film photography Archives - Luigi Barbano Photography

Jan 13

by Barbano Luigi in Black and White Tales, BlogUpdates, Books, Film photography, FineArt, Gear Talk, meditations, News, Uncategorized 0 comments tags: film photography, fineart, New Year, new year resolutions, photography

Welcome to 2021

What a freaking year 2020 had been! Now we are 12 days into 2021 and it seems to suck even more… but I’m still optimist so I will focus on the positive I got from 2020 and tell you a little about my projects for 2021. If you prefer a video version, just watch it here, but if you prefer to read go on. I’m really glad in January 2020, before the shit hit the fan badly, I decided to start my Black and White Tales project. It was a great way to keep myself busy and stay in touch with the world and my creative mind while we entered the Covid jail we still have to leave! That project taught me a lot about myself and my photographic style and preferences. I got even more involved with film thanks to the images I found in my archive and really loved. If you followed the projects from the beginning I owe you a big thank you. If you did not just click here and enjoy it. If you do not click and check it out nothing will happen to you but you will make me sad and that will perhaps […]

Sep 17

by Barbano Luigi in Gear Talk, BlogUpdates, Film photography, News, Uncategorized 0 comments tags: 35, Camera review, Film camera, film photography, Filmcamera, filmisalive, GT, Minox, Minox 35, Minox 35GT, sharp lens

Gear Talk: Minox 35GT

After my last video about the huge Pentax 67 I had some jokes, on social media, about the size of the camera and the probable need for compensation for other attributes. Being an Italian and having to defend an entire tradition and culture, I evaluated various options. At the end I decided to talk about another camera I use so I can recreate an equilibrium! Ok, just kidding but I decided to talk about the Minox 35GT because is a fantastic camera and has an opposite philosophy to the medium and large format cameras I mostly use. . . Here a couple of example of images enlarged from the original 21.6″x30.8″ at 360 DPI. Click on the details to see them at original size. . . . As you can see the sharpness is pretty impressive. In the last example is easy to read the incision on the statue also if the light condition is not the best, being the incision in the dark shadow. See you for the next review!

Aug 24

by Barbano Luigi in Gear Talk, BlogUpdates, Film photography, News, Uncategorized 0 comments tags: Camera review, Film camera, film photography, Filmcamera, filmisalive, MZ-S, Pentax, Pentax MZ-S

Gear Talk: Pentax MZ-S

In my opinion one of the greatest camera of the autofocus era. I simply loved this camera and used it a lot professionally. . . More cameras to come, stay tuned!

Aug 24

by Barbano Luigi in Gear Talk, BlogUpdates, Film photography, Uncategorized 0 comments tags: Camera review, Film camera, film photography, Filmcamera, filmisalive, Pentax, Pentax PZ-1p, Pentax Z-1p, PZ-1p, Z-1p

Gear Talk: Pentax PZ-1p & Z-1p

Another very good camera by Pentax. . . Stay tuned for more camera reviews!

Aug 23

by Barbano Luigi in Gear Talk, BlogUpdates, Film photography, News, Uncategorized 0 comments tags: Camera review, Film camera, film photography, Filmcamera, filmisalive, K1000, Pentax, Pentax K1000

Gear Talk: Pentax K1000

Ok… I know… a lot of people will hate me for this… Pentax K1000, a great cheap camera at that times… a very overpriced camera on the used market! . . I promise, next time some camera I love more…

Aug 23

by Barbano Luigi in Gear Talk, BlogUpdates, Film photography, News, Uncategorized 0 comments tags: camera revie, Film camera, film photography, Filmcamera, filmisalive, Pentax, Pentax Spotmatic

Gear Talk: Pentax Spotmatic

One of the most classic and iconic Pentax cameras. This camera introduced the TTL integrated meter and was a revolutionary camera that changed SLRs. Beautiful lenses available with m42 screw mount. Watch the video to learn more. . . The camera in the video was part of my first Phoenix Photo Project that was recognized at the London International Creative Competition. . . Until the next camera!

May 08

by Barbano Luigi in Gear Talk, BlogUpdates, Film photography, Uncategorized 0 comments tags: Film camera, film photography, filmisalive, Luigi Barbano, Pentax, Pentax ME Super, photography

Gear Talk: Pentax ME Super

Since I published my book “Photography: The F Manual” I received many questions about what equipment to use. I decided to make a series of video about cameras, lenses and other tools I used and still use for film and digital photography. First review, my first camera: Pentax ME Super. Enjoy the video! . .

Oct 07

by Barbano Luigi in Uncategorized, BlogUpdates, Film photography, meditations 1 comments tags: Analogue photography, family archive, film photography, history, past, photo archive, photography, present, print, prints

Exploring the analogue past

In the last days I’m exploring an analogue past and thinking about the digital present. A lot of water passed under the bridge since my last blog post. My father passed away, my sabbatical I took to take care of him is going to end soon and at the moment I’m putting some order in my home getting ready to sell it and move on with my life. I come from a family were we used to keep everything and for sure a lot of pictures. Opening boxes and drawers I found the photographic archive of the family, the oldest one consisted in a lot of prints, starting from the beginning of 1900, the newest one, mostly created by me consists in CSs, DVDs and hard disks. Guess what? The oldest archive is accessible without any tools but my eyes and a source of light, the newest one requires a ton of tools and it is still accessible thanks only to the redundancy I applied when I created it, using different media to store my images, but the CDs and DVDs are almost all unreadable now. Vint Cref, one of the Internet fathers and Google VP, warned us about […]

Feb 21

by Barbano Luigi in Uncategorized, BlogUpdates, CaptureOne, Film photography, Fujifilm, News 10 comments tags: Acros, analogue camera, digital camera, film photography, film versus digital, Fujifilm, Hasselblad, photogrpahy, XPro-2

Fuji Acros Digital vs Fuji Acros Film

Digital or Film? Fuji Acros Digital on a XPro-2 compared to Fuji Acros 100 Film on Hasselblad 6×6… who will be the winner? Few weeks ago I did a non scientific comparison between black and white digital and film, using my beloved Fuji XPro-2 and a Pentax 67 with Ilford FP4. The article got a lot of interest and was also published on Fuji X Passion magazine. I decided to improve the test and use Fujifilm Neopan Acros 100 film, instead of Ilford FP4 and Hasselblad instead of Pentax. The use of actual Acros film instead of Ilford is obvious and needed for a less casual comparison. Hasselblad instead of Pentax is because I suspected some lack of sharpness was caused by the lenses, and since I have used Hasselblad all my life and I’m sure were the best analogue medium format camera and optics, I simply wanted to eliminate every variable related to the lens. As I said before: I know that, scanning the negative, part of the process is still digital so is not perfect I do not intend to give all the answers I did this just for fun and to understand myself a little better […]

Jan 31

by Barbano Luigi in BlogUpdates, CaptureOne, Film photography, Fujifilm, Uncategorized 8 comments tags: film photography, film vs digital, Fuji Acros, fuji XPro-2, Ilford FP4, Pentax 67, photography

Digital Fuji Acros vs Ilford FP4 Film

Is Black and white better with digital or film? I compared the Fuji Acros film simulation on my XPro-2 with an Ilford FP4 film on my Pentax 67. Lately I had the time to scan old negatives and I was pretty impressed by the quality and quantity of information available on film, so I decided to use film again, particularly for the PhoenixPhotoProject. The quality of the images created was pretty impressive so I decided to try some film in medium format. I used to work with Hasselblad but I decided to get a used Pentax 67 and have some fun with it. Next time a Pentax vs Hasselblad comaparision! I took some pictures on the snow in a sunny day. The dynamic range a the quality of the tones were great and I started to have the feeling that film can be better than digital sometime. I decided to do a simple non scientific comparison and take the same pictures with the XPro-2, in RAW and jpg with the Acros simulation, and with the Pentax 67 with a roll of Ilford FP4. The choice of a medium format film, compared to an APS-C digital is very simple, 24 MegaPixel […]