New 67 website

I have used the Pentax 67II system for the last 5 years and have set up a website to show my photography and travel writing.
Although I'm originally from Manchester I now live in Okinawa, Japan. Over here the 67 is known as Gulliver due to its gargantuan size. Personally I have had a wonderful time experiencing my own Gullivers Travels and hope I can share this with other members of the Pentax family.

www.travel67.com

Looking forward to hearing your comments.

Chris

Very nice, but the small size of the pictures doesn't allow one to see whether the "high resolution scans are better than anything digital cameras can offer".

There are now some ex-67 owners who feel that they can get better results from digital. Here's one:

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/shootout.shtml

You may be surprised at the results of the tests this chap performed.

G

Hi Chris,

Many thanks for sharing your website with us - I've had a quick look round and think it's rather nicely put together.

Some of the links have already been useful to me as I do quite a bit of travel photography myself, so I've looked at travelphotographers.net and then linked this thru to PhotoPortfolios.net, where I see that yours is this months featured portfolio.

Naturally I'm always on the look-out for opportunities to get my pics seen and possibly sold - how useful have you found either of these 2 resources? I'm just at the crossroads where I feel that some of my images are saleable but it's trying to find useful outlets to concentrate my efforts...

Any advice appreciated...

Cheers in advance - Will

[quote="George Lazarette"]Very nice, but the small size of the pictures doesn't allow one to see whether the "high resolution scans are better than anything digital cameras can offer".

There are now some ex-67 owners who feel that they can get better results from digital. Here's one:

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/shootout.shtml

You may be surprised at the results of the tests this chap performed.

G[/quote]

George

The above test of Canon digital vs Pentax 67 has been heavily criticized on other forums (think it was on APUG).
Just looking at the photo with the two cameras, I notice that he uses what appears to be the sturdier tripod for the Canon (going by the size of the ball head), and uses a shutter speed of 1/250 with a 100mm lens vs 1/90 (with mirror locked up) for the Pentax with a 200mm lens.
As every Pentax 67 owner knows that when used especially with lenses greater than 100mm even with the mirror locked up, the camera needs a sturdy support, or, a fast shutter speed, better still both for maximum resolution.

Does the Pentax 67II have a shutter speed of 1/90? I have the previous model and there is no 1/90 setting.

Regards

Anthony

Well, I would still like to see some large scans.

I personally achieved far better results using the *ist D than I ever did with film cameras, no doubt in part due to the fact that high-street film processors did such a bad job.

The K10D is another step up, and I really would be interested to see some good scans from a medium format camera (with a good lens) compared to the K10 (with a good lens).

I would expect the K10D to do better. Refutations should be in the form of photograhs taken with both.

Best wishes

G

In my early days with digital cameras, I gave up medium format when I found my digital macro shots were so superior it was ridiculous. They were cleaner, sharper, more detailed....

As most of you regulars know I'm still shooting film on 645 and 617 formats. I am certainly not going to go on about how much better it is than digital because I don't actually agree with that - both are so different.

For me the reason why I'm still shooting film comes down to getting stunning results in print. All of my MF printing is done by BPDPhotech (http://www.bpdphotech.com/), cibachrome prints from these guys are simply amazing - there isn't another word for it! I have some of my Panoramics up on the wall at 170cm long and there isn't any way for me to get the same out of digital... yet!

The only reason why I am not yet getting the same level of results off of digital is that with the *ist-D I wasn't convinced by the cameras performance enough to experiment. The K10D has changed that slightly and I am now playing around with my Epson R800. Once I have all of the stages fully dialed, RAW processing, sharpening, decent calibration etc, I think I'll be more than satisfied with the results. Already I believe that I can get an equally good A4 print out of the R800 from either K10D RAW file or a decent 2400ppi MF scan from my 4990 flatbed.

The other job that I need to do to realise the full potential of digital is to strike up a decent relationship with a decent digital lab/printer... At the moment I think there's a lot of work involved to get there... Any recommendations chaps?

The quality of my results at the moment comes down to my personal effort and knowledge, not the cameras or the media that I use. Using film is easier than digital, I step out of the loop once the film is out of the camera and rely on other experts to get the results I need. With time, a lot of reading, a small pile of effort and no doubt some pointers from you chaps I'll be getting cracking prints on my wall that are digital all the way...

Will

www.ProAMImaging.com - definitely
Fully colour managed, high resolution, quick turnaround and friendly staff. (And the prices are crazy too )
Matt

[quote="MattMaticFully colour managed...Matt[/quote]

And this is where I start to get lost... Will need to put in that effort I spoke about to fully understand how all of this works...

[quote="MattMatic"]
40p for a 10x8. You can't beat that. There really is no point in having your own printer.

G

Will,
The instructions are quite simple - http://www.proamimaging.com/profile.html

Essentially they don't touch your file at all - no tweaks, no adjustments - nothing. So you know you'll absolutely consistent results.

First, you download their profile, install it on your machine (as per instructions). Make sure your monitor is calibrated (so you're looking at pukkah colours), and edit away in Photoshop.

When you're happy with what you see within Photoshop (not anywhere else as many imaging applications are not colour managed and won't utilise the monitor's profile) then you follow ProAM's instructions and use Photoshop to convert your image into their machine's colour space.
Then you save that as a new high quality JPG and stuff it on CD.

(You also have to resize your images to the correct dimensions - but that's not difficult.)

As George says, there's not much point having your own printer with their service! And their 18x12"s are superb

Matt

Chris, there's some great stuff there. It's hard to be inconspicuous with a P67, though, isn't it?

On the following discussion, it's important to remember that resolution is not the only thing that counts in film vs digital. For me, film's big advantage for some photography is the graceful degradation of highlights and shadows, along with better noise levels when exposures get up into the 5 minutes plus bracket.

While I doubt we'll ever take 35mm colour again, the Canon 5D and Pentax K10D ruling there, the P67 still has work to do. Some examples at:

http://www.scotstock.net/html/gal.php?aid=9

All those are MF, mainly P67 with some Rolleiflex TLR and one Mamiya Press 6x9. The waterfall shots were also taken with the 5D, and they aren't a patch on the film versions. Even FF digital can't cope with water and rock in shade the way big film can. Posterized highlights and noisy shadows!

Colin

Were you shooting RAW? And if so, with what converter?

G

Never shoot anything else! They were processed in ACR. The problem is dynamic range; if you back off exposure enough not to blow the highlights in the flowing water (and being white, all three channels clip more or less together), the shadows which need a little texture are starting to get noisy, even on the 5D at ISO100. Also, wet rock and wood is all texture, while digital is good at edges but not subtle detail. It just doesn't look right.

Anyway, it keeps the P67 busy. Can't do all the good stuff with a Canon!

Colin

I chose the 67 system so that magazines were more likely to publish travel features and use 2 page spreads as well as smaller images. Although the differences in resolution between 35mm film (and most digital cameras) and medium format may not be noticable on the web it is for larger prints.

I am looking forward to the Pentax 645D. It may be the camera that tips the balance toward digital for me although I will still love looking at big transparencies on a lightbox.

Travel Photographers Network and Photoportfolios.net have both been a useful resource - they haven't led to any direct sales, but they both have a great bunch of people and it gets your photos out there. I have had some success with Alamy which is great if you have images that not so common. Photos of Tower Bridge no matter how good are unlikely to ever get a sale as there are thousands of similar images.

You do stand out walking around with a Pentax 67, however, living in Japan as a "very white, big nose, skinny man" ( a compliment a student once gave me ) you get used to people looking at you.

Even in Japan its getting difficult to get roll film processed. I now have to send all my film to Tokyo to process. As I live in Okinawa ( a thousand or so kilometers from Tokyo ) it isn't exactly helping my carbon footprint!
How are things going back in the UK with regards to processing?

Chris