Daisy Scout Adventure: Owl Time

I went with Lily on her Daisy Scout field trip to the Anita Purves Nature Center in Urbana, IL. The troop leaders had scheduled a presentation on owls. I’m sorry to say that I don’t remember the name of the little guy above, but I do remember being told that when the owl’s ears are back, it’s not happy. As we can see, this one was starting to get grumpy with me….

The girls were pretty attentive to our speaker. She discussed a few of the different owls found in our local area, owls special traits, and their silent feathers.

At the end all the girls got to dissect an owl pellet. An owl pellet is the remains of the owl’s dinner that it can’t digest. Anything that it can’t digest (bones and fur mostly) get thrown up as an owl pellet. I think that all of the parents were a bit skeptical about this activity, but the girls had a blast. The found many bones and one girl even found a complete skull. Everyone was pretty excited.

Technorati Tags: photography, owl, daisy, scouts, b&w, black, white, tmax, 400, tmy, xtol

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

Hand-held low-speed

Norah (larger)

My next roll was my hand-held, low light roll. ISO was held at 400 for this roll, but I wanted to see if shooting at f/2.8 and 1/30th was going to work out. Norah’s picture above was (if memory serves me) f/2.8 at 1/30th.

Let’s start by discussing what I think went well in this picture:

1. Clarity
   I’ve very happy with the overall clarity of the picture. I’m quite enjoying medium format.
2. The eyes.
   I’m also happy with the reflection in her eyes. I’m very happy to report that the reflection was quite intentional and I moved around to get it. Now, you can scoff and think to yourself “well, duh” but I’ll tell you that it’s not easy for me to remember all the little details when shooting.
3. Blur isolation
   I also like the blur of the lens that the aperture provided. Granted, I chose the aperture for exposure reasons, but nonetheless, I’m still happy with the isolation it provides.

Things that could have gone better:

1. Dust, dust, dust.
   Dust spots are still a major problem. I spent a considerable amount of time in Lightroom removing dust. I’m working on it, but I’m still not sure where it’s all coming from and how to mitigate it effectively. Aaargh!
2. Overall composition.
   It’s not bad, but it is just a grab shot. While nothing to be ashamed about, I’d still like to strive for better.

Stella on fire (larger)

Of course she’s not really on fire. I just think the rim lighting of the sun makes her hair look like fire. I don’t remember what speed I was shooting here, so I don’t know if this qualifies for my “hand-held low-speed” shooting or not. Still like the picture though….

Technorati Tags: photography, norah, stella, mamiya, c330, tmax, 400, tmy, children, b&w, black, white

Medium Format, Frost, and Bugs

Asian Beetle on a Mum

I finally got a medium format camera. I’ve been hemming and hawing about this for a while: 35mm, 6×6 TLR, or 6×7 SLR? I finally went with a Mamiya C330 TLR purchased from KEH via Ebay. It was relatively inexpensive, but could use a good cleaning.

Frost killed tomatoes

The picture above is from my first roll of file through it, Kodak TMAX400. All in all not too bad, I’d say. The scans reveal an incredible amount of detail. It’s really quite stunning. I seem to have a bit of a lint issue somewhere, as all of the negatives have somewhat large squigly pieces of lint in them as well as regular flecks. I’ll have to think about my processing procedures and see where I can try to reduce dust contamination.

I’m very happy with the sharpness of the pictures. I also like using the waist level finder. It’s easy to get focus (though not fast). The biggest downside is the price. A single roll of TMAX400 film costs about $3.80. I get 12 exposures from a roll of film. Once the bloom wears off my new toy I’m guessing that I’ll shoot a roll a week or so. I had thought about trying some slide film, but the cost of the film plus processing is approaching $10 per roll. A bit too much for my blood.

I’ve already got a series of shooting strategies for my next several rolls:

• Hand-held push: My current roll has several shots at 1/30th shutter speed. I want to see how that will turn out.
• Under the lights: I want to see how the camera / film / pictures respond when using it for portraiture and my lights.
• Pushing: Push the film to ISO1600 and/or ISO3200.

I had 10 rolls of film when I started. I’m down to 8 rolls now. Soon to be 5.

Technorati Tags: photography, film, b&w, black, white, kodak, tmax, 400, tmy, mum, beetle, tomato

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

More Champaign at Night

Merry Ann’s Diner

I had a chance to grab some pictures in the snow the other night in downtown Champaign, IL. These are scans of the prints that I made with the new (to me) enlarger. I am particularly happy that they turned out okay. I was shooting Tri-X 400 at EI3200. I wasn’t sure how long to develop, but based on my EI1600 development trials I shot for 1.5 hours with 5 min agitation intervals. Let me tell you, that was a long time. The highlights got blown out, density wise, and I should revisit that.

Here’s a picture with the blown highlights.

Orpheum

On my test exposures, that I developed at the same time, the highlight density was 1.36 for zone 8. I think that if I can that back to 1.2 or so, I’ll have my time for EI3200.

I could try to burn in the lights to the right, but I kind of promised myself I’d avoid dodging and burning so that I wouldn’t spend a tremendous amount of time making prints. I guess rules are made to be broken….

Technorati Tags: champaign, il, b&w, black, and, white, trix, tx, 400, rodinal, photography

Christmas Party

Stella and Grandma Flossie

This past weekend my Grandparents held their “early” Christmas party. It was a good time and I was very glad to be back in the midwest. Living in AZ, we weren’t able to come to the Christmas party for several years now. The picture of Stella and Grandma (above) is probably my favorite picture from the day. I’m very happy with the tones in the picture. I’m probably also biased as it’s my kid, but so be it. I am very excited to get my enlarger. This will be one of the first pictures that I’ll try to print. Knowing me, I’ll print it 20 times trying various times, etc.

Stella was a tired little puppy

Technorati Tags: photography, christmas, black, and, white, rodinal, tri-x, 400, pokey, puppy, film

Champaign at Night

Orpheum

I wanted to try shooting a roll of Tri-X 400 in really dark conditions and then use the “minimal agitation” method for development. I developed the film in Rodinal 1:50 for 55 minutes, agitating every 5 minutes via 3 gentle inversions. For someone with no reference point, I’d say the pictures turned out okay. I particularly like the one above, Orpheum. My camera’s meter wasn’t responding, so I just shot everything at f/4, 1/60. I find that focusing with my Pentax is very hard. More specifically, I find that it’s really hard to focus wrong. Even when I am careful I tend to mess it up. I’m not sure what’s going on there.

I am still having difficulties deciding if I’m getting the best that I can out of my scanner. After development, the Tri-X comes out (for me anyhow) very bowed. The film holder that came with the Epson v500 is relatively flimsy and does not provide any sort of support for the film. So, I ditched it. I instead placed the film on the flat bed (emulsion side up, if I remember correctly) and put a piece of glass from an 8×10 frame on top.

Patio

Unfortunately, using this method I couldn’t figure out how to crop properly in Vuescan. Argh! One frustration after another! So, I went back to Epson Scan. I think that I got a better scan, but this could just be a placebo affect. This has lead me to seriously think about buying an enlarger. I have been watching them on Ebay for a few weeks now. Am I just asking for more headaches? Probably.

Book shop

Technorati Tags: photography, champaign, il, night, black, and, white, tri-x, 400, rodinal, high, contrast

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