A Question in my Email

I got a really good question in my email today, which is really exciting! Here it is:

My name is Teresa and I live in Baton Rouge, LA. I have been converting to film the past 3-4 months. I'm dying to know what Bill Pyne said to you about customizations. I played phone tag with Bill and I haven't had a chance to talk to him yet. If you have time and it's ok to reveal what he said, could you fill us faithful readers in... At some point in the near future, I'm planning on taking Jonathan or Jose's workshops. I am loving your new blog and although I've been shooting with the Contax and a NikonF5, and I'm learning, it's very helpful to have your writings to compare notes with.Thanks for all the information!

Here is what I wrote to her:

Thanks for the email, so Bill said that they can adjust the color and density and that is pretty much it. I know they have different settings that they dial in for different photographers and Brian Greenburg (the owner of Richard's) told us at the workshop that you can look at the images on their facebook page and describe the look you want to achieve using the images from their facebook that were taken by the rock star photographers and they will dial you in similar settings. The example he used was, "You might tell us, I want my stuff to look like Jose Villa's but with a little bit of this other photographer's blues." I know they use two scanners, the Niritzu and the Frontier. By default they scan on the Niritzu, but photographers like Jose, swear by the frontier. I was a little frustrated with them for not explaining this option to me from the get go. You have to be very specific if you want the Frontier and even then, they will want to scan on both for you to compare, probably. They really want people on the Niritzu because it is way faster for them to use. Hope this helps!

Added note: Actually I think their Niritzu settings are pretty cool too. Tanja Lippert has her stuff scanned on the Niritzu and it is beautiful. I was really stugging to get my exposures down at first and I wasn't sure if my issue was with the lab or my own skill level, so that was really skewing my feelings at the time.