The 35mm Laser Gallery

[Blarg King]

So, after several weeks of waiting, I was finally able to get my color film developed. One of my college instructors was kind enough to let me use the school's darkroom and teach me how to do the C-41 development process. And for the most part, I was able to develop all my film without issue.

I shot an entire roll of film just for laser photos. I was inspired by trencheel303's lasers on film post from a while ago.

The "good" (and by good I mean ones that weren't garbage).

445 + 520

445 + 620

520

520 Mirror Bounce

445 520 620

The Bad:

So, learned a lot from these photos. I'll share some key points in case anyone else decides to try this.

-445 easily over exposes all the color layers, making the beam appear white.
-620 really easily washes out the whole photo.

I thought 400 ISO would be slow enough for this kind of low-light stuff. I'll probably use a 100 ISO film.

Shorter exposure time + tighter aperture should stop the 445 from exposing all the layers.

For 620 Ill do the same, plus a better beamstop to avoid excess red light getting everywhere.

 

[Lifetime17]

Hi BK,
This is awesome i have a 35mm film camera might be thinking about using it again for the beam shots. But i would get them put on disc or chip.. Great work back to old school photography .. Back when we didn't have beepers or cell phones or digital cameras ..Good work + Rep buddy something refreshing..

Rich

 

[Blarg King]

Thanks man!

Heres a bonus photo of my bare HeNe tube:

 

[Lifetime17]

Hi,
Wow that came out sweet my man, How soon we forget the older equipment and how well it worked for us in the past. there's some thing about past tech..

rich

 

[Alaskan]

Thank you for sharing, interesting.

 

[trencheel303]

Nice, glad to see these materialised + thanks for the mention

Now you have learned similar to what I mentioned: blue and violet lasers just tend to wash out on film, and can even look like 473. Film does not like UV, or anything near it. Reds do indeed over power the film, you will also find on the streets that sodium street lights can really go far on film as it loves yellow/red light. One thing I have found as well is that film balances well - there's no concept of white balance like digital and a good film won't be thrown out wildly by one prominent light source of a certain colour temperature like digital can.

I need to get a tripod again!

Ps. I did multiple threads, this one is better than my first: http://laserpointerforums.com/f48/lasers-film-round-two-mirrors-rainbow-89062.html

 

[Crazlaser]

Nice change from average DSLR photos we see. Without an IR filter, what's the wavelength range that the film can develop?

 

[Seoul_lasers]

Another idea would be to reverse process a digital photo onto colour film.
I have tried before with B&W negatives and the results were excellent.
It might be something to experiment with it.
Take the photo with a DSLR and invert the photo into a neg, then expose the image onto photo paper.

Nice attempt at the Analogue photography.
Looks like those 1970s /1980s shots of old HeNe beams pointing at the cameras in
National Geographic Magazines. Cool and Retro.

 

[Blarg King]

Nice change from average DSLR photos we see. Without an IR filter, what's the wavelength range that the film can develop?

I think it varies depending on the film, but film chemistry I believe goes from deep ultraviolet up to nearly IR.

Originally, film was very responsive to blue light, and almost completely blind to red light, which is why very old black and white photos don't have a very wide greyscale. If it didn't reflect blue light, it didn't expose very well, making the photos have more contrast.

Modern films are responsive to roughly the same spectrum we can see, with a bit more UV, but filmmakers put a UV blocking layer in to prevent the UV from blowing out the film. This layer isn't perfect though, and is mostly for shortwave UV, which is why the 405 and 445 lasers still cause issues.

In color film, the silver halide crystals that are responsible for exposing under light are mixed with various dyes to produce color responsiveness. A cheap film may just have 3 layers for red, green, and blue, but a more expensive film can have up to 13 color layers, with each covering a small section of the visible spectrum.

Im definitely going to get a pack of 200 film and try again. They sell 3 packs of Kodak 200 at walmart for like 12$. If I can get better results from the 200 ISO I might splurge a bit and buy a 10$ roll or Kodak Porta professional grade stuff.

 

[trencheel303]

Portra 400 was one of my all time favourites, mainly because at 400 it's almost noise free and it can be pushed quite easily all the way to 1600. When you do, the film colour and grain takes on an almost "instagram filter" sort of look, only 1000x better. It also works with Kodak Gold 200 pushed to 800 and Fujicolour ISO 200 up to 800 although that's more grainy IIRC. I love film. I have loads of photos taken on it that I'll cherish forever because of how experimental they were and how well they turned out.