BlogUpdates Archives - Luigi Barbano Photography

Dec 22

by Barbano Luigi in BlogUpdates, News, Uncategorized 0 comments tags: Christmas, Christmas 2023, happy new year, Luigi Barbano, photography

Merry Christmas… was I nice or naughty this year?

Christmas is here. It’s time to think about the past year and see if we had been nice or naughty… but I’m always a nice boy! 😉 I’m so good that this year I received the Claus House Seal of Approval for my 29 years of Christmas photographs! In time for the opening of my new Italian studio! And here as usual my Christmas picture to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a fantastic 2024. I wish you to live in a free world where all the totalitarian dictators, real and in spirit, will be sent out of our way so we can create freely! Have a great Christmas and see you all in the new year! Ciao!

Nov 23

by Barbano Luigi in BlogUpdates, News, Uncategorized 0 comments

A challenge: my new Italian studio

The challenge: sometime life events screw up our plans and, to make the story short, I found myself in my late parents’ house in Italy with the challenge to create my new photo studio in the attic. It’s a boring story so I don’t write here about it, but I made a video where I tell it, so if you are curious just check it out. The location, for some aspects, is not ideal and I come from a previous experience in a 4000 square feet studio in an industrial building, just the room dedicated to the shooting was 10×15 meters (32×50 feet). A very nice situation where I had plenty of room to plan everything I needed without having to compromise. I got spoiled. The big plus I have now is a lot of years of experience so I know exactly what I really need and what I can live without. Experience is really a huge help. The lesson learned from the mistakes and the right choices are really valuable and I made a lot of both in almost 30 years as a professional photographer. The attic is a large non refined room used by generations of hoarders. You […]

Nov 15

by Barbano Luigi in BlogUpdates, FineArt, News, nudes, Photography Class, Uncategorized 0 comments tags: #ItalyTours, #travelItaly, LaDolceVita, Luigi Barbano, photography, workshop

La Dolce Vita Workshops

Great news! In partnership with La Dolce Vita Workshops, I created traveling workshops in Italy. The workshops are designed for any level of expertise and will teach you to live everyday La Dolce Vita and bring it in your photographs. . Italy is not just a place, it’s a lifestyle that created the most beautiful art and design. It’s a lifestyle you can live everywhere after you had experienced it in the proper way. You can check the details of the workshops on www.ladolcevitaworkshops.com . Book before Christmas 2023 and receive $500 discount. Hurry up, only ten rooms available and usually fill up quickly!

Jul 05

by Barbano Luigi in BlogUpdates, Books, FineArt, News, Nim148, Uncategorized 0 comments tags: Black and White, fine art, Luigi Barbano, nim148, photography, zine

nim148, welcome to my new Zine

A brief introduction to my new zine: nim148.

May 26

by Barbano Luigi in BlogUpdates, Gear Talk, News, Uncategorized 0 comments tags: #Fowa, #Kimono, #monochrome, #Pentax, #Ricoh, #Ricohimaging, Black and White, K3Monochrome, Luigi Barbano, photography

Pentax K3 Monochrome, full review.

Introduction Thanks to Fowa, the Italian Pentax importer, I had the Pentax K3 MkIII monochrome to test for some weeks. There is only one way to describe my feelings for this camera: I’m in love with it. I like to do black and white photography, both in film and digital, and it’s the first time using a digital camera I feel the camera is just a tool to realize my vision and not something that will be in my way and I will have to figure out how to not let it influence my vision. . The camera The Pentax K3 MkIII, in its normal color version, had been on the market for a while. It’s a beautifully built 26 Megapixels Aps-C reflex camera that had great reviews from many photographers. The body is solid, weather sealed, very easy to use and has a beautiful viewfinder. In the era of mirrorless Pentax decided to continue to produce reflex cameras. If you like optical viewfinders as much as I do, you will really like the quality of the Pentax viewfinders. I tested the K1 MkII, a full frame camera, and the K3 mkIII and also if the K3 has a smaller […]

May 10

by Barbano Luigi in BlogUpdates, FineArt, Gear Talk, News, Uncategorized 0 comments tags: Black&White, K3, K3Monochrome, Monochrome, Pentax, photogrpahy

Pentax K3 Monochrome vs K3 mkIII Color

Thanks to the Italian importer of Pentax, FOWA, I had the Pentax K3 Monochrome and a K3 MkIII to test. For now I just did a first walk with the camera, at night in the city of Cuneo and a little comparison test in studio. . . Here, in the video you can hear what I think about the camera, if you like to see the pictures I took in the studio to have a first comparison of the K3 Monochrome and the K3 MkIII Color and download the raw files, just scroll to the end of the article and you will find the link. . The results are really impressive. The lack of noise also at higher ISO, the dynamic range and the general quality of the images are absolutely fantastic! . Here the 100% zoom. If you want to download the original RAW files and play with them, use the following links. Please consider to use the Donate button so I can cover the increase of expenses for the server space and bandwidth. K3 Monochrome:KimonoTestRAW_Part1.zipKimonoTestRAW_Part2.zip K3 MkIII Color:K3MkIIITestRAW_Part1.zip K3MkIIITestRAW_Part2.zip Please consider a small donation: . See you next time with more tests!

Apr 06

by Barbano Luigi in BlogUpdates, Gear Talk, News, Uncategorized 0 comments tags: aviation, Castelleto Stura, Fowa, Luigi Barbano, Pentax, photography, Ricoh, Ricohimaging, Tecnam

A tale of two passions and a beautiful Sunday morning

Whoever knows me knows I have two great passions in life: photography and aviation. Both of them started early in my life, photography when I was 8 years old during a darkroom class at the elementary school and aviation with my first flight when I was turning 6 and my father, a private pilot, brought me up for my birthday. A lot of water passed under the bridges since then and life decided photography had to become my job and aviation an hobby I had to dream about more than practicing it. I tempted many times to bring the two passions together but I was able to do it just for a little while when I lived in Florida and you can see here a peak moment of that union. In Italy it’s not that simple and when the unexpected opportunity of last Sunday arrived I jumped on it. . . Sadly Italy is not offering the same opportunities in aviation. General Aviation in Italy was annihilated by years of excessive taxes, absurd bureaucracy and socialist rhetoric. The story of aviation in Italy was great at the beginning, the development of aviation was fast and strong around the World Ward […]

Dec 23

by Barbano Luigi in BlogUpdates, Film photography, meditations, News, Uncategorized 0 comments tags: #filmisalive, #Pentax, #photography, #Ricoh, Black and White, fineart, Luigi Barbano, photography

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

Also this year Christmas arrived and with it my usual Christmas picture to wish you wonderful holidays, a fantastic 2023 and the joy of experiencing an analog life. . . Usually for my Christmas photograph I follow the big events of the year, and you can see in this article what I did in the past, but this year I decided to stay far away from the world events. I simply decided that I had two choices: getting very upset with how the world is run and be very polemic and political or concentrating on my passion for photography. I chose the latter. I decided to create an homage to film photography. First of all in the last years I started to use again film for a lot of my artistic production. Second this year was a great year for film photographers; Leica produced again the film camera M6 and Pentax announced, just few days ago, that will again produce analog cameras. It’s really a great moment for film photography because the involvement of big companies in the analog field means film is not dead and there will be a revival as there was in music with vinyl. We have […]

DIY UV Box Tested!

It passed quite a while since I built my UV Box but sometime life gets in the middle of our fun projects! Now finally I tested the UV Box and I can say it works great. . . I made a test with two different negatives: a very soft flower subject lighted with painted light and a very sharp subject lighted with a very contrasted light. I wanted to see how this printing process deals with different subjects. I proceeded with some step test to find the corrected exposure for my negatives. I did 2 seconds steps and as you can see in the video I was a little optimist with my first strip of 2,4,6,8 seconds exposure. At the end the correct exposure resulted of 11 minutes. . You can see the tests I made in the video below. I was expecting shorter exposure times ’cause I seen some other boxes made with the same LED giving short exposure times with other alternative processes. Still I like the slow times when I work with film and so I kinda like to have time to think while I wait for the paper to be exposed. The Arduino timer is working […]

Feb 10

by Barbano Luigi in BlogUpdates, Film photography, FineArt, Gear Talk, Uncategorized 0 comments tags: Carbon, Cianotype, film, filmisalive, fineart, Luigi Barbano, old techniques, palladium, photography, Platinum, printing, UV, UV BOX, Van Dyke

Luigi’s Drunk UV Box!

I was always told: if you have to do something, do it with your own style! So here my Italian style UV box to expose the papers coated with antique photographic processes. At the origin of photography many technologies of printing required the exposure in UV light. At those time sun was the perfect source and the exposure was usually made outdoor. The quantity of UV light from the sun can vary a lot in different seasons or with different weather, plus, baby it’s cold outside now in winter! For this reason I decided to build a UV Box. I was inspired by some similar projects videos on YouTube but I added a personal touch. First of all I used an old wood box for wine bottles instead of a modern plastic box. The wood box was in my cellar, free, and wood looks better and more coherent than plastic with old techniques. Second I decided to add a timer for a precise exposure instead of counting the seconds with an external timer and manually switch the lights on and off. . . Check out the video to know more about the UV Box and see how it works. . […]