peter_witkop

I think the advice of using a c-41 B&W film is probably the best. I've used the kodak consumer B&W C-41 (like what you'd find in wal-mart) with quit good sucess. Ilford's XP2 has recieved very high marks and is supposed to have a clearer base, which makes it easier to print traditionally, but I haven't tried it myself, I shoot mostly silver films. I don't so much recomend a traditional silver film for this purpose because it doesn't sound like you'll be developing you own film, which is what will give you the best results (after a bit of practice and testing), and I haven't ever seen any machine developed B&W (traditional) negs that looked very good. The suggestion to stick with color film isn't a bad one either if digital prints are ok for your friend. B&W isn't hard at all, I think it's easier compositionaly than color (though I shoot both alot), just take a few test rolls in lighting that will be similar to the light you'll photograph the little one in to get a feel for what will render as what tone, and how easily things will wash out (which btw shouldn't be too difficult to avoid). And have fun, little kids are great to shoot, just expect to shoot _alot_ of film for the number of good shots as they aren't always willing subjects :o) And if you do use flash, try bouncing it of a white (or light colored) ceiling, it gives much better quality of light, and just as important isn't as startling to small children, and probably doesn't hurt their eyes nearly as much. Hope that helps.

 

Peter

I've done a bit of ilfochrome printing, and it probably isn't the easiest way to learn color printing, but it can be done. Making the masks isn't very hard, but does take some practice and a pin registration system will help, alot, I'm not sure I could get it done well without one, but I've never tried. A quick overview of making masks is something like this. You put the chrome over a sheet of fine grained b&w film (ilford recomends fp4+ I believe), with the chrome emulsion in contact with the film base side, and make an exposure. This is so the mask isn't too sharp, which will help make it not noticable in the print. When I did ilfochromes we used a piece of diffusion glass to hold everything flat, which softened things further. The amount of exposure that the maks recieves will dictate how far into the chrome the mask will go, how much (if any) of the midtones or lower highlight values will be affected. The more exposure the deeper the mask will go. Development of the mask will determine how dense the mask is. We used a 2 min. development in D-76 in trays with constant agitation for CPM. The higher contrast paper (cps if I recall correctly) require a deeper mask, while clm requires less of a mask or sometimes will print better with no mask. I'd strongly recomend contacting Ilford to get ahold of their literature on the product, it's quit in depth and has any technical information you'd ever need, particularly in masking, and they do have very good docs abou the chemistry, and even re-touching which I've never dared trying.. If you can't get ahold of it from ilford, email me off list and I'll see if I can't find some of what I've got and send a couple photocopies. Hope that helps.

As for 'pop' another thing that helps is glass mounts. With MF chromes I only bother mounting the ones I like (as opposed to 35 were it's all mounted by the lab, at least I have it done that way) so the extra cost of the mounts isn't as big of a deal.

 

Peter

The way I've delt with this with stop, fix, and hca is to fill the tank from the gallon of mixed chem (or what ever amount you've mixed), then dump the chem back into the bottle until the bottle of chemistry is exausted, i.e. has had 50 rolls go through it. Hope that helps.

I've used a Sironar 5.6 (not sure if that's the s or not), it worked execelant, great coverage, and quite sharp. I would cerntainly recomend it. I'd also second the suggestion of a 210 Nikor 5.6 (which is what I'm currently using) which can be had for the price range you mentioned.

I'm not sure just which camera you have, but calumet does have a listing of recessed lens boards in the view camera accessories section (<a href="http://www.calumetphoto.com/syrinx/ctl?PAGE=Controller&ac.ui.pn=cat.CatTree&ac.cat.CatTree.prodIndex.param=01;Cameras;001;Large+Format;900;View+Camera+Accessories;57;Calumet">click here</a>). Not sure if anything listed there would help or if you've already checked there. Another thing you may or maynot have tried is to mount both standards in front of the mounting bracket, so there's less between them. If you don't already have one, you'll probably want a bag bellows as well. Hope that helps a little anyway.

 

Peter

One thing I have noticed about processing large tanks, like a the one mentioned here, or a jobo 4x5 tank ( 44oz of chem when processing by hand) is it's great upper body exersise :o)

I've done a bit of it for my classwork, and it all depends on your subject. For people in southern california, they about always have plenty of skin tone to get good tonality unfiltered. And if you expose and develop correctly (it takes some practice and work, but it really is _nessicary_ for good black and white work of any kind) contrast will not be a problem. for white skinned individuals in Maine in january, skin tones will blow out _very_ quickly and a green filter will help give better tonality and smoother tones. That's been my experience, YMMV

 

Peter

Generally it all depends on the film, all film is made with differant purposes in mind, which effects the latitude. Most of the time with color films I'll assume I've got about 5 stops between the darkest areas I want to have good detail in, and the lightest. There will often be another stop or two on either end of that were I haven't got either pure black or white and some detail exists, but I try to make sure that everything I'm concered about is in those middle 5 (and will look descent were it falls in that middle 5, which is a differant discussion all together). That said, you're really best off to test for yourself to see exactly what you get with a particular film and what's accpetable to you. Also in B&W, it's kind of a hard question to anwser, with normal development you can get about the same 5 stops of good detail, but if you've done enough testing and played with your development enough, you can expand it out to around 10 stops (you do make some compromises though), this is what the zone system in B&W is all about. Incidentally, you can use the zone system, minus the development controls on color films. The only major differance (other than the lack of dev. control) is with chrom (slide) film I base my exposures around the high, rather than low values. Sorry for rambling quit so long, hope it helps

 

Peter

I checked this morning and didn't see anything on the top of the chem in the bottle, I did filter it again with a paper coffee filter, and didn't get anything in the filter so it did disolve when I put the rest of the water in. Thanks for the responoses, I never thoguht of using a coffee filter, I'll have to remember that one.

 

Peter

I just mixed a fresh batch of D-76, started with 2000ml (2 liters) of

warm (around 130-145 F), disolved the powder into it until it was

clear and nothing left on the bottom. I left it stand for a few

minutes (5-10) when I went off to take care of something else, when I

came back to pour the solution into the gallon jug with the rest of

the water (to bring the total volume up to 3.8liters), there was white

stuff floating in the top of the graduate. It stuck to the screen in

the funnel (making the pouring process quite slow), but after puting

the rest of the water through the funnel, the white stuff had gone

through and apparently disovled since I couldn't see anything floating

on top in the bottle. My question is has anyone seen this, and should

I dump this batch and start fresh? I did mix with distilled water,

which I heated on the stove, so I suspected I might have gotten the

water too hot? Any insights and/or advice is greatly appreciated.

 

Peter

Thanks for all the ideas. I do like John Cooks suggestion of using gasket material, I hadn't thought of that. Should be thinner, and provide some friction and a little bit of a buffer as opposed to metal on metal. I've got a smaller bogen with a QR head for my smaller cameras too, which has the locking pins Ralf Barker mentioned, but I never noticed that the plate for the 3047 head had the taped hole for them (just checked, it does) since it didn't come with the pins. I think I'll use that as a last resort though, since I'd have to make a (albeit small) hole for the pin in the camera. Not too big of a deal really, it's soft aluminum, and it'd be pretty risk free, but what calumet charges for a replacement is enough to make me a little nervous about any customisations. Thanks again to everyone who responded.

 

Peter

I just bought a new 4x5 (Cambo 45NX) after renting a horseman. The

camera works great, but I'm having a little problem with the camrea

moving on the tripod quick-release plate. The area on the 45NX were

the tripod attaches is relatively small (about 1 1/2 inches square)

and only convers a small part of the rubber on the bogen quickrelease

plate, so much of any force will cause the rubber to flex an allow the

camera to move or vibrate. I've tightened the locking ring as far as

I dare (don't want to strip anything out).

 

I gues if the rubber was harder, or non existant and a thin layer of

something grippy was over the metal on the quick release plate it

might help. So before I try anything like taking the rubber out

entirely, I was wondering if anyone here had any ideas, or experience

with this (or a similar) problem. Thanks very much.

 

Peter

If you're using 160 ISO film, (and you don't have third stop shutter speeds), the closest shutter speed is 1/125, which is a third of a stop more light, so you'd compensate by closing down a third of a stop, providing you have the ability to do this. That said, a third of a stop may or may not be splitting hairs. With neg film, it almost cerntainly is splitting hairs. With chrome, and a scene that uses it's full range, it is important. Sunny 16 (or BDE, Basic Daylight Exposure if you learn it from Brooks :o) works well areas closer to the equator, where the intensity of the sun doesn't vary as much throught the time of year, and time of day. Sunny 16 works well around an hour after sunrise and 1 hour before sunset, before or after those times the intensity of the sun varies quite a bit. Photo 101 students at Brooks are given a card with a quick explanation of BDE (sunny 16), and a table of compensations to use in differant lighting situations ranging from cloudy day, to night skyling, and stage lighting, and encouraged to use this for much of photo 101. In my experience (in southern CA sun) has been it works quite well in full sun, coulds (add 1 stop), dark shadows/open shade (add 2 stops, can vary a little), and light sand/snow (close down 1-2 stops). Situations beyond that, you're guesing too much. So for your example about the street in Rome, if the bright sunlit buildings were what I was most interested in and didn't care about the shadows use sunny 16 straight, but I wanted descent shadow detail, I'd open up one stop. If I was primarily interested in what was in shadow (and would tolerate the bright buildings blowing out some), I'd open up two stops. Sunny 16 will give you a good baseline exposure very often, and getting good at compensating for lighting, or adjusting expusre for what you want to emphasise will give you very good start at understand expsure, reading light well, etc. But it will take a little practice to be able to predict just what will be on film if adjust your exposure for various lighting situations. It's very doable, and won't be too hard to get a good feel for. Hope that long rambling post is helpful :o)

 

Peter

I may be a little confused about this, so those with more experience, feel free to correct. I believe you need double the focal length of extension for 1:1 with a standard lens, but (and this is were my knowlege is a little incomplete) with a Macro lens design, it should focus close enough to give you 1:1 with less bellows draw than a standard lens.

I've never seen actaul color film done in B&W chem, but I have seen C-41 B&W processed in traditional B&W chem. What happenes is the silver is developed as one would expect, but you end up with a very dark, dense, flat neg, which can be printed, but with some difficulty. Someone with more experience with color neg & associated chem can correct me, but I think you end up with both the dyes and the silver in the image, since the silver is never bleached out.

Film labeled as "pan" is panchromatic, meanint it's sensative to the visible specturm of light. This is what you'd call "normal" B&W film. It also must be handled in complete darkness, no safelight, since it's sensative to red light too. There is such a beast as orthochromatic (sp?), which (those with more experience please shed more light) if I'm not mistaken is sensative to only blue (and/or green?) light, which can be handled with a safelight, and is not used much outside of some specialized uses. Film, unless otherwise specified, is almost always pan film. If you took a normal picture with ortho film, the only thing that would happen would be some of the tones would not be quit 'right'. Reds would come out very dark, greens lighter, etc. Hope that helps.

Just couple sugestions, may not fit your needs, but here goes. Portland color (www.portlandcolor.com) does do 8x10 transparency duplications, which is essentially what you're trying to do, from what I gather. They're a good lab, I've given them many rolls of e-6, havne't had any problems or heard of any. It's a little expensive ($55 per 8x10 dupe), but I imagine it'd be a bit expensive doing this yourself given e-6 materials and processing isn't real cheap. maybe I missed something in your post (if I did please ignore following suggestion :o), but why not make Ilfochrome prints (They are, in my opinion, incredible, http://www.photographictraditions.com/ - excelant traditional custom print lab for ilfochrome, and other traditional printing) or have the transparencies scanned and make lightjet (Portland Color does that too). I haven't got much experience with duping (any acctually), but I suspect that an enalrger with the correct filtly ration (or propercolor balenced film) might make things easier if you do go the DIY route, maybe even a color head for color corrections? Good luck and let us know how things turn out, maybe even share an image or two when you get to that point.