge to go explore this vast car graveyard, I call ahead, then I bake something with beer for the Mclean’s proprietors to gain my admission – chocolate stout cake, raspberry beer blaster cookies….you get the idea.  It’s either bake them something beforehand or share your photos with them afterwards, and sharing photos is just too much damned work!  Shot with a TL-120-1 on Fuji NHP 400 negative film, then cross-processed in Argentix (Arista) E6 chemicals using a Jobo processor in my basement.

“The Jazz Standard” – this title is also a crossword puzzle type of clue (the answer is “Autumn Leaves”).  This is a pinhole image, and I captured this just prior to Hallowe’en 2018, using one of Todd Schlemmer’s terraPIN Oskar^2 stereo pinhole cameras on a GorillaPod.   I seem to recall that the exposure was somewhere around the 1 min. 32 sec mark.  Todd’s cameras are 3D printed using environmentally-responsible materials.  This roll of Fuji RVP was developed in a Jobo processor in my basement using Tetenal Colortec E6 chemicals.

Jim Harp d20 submission

by Jim Harp

This is Jim Harp’s contribution for loop d20, grandfathered in from loop 20 of MF3D Folio II managed by Brian Reynolds.

San Francisco. 5/17. Twin Mamiya c-220s, 135mm lenses.

Chicken of the Sea. 6/17. TL-120, Coney Island Mermaid P.

Pink Mermaid. 6/17.TL-120 with Vivitar 285H Fill Flash.

Ghost Child/twilight. 5/12. TL-120, Kaohsiung – (Taiwan).

Left and Right

by John Thurston

Right Side

If the Juneau tourists get a bus to the Mendenhall Glacier, a mile long walk along the willows on the lake shore will bring them to the bottom of Nugget Creek. It offers a nice waterfall, and good view of the glacier.We’ve been here before.

Left Side

And if one walks several miles up the “left” side of the lake, and climbs a little, it is much quieter and less crowded.  Not many unguided tourists make it this far up the trail, so when I meet one I try to make them feel welcome. If the lenses in your viewer are good, you can see the crowd of tourists on the beech at the base of the waterfall.

Twenty years ago, all the open water in both images was ice. The face of the glacier was just past the rightmost iceberg in the second image. At that time, the bedrock was below more than 100′ of ice, and Nugget Falls disappeared under the edge of the glacier.

Both images are from my TL120, Nugget Falls has been captured with Kodak E100G rather than my usual Provia.

Town and Tours

by John Thurston

So Many Choices

Juneau is historically a gold town. More recently, it is a tourist town. On a ‘good’ day, cruise ships can deliver more than 15,000 passengers to shore. And when all those people get ashore, they need to find something to do. Most of the ships work hard to sell package tours on board to their captive audience, but there are still folks on the sidewalks ready to help put tourists on buses out to the glacier or to another dock where they can grab a whale-watch tour.

Whales, Whales, Whales

Most of the vendors are seasonal workers. They arrive from Outside at the start of the season, rent their booth, and sell tours on commission. They’re assertive, but friendly. I’m not often mistaken for a tourist (wrong clothing and not enough tan), but when I am I listen to their pitch before turning them down.

Both of these are from my TL120 on Provia.

Down the Throat

by John Thurston

As a bonus image, I’m including a little bit of blue. Like all of my under-glacier images, the light is dim and the location is long gone.

I’m standing in the stream which has cut its way under the ice. The ground is gravel over bedrock, and the deeper one goes the thicker the layer of gravel is. By this point, the gravel is thick enough so the stream is completely contained in the gaps between the stones. The running water carries heat under the ice which creates a gap. Then warm air start to move through and widen the gaps. The color variation in the ceiling is from the variation in thickness and sand content.

I’ve tried several times to try to duplicate this image by print and by film. In call cases, the color reproduction has stymied me. The colors reproduced by the film are not easily obtainable in any of the ink or film-recorder color spaces I’ve tried. I’ll try again in a few more years. Until then, please enjoy this original with all of its subtle colors.

Philip’s Folio a30 Submissions

by Philip Steinman

MFscan_017 Vincent's 6th bday-Vincent’s 6th Birthday Party
My four kids sitting in our kitchen behind the cake: Valentine 7, Emilie 8, Vincent 6, and Kevin 10 with baby pics of Vincent in the foreground, surrounded by this years crop of friends, classmates, and teammates on his A’s AA little league team. A family snapshot, but hopefully something more to remember.

Kids at Paramount RanchKids at Paramount RanchKevin 10, Valentine 7, Vincent 6, and Emilie 8 These are my 4 kids at one of our favorite places to hike, explore, watch silent movies under the stars, and dream of being in a cowboy western movie. Some overlapping of images here as I manually wind the TL120 camera. I cropped this out.

MVP Swing, Hunter LaPlanteMFscan_2400_038 Hunter LaPlante-Every team has one, an MVP, only Hunter was also the 10 year old’s league MVP. 7 of his teammates scattered across this photo with 3 of them looking on (the one in the middle is my son Kevin). Hunter has a sweet baseball swing. He never strikes out and hits 3rd in the lineup of our championship team. You can see the intensity and focus in his eyes with his level perfect bat meets the ball swing.
Shot with Kodak EPR film on TL120 which gives an entirely different look (nostalgic) than Fuji Provia (realistic).

Yankees Championship PhotoMFscan_2400_040 Yankees Championship Photo-The Encino Little League Minors 2018 Championship was won by the Yankees. A year these kids will never forget as they went wire to wire 1st place and undefeated in the playoffs to capture the championship trophy.
Shot with Kodak EPR film on TL120 which gives an entirely different look (nostalgic) than Fuji Provia (realistic).

I had some problems winding the manual TL120 camera. Do you wind until the # shot is in the red viewfinder on back or do you wind until the # is in the viewer finder or passes it and the wind is complete? Because of this I had some images that overlapped at the edges (and I cropped that part out). Tips appreciated, as I usually shot with my autowind Fuji GA645w, but always cha-cha.

Submission 2018

by Nik Sekhar

 

Thanks for allowing me to share my images with you. I’ve enjoyed your images

Nik Sekhar