John Milleker Photography

What’s cheesy, baked and makes photos?

by John Milleker on June 22, 2011 in About The Shot, Alternative Processes, DIY, Pinhole Photography

My new Cheez-It® camera of course!

Cheez-It Camera

The camera is made from 24×18″ black Coroplast, gaffers tape, black poster board and one Cheez-It® cracker. I went through the whole bag to find the one with the smoothest center hole. All the rejects were promptly eaten. The hole was 2.5mm, at this diameter the optimum focal length (from the pinhole to the photo material where the size of the pinhole will be the sharpest) was 15 feet! Well, we were going to have to see how 18″ worked.

A pinhole of 2.5mm at a focal length of 18″ gave me an aperture of f/183. I was using Ilford 8×10″ Photo Paper which sits at around ASA/ISO 6. My Sekonic light meter will actually go to f/128 so I used that to get close. A grey card reading of the scene at ISO 6, f/128 was 2 minutes. You will need to compensate for Reciprocity Failure which is a problem when exposing silver based photo materials (like film or paper) for extremely short or long times. In this case I knew that I needed about 10 times the exposure. My exposure was 20 minutes (2 minutes x 10).

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Positive Carbon Printing (An Update)

by John Milleker on April 25, 2011 in Alternative Processes, Carbon Printing

More observations. Attached is a test print made tonight. This print was made at five, ten, 15 and 20 minute intervals as specified.

I’ve learned a few more things.. First off, I have white specks so that means I need to filter my emulsion. I usually use a coffee filter in a funnel.

Next, I believe I may need to increase my Titanium Dioxide percentage, it’s at 4% already. But first I need to iron out my exposures. Right here we’re overexposed. At first I thought that my emulsion was staining the final support tissue but there’s a tiny sliver of black between 5 and 20 where the overlapping step charts blocked more light and that tiny sliver is perfectly clear allowing the full black of the final support tissue shine through. Obviously I want to get to the point where the borders are completely black. If I give the emulsion less than five minutes of exposure time (I will try 1, 2, 3 and 4) then I won’t get bright whites. That might be fixed by increasing my pigment percentage.

My other thought is to change my sensitizing solution. I believe I am using a 1% Potassium Dioxide sensitizing solution. I am either going to mix up a few new batches (2, 3, 4 and 5%) of see if I could for example coat the tissue twice for a cumulative effect. Normally a 1% sensitizing solution is ideal for silver negatives and 5% for high contrast glass plates. I also have gotten lazy with sensitizing temperatures. Texts recommend a 55°F sensitizer bath but I have had luck so far with room temperature. That’s another test.

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Positive Carbon Printing

by John Milleker on April 24, 2011 in Alternative Processes, Carbon Printing

Positive Carbon Printing

Successes, failures and fixes. Carbon printing itself is a rather exact process. While the process itself is not new, the recent popularity with modern chemicals and ideas is. Starting from scratch can be frustrating as most texts give conflicting views on the chemicals and techniques needed without much of the how’s and why’s an experimenter would need.

This is more of a holding place for ideas, experiments, successes and failures of using white on black carbon printing. I’ve only seen one person successfully make a print using a white on black carbon process over at the Carbon Printing forum. Since normal carbon printing is a black ‘emulsion’ on white paper and you contact print to the carbon using a negative a white ‘emulsion’ on black paper would require the opposite… A positive contact printed to the carbon. So, for the lack of a better name, I’m going to call it ‘Positive Carbon Printing’.

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Beach season kicks off with with the Ocean City Air Show

by John Milleker on February 27, 2011 in General

Once again beach season kicks off with the roar of fighter jets. If you’re within hop, skip or jump distance from Ocean City Maryland be sure to attend one of the best air shows on the East coast!

This will be our third year covering the event and like a fine wine each year gets better and better. The headliners this year? The USAF F-22 Raptor team and the AV-8B Harrier demo team!

And that’s only the beginning. Enjoy breathtaking demonstrations such as air jumps from US Army SpecOps Black Daggers and the 101st Airborne Screaming Eagles, a C-17 Globemaster fly-by, a search and rescue demonstration from the US Coast Guard, Red Bull helicopter and jump team, Geico’s air fleet and much more! Seriously, this isn’t an event to miss!

Dates: June 11-12th 2011
The URL for the event: http://www.ocairshow.com

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Bing – Showing results for ‘Bang’

by John Milleker on January 4, 2011 in General, Off-Topic

Recently I’ve attempted to move to the Bing search engine due to yet another round of annoying updates from Google that can’t be turned off (Google Previews, which can be turned off but only temporarily). I enjoyed the switch until I realized one major flaw to the engine. When someone with a not-so-popular name gets searched, Bing decides to assume that you did not spell the name correctly and gives you other search results as well.

While I wouldn’t have a problem with this, Bing has decided to inject these other suggestions above the search term you entered. For example, if someone uses Bing to search for ‘John Milleker Photography’ as I mention to people I meet out and about on occasion, Bing decides that John Milleker must be a typo and injects John Miller instead. No big deal right? Well, it is – instead of giving the searcher my home page, who is first? John Miller Photography. If I search for ‘John Milleker’ alone? The first correct result of my name spelled correctly is currently sixth down the page under a bunch of John (and even a Jon) Miller’s. To rub salt into the wound, Bing even suggests the searcher visit Art sites for the various John Millers around the internet.

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