Web Designer Ramblings - Photo of the Day

The Conservatory, Rio Grande Botanic Gardens, Albuquerque, New Mexico.

This photo is clear evidence of the high standards of current consumer quality 35mm film (click on the image to view a hi-res version)! This photo was taken with a Minolta X-700 with a standard 50mm f1.7 lens. The film was Kodak 400uc, a 400-ASA print film sold in Walmart for less than $10.00 for three 36exp rolls (1 hour processing is around $6.00 per roll--I keep the prints and scan the negatives! This film provides eye catching saturation of colors while keeping skin tones natural. Plus, it has the fine grain of much slower films and scans beautifully with typical consumer film scanners. This was scanned with a Nikon Coolscan V ED.I was amazed at how beautifully this film rendered the colors in this photo. Plus, the film grain is unobstrusive and not noticeable at normal viewing distances. I was able to print a beautiful 17x22 inkjet print of this image.

This photo is also another good example of why I still do most of my serious photography with film. It is very easy to get a nice bokeh (blurred background) with typical film slr lenses by using a wide aperture, limiting the depth of field. That effect is much harder to obtain with any digital camera you will buy of the shelf for less than $1,000.