Richard Vanek - Black and White Photography

My friend let me try some old Ikon Zeiss camera. It is simple rangefinder with 40/2.8 lens and shutter in lens. I clean it and put Neopan 400 in it. Will try it tomorrow.

I have shoot complete film with this old simple and very quiet camera. Most of the time in very contrast situations with sharp Sun. I would like to develop it today.
I also bought tetenal Archival Matte paper to try with MIS UT inks.

I am a bit of disappointed from tetenal paper, well at first I wasn't sure which is the right side for printing, after printing on both side I know now, even not sure. But the resulting print is not that perfect as I hoped for quite expensive paper (10 pieces for 13euro). I will do some more test later.
I developed film from Ikon Zeiss camera in Ilfotec LC29. Camera works fine, negative looks exposed nicely. Will see more Monday when I will scan and possibly print.
I have scanned next negative from Sweden, few more to go. I will update web soon with new images.

I have got Forte ink-jet paper from my friend. I am looking to do some more printing today afternoon. Lot of plans, let see how it will turn out.
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I scaned whole roll from Ikon Zeiss camera and print two pictures out of it. I do not know why, but I have feeling it is not that sharp as I am used to. Maybe it is by optics, but could be also because of developer change. I am using now Ilfotec LC29. Before I was always using xtol. I can also see little bit grain. It is more visible than from my xtol developed negatives, at least that how it looks to me. I need to directly compare two Neopan 400 scans devloped in different developers.
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I also tested Forte paper and did more test with Tetenal and must say those too papers behaves verys immilar, also texture is same. They are much whiter than EAM, but they do not handle black ink that good as EAM. Sometimes you can see little reflection on places where is too much of black ink.

I add three new pictures from one roll I just scaned. Roll was exposed in March this year, in a time I was still in Stockholm. I have two more rolls to scan from that time and I belive also two to develop. I will try again Ilfotec LC29 even I have got feeling that it brings little bit more grain. Last time I did it like this:

Fuji Neopan 400 exposed @ 400 with ilfotec LC29 @ 1:29

1 x 60sec constant inversions
7 x 60sec 3xinversions in 5sec

1 x 30 sec stop bath
1 x 30 sec wather bath

10x 30 sec 3xinversions in 5sec Ilford Rapid Fix 1:4

This is a example from my first roll in Ilford Ilfotec LC29. Maybe next time I'll try little less time and also lower dilution to reduce a grain. And maybe I'll do it in steps so it will be easier to see effect.

Always, when I see old bicycle I can't resist and I take a picture of it. And also this one in streets of Stockholm I found interesting. Rust gives it a nice shade tones.

As we were walking in Sodermalm I notice this shadow on a wall. Find it interesting, made by sharp Sun in a spring day, which was promissing summer, but still cold. That day we spent a lot of hours walking on this island of Stockholm and saw how people were pull to street to welcome the Spring Sun.

This photograph was exposed using old Ikon Zeiss Continnetta of my friend. One can see little unshapness, mainly on print or high resolution scan. The unsharpness is mostly visible at corner of the shots. Negative was developed using Ilford Ilfotec LC29 1:29 and it has a more grain than I wa sused from Kodak Xtol 1:1.

One nice spring weekend day we went to visit Milles Garden. House and garden of the Swedish sculptor Milles. His work is installed in a huge garden and you can visit part of his house whre is also exposed part of his art collection. My interest was catched by these three chairs with a sculpture in shadow.

As I was walking in shopping centre I notice these two boys. First I tought they are playing some sort of game. When I took a better look I relaize they are dividing sweets. One for you, one for me, one for you, one for me. They were so into it, that they didn't notice me at all, even I was staying three steps from them and taking one shoot after another.

Two new pictures added from next scanned roll exposed in Sweden. Hopefully today I will try to develop my next Neopan in LC29.

Yesterday I finished scanning of Neopan 400 which I developed in Ilfotec LC29 day before. I din't have much of a time to compare grain, but there are some nice shots. This roll was exposed in June.
I also run out of my first ink cartridge and need to refill. Well as usually a lot of stuff to do. This all have to wait a little...

Today early morning I was taking some photos in near by village. Sun was still sleeping when I arrived at port. I was expecting fisherman's in their huge boats returning from see. Nothing like that happens, instead I saw couple of dozen fisherman's on small boats leaving port for fishing.
I shoot 3 rolls. In a mean time the Sun was rising which gave beautiful atmosphere.
All this is happening on my holiday in France. This is first ti,e I have got access to internet.
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Today afternoon we went on beach, it was even colder, quite few people where there. I was walking between them and try to catch how people amuse themselves when is too cold to swim.

Unexpactable beautiful weater strikes back, so we spent most of the day on beach. Last week I found Ilford HP5+ in supermarket in pack of 3 for price of 2. It is already used as well as most of my fuji neopan I took with me here. Totally around 14 rolls exposed. Hopefully it would be much better than last year.

This night I saw something I didn't for a lot of years. The Milky Way!!! These days we having very cold nights and very hot days, yesterday night was a beautiful sky, stars I saw last time when I was small boy walking to local observatory every night. It was very very nice to see again the beauty of the night sky.

Last days, I must say I am tired. I have no idea of what or who I am tired of, but I have little energy. Clouds on sky today so quite bad weather for shooting. I anyway went to near village and took few shots of fisherman's selling from boats.

So we back. Before we left, I printed same image with MIS UT inks on tree different papers (Tetenal, Forte, EAM) with same settings for printer plus one with Epson OEM black ink only on EAM paper. Than I taped them on window facing south west side. I taped them that half of image was exposed to Sun and other was hidden. It was very hot and sharp sun for the past two weeks. This was kind of simple heavy fading test.
So after two weeks of direct sun exposing I have all four prints here in front of me. Epson OEM inks on EAM are terrible! Black is completely brownish. And even not that is very light brownish almost gone.
First, just comparing yellowing of paper. Epson EAM yellowed the most, but it is not very visible when you compare with non exposed part of image as paper is not extremely white in its own. Comparing it with real white paper give you feeling how much yellow is it. Tetenal and Forte are very very close with Tetenal be little more yellow than Forte, which is the best. It is important to say that yellowing is visible but only in very good light. I did comparison outside in bright cloudy day around lunch time. Yellowing all papers is very close to each other, with EAM being the worst and Tetenal and Forte very close to each other.
MIS UT inks have no visible fading on any paper. If I do not count yellowing of the paper and try to compare changes of inks on the border between sun exposed part to hidden part, I can not see any difference.
Conclusion, If I have paper which do not yellow (probably paper which do not contains whiteners) I woudn't observe any changing in pictures. Maybe Hahnemuhle PhotoRag is the one. To be tested this week, hopefully.

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On my desk 17 rolls is sitting and waiting to be developed, scanned and possibly some shots printed, well it is a challenge :-)
Two days ago I filled new cartridge with MIS UT inks and yesterday I tried to print. Something happened to my computer I was not able to print whole image. First only about 5cm from A4 printed and than after some restart reset and clean almost whole size did except maybe last 2 cm. Crazy, paper is released from printer and driver's window is just showing how is sending data to printer for next 4 minutes, but printer does nothing. Did you have similar problem?
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Today I had little discussion with my friend about how to handle this big backlog of undeveloped rolls and prints I wish to do. And outcome was that best is do things slowly and properly to eliminate it. So I will print from old rolls the best shots and will develop negatives in parallel. Will try to catch up with prints as much as I could. And maybe one day I will be able to developed just after shooting and print in one run from the same roll.

I printed on Hahnemühle Photorag 308g/qm my picture on which I spent last 4 hours yesterday. It is a picture on which I am working for past few weeks already. I used same curves for MIS UT as I am using for Epson EAM paper. The print is very very good! This will be my first print to be sold and than I am on my road to print more. This paper is very expensive, one sheet is almost two euros. So I will use Epson EAM and Forte for proofing and final print will be done on Hahnemühle Photorag 308, which is pure cotton with no whiteners and should be extremely stable.