How Chriscrawfordphoto does it...

rfaspen said:
Health issue stink. I hope that all resolves Chris.

A few days ago I looked at some old material you posted about scanning. Couldn't help but think what a helpful RFF member that Chris guy is.
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I've been in bad health all of my life. I spent half my childhood in the hospital because I kept having seizures. When I was older, I was thin and frail; I didn't weigh more than 100lb until I was in my early 30s, despite being 5'10" tall. In 2016, I had a stroke that left the right side of my body weak. If I put weight on my right leg, I sometimes lose feeling in my leg and fall. I've suddenly dropped things from my right hand for the same reason, and sometimes I have trouble manipulating objects like keys or pencils, which is hard because I am right-handed. Sometimes I have weird muscle twitches in my face that I cannot control.

Yeah, health problems suck!

I'm happy that my tutorials are useful to you. I had to learn all of this by trial and error many years ago. About 15 yrs ago, my health problems made it hard for me to work in the darkroom anymore. The chemicals were triggering allergies and causing respiratory problems, even though I had a good ventilation system. I got my Nikon scanner with the help of a wealthy person who liked my work, and I bought books on Photoshop and started practicing!
 
Good luck to you Chris. I enjoy your tutorials, too. Like you I've had nothing but bad health luck all my life. Keep your head up though, for the last few years things have been good for me (just a few hospital visits).
 
charjohncarter said:
Good luck to you Chris. I enjoy your tutorials, too. Like you I've had nothing but bad health luck all my life. Keep your head up though, for the last few years things have been good for me (just a few hospital visits).
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John,

Sorry to hear you've been in poor health too. I'm glad things are looking up for you.
 
Hey Chris:

Let me add to the deep appreciation. I'm probably somewhere like one of your teen students in current stage - less acne, less distraction, etc. but maybe (geezin') older and more rigid in other ways. Teens can be fearless in good ways, too! But that aside, this PMK stuff looks marvelous. But I'm put off by the toxic bit. Sounds intense? I worry 'bout what we throw down the drain, much less inhale or otherwise come into contact with. Too early for me to deviate into a developer that I think you post is great, but a tad finicky too. For now I'm curious, but keeping my distance. But still curious. The handling issues can probably be overcome, but then there's the finicky part. Sounds like something for the Advanced Class. Is that right? I've used HC-110 and DD-X (Ilford) successfully so far, and have a bottle of Rodinal that I'm saving for "down the pike", so I'm admiring from afar from now... and likely sometime ahead. Will collect info meantime (almost bought the book on PMK, but didn't).
 
roscoetuff said:
Hey Chris:

Let me add to the deep appreciation. I'm probably somewhere like one of your teen students in current stage - less acne, less distraction, etc. but maybe (geezin') older and more rigid in other ways. Teens can be fearless in good ways, too! But that aside, this PMK stuff looks marvelous. But I'm put off by the toxic bit. Sounds intense? I worry 'bout what we throw down the drain, much less inhale or otherwise come into contact with. Too early for me to deviate into a developer that I think you post is great, but a tad finicky too. For now I'm curious, but keeping my distance. But still curious. The handling issues can probably be overcome, but then there's the finicky part. Sounds like something for the Advanced Class. Is that right? I've used HC-110 and DD-X (Ilford) successfully so far, and have a bottle of Rodinal that I'm saving for "down the pike", so I'm admiring from afar from now... and likely sometime ahead. Will collect info meantime (almost bought the book on PMK, but didn't).
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If you're just getting started with film developing, I'd probably wait on trying PMK.

Toxicity isn't such a big issue as long as you buy the liquid kit. Its also sold in powder form, and some users buy the bulk chemicals and make their own. Dry chemicals are very easy to breathe in as the dust becomes airborne, and inhaled chemicals absorb into the bloodstream much more efficiently than liquids that get on your skin (and wearing nitrile gloves eliminates that problem).

Even though danger from PMK toxicity is easy to avoid, the developer is a difficult and finicky one to work with.

Go ahead and try Rodinal, though. It is actually a pretty easy developer to use. I learned to develop film when I took Photography class in high school 25 years ago. My high school photo teacher was a huge Rodinal fan, and that was the only developer he had his students use.

I don't teach high school anymore. I was actually a literature teacher, not a photo teacher (I have a masters degree in literature). One day in November, 2013 I was teaching and the right side of my body went numb and stayed that was for several hours. A stroke! I have not been well since then. Some days, I am tired and can't do anything but sleep. The right side of my body is weakened, and I walk with a limp.

So, I stepped down from being a fulltime teacher and worked a couple more years as a substitute teacher on the days I felt well. Last year, when working as sub, I witnessed a school employee bullying a blind middle school student whose father was also a teacher. I called him and told him what I saw, and the school system fired me for 'causing trouble' by talking to him.

So, I am retired. I make my living teaching lessons and selling prints. I miss my students; I run into kids I worked with, both as a fulltime teacher and as a sub, all the time and they always tell me they miss me.
 
A couple years ago, I made a video showing how to convert color digital images to black and white just using the tools built into Photoshop. While that can give good results, most of us who do a lot of BW work find that the tonality is still lacking, and that better results can be obtained with specialized plugins that increase local contrast without losing highlight and shadow detail.

I've just made a video showing how to get the best results out of Nik Silver Efex Pro 2, a popular and now FREE Photoshop plugin for converting color to BW.

https://youtu.be/xvnkwa9Zwjw

I plan to do tutorials on some other color to BW plugins soon.
 
Someone who had watched my video on YouTube on scanning color slides asked me if I had tried having Vuescan save a RAW file instead of a TIFF file. He was having trouble making it work, so I played around with it, figured it out and made a video showing how to scan into a RAW file in Vuescan.

https://youtu.be/IZWcPRnXWaU
 
Chris: Taking your practice and experience as a recommendation, and bought a Nikon LS-8000 scanner off ebay. Not the newest, but repair guy nearby says he has plenty of LS-8000 parts. Hope not to need them, but what do you do? Good to know. Thanks!
 
roscoetuff said:
Chris: Taking your practice and experience as a recommendation, and bought a Nikon LS-8000 scanner off ebay. Not the newest, but repair guy nearby says he has plenty of LS-8000 parts. Hope not to need them, but what do you do? Good to know. Thanks!
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Cool, I think you'll like it. I'm still using mine, 15 years after buying it new!
 
For a while now, I have wanted to do a series of videos showing me edit a photo step-by-step from beginning to end. I did one a couple years ago, then never did any more.

This morning, I photographed an interesting urban scene that I passed by after I dropped my son off at school. I decided to record the editing of it since it required some work in Lightroom to overcome a very high-contrast light situation.

https://youtu.be/ApC-5VzW-FM
 
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