TMAX Push

Lucy looking out the window (larger)

Continuing my trials with medium format, I wanted to try push processing. I am using TMAX 400 (TMY) and wanted to push it to ISO3200. When shooting around the house (especially in the winter), certainly 400 is too slow, and 1600 is pushing what I’m comfortable with hand-holding. Hence my desire for pushing to 3200.

Yes, I could use a bounce flash (sometimes) but I’ve not worked that out yet. Those are tests for a different roll.

I’d have to say that I’ve got mixed reactions. The picture above seemed to turn out okay. The contrast is definitely more that ISO400, but I think it’s okay.

Lily in the basement (larger)

The next picture is more typical of when I’d use a high speed push: in our basement. While there are several can lights in the ceiling, I meter to f/4 @ 1/30 (if I remember correctly) @ ISO 3200. It’s a high contrast pic, to be sure. I’m not terribly fond of the picture, but this just may be the overhead lighting and the subsequent shadows it produces on Lily’s face.

One aspect of shooting with the C330 is that I’ve only got full stops to work with. If I meter for anything in between, I invariably choose more light as opposed to less.

For what it’s worth, all of my development has been in XTOL replenished at stock strength. I’ve thought about trying XTOL 1:1 or 1:2, but that will burn through my developer pretty quickly. Using it replenished is very economical. 

Technorati Tags: photography, film, tmax, 400, tmy, mamiya, c330, 3200, push, processing, xtol, black, and, white, b&w

More Kids and Lights

Stella

You know, they are still my new toys. So, more kids and lights. Stella was being a really good model, and I managed to get a couple of good snaps of her.

Lucy, colorful

I wanted to try something a bit different (for me) and Lucy let me take a couple of snaps of her. I wanted to try using the colorful background and pushing the exposure on the skin a bit brighter than I normally would. This was shot at f/4.5, 1/250 with two strobes at 1/16th power each.

Table day bed

I did find some time to develop and print a couple of film pics too. This is Tri-X 400 pushed to EI3200. I developed it for about 45 minutes in Rodinal using semi-stand (5 min) agitation. It was very hard for me to print. I tried different grades of filters, but I was either blowing the highlights or just too flat. I finally tried split grade printing. I printed the highlights for 20 sec with a 00 filter, and the blacks for 8 sec or so with a grade 5 filter.

My guess is that I developed the film too long. A couple of the other pictures from the roll were much easier to print using a grade 2 filter for 16 seconds, so maybe not? Not too sure. Maybe this picture was just overexposed?

Technorati Tags: photography, strobe, tri-x, rodinal, 3200, 400

Prints from Summer vacation

Life Buoy

Going through my negatives, I found these two that I wanted to print. The one above, “Life Buoy” was particularly difficult on me. I’d like to get the water on the top to have a bit more detail, but I’m pretty happy with the rest of the picture’s tones. Since I’m still pretty new, I’m not 100% sure how to go about this. Should I burn it in? Try pre-flashing? Just leave it alone? Hmmm.

Stella Magnified

I think that I’m pretty happy with Stella Magnified. I think that it might be about 1/2 stop light, but I’m mostly okay with it.

One thing that is not obvious from these scans is that the pictures are askew on the paper. I printed at 6×9 on 8×10 paper. I can’t seem to align the paper correctly. Bummer. I’m using an easel, but something’s just not working.

Technorati Tags: photography, b&w, black, and, white, delta, 3200, ilford, xp2

Now the experiments

Ugh. This is the part of film that I’m both looking forward to and dreading. Experimentation. I don’t understand how the film will respond in different situations, etc.

Plus, reading on line, there are about a zillion different developers and development techniques. Yikes. Add to that the scanning and it’s a many variable equation that doesn’t seem to converge.

From Random Black and White, Nov 2008

Here are my kids captured using Ilford Delta 400 pushed to 800. Not too bad, but man, is it dark in the basement. Most all of the pictures are taken at f/2.8 or f/2.0. I was trying to stick to 1/60th, but I know that I pushed to 1/30th sometimes. I’m out of my comfort zone when I’m shooting like that.

From Random Black and White, Nov 2008

But, for the most part, the pictures turned out okay. Not the best, but I was able to successfully get the pictures and develop them. The grain is definitely better than a roll of Ilford Delta 3200 shot at 3200. Right now I’ve got a roll of Ilford 3200 in my camera set to ISO1600. We’ll see how that turns out.

Technorati Tags: photograpy, film, b&w, black, and, white, ilford, delta, 400, 3200