Pushing the Dynamic Range of Color Negative Film

December 17, 2019 Alex Burke

“Sunflower Sunset” - Backlit scenes are no trouble with color negative film. A filter was left off for this image to avoid flare troubles with the sun. The foreground (also the important part) was average metered and the sky ignored when taking the … — “Sunflower Sunset” - Backlit scenes are no trouble with color negative film. A filter was left off for this image to avoid flare troubles with the sun. The foreground (also the important part) was average metered and the sky ignored when taking the meter reading. Ektar 100 4x5, 210mm lens, 2 seconds at f45, no filters.

Color negative film has increasingly become a larger part of my workflow over the last several years and with good reason: the flexibility of the stuff is just phenomenal. It can be used to capture all the delicate subtleties of a low contrast scene as well as landscape scenes with intense dynamic range. If you don’t know what you will be getting into when you head out for a shoot it’s an excellent choice because it can handle anything you throw at it, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be used for a specific purpose or aesthetic either. Color negatives are the film type that I get the most questions about, mostly because people see such a wide variety of looks coming out of the same film types…

Manual Inversion of Color Negative Film

October 17, 2019 Alex Burke

This one is for you DSLR scanning folks, or those who want more control out of your film scanner. It’s been just about three years now that I’ve been using a drum scanner which has drastically changed my scanning process with color negative film. While the software for this scanner is incredibly powerful, it falls apart when it comes to inverting color negatives. This means that I had to develop a method to do this on my own that can work for every image I throw at it. While I love sharing my findings with the film community, I wasn’t sure that a technique I developed for drum scanning would be helpful to the average shooter. It turns out that this manual inversion can work no matter what you use to scan your film with…

Drum vs Flatbed Scanner - Side by Side Comparison

December 18, 2017 Alex Burke

"Corn Lilies in the Rain" - A fresh image from the Tango drum scanner

Many of you who follow me on social media have heard that I acquired a drum scanner about a year ago. I spent much of the last year learning how to properly wet mount film and operate this beast of a machine. Now after scanning about a hundred sheets I now have some results to share...

Wind River Range Backpacking with the Intrepid Camera

August 30, 2017 Alex Burke

The Intrepid 4x5 Camera in the Cirque of the Towers, complete with my reflection in the ground glass.

I just wrapped up a nice 5 day backpacking trip in the Wind River Range of Wyoming, which gave me a great chance to become familiarized with the new Intrepid 4x5" field camera. If you're not familiar with the Wind River Range, it's a huge area with over a thousand alpine lakes and deep wild valleys surrounded by lofty granite spires that attract climbers from around the world. It's also known for lengthy hikes to most of the locations that keep the day hikers out and make it a great backcountry destination. Just about all of the good spots.....

GND Filters - Getting the Perfect Exposure in One Shot

August 31, 2016 Alex Burke

It’s time for me to answer another set of frequently asked questions, one that I get almost weekly so I need to make a blog post about it. Do you use GND filters, how do you choose the right filter, which ones should I buy, how do you position them, and how do you meter for them? Well the answer to the first question is a big definite yes, I use GND filters for the majority of my images and I will explain the rest throughout this post in great detail...