david_senesac
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Posts posted by david_senesac
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Just another sad story of selfish morons mutilating famous places in the natural world the rest of us so value. Of course there are many stories of this kind of behavior from the past. I'm all for dishing out harsh painful punishment on anyone caught. One that stands out is the jeffrey pine atop Sentinel Dome in Yosemite. Cretins would break off branches as souveniers or climb up into the little branches for photos. And then some fruitcake they caught lit it on fire. Any place people can drive a vehicle to without hiking presents an opportunity for the selfish morons to carry off material. So I'd be all for the DV park service truncating road access out there in order to make people walk a mile or three. That way no one would be too inclined to lug out those sizeable rocks.
...David
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I'd echo what Slade said. Use your dark slide. It's also at hand when one is ready to take the shot. The camera is always on a tripod and one is never looking through it when taking a shot. So there is not any reason one cannot block the sun manually. In fact it works better because one can block the sun at closer directions towards the lens by watching where the slide just shades the front edge of the lens. The only problem is potentially forgetting to block the sun when one needs to. Once you've done that, you'll be sure to remember to check before taking a shot just like all the other large format bonehead moves. ...David
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Somewhat vague description but seems to want to display large size images on the web in order to better show their quality. Of course anyone can already do that...and get ripped off.
...David
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robert potts >>>"There is no neutral color slide film for real world conditions. Astia is probably the best but even it can turn some things ruddy or muddy. Provia turns red to purple, orange to brown, and makes your gray clouds blue. The Kodak films mentioned do about the same. This is neither here nor there. You are going to have to figure out your light and the nature of your subject and proceed from there. Filtering may also be in order."
Your opinion grates directly with my and others experience unless you are commenting on minor relatively insignificant differences. I don't have the calibrated lab film color test information with colorimeter readings to refute your statement but I would imagine someone here does. I am confident Provia is considerably more accurate than popular saturated films.
...David
www.davidsenesac.com
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Scott regularly provides knowledgeable answers here about film which I'll thank him here for. I shot EPN with 6x7 before Provia came out and it is indeed results in superb color fidelity transparencies. However I went to Provia immediately because it is considerably sharper while still providing relatively good color fidelity. It also does a pretty decent job at capturing well saturated landscapes as with fall aspen or spring wildflowers where the usual fav saturated films often result in garish blocked up color.
...David
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Related to your concern is a thread I posted on image size of internet website images:
http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00Db64&tag=
One of the main points I questioned is does it matter if some peon copies even a 1000 pixel width image since that can only make for a quality 4 inch or less wide printed image? To the art and craft folks putting little pics of puppies on coffee mugs maybeso but not so for those marketing serious large fine art.
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I'm considering buying some dated or near dated Provia 100F 50 sheet
boxes from an eBay seller out of Brooklyn of the name "
prophotomarket ". The seller has a high feedback rating so I would
tend to trust dealing with him. I sent an email to him requesting
information as to how the dated film had been stored at wherever it
came from. Has anyone here purchased dated film from prophotomarket
and if so did it develop ok? I've bought dated film before that had
been properly refrigerated in storage but would not trust film that
was not so stored. ...David
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Taking my camera out of the pack and putting it together for use takes two or three minutes maybe if I need to work fast. Framing and focusing vary considerably. With 4x5 I'll work my tripod position quite a bit to get the optimum position. Sometimes that is quick while other times difficult. What takes time for me is focusing. My field camera doesn't have useful detents so I have to adjust focus and both tilt and swing each time I change my lens. I'm amazed sometimes when after installing a new lens, that my lens is in sharp focus after the first crude movement of the adjustments. When I see that it is obvious visually so, I leave it alone and go for the film loader.
One of the best shots I got last year of a famous landscape icon in Arches NP required me to set up from the totally in the pack point and shoot in about 3 minutes in order to capture the best alpenglow I've ever seen. A friend and I had been shooting on a Utah trip last spring so I was really into the methodical sequence of working my gear. After hiking back from Delicate Arch with little time to spare, we sped in his car up to Balanced Rock and got there as alpenglow just started going off the charts during a day of the clearest air I've ever seen. I ran about 100 yards from the parking lot to a spot that looked about right, in seconds dumped out everything from my pack onto the ground and quickly got it all set up including the difficult focus in the dim light. The terrific thing for me is I nailed the exposure for the single sheet which was something like EV 12 after taking a quick reflective spot reading on the pinnacle that was about 3/4 stop higher and then relying on experience to judge how much more to open up the aperature. ...David
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When shooting outdoors for scenic, landscape work, do you rely on
your light meter's ambient or spot meter functions most?
I know a lot of folks here have various one degree spot meters some
of which don't even have auxillarly ambient sensors. My own digital
meter is a 5 degree spot plus an ambinet sensor. Overall I rely on
the ambient sensor on my meter far more because it tells me how much
light is coming down from the sky, sun, and or clouds over the
general scene. Using the spot is of course more involved because
different colored targets given equal illumination to 18% gray will
all meter differently as will the different shades of
neutrals. ...David
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I shoot 4x5 landscapes and own one of these 5 degree digital spot meters.
Is 5 degrees enough? Depends what you are using it for of course. Long ago when I shot 35mm, I owned an Olympus OM-4T one of the first SLRs to incorporate spot metering in the 1980s. And it had about a 5 degree spot that was just fine. Actually for LF landscapes I make far more use out of the ambient sensor than the spot sensor and nail most of my shots. I work totally in EV. For studio and commercial work a one degree meter certainly has use but I don't see the logic for that outdoors. ...David
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A DSLR of which I own none is just another more involved and tedious machine to take smaller pictures that is squeezing a small zone above our old reliable 35mm to bulky but easy to use MF. For me LF is mainly about making large landscape prints. There are many other photographic pursuits and subjects where large prints are rarely the end creation. So much out there looks best in small sized prints no larger than say 10x15 or 8x10. Sure people will sometimes print just about everything large, even images without much detail, but I just wince when seeing such. And I'm not just talking about smaller format images printed large but also talking about LF images that simply are not subjects where a lot of fine detail jumps out like so many of the murky dim sunrise and sunset shots many seem obsessed with. Such images can be taken much easier with a digital setup with the difference between MF, LF, or such a big DSLR inconsequential in the final print regardless of size. A LF photographer today that uses that cumbersome slow tedious setup for both their images printed large and small is not being efficient with the later. Heck each 4x5 sheet is pricy whereas digital is simply review delete reshoot! And it is nonsense to think one will always only be going out to shoot a few images only to be printed large because there are way way more reasons to shoot smaller images than large ones. So the multiple format setup is the only sensible way to think as long as one can afford to.
Now I don't personally own a DSLR because I find the newer compact digital cameras like my 7mp Coopix 7900 capable of making amazing images for such a tiny thing that is always available in a coat pocket for a quick shot or at the end of a Benbo for any matter of closeup and even minor macro work. And there is a minor gray area below 4x5 sized images where I'll grab my 6x7 and shoot a roll of film when the subject isn't a landscape and a print deserves more than the 7mp can deliver.
...David
www.davidsenesac.com
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I use the 45-4B Printfile sheets too but have customized their use. One issue for me is having an efficiently dense way to store all my transparencies. The most dense storage would be to simply stack the singly sleeved from lab slides side by side vertically in small boxes. However the issue with that is, even if the boxes are indexed by trip, it would be more tedious looking through a lot of images than using transparency pages. Also their is a considerable opportunity for misplacing lose single slides that would take tedious time tracking them down. Second viewing issue is I don't like using binders because they are both not efficient for dense storage and too heavy and awkward to display individual pages on a light table without removing the page from the binder. Thus I use the hanging file method though that requires using the bar stiffeners. And the problem with the bar stiffeners is they have some width that reduces the side to side packing density. Thus I customized my bars so that one bar holds up to about ten pages or enough for 40 images. I mainly group pages by trip. The grouped pages make viewing a tad more awkward though I can still flop them atop my light table for viewing without taking apart the page groupings. ...David
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California south of about Fresno through San Luis Obispo is considerably below average rainful. Wildflowers in the dry Southern California locales famous for wildflowers put on a good show in well above average years and that tends to be the El Nino winters. I wouldn't recommend anyone but SC locals visit those areas except in the big years.
Northern California precipitation has on the other hand is well above average though not as much as in El Nino years like 2005. Thus there ought to be a better than average show of wildflowers in the usual places. Since this March has been particularly cold and stormy, earlisest wildflowers in the lowest elevations have only slowly been coming out. The whole month of April is looking to be a good show although displays in the northern part of the state are more modest at best. A few days ago I took some photos with my little digital camera in our Sierra foothills showing some of what is rising up already, and made a short slide show. Go to my website at www.davidsenesac.com and select the field "Itchy Sierra Foothills Slide Show".
...David
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I'll echo what Robert suggested. A landscape photographer can read the guidebooks and get advice from others, but the real gold is in cultivating an understanding of topographic maps and how the sun moves across the sky at different times of the day and year. Learning that, a savvy photographer can visit areas they have never been to, read about in guidebooks, or gotten advice from others about, and narrow the possible best choices enormously.
...David
www.davidsenesac.com
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The above answers directly apply to your question as you probably intended stephen, and I'll dampen such a bit with another landscape focus reality.
More often than not in landscapes, the planes and objects to focus in one's frame are impossible to all get in sharp focus. Thus one needs to estimate from experience where in a given frame to focus the near and far, and to a lesser extent left and right points in a frame for whatever intended image one is creating. Its mostly guessing from experience and then stopping down as much as is appropriate to take care of the compromises. In many non ideal situations focusing on the furthest point at the top of a frame and the nearest foreground point at the bottom of a frame, then optimally tilting is not the wisest choice.
As a simple example, if the top half of one's frame is a 30 foot tree 30 feet away on level ground, and the near point is a short single flower 5 feet away, it is impossible to get the foreground, the bottom of the tree, and the top of the tree all in sharpest focus even if stopped down to f/45. Thus one might choose to place the sharpest far focus half way up the tree maybe where detail is most interesting and the near sharp focus 10 feet away where a larger group of other flowers provides more detailed interest. By doing so the bottom of the tree would also now be sharper and the near flower less so. Knowing how much one is going to give up on the near focus versus the middle is an experienced guess. Additionally one might stop as far down as a lens provides, but if there are moving objects like wavy water, or breeze on vegetation, one has to compromise that with considerations of adequately stopping motions. Thus focusing on landscapes is often requires making decisions that are not at all mechancal and exact but relie on one's experience. Thus the notion of accurately predicting optimum focus in some cases may not be as important as just making wise decisions on how to compromise.
...David
www.davidsenesac.com
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Leon Chang >>>?I read the post by Drew Rogers called: "Choice Slide film for Southern Utah (good for scanning". This is not the first time this sort of question arises and I just wonder why many feel it's kinda obligatory to use Velvia when doing landscapes. Is this some sort of unwritten rule?...?
Been awhile since this old controversy has been knocked around.
When Velvia came out in the later 80s some pros began switching from Kodachrome to Velvia. Some did so because of the impressive color but others did so because it was easily the sharpest ever color film. For pros like Rowell that shot the small format that many other pros forever criticized as less than serious, and his orientation of dim magic light conditions, it was a perfect match. Those days were also the dawn of archival digital color printing with Evercolor and the first drum scanning monsters as fine art color printing was much smaller than today limited to the awkward Cibrachrome world. Most of the pros were thus selling stock especially to magazines and publishers. Those folks liked the gaudy bright colors as they especially looked better on magazine covers and had little interest in color fidelity when that gets in the way of $$$. Other film makers caught the drift and of course made more saturated films and primed the advertizing and media for everyone to come aboard. Soon anyone that was a landscape pro had to compete so most went with the flow. And many of the rest followed the leaders of course. As someone that has been a serious photographer since 1980 it is amazing all the photographic technology that has evolved in the space of a couple dozen years. The huge numbers of new photographers just now getting in during the digital wave have missed an enormous knee of change that has to corrupt their perception of what the status quo is and has been.
If you really do your homework by visiting the websites of accomplished landscape pros and search in internet forums, you will find that there have always been a fair number that did not fully join the saturated camp. Some noted conditions where Velvia and its copycats do well and make use of it there and have gone on to use other films like Astia, Provia, etc for other conditions. And others like me that just prefer natural color films with reasonably good color fidelity tend to not use Velvia and the like at all. For several years a photographer friend I worked with in the field, shot both Kodachrome and Velvia. So we got to compare the results and I just never liked the lack of fidelity even though it does often make otherwise boring light in scenery look surprisingly more aesthetic. Personally I've been shooting Provia 100F since it came out. A film preferred by a modest number of other landscapers too. The results I've had speak for themselves which you can look at on my website at www.davidsenesac.com. For me at least nature is just fine the way it is so I have no interest in jacking it up more than is real even if the next guy beams his customers are buying the pics with the neon glow. Each one to his own style.
...David
www.davidsenesac.com
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I have a number of 4x5 images with a mix of wildflowers in sagebrush. All the shots are on the slopes of the Eastern Sierra where sagebrush is dominant. For example one fine art print up McGee Creek:
http://www.davidsenesac.com/images/print_04-o1-3.html
I shot the following image of rabbitbush at South Tufa at Mono Lake the October. I use it as a decoration of the top of one of my web pages. It has not been drum scanned for fine art but I could easily do so. The lower quarter of the image was cropped off for the web image and that shows sagebrush a lot closer.
http://www.davidsenesac.com/david_upcoming.html
I have several more excellent shots of wildflowers in sagebrush with snowy Sierra peaks in the background though they are not on my website index as and have not been scanned for fine art.
...David
www.davidsenesac.com
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Depends on what/how you shoot. If your use is mainly for outdoor use without any flash lighting setups: Shepherd Dual Polaris 5 degree spot with ambient $270 at B&H. Lightweight, simple, cheaper, modern design with lcd display. ...David
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Hello Nicole,
What you are considering I am going to do. Depending on where and how such prints are displayed would of course make a difference. I don't buy the arguments that displaying prints in commercial locations for free is a poor idea. My opinion is the the traditional venues like galleries and museums for getting photography out in front of the public has long been an unpleasant business reality for up and coming artists and photographers. Often there is considerable resistance by both those running galleries and the artists they already represent to hang others work. The result is many photographers had gone the art and craft fair route to get business momentum and expand reputation. However that does not need to be all one can do. Just having a website and not getting one's work out in front of people is a forumula for failure with photographers that haven't developed a broad reputation yet. And that is especially the case for those that sell large fine art prints. A friend of mine that has been successful for several years in the art and craft show circuit selling big prints relates that he rarely sells any prints to people who have just seen his website gallery and not some of his prints at shows. People are always far more impressed seeing actual large prints than some tiny monitor sized screen image on the web. Then later looking at the website some will purchase a print they actually viewed.
My own strategy will be to hang a few prints in places where upscale customers that are wealthy enough to but my prints may also visit. Or places in scenic areas that represent the narrower segment of the public that appreciates natural scenery. My prints are large fine art landscapes so the cost can be significant. I'm going to be giving at least one free framed print that will cost me about $200 to do that will hang in a prominent US national forest visitor center that hundreds of people that love scenery visit each day during summers each year. Then there are other places I am going to try and get my work hung as loans in upper class communities. For the later I will just stipulate that I will have a business card behind the glazing at the bottom of the mat so those interested might visit my website. Is such a strategy likely to generate business? I would say the uncertainty is significant and cannot be argued for or against with much weight. However if one has exceptional work people will be impressed if once can actually get one's work in front of people.
...David
www.davidsenesac.com
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There is more to this than initially concerns we sheet film users. I have kept a number of sheet film boxes for storing film including the task of moving film to lab for development. Since I always tend to use the same type of film, it can at times be difficult to tell what is in one box or the other. Whether one box is truly empty or not. Whether a box has unexposed new film or exposed film from a recent trip. Whether one box has a few exposed slides I expected to hold on for a while before deciding to trash them once I get to see the results of developing possibly better shots of the same subject. Some of these questions can be solved by simply putting the box back into a change bag and feeling what is inside. But one cannot tell exposed film from unexposed, a possible throw away sheet from one that is good. Thus one needs to develop a system of marking film boxes and many different methods would work so just figure something out as you wish.
I like to slap circular colored sticker labels onto my boxes so I can just write info atop the stickers and not on the boxes that might otherwise become messy with crossed out scribblings after considerable use. Like I can paste a new label atop an old one and make such simple. I can also feel such a label on a box in a change bag. That can become useful because I usually have two otherwise identical boxes inside the change bag; a box for exposed film that has a growing stack and a box of unexposed film with a decreasing stack. One cannot of course read notes on boxes in a change bag but can feel say a label placed on the sides of the box instead of the flat tops. In my system, I put labels on the narrow sides of boxes for exposed film and on the flat top for unexposed film. Why do I want to put a label on a box of unexposed film? Though one can sort of gauge how much film might still be inside a given box by its weight alone, I prefer to be more accurate thus write on the labels how much film has been removed for each changing session. Thus I might have -6 -2 -11 etc on the label indicating I've used up 19 sheets of the 50 in the box. Likewise mark the label on the exposed box when putting film into that box. Labs may ask for the number of sheets one is inputting for development thus that removes the need for a change bag session counting sheets before lab input. Another tip is film comes with paper sandwich sleeves inside the silver light tight film bags. It is easier for me to handle the movement of film inside a change bag by moving film from holder into the sleeve than say directly into a box. A box is a lot larger and more unwieldy to manipulate in the awkward confines of a change bag than something smaller like the sleeve. Of course the sleeve with film then goes into the triple box. After securing the film in a box, always use one rubber band wrapped around opposite corners to ensure it cannot open itself up while rattling about in ones gear.
Another couple thing I do, is for any box that is empty of film, I put the inner two boxes back into the outer box upsidedown from normal use. That is visibly noticeable as one will then see parts of all three boxes instead of just two. So when I need to grab an empty box for say a road trip from my gear storage area, I immediately can see the ones that are empty.
...David
www.davidsenesac.com
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I don't shoot B&W as you, but rather Provia. The first few years when I dabbled with my view camera, my exposure results tended to be erratic. When I got serious and religiously recorded on a chart the way I was calculating exposure, my results quickly got better. At that time I went to a simple EV method of analysis instead of involving aperture, shutter speed, and film speed into the thought process. Thus I calculate for EV then set up the rest from a chart for ASA 100 speed film that I always use. And later when I bought a spot meter instead of using my old spot metering function on an old 35mm camera my results became even more consistent.
A couple people mentioned using loupes for focusing. I always use 3 diopter reading glasses for most of my focusing work. Usually such will suffice alone though at times will grab the loupe for final critical tweaks. The reason I do not always need to use the loupe is most of the time my landscapes are compromises that are impossible to have all important elements within the sharp focus plane. I may decide to make a row of trees in the my upper frame middle ground at sharpest focus instead of more distant mountains. And have just enough tilt to focus not on the closest wildflowers in the foreground but rather some a bit further back in order to not require as much tilt that would otherwise throw off more of the rest of my frame from sharp focus. The same choices one has to make without movements with smaller formats. So there is often not much reason to be too precise as to whether the near lower frame critical focus is 6 feet away or 8 feet and the top frame focus is 100 feet or 125 feet. At that point I have made the best compromises for what I wish to create and will then stop down to about one stop off of minimum aperture so the depth of field will take care of the rest.
...David
www.davidsenesac.com
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Mr Smith there are certainly some among buyers of fine are who may share your opinion, "Unless you want to sell your prints real cheap!", but I've chosen not to share that view as too important. And of course I was aware some might think so when I began using digital signatures. You may be surprised by some of the pros that are already doing so. In fact galleries representing deceased photographers are sometimes adding a digital signature because a real one is of course impossible.
In my own case I don't at this point sell matted or framed prints. So cannot in any case pencil up the mat. And that of course grates against those who think lack of even a mat is "unprofessional". Ahh but now quite a few other pros are doing that too. Yes and a few prints are being sent directly from labs to galleries without the need to ship a print to the photographer in the process. Also to sign atop a print has always been controversial, especially for scenic landscapes. Personally I hate doing that because one can easily muck it up. In my own case I have few qualms about going against the grain of those who cling to traditional accepted methods of presentation and framing. And in any case, will happpilly agree to sign a print if a buyer asked.
...David
www.davidsenesac.com
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Who else puts digital signatures on prints? I have found that some
others do this also and am wondering are we just a few or is this now
done my many?
Years ago when I began using digital processes, it immediately
occurred to me that adding a digitally generated signature to one of
my fine art prints was a preferred way to generate signatures on my
work versus traditional mat or print media signatures. And I always
hated signing the media or mat because making a mistake is
disgustingly fatal. Of course some people crank out their signatures
rather smoothly time after time but since kindergarten that has
always escaped me haha. So instead I add a muted signature to the
least noticeble spot on the bottom or top border. Blend it in with
PS hue/saturation controls so it does not stand out or detract from
the image. And usually save the signature as a separate layer that I
can delete or change later.
...David
www.davidsenesac.com
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When I open a new film bag, I just cut a slit about 133% of the width of the Quickload and use that package to store both the unused and exposed film in. And the bag goes back in the green Fuji film box. In other words, I prefer to keep using the film bag because it is just extra insurance against light contamination. Anytime I open a new box of 20 QL sheets I write numbers on all the stickers. For instance 1 thru 20 or 21 thru 40 etc. After I expose the film, I place the next numbered sticker across the metal clip. Otherwise the clips may possibly come loose during handling and that could cause light leaks. I place the film back in the silver film bag. All exposed sheets are slid in on the top of the stack thus I grab for unexposed sheets from the bottom. The advantage of numbering the stickers is that in the heat of shooting, one may take a shot that ought to be trashed so the number can provide an id. As an example, say I am shooting a landscape but clouds are shadowing my frame. The clouds part some and I expose a sheet with slightly cloudy weak light conditions as an insurance shot. I slap on sticker number 27 and put it into the film bag and box. I push in another Quickload and wait for better sunshine and after a bit the sun breaks out from the clouds to illuminate my frame. I take the shot, put on sticker number 28 and stick that in the film bag too. Later on when I have a minute I fish number 27 out of the bag and write a note on it as "cloudy exposure". At that point I have not with certainty decided to trash it but likely will later since I prefer not to have useless shots developed since each 4x5 sheet costs a buck fifty to do so. Someone might say, why not just write notes on anything exposed. Well that can certainly work well if one always has a pen at hand. The nice thing about pre-numbering is one doesn't need to write anything immediately and just remember the number awhile.
How do you clean your change bag?
in Large Format
Posted
For those of us that do field work thus have to sometimes use a
change bag, how do you go about cleaning the insides? Some here may
have never bothered, however I know that mine seems to regularly pick
up dust and specs of stuff. The drum scan operator at the lab I send
my transparencies out to recently said I had a fair number of dark
specs on some of my film. That told me I had dust on the unexposed
film that when exposed showed the characteristic dark hard spots and
squiggles. In the past I tried to vacuum the inside but thought that
awkward as the material inevitably gets sucked against the vacuum
hose preventing easy movement across the material. Since then I've
used the cheap roller type clothing lint removers that have rolls of
sticky sheets. After use, one just sheds the used sheet to get
another fresh sheet below. One nice thing about it is that the stuff
that one picks up is pretty visually obvious after being removed.
I'm guessing there are some other ways members here are doing the
cleaning so am curious in case there is a better method.
...David
www.davidsenesac.com