Plaubel Makina 67

Tsuyoshi of Project Basho and I were talking about 2.25" rangefinders a few weeks ago and I was basically complaining that I only want one for just an everyday point and shoot and wouldn't use it for serious work so I can by no means justify spending more than a grand on a camera of this type. I'd really like a Mamiya 6 or 7 but refuse to pay well into the thousands for a USED system I won't use often. Then out of no where Tsuyoshi drops a bomb on me, "Ohhh kevvvviiinnn, I have a 6 by 7 rangefinder you can borrow it." Awesome. Turns out its a Plaubel Makina 67, the fucking camera I used to sweat when I was in college!! I would have bought one years ago but they don't come up on eBay too often and when they do they go for way too much.

Last Tuesday I went to Jon's while the boys were recording and tested out the Plaubel 67. I shot 4 rolls of film - 3 Provia 100(still unprocessed...) and one super outdated roll of Tri-x 400. I used a Nikon speedlight bounced off of walls and the ceiling. All photos below shot at 1/125 f/8-11ish. Processed ten minutes, 20 degrees C, Edwal FG-7, scanned @ 300dpi with Epson 4990 slight crop and level adjust.





Overall I really enjoyed the camera, it was simple to use, the viewfinder was bright and the rangefinder produces tact sharp negatives(looking under a 12x loupe). The best part about the camera I think is the 80mm Nikkor with the leaf shutter. I shot a test roll to see how well it preformed hand held and I was able to get a sharp image at 1/8th f/2.8!! Try that with a slr.

Paper Negatives

"Hey, Kevin, why do your photos look so fucked up?"
"Fucked up how? Content?"
"No, they look fuzzy. You know, weird."
"Oh, thats a paper negative."
"ah, ok?"
- people walking by the color lab my last semester at Antonelli.

Paper negatives are fun, they look neat, they add some crazy textures to your photo. They shouldn't always be used as I think it varies from photo to photo. I'm not going to explain how to do it, you can Google 'paper negatives' on your own. I will, however, show you how to cheat at paper negatives. I stumbled upon this the other day.

First, start with a negative(you know, from real quality cameras.Preferably a big one too, 2.25" and above). The picture I'm using is almost two years old and is from the Schiele series I did before I graduated. This was excluded from the series for a number of reasons. Mostly because of my own carelessness composing this shot. I've come back to this negative because I really enjoy just how perfect my friend Amanda hit this pose and her face is exactly what I wanted. Here is the negative scanned at 1200dpi on an Epson 4990 Photo scanner(just scanned, no work - hence dust.):


Once scanned and corrected and cropped and blah blah blahed this could be an ok picture.

First, we are going to rescan this negative. I used the film area guide so I could do a full frame scan of the 4x5" negative. But before I close the lid to my scanner I'm going do something a little crazy. I'm going to place a piece of plain white printer paper over my negative. I know, I'm insane. Why hell would I do that? Because!

Look at all that grainy texture we just added! It's almost like a paper negative!

Now this doesn't change the fact that its kind of a mediocre image. Time to crop, lower saturation, adjust levels, and throw in some curve adjustment. Add some light toning too.

Final product:

An image that is better than mediocre! Something I'd consider hanging on my wall.

Now that you know how to cheat making paper negatives I suggest you go fucking nuts. Get anything that isn't completely opaque and throw it in your scanner. See what types of texture and patterns you are able to cast on your newly alternative image.