I see two certainties involved with computing:

1. Hardware failure and data loss with happen at regular intervals.

2. I will always hate having to back up files. Thinking about backing up those backups as the backup media gets outdated makes me grimace.

I'm not being technophobic. I just prefer when things are simple. A future where the longevity of photographic archive requires me to keep up with the rapid turnover rate of computer hardware and software is not one I want.

I recall an experience where I heard a digital photographer talking about cutting edge, two thousand dollar RAID system he just put in place to keep his many thousands of digital photography files safe. My first thought was that the technology would be laughable in terms of storage capacity in five years time. We'll have a newer faster hard drive interface, and the discs will be able to spin at 200,000 more RPM. I image that he will be doing whole thing over again to keep up with the technology.

Meanwhile, here is all the backing up I've had to do over the past ten years.

With film, I can just file and forget. Each binder and a pack of one-hundred negative sleeves runs about $30 and will never be outdated technology. No software drivers are ever going to be unavailable which will leave them unreadable. In ten more years, I imagine that the only thing that will really change is how tall the stack of binders is. So simple it hurts.

You just wait till your house burns down!

While film storage is incredibly durable, I understand that it isn't indestructible. My grandfather's slides from the 1950s were not stored with much care, and as a result they've all been destroyed by fungus.

The other great threat towards my file and forget method of film archiving is of course a house fire. Luckily for us though, house fires aren't that common. I can't say that I even know a single person who has lost all of their possessions to a house fire. Yet, I've experienced hard drive failure many times in my life. The worst of which was a power surge back in 2001 which caused some of the internals on my motherboard and hard drive to explode. Literally.

Just as most oil painters wouldn't switch to a Wacam tablet and Photoshop to keep their work more immune to a fire, I'm not going to use it as a fear point for switching. Any digital photographer who isn't making off site backups is sitting in the same boat as use film photographers anyways.

Contingency Plan

I think I might add a small layer of fire protection though. I think a reasonable contingency plan would be to get a program such as SyncBackPro and have it monitor the folders that my scanned files get saved to. As I scan my negatives, the files would automatically be uploaded to my web server for backup. Then in the event of total negative loss due to a natural disaster, at least part of my archive will be retrievable as a second generation copy.

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Wintertime in the Northland. The time of year when the sun goes down at 5:00pm, and doesn't show itself again until 7:00am. The perfect season for Night Photography!

Recently I acquired a Mamiya RB67 to replace my Yashica Mat 124G as my main night photography camera. Combine the fun of new hardware with the frequent encouragements on Twitter by Andrew Sanderson to get out and use it for night shooting, and what has resulted is a lot of enthusiasm to get out and shoot at night.

With night photography at the top of my mind, I thought I'd share a few practical tips I've learned over the years while shooting photos at night.

Mornings are dark too.

In the past when I'd hear the term Night Photography, I'd instinctively associate it with the hours right after the sun sets. I'd stay up late drinking caffeine to help force myself to stay awake so I could head out and shoot for a few hours starting at midnight.

These days, I find that about two hours leading up to dawn to be most preferable for night photography. Now I can get a decent amount of rest before heading out, along with a few other perks.

1. The bars are closed. Less worries about encountering a drunk college kid who may feel the need to pick a fight to impress his popped-collar buddies. Less worries about people leaving the bar who really shouldn't be driving crashing into me.
2. Most people are asleep. Sleeping people are less likely to come outside and question what I'm doing. Most people who are up seem to either be on their way to work, or a morning jogger.
3. Less traffic. Headlight streaks are a fun trick to teach to Photo I students. For my needs, I'd rather not have them. If fresh snow has fallen, it is also less likely to be trampled down at this hour.
4. There is something magic in the air. The morning and dawn hours just feel less evil. People seem to be nicer at this hour.

Prepare your equipment in advance.

Get every piece of gear you'll need together and in one place the night before. Then check the weather and get every piece of clothing you'll need laid out as well. I find it easy enough to waste twenty minutes because I'm unable to crawl out of bed as soon as the alarm goes off. There is no need to waste even more time because I can't find my cable release or my Incredible Hulk pajama pants that I use for layering.

Bring multiple cable releases.

Bring them if you have them. I've had moments in the past where I've framed up a shot, and then realized that my cable release has disappeared. For certain cameras this is a game over scenario.

Stay away from cab depots.

This morning I went for a night photography session and kept having cabs buzzing around me like gnats. Not being a fan of headlight streaks in my photos, this was starting to get irritating. Why did so many people on this block need a cab at five in the morning? The answer—a launching point for a cab company was a block down the road.

I went to take a photo of some of the parked cabs which were being unused. About ten seconds into the exposure three cabs pulled in and the dispatchers started coming out to talk to the cab drivers. Too much action for me, so I bailed out before being spotted.

Buy a fedora

What? Buy a fedora?

Now that I think about it, a Stetson hat will work as well. Pick which ever one matches your outfit better.

Now why would you need a fedora for night photography? Simple. The big hat serves the purpose of giving you something which can quickly be used to stop and resume the exposure without disturbing the camera in case a car comes rolling through the scene. Hold it in front of the lens until the car passes.

I don't actually do this, but every single time I go out and shoot I think about how I wish I had one for this purpose. I find my gloved hand is usually adequate.

There you have my first set of practical night photography tips. I'm sure I'll have more in the near future as I make more boneheaded mistakes during my night photography adventures.

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The Olympus XA2

An Olympus XA series of camera was chosen for this project primarily because the XA cameras are very compact, even with the flash attached. The second, and probably more important reason, is that they can run in a completely manual mode. I didn't want a camera that would going to try to do any auto focusing, or make any automatic judgments on flash output.

I used an XA2 for this experiment just because it was what I had on hand. After shooting a few events successfully with the Infrared Modified XA2, I really think that an Olympus XA4 with the wider 28mm lens could be the most ideal camera for this use. I'll have to keep my eye out for one.

Olympus A16 Flash

In the second round of changes I upgraded the A11 which appeared on the original photos of the camera with the larger A16 flash. The logic behind the the switch being More output = larger flash range. I didn't do any real world testing with the A11 flash since the A16 was giving me results that I was liking, so I can't say for certain how great the benefit is. It is very well possible that the A11 is perfectly adequate for this use, but don't hold me to it. Perhaps I'll shoot a few controlled comparison shots between the two flash units and revise this post in the future.

I originally used black tempera paint to black out the large orange flash-is-ready light on the A11 flash. I haven't done this yet to the A16 which is pictured above, but plan too do so in the near future. It was actually kind of surprising how many people would stare at the light in my hand as I approached them. On at least one occasion I actually heard one kid say to another "Oh, It is just a camera in his hand" as they passed by. I wonder what strange sort of apparatus they thought I was holding?

Ilford SFX A Filter

The original Infrared Flash guide that influenced me to do this used an 87 filter. This filter appeared to work fine for people who have done similar modifications who had easy access to the now discontinued Kodak HIE Infrared film. On the current market nothing seems available to be an adequate replacement in terms of speed and infrared sensitivity. With the easily available Rollei Infrared 400, and Ilford SFX 200 films, I found that an R72 filter provided infrared transmittance that worked very well with the Rollei and Ilford infrared films.

I ended up using an Ilford SFX A gel to filter my flash. Being a gel filter, they are very easy to cut and tape over a flash. Ilford SFX A filters are currently available on Amazon for $9.99. A single 58x58mm gel will be enough to cut a replacement or two in case they wear out over time from use of the camera.

Finding the best infrared filter for this project was address in the first and second rounds of the experiment.

Rollei Infrared 400 Film

Through my experimentation, I decided that Rollei Infrared 400 is the best film for the job in terms of quality vs price. As an added bonus, if you purchase ten rolls at a time, Rollei Infrared 400 comes in a classy wooden box.

Rollei Infrared 400 is available at B&H or in bulk at Freestyle Photo. The full write up of the films I tried can be read in my post about infrared film options.

The Results

I've set up a gallery for just infrared flash photographs. Take a peek and judge for yourself.

Shooting with the modified Infrared XA2

In the post Real Word Testing I addressed both the expected, and unexpected reactions by other people while using the modified XA2. From these tests I realized that the use of infrared flash is less about being stealthy, and more about being courteous to my subjects.

Maciek Pozoga recently wrote in with a few questions about shooting with the infrared modifing XA2 that are more technically oriented then what I had previously addressed. His questions are worthwhile, so I am going to answer them in this article as well.

Q: I read a lot on the Internet that focusing in infrared was not the same as in normal. Did you have any trouble with that?
A: Not that I've noticed. Being that the XA2 is scale focus camera, focusing is a very unpolished process to begin with. I just set the XA2 to the closest focus setting and try to get the subject about five to seven feet away. I care more about the content of the images instead of having absolute perfect focus, so I don't fret much if the end result is a little bit off.

Q: Also that the [infrared] filter costs about 5 stops, so 200 ISO should be shoot at 12 ISO. Did you do that?
A: I set the flash to fire at full power on each shot, and don't worry about the ISO. While I don't consciously think about the loss of power, it still is in play as the usable range of the flash is far shorter than it would be if I was using it normal, white light mode.

Q: How did you use your Olympus? All automatic, like TTL?
A: I set the flash to its full setting, and set the focus to the closest focusing distance. With SFX 200 or Rollei Infrared 400, the balance between the flash, film ISO, and f-stop comes out well to give properly exposed negative about five to seven feet away. The XA2 is completely a point & shoot camera when I use it this way. It is just up to me to work myself into a position where I'm at the right distance from my subject.

I feel I have the technical side of infrared flash with the XA2 firmly in my grasps, so I think is all I'll be writing on the subject infrared flash with an Olympus XA series of camera for a while, outside of posting actual photos I create from using it. If you still have any other questions, ask away in the comments section of this post and I'll do my best to answer them. If this little guide influences you to do anything similar, let me know and share your best results. I'd love to see them.

I also need to give props to Joni Karanka's blog post which led me to Matt Smillie's infrared flash tutorial since they were the influential posts that got my infrared ball rolling.

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1. Remove film from the cannister.
2. Cut off the film leader.
3. Insert the leader end first into the developing reel.
4. Spool the film onto the developing reel.
5. Snip the film off the canister spool right before finishing.

This method may seem fine on paper, but from my hands on experience, I found it to really suck.

For years I just assumed that having the film get stuck 3/4th of the way through the loading process was just something that film photographers had to deal with. With nearly every roll I loaded I would find myself at a point where I had to decide to either keep slowly trying to force the film onto the reel and risk crinkling it, or tearing it off the reel and starting over. Often I'd have to make that decision several times with some stubborn rolls of film that just would not load.

This put me off towards 35mm for years as I hated the constant struggle of loading it. Then one day I had a single, simple revelation about the physical nature of a roll of film, and loading has been a breeze since.

It dawned on me that if I first cut the film off of the canister spool, and then loaded it from that end instead of from the leader end, the natural curl of the film would align better with the spirals of the development reel.

Make sense? If not, here is an image to illustrate what I'm saying.

Circle A is a roll of film wound so that the lead end is on the outside, and the spool end is on the inside. Circle B is that same roll of film reversed so that the lead end is on the inside, and the spool end is on the outside.

When a roll of film is loaded using the method that I claim sucks, what results is that the tight circle B has to be forced into the spiral development reel. When loading from the spool end first, then circle A is what ends up being on the development reel. As the image tries to show, this is a much smoother fit.

Loading film for development the easy way

What I do is remove the film from its canister and cut off the leader. Then I reverse the direction of the roll in my hands so that the end of the roll of film is on the outside. At this point I'm holding in my hands what is represented as B in the previous image. I then clip the film off of the spool, and it is smooth sailing onto the development reel.

One other thing that I've found with this method is that the film is much easier to manage while trying to get it onto the development reel. By having the film forming a nice tight circle, and not having the spool from the canister in the center of it, I can just slip the film over my little finger while transferring the film onto the development reel. This keeps the film securely in line with the development reel, and completely frees up the other hand for film advancing. Everything ends up staying nice and orderly throughout the process this way.

Switching to this method has led to a massive reduction in incidents where my film seizes up while I'm trying to get it on the spool. This in turn not only saves me time, but also eliminates the frustration of having my favorite photo from a roll end up with a big crescent moon shaped wrinkle right smack in the middle of it.

If you happen to need any more proof of concept, I put together a video for this post showing me load a reel. I'm not trying to show off to break any records in it. This is actually how fast I confidently load my film on a day to day basis.

I am using a Paterson Super System 4 reel here. I own some Paterson System 4 (notice the lack of super) reels as well, and there is no way I could possibly hit this speed with them. In fact, they are so slow and clunky at loading, I'm actually terrified to try and use them. I should just throw them out.

If you've ever had the same issues with loading your film like I had, please give this technique a shot the next time you develop. I'd love to hear back and know if you found it any easier to get your film ready for processing.

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I tried a few methods to flatten these negatives enough to make them usable in the Epson holder, but never seemed to get them to a point where I knew I'd be getting the best scanning results. So, I resorted to purchasing an anti-newton glass insert from betterscanning.com to help ease the pains of trying to get a good scan off of these problematic negatives.

In theory, the weight of the glass insert is all that would be needed to crush the curl on a negative and force it to lay flat for scanning. However, once I received my insert and set it on top of the first of my curled negatives, it became quickly apparent that its mass wasn't great enough to defeat the intensity of my film's curl.

The BetterScanning.com web site has some tips for what to do in this situation which involves using tape to secure or push the glass insert down. The thought of having to deal with tape residue, or the adjusting of the tape on the glass for every scan, or having hundreds of little pieces of tape all around my desk immediately turned me off to this solution. So, I sat and tried to think up a method that would be quick to use, and have no fuss clean up.

After some thought, I recalled the bag of extra packing peanuts from my most recent supply purchase from Freestyle Photo which was sitting in my closet next to six gallons of fermenting mead. I found that if I take a few of them, and crush them a bit with my fingers, they become the perfect size to fill the gap between the scanner lid and glass insert. At the same time they still apply just enough pressure onto the top of the glass insert to flatten the negatives.

Now I just load the strip of negatives with the glass insert into the scanner and use the peanuts to mask off the frames I want to scan before closing the lid. It is a clean process that can rapidly be removed and set up for each strip of negatives that I want to work with in a given sitting. Perfect!

But what about the results while scanning with the insert?

I'll let you judge for yourself. Below are close-ups of two scans made from the same Arista Premium 400 negative. The left image is from using just the Epson film holder as it came with the scanner. The right image comes from using the stock holder in conjunction with the BetterScanning.com glass insert and the packing peanuts to press the negative flat. The scan with the glass insert definitely ended up creating a crisper image.

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