bradleycloven

From the first roll in a very long time with my long-lost Contax IIa. 50 f2 Sonnar on HP5. I'm completely overjoyed to have it back!

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That composition is extraordinary. The "Lucas" headlamp in glorious crispness and the rest of a car apparently fading out of focus and into rust. Wow. Just great photography.

Hi Brad. My turn to "steal & return". You have tons of shadow values in those negs, you are just printing tooooo dark. This "return" has a few simple brightness[ATTACH=full]1371266[/ATTACH] controls added to bring the whites up about 1 or 2 Zones. The shadows follow along. I always like to have a Zone 6 or 7 white value if possible in a print. My print has been dropped to 1k pixel, so it might be a bit "mushy". Aloha, Bill

Bill, as you know, as a refugee from the software industry, I'm allergic to using it on my hobbies. But I did try an autocorrect button in Photoshop, and came up with this. Much more like your recommendation.

bradleycloven said:

 

Brad, just out of curiosity I took the liberty of stealing one of your images and tweaking it a little, as I would have done for scanning. I may have taken it a bit far, but even in the screenshot there's quite a bit of detail that the original is lacking. Hope you don't mind...

 

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Okay, Mr. D, give it up! What's the trick?!?

bradleycloven said:

 

Given the dark nature of your subject matter it was possibly a mistake in the right direction. Great shots! The latitude of FP4 and the full tonal values created by PMK is a combination that's hard to beat.

 

How do I get a generally lighter effect like yours? I do get solid white highlights. And I love the gray scale of FP4+ and Pyro. But I'm getting consistently darker overall tone. A push in the right direction would be appreciated.

Rifle Storage.

Notes on Exposure and Development

All shots at f/22, with 1/2 second to 2 second exposure times.

I accidentally had my Pentax Spotmeter set to ASA 80 for the ASA 125 FP4+, so I should have been somewhat overexposed. I compensated by triangulating between Rick Drawbridge's instructions for FP4+ ASA 100 and Massive Dev Chart at ASA 64, ending up at 8 minutes and 73 degrees in a 1:1:100 mix of liquid pyro. Either film latitude or luck saved the day.

Hallway

Door and Stairs

All from Fort Warden, Port Townsend, WA. Crown Graphic, Rodenstock Sironar-N 150mm f5/6, FP4+, Pyrocat HD in Glycol, Epson V800.

Stairs and Squares:

Ages ago some advertising company put out a TV commercial titled "Different Strokes for Different Folks". Suzuki bombed in the motorcycle surge of the 70's, but my mix of vintage mechanical film cameras and of the last few years, semi top end digital offerings keeps my sanity going in these Covid times and even gets some of the "younger crowd" asking me about "what is that " when the Fed's & Zorki's are up. At 78 I have not regrets ! Aloha, Bill

In about early October, I was up on Mt. Rainier with my current 4x5 outfit. I saw two twenty-something Asian Americans toting cameras that didn't have a preview screen on the back, so I asked what they were shooting.

"M2s! Both of us! I've got a 35mm Summilux and she has a 28mm Voightlander f/2.0." They were shooting some sort of newfangled color print film I didn't recognize, and now can't recall.

I've passed along about a dozen cameras to students and friends. Lots of young folks like to give it a try, especially when equipment is essentially free. Gotta keep demand going somehow so I can live out my life with this silver coated celluloid....

I have returned to film completely. I have so many superb film-burners that I want to explore. Only in special circumstances would I pick up a digicam. I have a Leica M3, a Nikon F, and a Rolleiflex 3.5 F. Who could ask for anything more? How can I ignore such machines when I want to go out shooting? Anyone else in this position? I even have a Speed Graphic for LF! And a Minox for spying!

I have my damnable phone which can document suspected prowlers.

Otherwise, I don't own a pixel pimping "photographic" device that depreciates at $1,000 per year.

I do, however, have a curio cabinet lined with 35 functioning jewel-like film photography art creating devices.

Troglodytes Unite!

Central Mixed Grass Prairie

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Smoky Hills Region. KS

Heiland Pentax H2

Film type, please? I like the color rendition.

I'm sure there are "better" digital cameras out there. I don't care. I like what I like. If I'm eventually forced to become a painter, so be it.

I think we're probably at about the break even point on LF v. Digital for overall data capture. Here's FP4+ in Pyro scanned via Epson V800, reduced image size 5X (to 3K from 15K pixels, long-side) for this forum. The original has much more detail, of course.

And then there's tonal "feel". Different films and digital management techniques are like brushes or oils v. acrylic v. sketch v. watercolor. What medium do you like?

I like this. It's slow and fun, and I did it all myself.

view from Camp Defiance

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a former military fortification located at the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers

Nikkormat FTn

Defiantly Forts of a type.

Great images, Bradley. Outstanding color. BTW, who processed your Velvia?

I really need to use my Crown Graphic more.

North Coast Photographic Services, Carlsbad, CA.

Lovely Rich colors!! I too own a Speed Graphic and I have toyed with the idea to use 4x5, but besides a mass plague of procrastination, I can'T scan the format. I thought I'd do direct to print on paper chemistry but I never couldn't get the pre-flash and the contrast was appaling and I'd used up 85% of my paper and still no working formula..oh and the horizontal flip/backwards results ..see no scanner for 4x5. end of rant

 

Beautiful results with Velvia, really seems worth the price of the film with these results. Excellent exposures!!

Epson V800 Scanner, in case you wanted to go whole hog.

Lovely Rich colors!! I too own a Speed Graphic and I have toyed with the idea to use 4x5, but besides a mass plague of procrastination, I can'T scan the format. I thought I'd do direct to print on paper chemistry but I never couldn't get the pre-flash and the contrast was appaling and I'd used up 85% of my paper and still no working formula..oh and the horizontal flip/backwards results ..see no scanner for 4x5. end of rant

 

Beautiful results with Velvia, really seems worth the price of the film with these results. Excellent exposures!!

On the other hand, this was the best day for Fall colors ever, so ....

Lovely Rich colors!! I too own a Speed Graphic and I have toyed with the idea to use 4x5, but besides a mass plague of procrastination, I can'T scan the format. I thought I'd do direct to print on paper chemistry but I never couldn't get the pre-flash and the contrast was appaling and I'd used up 85% of my paper and still no working formula..oh and the horizontal flip/backwards results ..see no scanner for 4x5. end of rant

 

Beautiful results with Velvia, really seems worth the price of the film with these results. Excellent exposures!!

Silverfast software for scanning has some menu problems. They don't size correctly for your sceen. So I may have accidentally bumped up the saturation higher than the film would usually warrant. Anyhow, Can't really tell what to do other than adjust the slider to something good looking. This is what I got...

Erm, a 4x5" is pretty close to MF and there is a transition / gray zone. For my Technika I have a Graphlock and also a slide in roll holder, to shoot 6x7 on 120 + strap, grip, VF and rangemeter coupled lenses and I wouldn't know why on earth I(!)* should lust after an additional native 6x7 camera. I suppose if you shop for a higher end monorail (precion wise), you could be very happy using roll holder and focusing hood on a slider and a bag bellows and MF appropriate WA lenses.

Depends? - How to start nailing those? - Film is film, no matter which format and almost maxed out at ISO 400. - Let's look at crop factors: A 4x5" standard lens is 3x as long as for 35mm or 6x as long as your MFT stuff's. - You have to apply that crop factor to your aperture rings, to get images with similar DOF: MFT @ f2 = 35mm @ f4 = 4x5" @ f12. So the 4x5" will need that tripod earlier than the others or you'll have to crank up your strobes' output.

 

4x5" and FF with f2.8 zoom are a wash at the body building frontier.

 

Different experience depends on how you choose to focus and compose. 4x5" can be handheld press cameras or SLRs with WLFs, nothing extraordinary special about that. "Different" starts when you put them on tripods & apply movements.

• Prepare to get stronger than reading a newspaper on your table glasses, to use under your dark cloth.
  
• Be either able to process film yourself or prepare to file bankruptcy. Don't even think about doing color in LF; that would become insanely expensive.
  

Some folks mentioned portraits. While LF seems able to pull off "the ultimate bokeh shot" easily, you'd have to pair an ultra patient benevolent and "professional actor"-type of subject with a view camera, since you 'll need a long while of absolutely no head movements for stopping down your lens, getting your shutter closed and ready and some film in too. - To me it seems hard enough to work subjects with the other camera concepts. While I appreciate a swiftly auto focusing SLR, I'd even love to get my hands on an eye-AFing MILC. - I missed shots due to manual focus.

 

Big LF problem: Packing

Dedicated backpacks seem rare and original suitcases aren't what an amateur enjoys toting around. - Most things I've seen mean spending quite a while to rig your camera up, compared to lens cap off & *snap*.

I solved the packing problem at the Goodwill lunchbox space. Crown Graphic fits in Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtles. Film holders go in rectangle professiional insulated box. Dark cloth stuffs in a tiny purple and pink elephant kindergartner's snack box. Lenses go in my smallest camera bag. All fit modularly in an Osprey day pack with a real lunch and tripod strapped to the side. Cheap. Works. Heavy.

Howdy folks.

 

Been sort of toying with the idea of getting a bigger camera. Along this line, I was thinking about something like a 4x5, and I'm wondering just how different this experience is from shooting a smaller, handheld camera such as medium format, or from any other camera for that matter?

 

Are exposure times, other functions, or techniques all that different?

 

Thanks!

I'm hooked. I prefer slow. The results are outrageous. See here:

Point Defiance in Color (Crown Graphic/Rodenstock/Velvia 100F))

My pack now weighs 25 lbs., including the Manfrotto 055 xprob. So, the workout is free!

Thanks again to Bill Bowes who turned me on to 4x5 by giving me a whole setup! I'm off and running....

OBTW - Two of the lenses are the Caltar re-badged Rodenstocks. I don't even keep track of which is which; they came off the same line to the same specs.

Pachamama.

Wood Nymph.

Rainier, 8x10. These two are from Fireman's Park.