peter_witkop

I haven't been shooting LF for all that long, which maybe gives me a little differant percpective than those who've shot it for many years. For me the size of the neg really does make a signifigant differance. When I look at an 11x14 I've shot on a 120 neg, and one that was on a 4x5 neg, I can see a noticable (to me anyway) differance in most if not all of them. My shots from 120 look great, sharp, printing is good, but they just aren't as rich in tonality as from a bigger neg. And acctaully using a view camera really makes you think about the image you're making. After spending 5 minutes under the dark cloth composing focusing, etc I know the image I'm making quit well, I have a better feel for what I'm doing compositionally, I know (better) how I want to print the image. With roll film I don't feel like I really understand as much about the image until I get into the darkroom, which oddly enough makes me want to crop more with smaller negs which I don't have much room to crop, than with 4x5 negs which I can crop considerably. Also once I got comfortable with the process of working with a view camera, and got used to all the steps, it's much more relaxing to work with than small camera, probably because of the pace.

 

Peter

Good luck Matt, and yes, when the notches are in the upper right, the emulsion is facing you, which is how you want it when you load the film.

 

Peter

In my experience provia 100f produces reasonable skin tones, helped if the subject has good complexion. Not quit as smooth as astia though. The only blue cast I've ver gotten with proiva 100F was in open shade, but that's normal and you need a warming filter to shoot open shade with pretty much anything daylight balanced.

 

Peter

Just to clarify a little of what pascal said, which is entirely correct. With traditional B&W films there is no standard process, there dozens and dozens of developers that can be used, each imparting it's own charateristics with that of the film, differant developing procedures, temperatures agitation. When people talk about normal development (or N development), that's ussually a referance to the zone system N, which is a 5 stop contrast range from black with detail to white with detail. That time changes for every film, and for every processing style. This makes it hard to do lab processed traditional B&W film because you don't really know what they're going to use for chemistry or times. This is the reason so often people give advice to people who won't be processing their own film to use the chromgenic B&W films. C-41 chemistry is standard, that is a correctly callibrated, replenished, etc C-41 line at one lab should produce the same result at a differant lab. With traditional, you need to find a lab that does a good job, and taylor your shooting style to their processing style, and pray they don't change things. Hope that helps

 

Peter

As the above poster did mention, bears climb quit well, they can likely get to your stand if they really want to ...

You'd most likely need a lab that either hand processed the film. That's not too easy to find, and it'd be preferable of course to find one in your area. If you can't find someone close, an old professer of mine does this, if you'd like contact information, feel free to drop me an email.

 

Peter

I lived in ME for the majority of my life, and saw quit a few moose, and as the above posters have noted Maine moose are quite dosile, and don't react too much. The one exception is a bull during the rut, rutting males can be easily angered. To venture a gues (and this is just a gues, I've never considered using a flash on a moose), I'd say you'd be fine with 9 out of 10 rutting males. And from a long enough distance, you'd probably be safe. That said with large animals, particularly rutting males, excersise much caution, moose are surprisingly quick and agile. In the woods alot can be said for excersising good judgement, if you take a few minutes to observe your subject, you can probably get a good idea of how how short temered he may be. And of course when in doubt err on the side of caution.

 

Peter

Just curious, what target were you using for the test? The above advice to make sure you're metering a monotone surface (such as a gray card) with no shadows is good, and pretty much what I'd do too. But just clarify, if you're taking a reading of a scene with varying brightnes levels, two meters can interpret the scene _very_ differantly. That is prticularly the case if you're talking about an slr using an averaging/matrix metering and a reflected handheld meter.

 

Peter

I've been testing and playing with FP4+ quit a bit lately, and have been really happy with the grain, and tonality, excessive grain in 4x6 prints does sound unusual for that film. In my testing/playing the one thing I did find that would cause excess grain in fp4 was very long development times. Playing with perceptol diluted 1:3, my N+1 time was in excess of 25 min at 25C, I was also doing relativly little aggitation. With this development, I could see grain on an 8x10 print from a 4x5 negative. Perceptol also generally produces very nice, fine grain. You might ask if they've changed how they processed the film since the rolls you had done that came out well.

 

Also, how do the negs look? Over exposed traditional B&W negs will tend to show more grain. I can't imagine this causeing the kind of grain you're talking about, but might be contributing to what you're seeing. I wonder if it might be a combination of things?

 

Peter

I can give you some good news about the flash. I use the 544, and the nice thing is that since the flash uses the pc post, all you'll need is a pc cord extension (no module needed, the flash won't know the differance), only costs a few dolars, and a cheap tripod to hold the flash. Of course you've sitll the cord to trip over, and bring the camera and/or flash crashing to the ground, but it'll give you a good start anyway.

 

Peter

One thing that might be interesting, not sure if it's still made though. There was a blue paper, which I believe is similar to (at least works on the same principal, if not exactly chemically the same) as blueprints or cyanotype photographic prints. Came in about 4"x4" squares and worked well with objects like leaves and ferns placed on it, and put in the sun (or under a UV light source). If you can't find the paper I'm talking about you might try something simple like making a cyanotype, mostly done in roomlight, and exposed in daylight, and not much for chemistry. I think www.unblinkingeye.com has an article about them. A neat trick with poloriods too might be to stop action of something like water coming out of a faucet, fairly quick, it's neat since the image you get is something you can't see with your eyes, and all you need is poloriod back, some poloriod (you could of course work with film, but for this instant is probably nessicary), and a flash with a pc cord that has a manually adjustable power ratio. Just put the power ratio as low as possible and the duration is ussually short enough to do the trick. Hope that's of some help.

 

Peter

I've never done any wedding photography myself, but I will pass along a piece of advice I've gotten before, in regards to camera choice anyway. With a square (such as the bronica SQ-Ai), you're not going to have to worry much about if it's a horizontal of vertical, just shoot, and you can crop either way later, or print a square.

I think the biggest thing you may need to master (forgive me if you've already studied up on this and it's not the problem) is bellows compensation. There are several ways to handel bellows comp, a variation the one Brooks gave above is the one I use. The only differance is I was taught to convert the focal lenth to inches (using a nice round 25mm to an inch). So that a 210 lens comes out to be an 8 inch lens, annd to do macro work at 1:1, you're going to have 16" of bellows. The differance between F8 and F16 is 2 stops of compensation. I also on occasion will use a Quick Disk (do a quick search, you'll come up with good results), which is a small circle you cut out, with a matching "ruler". Put the disk in the scene , and measure it on the ground glass with the ruler, which will give you the bellows comp. You can also measure the bellows and do some cryptic equations (do a search on bellows compensation, you'll find 'em) but I know very few photographers who bother when there are far easier ways.

Well, not a specific question, so you're kinda asking for me to ramble :o) The one definite (pretty much anyway) anwser is that it's not the camera, grain is completely a function of the film. That said, under exposed color negative film (which is I assume what you're talking about?) shows signifigantly more grain than normaly, or over exposed film does (Traditional B&W and slide films behave differantly in this respect). That's the only place the camera can come into play, is if the meter is underexposing the film. If your negs look good though and exposures for 200 speed film look good, that's probably not a problem. Also differnat lines of film have differnat grain structure. From kodak, I find Max 400 film rather grainy, a bit objectionable above 8x10, where as kodaks portra 400 speed films, to me, makes quit good 11x14 prints. You also mentioned scaning, which depending on the scanner can accentuate grain as well. I'd say though that if 200 speed film looks good, shoot it, or even slower, in fact my ussual strategy is to shoot the slowest film I can get away with depending on the conditions. I also almost always shoot from a tripod with a cable release, and have become quite familier with reciprocity failure too. Keep in mind too that what's objectionable grain, and what's not (like many other things in photography) is pretty subjective, so it takes a bit of experimentation to figure out just what's acceptable and works best for you.

 

Peter

That's an interesting problem. The only time I've seem something similar was 4x5 sheet film that was loaded backwards (base side out, not emulsion). But since you said roll film, the only possible way something like that could be it would be if it were 220 film loaded backwards, but even then I'm not sure ... Be interested to hear what fuji tech support might say about it ...

 

Peter

I've personally bought a number of new and used pieces of equiptment lately, some of it from ebay. E-bay isn't a bad option but not the only one. First check what the item is going for used from a reputable retailer, several have already been mentioned, I've also had good luck with www.keh.com. Often KEH is pretty close to what the item acctaully goes for, in which cas I'd just as soon get it from KEH, or a similar reputable dealer, not just because of their return policies (that's a big reason though), but because I'm impatient, and will ussually get it faster. It also gives you an idea were to put your bid on the item, I'll ussually decide not to go above 20% bellow the price at a dealer. And also check the feedback of the seller, there's good advice on what to watch for in other threads. The moral of the story is to be cautious about the sellers you deal with, and know what the item you're buying is worth, ebay can often go higher that a dealers price used, and I've seen it go higher than the _new_ price before several times. Hope that helps

 

Peter

Just a quick response to the post above making mention about cdr's having good longevity, not always. This is an article regarding some tests done on consumer cd-r's, many were unreadable aftre two years. http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/7751

 

We (by we I mean those of us used to the longevity of traditional B&W) need to keep in mind that we have a very differant idea what "long archival life" means than many tech/computer people. And also (and I speak from experience as a former DB programmer) that many computer companies advertising makes many photo companies look _very_ honest straight forward ....

I'll put in my $0.02 (USD), I'm sure many others will too... It's all about the results, the rest comes down to tools. If XP2 produces what you like, it's the right tool for the job. Photography is about seeing the image, and putting it onto film, and then to the print, or whatever final media you use (projected slide, web image, whatever), and being able to do it relatively consistantly, if not every single time. Understanding your materials, no matter what they are, are a big part of being able to do that, and doing your own darkroom work will definently help there. And not that I'm much of a digital person, infact I'm gravitating toward 4x5 traditional B&W more and more, but even digital photographers have a pretty good amount of post-exposure work that they do. It all comes down to finding the right tools for your vision and working style, be it 4x5 B&W (you can tell my preferance :o), or color digital images.

 

I could ramble on quit a bit about this, but I'll leave more space for others to, and since most people with an attention span similar to mine wouldn't read it all anyway, I'll just say this: in the end it's all about the images, the rest is getting there, as much fun as that may be. Ok, sometimes it's about getting there too, whatever way works for you :o)

 

Peter

As an etrs owner, I can give you some impresions. The lack of MLU hasn't bothered me much, though it would be nice. I haven't seen an issue with prints up to 11x14 without it, but as I said, it'd be nice to have. I'm not sure about a metered finder, I think it would (pretty sure I've seen an etrs for sale with a metered finder), but mine isn't metered so I'm not sure. If memory serves, there are contacts on the top were the prism meets the body that I'd assume would be for a metered finder. The only thing that does kinda bother me about the etrs, and I'm not sure if this is differant with the etrsi, is the lack of a T, or B speed. To do a longer exposure than 8 sec, you undo a screw on the lens, slide a switch over, and (with any shutter speed) the shutter will open when it is released like normal, but will not close until the switch on the lens is put back to the original position. I haven't encountered an exposure longer than 8 sec., so haven't had to use this yet. I don't think there would be any issues with lens shake, since the expsure would be quit long, and just putting the lens cap on to stop the esposure, then fliping the switch should help anyway. The one thing I did like about the etrs, as opposed to many of the newer 6x4.5 cameras is it has a leaf shutter, so it will synch with a flash at all speeds, important for mixing flash with ambient light. Hope that helps some.

 

Peter

I just had a similar problem myself. I ended up ordering from Quality Camra in Atlanta, whom I was refered to by KEH who didn't have anything I needed in stock. I believe I talked to Jerry, who spent about 15 min. on the phone, each of us with rulers measureing openings, and lens boards (with my trying to add fractions in my head, which was amusing), figuring out just what board I had, and which I neeeded. Their number is (404) 881-8700. I just did a quick search and didn't find a web site for them. I've also had good luck dealing with KEH (www.keh.com) for things like this as well.

Just a warning about x-ray dammage in that area. Since 9/11 there has been x-ray equiptment installed in the Hoover dam area, and at hoover dam itself. A friend of mine had a good amount of 4x5 tri-x fogged not realising the equiptment was there. I beleive he said there had been one at a parking garage he used as well as at the dam. I'm not sure if the garage was in vegas, or near the dam though. Moral of the story, I'd invest in a good lead bag and ask about x-ram equiptment at potentially sensative places.

 

Peter

It really depends on what is acceptable for quality. Medium would be better, but 35 may be acceptable. You'd really have to test to see. I have to disagree with you about velvia, but that's a totally subjective thing and to be expected. If you're not big on velvia, you might like astia 100f, very fine grain. I would do a film speed test on it though, my initial teting (I only got that far and just went over to provia), was that it's acctaul iso (with my equiptment and my lab) was closer to 64 than 100.

Oskar mentioned that there are 6x9 view/feield cameras, you can also shoot roll film with a roll film adapter in either 6x7, 6x9, and I beleive there are some 6x12 adapters available too. Another option anyway.

One thing to keep in mind, a frontier machine can change contrast, and lighten and darken, etc., which can make prints from less than ideal slides, but it can not put detail were it isn't on the slide, if it went black, it's gone, the same for clear film base. And also when you get an over or under expose slide, the high or low values do start loosing detail before all detail is gone, and any printing process can only darken or lighten what's there.

One idea, bender has instructions on how to align the gg for their view camera kits, you might be able to get ahold of thier instructions and apply it to your camera. Their url is http://www.benderphoto.com/