Our stop-over in Cambridge began with a stay at the fantastic Madingley Hall.  I say fantastic, the rooms were a little basic but the hall and it’s dining room are out of this world!

This is the most impressive Madingley Hall which operates as a hotel as well as hosting students of short courses at Cambridge University

The morning after the night before, we went for a walk around the stunning gardens:

The traditionally landscaped gardens are befitting of such a historic building, it was really nice to see the gardens on such a sunny morning

This garden tap with corroded copper made for a fantastic subject at Madingley Hall

and I found a nice bench just for me!

I found a nice bench that was named in my honour!

After our tour of Madingley Hall, we went to investigate the historic town of Cambridge.

The King's College Chapel is one of the first buildings to greet the Cambridge tourist. Fantastic on the outside and definitely worth the entrance fee to look inside.

The Spires at the front of King's College Chapel, taken from an interesting angle

The interior of the King's College Chapel is stunning. What is as amazing is when it was completed - 1515!!!

This photo of the fan vault roof doesn't do the spectacular view justice

An image of tourists "Punting" along the river cam behind King's College and looking towards Trinity

A stonemason / builder repairs one of the ancient brick walls along an alleyway

Eventually I managed to pry myself away from the impressive historic centre of Cambridge to take a walk along to the Botanical Gardens. Another tourist gem, the gardens even claim to hold a direct descendant of the apple tree from which an apple fell on Sir Isaac Newton’s head. I’m a bit sceptical, but I like tourist trivia as much as the next camera touting eejit!

A visit to the Botanical Gardens which are a short walk from Cambridge's historic centre rewarded us with fine weather and some more photo opportunities!

Once signed up with dropbox, all one should do is download the client application which is available for win, mac and linux.  The client application creates a special “dropbox” folder – at a customisable location if desired.

Now that you have a local dropbox folder, you can begin copying files into the dropbox, up to the free limit of 2Gb.  By placing files into your public folder you can easily send email links to your friends and collegues by right clicking on the desired file or folder and selecting “copy public link” from the dropbox menu.  You can edit files in your dropbox as if they were locally stored,  the dropbox sync procedure is transparent.

Now I finally have a way of sharing my big old panoramas (28Mb!!) between my friends!

So there are no reasons not to try it, it’s big – free – and flexible.  Go to Dropbox.

The photos were simply fun snaps taken during the walk – the walk was really the objective of the day. All photos were taken with my Nikon D300 and the 18-200mm VR lens.

A Raised Loch that sits in a Bowl / Glen

The moss on this stone is a range of different an interesting colours

This wee barn looks like an awfae tempting emergency Bothy!

The tree branches are cast into shadow against the sky

A fallen tree branch has interesting bluey grey colours

My Nikon FM3a is a black model, as I purchased this hoping it would hold it's resale value, I opted for the more expensive black option

The Nikon FM3a is a very traditionally built but thoroughly modern SLR camera.  The camera’s industrial design is clearly Nikon throughout and the minimalist style is reminiscent of the 70′s and 80′s camera’s that you might imagine a photojournalist touting around a foreign war zones.  In fact the reason that I bought the FM3a is that I was fed up carrying my bulky D300 around towns when I was meant to be enjoying a weekend away or a city break.  The small and light Nikon FM3a did not disappoint me.  My new FM3a allows me to casually walk the streets without getting fed-up with my camera and without drawing too much attention to myself.

It is a fantastic carry everywhere SLR.  It is nearly as portable as a point and shoot digi-cam but I feel safe in the knowledge that I am not sacrificing image quality by reducing the quality of my camera system.

The FM3a adopts Nikon’s brand leading F-mount lens system.  The camera will accept all F-Mount lenses that include a manual focussing ring.  One should note however that the newer Gelded Nikon lenses; ones that contain a ‘G’ at the end of the model number; cannot have their aperture controlled; and the lens will only be useable at the maximum aperture.  this basically means that all pre-2003 lenses are A-OK for use with the FM3a, which is handy because that means any lenses you may choose to buy will be second hand and should be a good deal!

Automation has been incorporated just perfectly in this mechanical camera.  The film speed is automatically read via the DX coding that is present on all film canisters.  The camera also includes a TTL centre weighted exposure meter, which allows one to manually select the aperture and shutter speed to suit.  The camera also allows for Aperture Priority exposure mode – so the camera will automatically select the shutter speed to correctly expose for the lens aperture selected.  Aperture Priority is an ideal level of automation to allow one to select a preferred depth of field / shutter speed for artistic puposes while not becoming bogged down in setting dials.

The image shows the match needles on the left hand side of the frame and the metering circle in the centre of the image

Manual exposure is achieved utilising the ‘match needle’ metering tool that is presented vertically along the left-hand edge of the finder window (see above).  The match-needle tool displays a needle that represents the camera’s recommended shutter speed based on the electronic meter and the selected aperture.  A second needle shows the user-selected shutter speed, the vertical distance between the two needles; if any; represents the exposure compensation applied.

Should the battery die, the camera may be operated in entirely manual mode, a function that is unique as far as I know and which Nikon call a Hybrid Shutter – hybrid electro-mechanical, just like a modern car!.  Although I could never take a photograph without automatic exposure, it can be done with the Nikon FM3a!  In fact, should your camera battery die, you could use a handheld light meter or even an iPhone app such as ‘Light Meter’ to perform your exposure calculation for you, while you keep on snapping battery-free with the FM3a.

One challenge that I discovered when I first attempted to use the FM3a is that the Matrix Metering performed by my D300 is so good that I could not properly expose the film while using the FM3a!  I thought that my FM3a was faulty and was not calculating film exposure properly – in fact I was at fault on two counts 1.) Not understanding how the centre weighted metering works – 2.) Not remembering to press the exposure lock button!

By quickly learning the basics of the zone system via online cheat sheets, I was able to use the FM3a’s exposure compensation dial to achieve perfect exposure of more tricky lighting more reliably.  Please see below a very good explanation of the compensations to be applied to meter readings that I have borrowed from Ken Rockwell:

These compensations are based on your subject pretty much filling the centre of the exposure meter circle….

It has taken me rolls and rolls of film to remember to press the exposure lock button!

To use the above table, let’s say I want to take a photograph of my girlfriend – who is very pale skinned.  I know that I want her skin to be exposed perfectly even if it means sacrificing the background of the image so I dial a ‘+1’ stop compensation into the FM3a’s exposure compensation dial.  I fill the meter circle with the subject (my girlfriend, remember!),  press and hold the exposure lock button and re-frame the photo how I want it, before pressing the shutter button.

It has taken me rolls and rolls of film to remember that half-pressing the shutter button doesn’t lock the exposure on the FM3a!  I have learned that my FM3a does not poorly expose film, I DO!  I have become overly reliant on the excellent matrix metering system.

Unless you are in fully manual mode flash sync speed max’s out at an excellent 1/250^th of a second and the FM3a packs another neat trick up it’s sleave – a flash fill button.  The button is located on the left hand side of the camera’s viewfinder, and reduces flash output by 1-stop [when using Nikon speedlight flashes] to allow for subtle flash-fill of sunlit subjects.

Taking my FM3a out for the weekend leaves me with an age-old problem – how am I going to get my photos onto my computer for editing / posting online!  Regular readers will already know the answer to this question, I capture the film, and invert negatives whenever I use film.

The Nikon FM3a is a great camera for any experienced photographer.  If you can get familiar with the rough workings of the zone system to tune the centre weighted metering then you will achieve great results as I have.  The camera takes button cell batteries and will take great photos for as long as 35mm film is available.  For some example photographs taken with my FM3a, please see Colour Negatives and Black and White photo galleries.

One thing that I did have during the visit was great weather; which is something that can’t be said to often in Scotland. If you like the photos Tweet your followers to spread the word!

The Royal Observatory building at the top of Calton Hill - Camera pointing into the sun

One of the closes that head off the Royal Mile and into Princes Street Gardens

A view from Calton Hill onto the Royal Mile and the North Bridge

The impressive National Monument was once considered a national embarrassment !?

Looking out onto Edinburgh and it's castle

The Scott Monument on Edinburgh's Princes Street

The Forth Rail Bridge as shot at night

Fortunately during this walk, the sun was low providing a nice low light in which to take some macro shots that show off the quality of the Nikon 105mm f/2.8 AF Micro lens. I wonder if I should have used supplemental flash lighting??

A nice wee yellow flower just beginning to lose it's seeds - (105mm 1/320sec f9.0)

A bluebottle is attracted to the yellow flowers - (105mm 1/400sec f10.0)

A nice flower in soft focus due to the camera choosing the leaves which were proud of the flower - (105mm 1/320sec f6.3)

The bluebottle moved round to show more of himself to the camera - (105mm 1/320sec f9.0)

A wasp is pollenating the flowers - (105mm 1/250sec f8.0)

Let me know what you think & post a twitter link if you like them!

On this trip I took my Nikon Fm3A; with Ilford HP5 Plus Black and White film loaded. I scanned and processed the negatives as described in my scanning and processing guides.  Using the techniques described in my guides even saved me the money I’d normally spend on a poor quality photo cd!

Rather than a series of smaller thumbnails with lightroom blow-up effects, I though that I’d try and load the photos into the body of the page – let me know if you prefer this layout.

The car was parked up on that bridge!

A roman style statue in the skud!

Some leaves led to interesting textures

A family enjoying a coffee

A cyclist feeds the pigeons

The river Kelvin, as seen through the bridge

An interesting mirror in the Botanical Gardens

A Thoughtful Cherub at Kelvingrove Park

I have agonised a little over how much contrast to apply to the photos, get in touch via comment or twitter to let me know if you think the images should have a stronger contrast; I just can’t work it out….

A Round House at Crathes Castle

The camera was a Nikon FM3a – 28mm & 50mm lenses, the film was a cheap roll of Kodak ISO 200 from Tesco supermarket!  The film might be cheap, but look at the great blue skies that can be achieved with film, I think you’d struggle to get that blue every time with a DSLR?  However the DSLR is perfect for copying the film in the very controlled lighting conditions that I set up to copy the negatives.

These photos were taken in 3 locations, at Crathes Castle in Aberdeenshire, Hazlehead Park in Aberdeen City and Levengrove Park in Dumbarton.

I always find that tree bark can create interesting textures

A man made loch at Crathes Castle - a lot of green there!

The Rose Garden at Hazelhead Park is a great place to shoot colours - the bold film colours have been well captured by the DSLR

A general scene of Hazelhead Park - Greens, Blues and Reds all captured from negative

A photo of Dumbarton rock taken from Levengrove Park

I will explain how to obtain true colour digital images from your negatives

The steps below allow me to obtain perfect colour balance.

1. It is crucial that you shoot in RAW format so that the white balance may be changed after capture – do not worry about the white balance setting at this point
2. Have a white background on your monitor screen such as an empty google page for example
3. Set the film leader in your toilet tube holder, or other suitable negative holder


This is the Negative Film Leader

4. Take a photo of the film leader
5. In Lightroom Invert the film leader by choosing the ‘Develop’ module -> locating to the ‘Tone Curve’ section -> selecting Linear Curve -> and moving the left and right corners vertically opposite, as shown below.


This is how your tone curve should look when you're done

6. Now the frame numbers which are always negative white, are the colour which we want to set our white balance from, using Lightroom’s white balance dropper.


Take the white measurement from the centre of a white frame number

7. Lightroom’s White Balance ‘Temp’ and ‘Tint’ will now have changed to suit our negative’s colour balance.


This is the white balance that we shall apply to the remainder of our roll

8. Note the ‘Temp’ and ‘Tint’ values so that they can applied to the rest of the negatives.
9. Set the negative that you actually want to scan / copy in your toilet tube holder, or other suitable clamp – and take the photo.  Here’s what I ended up with:


This is how the negative looks before processing

10. I now apply invert the image by setting a linear point curve and reversing the ends:


This is how your tone curve should look when you're done

11. I manually set the colour temperature from the first film leader that we shot.


We apply the Temp and Tint settings that we obtained from our film leader

12. Now press ‘Auto’ in the Tone adjustment box to correct the colours that you are seeing and you should have a pretty much perfect image.
13. I had to add a couple of points to the tone curve to restore some contrast, you may have to do the same.
14. Please see my finished frame, cropped and straightened below.


This is the result of our prep work - a well balanced image

15. I found tweaking the colour temperature and tint slightly improved the image, but once you have a good value, it is completely repeatable across the remainder of the roll of negatives, as it should be

Completing this process results in scans that retain some of the colour properties of the film image. For extra bang, like you get from a digital camera, you can apply camera profiles to the image, or export it to photoshop / GIMP and apply ‘Auto Colours’ which liven the images up a little to more what you’d expect from a saturated digital image.

I was delighted with the outcome of this research. Stay tuned for some more where I will experiment with varying the colour of the backlight supplied by the monitor.

Updated 16/09/2010 – Please see my colour and black and white negative copy results pages

I describe how to incorporate film into a digital workflow

Last year I decided to experiment with a film camera and purchased a Nikon FM3a. The camera produces excellent results, but there is the problem of incorporating the film images into my otherwise completely digital workflow.

After googling the issue which many other film photographers have faced I read several web articles about using Digital SLRs to capture developed film, utilising macro lenses. I own a Nikkor 105mm 2.8 Micro lens and a Nikon D300, so I set about photographing my 35mm films so that I could store them with the remainder of my digital workflow.

I find that captured images of my slides actually retain the properties of the slide film rather well, the limitations of the DSLR (dynamic range for example) are minimised because the capture is being taken in such a controlled environment.

My Copying Setup

Other sites recommend utilising a dedicated light source such as a light box behind the film to be captured, with the Digital SLR secured on a mount pointed towards the film. I don’t. I have a perfectly good light table with configurable colour temperature… my computer’s monitor!

• I make sure that the computer monitor is setup with a white background – such as an empty Google homepage – behind the film to be copied.
• I attach my home-made slide / negative copy adaptor

This is the Toilet Roll Tube Copy Jig, note the seperate piece at the end which is cut to accept slides and may be swapped as required

• I setup the camera pointing at the monitor’s white background, and take a custom white balance shot to ensure a neutral colour balance in the final capture – The camera may be mounted on an old book, or on a mini tripod, whatever works best for you.
• I place the slide film in to the toilet roll jig – in front of the white computer monitor.
• I arrange the film so that a very small border (say 1mm) is visible around the film.
• I set the camera to fire on a 10 second timer to minimise camera shake, and ensure that the viewfinder is covered to prevent the open viewfinder affecting the camera’s exposure measurements.
• I dim the surrounding room by either turning off the lights or shutting the curtains.
• With the camera on Aperture Priority mode Aperture of F22 or higher, I press the shutter release and stand clear to minimise shake.
• The exposure can be as long as 2 seconds.
• Once set up, it should take less than 30mins to have excellent quality copies of your slides.
  

  This is the photo of a slide captured from the North Bridge in Edinburgh

• I open the RAW files in Adobe Lightroom for colour balance editing, sharpening & cropping.
  

  The same slide - processed in Lightroom

Above you can see that the slide has benefit from being processed in Adobe Lightroom.  The same effect can be reproduced in Photoshop or freely using the GIMP.  There was a slight red tone to the clouds in the original slide capture that has been removed.

The areas of the original photo that were sharp remain pin sharp in my macro photo of the slide.  Take a look at the 100% crop below and see just how sharp the results are.

This image shows just how sharp the slide copy is

When walking around a place I visit regularly such as Edinburgh, I prefer the compact form factor of my Fm3a, combined with the fact that film makes you think before you shoot.  Using my DSLR to capture the slides taken on one of my short visits; at no additional cost; gives me complete control over my photographs via my normal digital workflow.  Anyone who has had a disappointing film scan from a photo lab will appreciate the high quality of the output that is possible using equipment that they already have available.

The following sites are great references for more of the same information: Print Head, Simple Slide Copy Jig, Macro Lens & Tripod, Toilet Tube Macro Photography