therealblowers
Untitled Rock With a Hole Under Two Trees
Direct Positive
MPP Micro Technical VII 4x5
Bausch & Lomb Rapid Rectilinear ~120mm f/8
(adapted from a Kodak No.3 Model G c1918)
Yellow filter
Rear swing
f/11 8sec
Harman Direct Positive paper (ISO3)
Pre-flashed in camera, EV -2.5.
Metered for lit edge of stone facing camera. Shadow side @ -2. Tree bark (indirectly lit) @ -1.
Developed in Caffenol Delta modified: 30g/L Sodium Carb.
11'00" 21.5C
Selenium toned (Bellini Seltone)
1+19 6'40" ~21C
I took this positive as a thank you to a local artist/sculptor whose work is the subject of the image. He runs an antique shop and has kindly set aside a nice Voigtlander 6x9 folder for me to collect tomorrow!
Generally, I've made sure to shoot direct positives in overcast or subdued light in attempt to limit the dynamic range of the scene to the paper's latitude. By contrast, this scene was back-lit at closing of a fine sunny day so I decided to preflash the paper at -2.5 stops instead of -3 (or -4) to prevent the shadows appearing too dark. I also shot the lens just one stop from wide open at f11 to try and help soften the contrast - before setting out to take the picture, I came across an image posted by flickr member 'Conspiracy of Cartographers' which included this nugget of info. He stated that he'd shot his scene at various apertures, electing to publish the open aperture version as the smaller apertures made that particular image look too hard and I wondered if I could use the same effect to my advantage on the contrasty paper. I compensated for the shallow DOF with rear swing to get the line of trees in focus.
It is a touch overexposed if anything; I didn't really compensate for the increased pre-exposure in the paper (or knew just how much that would affect the highlights) but then I forgot to compensate for the yellow filter too so, thankfully, those two factors seem to have cancelled themselves out. With the extended preflashing, I do think this image is more balanced overall than some I've taken previously despite the range in the scene; it did take a lot of developing to bring the density in, however. I had to pull it out after 11 minutes because it appeared the highlights were beginning to fog, so this is about as much density as I could develop without taking the edge off.
I also like the vignetting to add a central focus and I think it gives the impression of there being more depth to the shadows than there really is - This was achieved by preflashing the paper in-camera against a sheet of mount board at f11 and making use of the light falloff at the edges, rather than stopping the lens down further for an even pre-exposure.
I was really happy with how this came out but felt I let the toning go too far. It's taken on a bit of a vibe that detracted from the stonework I was attempting to showcase, however; viewing the print on ivory backing paper seems to have subdued the red hue a little and I'm quite pleased with the end result. Lessons learned for next time.
Untitled Rock With a Hole Under Two Trees
Direct Positive
MPP Micro Technical VII 4x5
Bausch & Lomb Rapid Rectilinear ~120mm f/8
(adapted from a Kodak No.3 Model G c1918)
Yellow filter
Rear swing
f/11 8sec
Harman Direct Positive paper (ISO3)
Pre-flashed in camera, EV -2.5.
Metered for lit edge of stone facing camera. Shadow side @ -2. Tree bark (indirectly lit) @ -1.
Developed in Caffenol Delta modified: 30g/L Sodium Carb.
11'00" 21.5C
Selenium toned (Bellini Seltone)
1+19 6'40" ~21C
I took this positive as a thank you to a local artist/sculptor whose work is the subject of the image. He runs an antique shop and has kindly set aside a nice Voigtlander 6x9 folder for me to collect tomorrow!
Generally, I've made sure to shoot direct positives in overcast or subdued light in attempt to limit the dynamic range of the scene to the paper's latitude. By contrast, this scene was back-lit at closing of a fine sunny day so I decided to preflash the paper at -2.5 stops instead of -3 (or -4) to prevent the shadows appearing too dark. I also shot the lens just one stop from wide open at f11 to try and help soften the contrast - before setting out to take the picture, I came across an image posted by flickr member 'Conspiracy of Cartographers' which included this nugget of info. He stated that he'd shot his scene at various apertures, electing to publish the open aperture version as the smaller apertures made that particular image look too hard and I wondered if I could use the same effect to my advantage on the contrasty paper. I compensated for the shallow DOF with rear swing to get the line of trees in focus.
It is a touch overexposed if anything; I didn't really compensate for the increased pre-exposure in the paper (or knew just how much that would affect the highlights) but then I forgot to compensate for the yellow filter too so, thankfully, those two factors seem to have cancelled themselves out. With the extended preflashing, I do think this image is more balanced overall than some I've taken previously despite the range in the scene; it did take a lot of developing to bring the density in, however. I had to pull it out after 11 minutes because it appeared the highlights were beginning to fog, so this is about as much density as I could develop without taking the edge off.
I also like the vignetting to add a central focus and I think it gives the impression of there being more depth to the shadows than there really is - This was achieved by preflashing the paper in-camera against a sheet of mount board at f11 and making use of the light falloff at the edges, rather than stopping the lens down further for an even pre-exposure.
I was really happy with how this came out but felt I let the toning go too far. It's taken on a bit of a vibe that detracted from the stonework I was attempting to showcase, however; viewing the print on ivory backing paper seems to have subdued the red hue a little and I'm quite pleased with the end result. Lessons learned for next time.