The Shepherd's Hut <p> Mont St Michel

Thanks for your input.

Excellent! The photograph is quite striking and draws one's attention immediately. The only thing that I find a bit at odds with the overall feel is the graininess in the sky. What film did you use and how did you process it? Also, are you sure it was taken with the Mamiya 7 & 150mm lens? Looks more like a 35mm shot judging from the aspect ratio (also the grain might be explained by a smaller format camera). Not that it would matter, it's still a very nice photograph.

Grain is good! Dramatic. Wish there was a little more light and detail in foreground.

Tom, the lens used was a 65mm on the Mamiya 7. I don't own a 35mm camera, nor a digital and have enough trouble deciding which equipment to take with me as it is. The 'equipment used' information has been updated. This was taken on a week long tour by motorcycle and remembering which lens was used for each shot can be confusing. Many thanks for your kind comments.

 

The grain is due to processing FP4 in Rodinal 1:50 and the aspect ratio is merely down to cropping some of the foreground. The image is almost full width.

Gary, a very good shot with loads of atmosphere. The recession of the landscape from the foreground grass past the shepherds hut to Mont St Michel on the horizon is very effective. I find the sky graininess distracting and have tried to reduce it using gaussian blur in PS. I hope you do not mind. I also use a Mamiya 7 and have the 50 and 150 lenses and am planning on a 80 in a few years time when I can afford it! How do you find focusing and depth of field with the Mamiya 7? I found at first I was getting it wrong a lot of the time but things are improving.

No, please feel free to play with it off line, I do that often with others, but am always in too much of a hurry to get my pics on to Photo.net to get it right first time. There are always lots of interpretations of a picture and part of the fun is playing around. Much easier in PS than in the darkroom.

Depth of field issues with the Mamiya 7 is very contraversial. I generally give landscapes as much DoF as I can to compensate using hyperfocal distance.

 

My 150mm was always well out on critical focus and the camera had already been back for the cam adjustment. At the second visit the importer found, much to their surprise, that the lever on the lens was mis-aligned. It's now spot on. Check it on the number plate on the front of a vehicle at different distance. You should be able to read the name of the maker.

 

For massive DoF use a Hasselblad SWC 13" to forever at f22, as on my other Mont St Michael image. Sharp too,if I enlarge it I can read the date stamp on the tax disk at quite a distance.

Thanks for that, Gary! From what you say about the Mamiya 7 it will be worth my while checking whether the distance scales are right using a ground glass screen. I bought it as a lightweight substitute for my 5x4 camera but I'm missing seeing the actual image.

Thanks for the update. Im also a Mamiya 7 user, which is why I noticed the lens thing. The 65mm is a great lens, no? I've only used Rodinal on 4x5, so I can't advise with 6x7. You might try D76 1:3 or maybe Xtol 1:1 to see if you can get good accutance, but less grain. Of course, I'd bet that on a real print the grain is less noticable--it might just be the scan that's accentuating the grain. Anyway, a wonderful photograph!

The praise I have made to your previous photo permit me to be more critic towards this one about the composition. The subject is good, the exposure too, but I think that here the Mont St.-Michel you can see in the distance is too much. If your subject is the hut, the too famous shape of the monument distract the eye of this one. I think that you would have to place your camera nearer of the hut and hide the Mont behind it.

 

You can see my last loaded photos here : Rocks and sand ; The town of Is ; Evening, Trevignon beach

The Mont was an very important part of the composition. I tried to find an alternative view at this much photographed location and found one that I haven't seen before, perhaps because it's so difficult to get there from the car park.

I suspect a small separation between the hut and the abbey would help. I must search my other negatives.

 

Thanks for your input.

Another beauty. Makes me want to throw my stuff out the window.