Richard Vanek - Black and White Photography

I had a nice holiday and I exposed few Fuji Neopan 400 & 1600. I will try to developed them in following days and that I can make decisiona bout what I am going to u se for this year.

As you can see on right side I added list of three latest photographs. This place is updated automaticaly whenever I add new photo on server.
I am also planning to add new page containing my best photos from last developed roll. This will be possible found in hobby/photo page.

The next interesting result I confirmed yesterday was secret of scratches on my few last negatives. I am sure that scratches are drying marks on films. My metal clips for hanging negatives just get little bit of dirt and when I pour wetting agent over them it start loosing some of the dirt which dries on film.
So I need to clean them, be careful not to pour wetting agent over them and be sure wetting agent doesn't have a foam on it. Hope this will solve the problem.

I developed AGFA APX 400 in xtol 1:1 @ 20C for 13:30 and get very nice full shadow range negatives. I did continuos inversions for first 30 sec and than each first 10sec of each minute 4 slow inversions.
I used Amaloco X89 fixer for 5 min with hope film will be less courling. Unfortunately it doesn't have any effect.

I paid attention, when I developed yesterday Fuji Neopan 400 from holiday, to avoid drying marks. I used very little wetting agent and clean clips for hanging of negative. And it turn out to be right approach, especially I think low volume of wetting gent helps. Normally I used much more that yesterday.
Using xtol 1:1 with my approach I already wrote before for 10 min @ 20C creates beautiful negative full of tone. So I can declare (even before I will really scan it) Fuji NEOPAN 400 as my film for 2003.

After my sunny sky winter holiday I have problems with right eye. I hope it is only temporary. I had that problem already once and after few days was gone. I have to take this as warning and be more careful.
I went yesterday to the nice photo shop here in Stockholm. Very nice man help me with searching eyecup for my Bessa R2. We found lot of them which fits from Nikon range, but all of them covers also useful part of image inside in viewfinder. As I do not like to lost that advantage at the end I bought rectangle one for F80 which perfectly fits to Bessa.
As I paid before for more expensive rubber eyecup mounted on top of diopter correction for Nikon EM I could choose something to fill the gap. I choose for Ilford Delta 400 film. The man gave me two of them for very very cheap price. I really like that shop. They have big choice of second hand Leicas and are very helpful.

Do not hesitate to look forward to Photo pages. They are updated very frequently.
Chess page wasn't updated for some time as I lost much of interest in game. I still play but nothing really important.

In a weekend I developed two high sensitive films. Fuji NEOPAN 1600 and Kodak TMZ. Neopan I did, after unsuccessful previous try, now in non diluted xtol for 6 minutes with recommended way of agitation. ( 1min constant and than each minute 5sec inversion). Result is little flat and a little undeveloped. Not much but could be better. Next time I will try longer time and maybe agitation every 30sec like I am using with Neopan 400.
What about TMZ goes, I used as I did before 18:30, but this time film is heavily undeveloped on a part which was in a centre of the tank and quite ok on the part which was at the end of tank. I suspect that, maybe I should use undiluted Xtol here as well. I will try that next time.
So far not much luck with high sensitive films.

I have successfully modified apache xml-rpc library to be able to call my xml-rpc from behind of proxy using https.
I am now able to update my databases from local computer. I made small nice command line program which manage my photos from local PC on my web server, using https, xml-rpc. It is really cool and I was surprised how fast it is.
This will be incorporated in imgArch software as I said before. I changed my approach to imgArch after I saw some nice example of work done by my colleague at work. Hopeful I will have a first version of imgArch soon ready. Should be able to import images from local drive and update web images and save them in SQL or XML file.

I added new 'browse photo' page in hobby/photo. You can see all pictures I published on web there.
I am also adding pictures from last year as I have now handy tool for it. Next pictures are comming just in few moments.
Enjoy!

Last week I have borrowed from shop 21/4 Color Skopar for my Bessa R2 camera. It was a different experience, comparing to my 35 Ultron. I need to go closer to people I could shoot in a room with taking atmosphere there. Nice I believe I this will be my next lens.
Today I developed those films some looks promising, of course until I print them you can's say anything for sure. Let's wait until I get back home again (next week) and I can do some scans and prints.

This is the last week of my stay in Stockholm. I had achieve what I was planning, I developed all my old negatives (well two left, still :-) and I exposed and developed about 20 rolls of film in Sweden.
I like nice photo shops in Stockholm, they make possible for me to try some new equipment and to buy rubber eye piece for my Voigtlander Bessa-R2.
I also had time to improve my web pages and bring attention to my photographs. Hopefully after my return to Netherlands I will bring you more of my latest photos and will open some of them for sale.

I did my last photo shopping in Sweden yesterday. I decided that I am going to look how much would they ask for UV filter 39mm. And if they have it in shop I would just try it out, which is very difficult in Netherlands as I have no such a shop near by.
I visit my favourite Schomherrs foto at Upplandsgatan 16, Stockholm. If you ever be in Stockholm go there!. I wasn't disappointed I walked away with Leitz UVa filter for 200SEK!