abica

Thanks for all the advice. In my own delusional mind, I have a plan that will yield excellent results.

Since I am using the Rollei Vb, I won't be switching lenses.

I am thinking about the neat things I could do out there with multiple exposures. Wide open shot to capture the stars as best I can, then tilt the camera down to throw in the beach/ocean, possibly masking out the sky with a card as if burning/dodging.

With no moon, the scene will be pretty dark.

I took a few shots from 1-2 minutes on Acros a few days ago out in the Ozarks on a river, but fog and a full moon pretty much make it useless as a direct comparison for my planned FL shots. Then again, getting a grip on scene brightness and exposures is always a good thing, at least I'll not be completely clueless.

No moon...really dark. I remember those conditions from a few years ago. I guess I could use a bit of flash from varying distances to get some interesting effects too.

And I think I will be doing several frames with trails. I have a feeling I have better chances of getting usable negs that way.

If nothing else, I will be spending hours stargazing over the ocean on moonless nights.

I am traveling to Sanibel Island, FL, from July 13-19. The moon will be

non-existent during that period, but I want to do some nighttime beach shots. I

will be using Fuji Acros in my Rolleicord Vb. I had originally envisioned some

sort of moonlight, and figured I would be able to keep exposures bracketed

between 5 and 20 minutes and make at least a couple printable negatives.

Now I am faced with slivers of moon or no moon at all. There will be very

little ambient light, as lights near the beach are prohibited.

Here are some thoughts/questions:

I envision compositions having:

~beach foreground, ocean, sky with stars

~angled beach with vegetation on one side and ocean on the other

~straight out from the beach is the milky way cloud...hmm...

Aperture? I would think I want to go as wide as possible while keeping decent

depth of field...which means f-8 I guess. What do you think? Should I go

smaller?

Could I go wide open for some shots of just the stars? (clear air and no

ambient light)

And then...I wonder if anyone could take a stab at exposure ranges for these

various scenes. I am thinking things will be in the 1-2 hour range for the

beach shots? What about the stars...do I have a chance of capturing the milky

way cloud and some stars without much trailing/movement?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

I think the highest one is supposed to go while mixing d76 is 140?.

That being said, I am pretty sure I have read slightly higher mixing temp should be fine.

That stuff can be a bugger to mix if too cold. I did a 125? recently with imperfect results.

This amateur tends to process a non-critical roll as a new developer's first victim in case something is amiss.

I didn't find the gallery difficult to browse at all. I enjoyed your work.

I like the consistency of the gallery and the preponderance of horizontal frames. The concert shots that were vertical really stood out though...they did add a dynamic quality.

Someone asks about scanners, and several people chime in about DSLR's.

It is surely a joke.

I wonder if there is a shop in my area that would make scans of that quality?

Get the lens!

My favorites are...

3008 (just because...an ortofon concorde needle? Ah I miss mine from back in the day, not because I think you should enter it...nice but not enough 'interest' factor).

2939 is cool. You probably already picked it.

3229 is illustrative.

3696 is the best dj pic I think.

3526 doesn't cut the mustard with regarding composition, damn. It would have been cool to get a strong shot of somebody playing a digiridoo.

And who is the girl in 3000? Hook me up! ;P

Those are the ones I would choose. It's hard to sort through your own work sometimes.

Where was that party? I need to go there...obviously a bunch of really cool people and lots of fun...that's right up my alley (such a not-cool party scene here).

A stamp of approval is always a confidence-inspiring thing to have going into a project. I just talked to my engineer uncle and my engineer roommate in the last few minutes as well. My main concern was water pressure along the length of the 'washing head.' After spitting out some arbitrary numbers, my uncle was confident that there would not be a drop in pressure from one side of the hol-ey pipe to the other. Now I must decide how to modify the dev tray...hmm...I guess I should order a 12x16...I will not make 12x16 prints in the near future (unless my work makes a serious quality jump) but having the room to play with opens the possibility of doing 2 8x10s at once...having the 'new' print toward the drain end and the 'on its way out' print by the wash head. I will need to glue little 'nubs' to the inside of the tray to catch various print sizes. They must not dent the edges under the water pressure, although I imagine it will be pretty low pressure.

Time to start making a plan. I plan to build this weekend, and upon completion I will take a picture and post it. It should be $30-$40.

As far as mineral buildup...

I have moderate carbonate hardness here if I recall, and that may just be in issue. An issue that could be solved with a piece of wire and some occasional poking? Or maybe manufacturing several wash heads when I build, so they could be swapped out?

Hmm...

jw

I am considering various design elements for a stand-alone print washing 'sink'

or 'tray' for my darkroom. I cannot afford a proper sink because I spend all my

money on paper, chems, and film. I have a walled-off darkroom in a large

basement. It is 10 feet from the laundry machines. There are hot/cold water

valves coming out of the wall to feed the washing machine.

My plan is as follows:

Flexible plastic hose

Large developing tray

"Y" connector for the washer cold supply

2x4 frame for the tray

I plan to have the hose connect to a piece of PVC with 20 or so small holes

drilled/poked in one side which will do the washing. Water would be turned

on/off by an in-line valve. Supply and drain go through the wall, spray foam

makes it light tight. Careful mounting on the wall and slight angle will ensure

the drain line drains properly.

The toughest part seems like it will be drilling/cutting/attaching the drain to

the tray.

Has anyone done anything like this before? Is the approximate water volume

sufficient to wash RC prints effectively?

Any recommendations or links to DIY sites with this exact project outlined in

great detail would be greatly appreciated.

regards,

jw

I'm back to muck up the water some more.

Dave, with the big yellow pouch of fixer WE are using, we are using different fix times than the ones suggested. Maybe this is due to the hardener, or a different formula (sodium hyposulfite as opposed to a non-acid fix or something?)

The fixer WE are using is mixed to working strength right out of the big yellow pouch.

Perhaps we need to look into some other brands, ones without hardener and with shorter fix times?

Very interesting.

You can over-fix a print. Somehow. It must take quite a while though.

I would not personally ever re-use fixer for film. I usually pour fixer from film processing into my tray, figuring 'the more the merrier' unless I am processing TMX.

Rich, this is good info, but what fixer do you use?

We darkroom types can complicate such a simple thing as fixer! Awesome!

I reiterate, stay with 'box' fix times for your kodak fixer for now. 30sec would be way short from my understanding.

In other news, I use clearing agent in a 4th tray. Once again, a dumping ground for film processing chemistry.

Don't do stuff like that drunk though, or you just might neutralize your tray of fixer or something stupid like that.

jw

There is also a question of image characteristics of tabular grain films vs. 'old' style films and how they respond to increased dev time.

I hold the totally unproven possibly unfounded belief that hp4 would serve better than delta. If you are just experimenting with push processing for the sake of knowing what to expect in the future, why not try some HP5? That stuff is very versatile.

Maybe someone will chime in and tell us whether delta or TMX is as good for pushing as 'classic' emulsions.

I hate to throw another question into the mix, but EI 20???

I understand shooting ISO 100 at EI 50-80 and shortening dev time to reduce contrast, say, when shooting in hard light, but 20 seems odd. I would like to know the purpose behind this...what qualities are achieved through this exposure that are so great?

I have 10 rolls of 120 acros coming to me, and plan to soup it in rodinal, and planned to shoot it at box speed. Now I'm thinking of giving it more light.

Could the spot metering technique be throwing things off? Might the meter behave sort of like when I use my Gossen digisix in reflected light mode instead of incident, giving higher value readings?

I hope I'm not muddying the waters or stealing your thunder by interjecting instead of answering, but I feel my interjection is relevant to the discussion.

jw

My opinion:

I think the girl's exposure is fine; she's back-light and it is obvious, so the eye/brain says "OK." I like the specular highlights too, and they support the appearance of a bright, sunny spring day. I would personally burn in the water on the right side to match the darker bit (darker from reflections of trees on the other side of the body of water) and maybe burn the really bright bit just below and to the left of the girl...bring that down a stop.

I think that would even things out and make for a stronger and more stable image.

jw

That is a really cool series. I love the color, and the schoolboys and fire chief shots in particular.

Gotta love that Japanese fire chief uniform...high style!

Can someone elaborate a bit on this print washing/hardening fixer thing? I use the kodak stuff too, perhaps I should be using something different?

Remember to store those chemicals away from light, heat, etc. in brown bottles. Don't shake to mix, and follow temp and mixing directions.

In response to your question, Dave, a few I dug up from the neat google site search tool:

Ole Tjugen, May 10, 2003; 03:32 p.m.

I do it the simple way:

1: Did I mix it today? If so, it's OK. If I've used it a lot, I ditch it at the end of the day.

2: If not, did I mix it yesterday? If used a lot, ditch it. If not, use it a little more, then ditch it.

Fixer is cheap, film is priceless. Paper less so, but I hate it when they fog.

If at all in doubt, ditch it.

Michael Erlichphoto, May 09, 2003; 06:28 p.m.

Edwal makes a "Hypo-Chek" solution I use to test paper fixer. To determine if film fixer is exhausted, first check the time it take fresh fix to clear film. Normal fixing time is twice to three times the clearing time. Then use the fix until the clearing time is twice as long. Then it's time to dispose of it.

Ellis Venerphoto, May 09, 2003; 07:26 p.m.

When I had a darkroom what i used to test for fixer exhaustion was a small piece of exposed but undeveloped film, the snipped off leader of a roll of 35mm film for instance. As I recall: if the film strip completely cleared with in two minutes the fixer was good to go

Slower films exhibit less grain. And as stated above, cropping makes grain larger.

I am not an extremist, but I attempt to work within +/- 1 degree F. It shouldn't be that hard, holding your dev tank in a water bath might help (that's what I am doing now that the weather is getting warmer).

I agitate 3 gentle times per minute. It seems sufficient, and I think any unnecessary agitation will increase grain formation.

I don't know about D76 and TMY (that shows what a beginner I am haha) but TMAX dev and TMAX films, once I got the hang of the combination seem to work nicely.

Scanning tends to show more grain also, I believe. I think thin negs are best for scanning?

Yesterday I shot a roll of TMY at EI200 and processed in perceptol for 13.5 min (it was a total guess). The negs look BEAUTIFUL. We shall see though...things have a way of being really...mediocre...when experimenting. That's part of the fun. It turned out I could have shot the TMY at full speed and processed in perceptol. Oh, that is an ilford "fine grain" developer.

I'm sorry this is such a disorganized mess, I'm just trying to kick some ideas out there that might prove useful. To me, the attached photo looks like it could be on TMZ due to the grain.

Shark valley, indeed. Great place. You might want to pack in a good deal of water too. The trail is a 14 mile loop, I believe. It's quite a hike. Beautiful area.

Attached is a photo I took with my el-cheapo digital in December of 2006. The trees in the distance are a hardwood hammock, and you can see a bit of a rainstorm ahead. The bird is a blue heron if I recall. The camera did most of the 'editing' for me...really weird looking original because of the pan and exposure. All I did was pop the contrast. Someday I should take the original into PS and do some editing.

In FL, you might want to look into Ginnie springs in the northern half of the state. There isn't (to my knowledge) much else of note in that area, so if you pass through it would make a great stopover. The panhandle coastline has a few interesting spots, but alas, I don't remember the names...its been a long time. Muddy keys, sleepy communities. Sanibel island by Ft Meyers has some beautiful mangrove preserves. Shark Valley is beautiful in winter, it is down on Alligator Alley in the 'glades. Googling a few of those might spark some ideas.

White Sands in NM is awesome! I wish I had pictures from my road trip out there with my buddies, but I was 17 and didn't feel like dragging the SLR along (my results were...remedial...and I was...lazy). Now I regret that sort of thinking, but I learned a valuable lesson. Always pack a camera and tons of film, and always shoot like there's no tomorrow. Unless, of course, you are in the boonies and some of that film is for tomorrow.

We were caught in a sandstorm in the dunes anyway, so my camera might have been a casualty. We actually lost half of our group out there for a half hour or so.

Nice pictures J.S.! I never knew Alabama was so...canyon-y.

Glamour photo=ego stroke for the model, or the model being the actual subject of the photo.

Modeling photo=intended to illustrate something other than "oh look, she's pretty." The combination of style and setting is the actual purpose of the shot; the model enhances it and facilitates it.

Old, uncoated lenses tend to be softer I believe. I guess the lack of coating doesn't have much to do with it, but that is a characteristic of 'old glass' in my mind.

I just learned about this with my FED-1f and pan-f plus. And regarding Roger's statement, I plan to do this experiment with that same film/camera combo...I shot in the evening, ?3.5 (wide open) 1/20 sec. I plan to stop down a bit and shoot in brighter light to see how sharp this setup can get.

I assume we are talking about limited resolution when referring to film blur?

Hard water here in the Saint Louis area is my reason for using distilled. The way I see it, higher mineral content might equate more "stuff on the film?"

My initial inspiration was the self-serve car wash with "spot-free" rinse water. It probably doesn't matter, though.

I personally use photoflo per bottle instructions or so in distilled water, mixing a gallon at a time and marking it in BOLD LETTERS. I dump a bit of that in my open tank after all other rinsing. I know people say not to expose plastic reels to the stuff, but I wash my stuff when I finish and have never had a problem. I then pull the reel out of the tank, crack it open, grab the inside end of the film, hang it, dunk my first two fingers in the tank with remaining photoflo, shake off the excess, and squeegee with my fingers.

Might as well use distilled water. It is cheap and then you have a 1 gallon photoflo container. Spot free rinse.

From my experience, fuji 800 and portra 800 are both great for small shows. Wide aperture, 1/15, and a monopod of possible. You could consider pushing a couple rolls a stop to get a bit more depth of field. And please note that shooting hand-held at 1/15 will not produce sharp photos, and if the band is really moving a lot you might have to time your shots carefully.

The hardest thing I have encountered is getting proper focus for the shot you want - a lot more depth of field is desired than what you will be able to get. I wish I had a shot to show you...but being that I am at work and I should be studying for a final, I didn't bring my laptop.

If I were you, and you really want some portfolio stuff to use to impress someone later, shoot several rolls including a few tight shots of each band member. Try and time your shots with the height of action and good lighting...some people worry about skin tones on a stage but I personally like 'lots of color.' I'm a deadhead though, so go figure.

I wouldn't bother with the 400 at all. There just isn't enough light at a show to use it to any great effect.

I've shot several small shows over the last few months, and the stuff I have outlined above is the result of my experimentation...I am starting to get the hang of it, but have not produced anything worth using in a press pack or a publication. Therefore, if someone with more experience tells you something, listen to them over me. ;)

Small shows are nice because they are more lenient about you and your camera, but remember to be polite to the people who are there for the music. (A few unusual angles getting a bit of foreground crowd shots/dancing girls might be cool too?)