I was wondering about doing a bit of hybrid photography. The combination of darkroom and digital.
see www.dpug.org for more information on hybrid photography.
I have some very old darkroom chemicals left. So I tested the effectiveness of the undiluted Fixer this should clear the silver from an old film in less than a minute so the film base is clear. I tried it to no effect. I didn’t think that Fixer could go off.
I was think about buying a ten-year old Canon EOS 1v Camera body to do film Infrared photography. I love the grain with film, digital noise even with B&W is nowhere near as attractive.
But as the potential seller of the EOS 1 v didn’t have one and my fingers smell of the Fixer that stinks which has put me off the idea of playing with film again.
So the money I would have spent on the camera I bought the vastly overpriced Silver Efex Pro 2 software, nowhere near as good as film but a lot more adaptable and presumably a lot less smelly hopefully.
The picture is of an Ethiopian Orthodox Priest taken in Lalebella in 2006 – all rights reserved.
(c) Andy Beel FRPS www.andybeelfrps.co.uk
Andy Beel FRPS 
Hello Andy, I use Silver Efex Pro and it is a lovely B&W convertor. I look forward to seeing more lovely images. Helen
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Hi Helen
Thanks for the nice comments.
With Silver Efex Pro I will need to aim for a look and feel thats my own and not an overly aggresive obvious use of the plugin that most are.
If it looks like high structure – then it probably is.
Andy
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Interesting article and thinking. I am delving into and finding my way round the suggested website , and very pleased I followed it up.
You are such a STAR
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Hi Paula
Thanks as ever for your encouragement and enthusiasm.
I will send the smaller file for checking printer ink density.
See you at Bob and Lindas.
Andy
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I am a massive fan of Silver Efex havent splashed out on version 2 yet but will before long, its a wonderfully adaptable piece of software and there’s no need for its use to be obvious.
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Hi Janet – I have only used SFX pro 2 for the 15 day trial about 2 months ago so didn’t get to know it perfectly as I do Lightroom and CS4 for my purposes.
Do you know of a complete manual / guide to SFX? The support video on the Website is – I was gonna say useless but that’s unfair, very incomplete would a better way to say it.
Andy
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Hi Andy,
I’ve been using Nik Colour & Silver for about 12 months and havent come across a manual yet – they do offer free live online tutorials evey so often though once you are registered, unfortunately I’ve not been able to take advantage of one yet. Its quite easy to just play around with and learn though.
Janet
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