Abstracts
Floors and tables shot with my #Charmera
Remote
Ralph Brandi
@thereisnocat@toot.cafe
mastodon 4.7.3Just some guy. He/His.
537 Followers
251 Following
50 Posts
Joined August 16, 2018
And yes, it’s pictures.
The roll on the left is kind of fogged and thin, I think, but I see frames in shot with my Pentax 17 in Florida. The roll on the right is a roll of expired Ektar 100 I shot this morning in the M3.
Finally starting to develop the photos I shot in Florida a few weeks ago.
Photobooths of lower Manhattan
Three rolls from today’s excursion into NYC ready for development; one roll of 120 Kodak Plus-X from the Hasselblad, one roll of 220!Kodak Portra 160NC, also from the Hasselblad, and one roll of Fuji 200 (US) from the Yashica Samurai X3.0. Nikon S still has part of a roll of Kikipan to finish, and the Samurai has another half roll of Fuji 200 (US) to finish.
It’s pictures.
One roll of Kodak Pro Image 100 through the Leica R4; one roll of Kono Don’t You Dare Call It Standard through the Pentax 17; and a roll shot at lunchtime today in the Leica M3 of Santa Color 100.
Took the M3 out this morning for its first full roll. Fingers crossed that it’s pictures….
It’s pictures.
One roll of 35mm Fujifilm 200 (US) and one roll of 220 Kodak Portra 160NC, both shot at the Dance Parade in NYC yesterday, both full of pictures.
It’s pictures
Third roll from the Dance Parade in Manhattan on Saturday, this one a roll of 120 Kodak Plus-X put through the Hasselblad 500cm and developed in 510-Pyro.
Calibration complete. Trying my first salt prints. #AltProcess
Replying to
This has held us surprisingly well. Putin is a Dickhead is a tasty beer.
RE: @llorenzin@infosec.exchange
Former senior here, now retired. Best part of the job was mentoring juniors and watch them get better at my job than me. Without that, there’s no point, because all the seniors will eventually retire and die, and where do seniors come from? Juniors who have been mentored, taught, nurtured to get to that level.
I’m so glad I got out when I did.
Was looking for some information about old Agfa film, specifically Agfa Pan 400 Professional, because I found 3 boxes of it in 4x5. It predates the APX films. Most information about Agfa black and white films is about APX. But I found this site with a bunch of old documents:
Had a hornet in the house. Laura isolated him in the bathroom and tasked me with dealing with him. Managed to trap him and take him outside and release him. That’s enough adulting for today. I need a drink.
Oh wait, it’s 8:30 in the morning….
Tried exposing three salt prints just now. All three had issues, mostly with my brushwork. /me sighs….
Wishing everyone who celebrates a Happy Ether. I hope you got a visit from the Ether Monkey.
Replying to
I developed the two sheets I shot. The 100 looks a little better than the 200, but they both look acceptable. The histograms are both a little to the right, which could mean they’re both overexposed, but I think it’s that the time on the box for Rodinal is too long. I bet I could shoot box speed.
Amazing for film that’s 40 years expired. I may try 400 and 50 tomorrow.
Lloyd Doggett and Michael Shank call for the U.S. to move from fossil fuel dependence to decentralized generation with renewable energy sources, using Ukraine as an example of a country making this move.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/may/18/iran-war-energy-independence-fossil-fuels
Dinner at my favorite restaurant in the world, Veselka.
Headed into the city for the Dance Parade. Laura is marching with the Findy Hoppers. Should get some fun photos out of this.
The local community college has an improv group, or maybe a class, and they do their thing in front of the public periodically. Laura finds out about stuff like this and suggests we go, and I usually say yes. So that’s where I was tonight. It was a blast.
Putin is terrified. Luke Harding of The Guardian talks to the Ukrainian commander throwing the fear of God into him:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/may/08/madyar-robert-brovdi-ukraine-military-vladimir-putin
KosmoFoto and PetaPixel have posted articles about Mark Osterman and France Sculley Osterman's project to make film like what was shot in the first Leicas, but this article in Rust talks to Mark Osterman and gives the best look at what they’re doing.
https://www.rustmag.com/gear/2025/7/15/mark-ostermans-mo-1925-film-project
So the Medalist II service manual specifically addresses the rangefinder issue I have where the halving is incorrect. The fix is to slightly move the rangefinder lenses without loosening the nuts holding them in place. This sounds almost doable.
Replying to
@bosak@flx.masto.host You’re not wrong. It would be the supreme irony of the biggest fan of fossil fuels in the world is responsible for the world making an abrupt turn toward renewable energy in a way that has escaped us up to this point.
Replying to
@analog_cafe@mas.to With a name like that, I agree with your speculation that it’s their take on Lomography’s flipped color films.
Replying to
@andre@mastoart.social @samael@filmly.co.ua That was fascinating. I subscribe to Ari's channel but hadn't seen this one yet because I'm on a trip right now and focused elsewhere, but I watched this. I think you've mentioned this film before; I was definitely aware of it. I can't imagine I could ever get some of it, but it's sure fun to think about.
Replying to
@coldkennels@mastodon.social @AlexLuyckxPhoto@mstdn.ca That looks really interesting. I use Silverfast and find the SRDx stuff there less helpful than I would like, but their demos as a Photoshop plugin look promising.
Replying to
@AlexLuyckxPhoto@mstdn.ca Diafine is more of a speed increasing developer. Your review shows Elementary working with films at box speed and mentions that it has both Metol and Hydroquinone; the box speed suggests D-76 over Diafine, and the use of Metol and Hydroquinone suggests divided D-76 over divided D-23, which uses only Metol.
Replying to
@AlexLuyckxPhoto@mstdn.ca Sounds like divided D-76. I’ve been mixing my own of that, and using 5 and 5 instead of 3 and 3, but the way these divided developers work, that shouldn’t make a difference.
Replying to
@andre@mastoart.social We would call that a cottage here. My paternal grandparents would spend every weekend at “the cottage up north” when I was a kid.
Replying to
@bosak@flx.masto.host I look forward to what you have to say about BTTB. Sounds interesting.
Replying to
@Richr@mastodon.social We used it for a project at my last job to serve as a back end to a front end I was creating. I didn’t work in it directly, but my colleagues who did were happy with it. The fact that it uses Next.js is a point in its favor; that mitigates a fair amount of the issues I have with React by rendering on the server. I actually paired it with a front end built with Remix, which works similarly to Next.js in rendering on the server and would up with something that worked like a normal site.
Replying to
@bosak I was just about to say “Divided D-76". You mentioned this a year or two ago, and I picked up on it and have been using it regularly ever since.
Replying to
@Billthoo@mastodon.art No need to apologize. Real life always always always comes first. I hope whoever is ill recovers quickly and fully.
Replying to
@analog_cafe@mas.to I have. I've been making use of Lomography Turquoise for an ongoing series about the way the world looks after the apocalypse, and Switch Azure looks to me to be perhaps even more appropriate for that project. I'm happy with it after one roll.
Replying to
@ai6yr@m.ai6yr.org My parents gave me one of those (specifically the R4, which was not for sale, only available as a premium for the stamps you used to get in grocery stores) when I was three years old to distract me from trying to destroy my father’s cameras. 60!years later, I still have it and it still works. Good luck with your film from 1980; it would probably be more likely to produce pictures if it were Verichrome Pan. :-)
Replying to
@lauren@mastodon.laurenweinstein.org I worked in a peripheral organization at Bell Labs (BL Tech Pubs), not the Murray Hill lab, but every time I needed to talk to someone from MH they were incredibly helpful. And it happened more often than you would think, because I was one of the people running www.bell-labs.com. Love your story.
Replying to
@AlexLuyckxPhoto@mstdn.ca @coldkennels@mastodon.social The version in Silverfast 9 isn’t the same. It’s more or less their name for using ICE when scanning, and only works on color scans.
Replying to
@Luke@typo.social New York Telephone….
(You probably didn’t see those ads, but where I live, the TV ran them constantly when I was growing up. I can’t see those words without singing them….)
Okay, this is cool. Got e-mail suggesting that FM skins open. Fired up my SDR and tuned to 88.1 FM and the RDS tells me I’m hearing WJIS in Bradenton, Florida, 1014 miles from my location in New Jersey.
Replying to
@andre@mastoart.social i know what the russian word is for that kind of cabin; what is the Ukrainian word?
Kind of struggling with salt prints. Made two step wedges, one at 900 units on my meter and one at ten times that and never got merged blacks, although that had bad fog. So somewhere in between. Tried 1500 and 2500 units for next step, and see no difference. I’ll keep plugging; kallitype’s easier…
There is undoubtedly a lesson for us Americans as well in this look at the daunting task before Hungarians in the wake of the defeat of Victor Orbán.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/apr/15/hungary-authoritarianism-poland-rule-of-law