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large format camera
Oct. 15th, 2023 11:38 pmThursday I wasn't feeling well. Friday wasn't feeling as bad. Saturday I was mostly better, if still not 100%. Today I felt fine, but by supper time I was dead tired.
I did a photography workshop. One of our members shoots large format, and uses X-ray film. X-ray film is cheap or free these days, since clinics and hospitals have all gone digital. It's interesting because it doesn't perform the same as regular film. It is more contrasty, and leaves more to chance. For people who have shot large format before, they would find this in interesting challenge. I haven't, so I was doing it just because I have never shot large format, and I have never developed film in a darkroom before.
So this was a 120-year-old camera, that uses 8x10" sheets of film. The cameras that the other people used were made of metal, and used 4x5" sheets. Carl gave me that camera because I was the youngest guy there, and this camera and tripod were the heaviest. We were going out in the woods by the river. (There were five people taking the workshop - three of us old guys, and two young people who had their own cameras, borrowed from school.) The main advantage of having the larger camera was that it was easier to focus. Other than that, there was little advantage in a setting like this. That is, people who don't know what they're doing, and aren't making art.
Taking pictures was a bit of an ordeal. Find a scene. Set up the tripod and level it. Pull the camera out of the pack and mount it to the tripod. Open it and run the front of the camera out on the rails. Open the aperture. Get the shot lined up. Everything is backwards and upside down, and you probably have to look at the image which is projected onto the ground glass on the back of the camera while you have the black cloth over your head. Focus it. Decide on an aperture. Take a light reading. Check the reciprocity, if necessary. Set the shutter speed, if possible. Test the shutter a couple of times. Redo the whole light reading and settings thing once or twice to get something that works. Put the film holder in the back of the camera. Remove the dark slide from it. Trip the shutter to expose the film. Replace the dark slide. Reverse the process to disassemble everything and find another scene.
It turns out my camera had an issue with the shutter speed, and I had to put the shutter speed on manual. Then I would make it so that the exposure would be as long as possible, so I could get the right exposure by counting the seconds. There's no way I could have counted a tenth of a second, so I'd do it at ten seconds.
I made one mistake in the field. The film holders are two-sided. For my third shot, using first side of the second film holder, when I was ready to take the shot I pulled the wrong darkslide from the film holder. This exposed the back sheet of film to the light, ruining it. I'm just glad it hadn't been used yet, and there was no image on it that would have been ruined.
So then we went back to Carl's house, to develop the negatives. I really had no idea what I was doing, there. There were six trays we had to put our film in, in turn. Water, developer, stop bath, fixer, water and water. Then more water. I just followed his instructions. Fortunately whatever lapses in instructions due to his distractions didn't have ill effect on my negatives. Another guy did have some damage to his.
So of my four sheets of film, shot 1 turned out OK, not great. Sheet 2 turned out well. Sheet 3 turned out badly, and sheet 4 was ruined. I'll count that as a success.
Then three of them left, and three of us went out to eat. That's when the day caught up to me. So tired. I had been carrying the heavy camera up and down the muddy trails. And using a lot of brain to figure everything out. And trying to figure out everything that was going on in the darkroom. And basically being on my feet for the entire afternoon. And trying to keep up in conversation. After that I drove home, talked with Cindy a little bit, and now I'm trying to write about it, and scan and process my images.
( extras )
I did a photography workshop. One of our members shoots large format, and uses X-ray film. X-ray film is cheap or free these days, since clinics and hospitals have all gone digital. It's interesting because it doesn't perform the same as regular film. It is more contrasty, and leaves more to chance. For people who have shot large format before, they would find this in interesting challenge. I haven't, so I was doing it just because I have never shot large format, and I have never developed film in a darkroom before.
So this was a 120-year-old camera, that uses 8x10" sheets of film. The cameras that the other people used were made of metal, and used 4x5" sheets. Carl gave me that camera because I was the youngest guy there, and this camera and tripod were the heaviest. We were going out in the woods by the river. (There were five people taking the workshop - three of us old guys, and two young people who had their own cameras, borrowed from school.) The main advantage of having the larger camera was that it was easier to focus. Other than that, there was little advantage in a setting like this. That is, people who don't know what they're doing, and aren't making art.
Taking pictures was a bit of an ordeal. Find a scene. Set up the tripod and level it. Pull the camera out of the pack and mount it to the tripod. Open it and run the front of the camera out on the rails. Open the aperture. Get the shot lined up. Everything is backwards and upside down, and you probably have to look at the image which is projected onto the ground glass on the back of the camera while you have the black cloth over your head. Focus it. Decide on an aperture. Take a light reading. Check the reciprocity, if necessary. Set the shutter speed, if possible. Test the shutter a couple of times. Redo the whole light reading and settings thing once or twice to get something that works. Put the film holder in the back of the camera. Remove the dark slide from it. Trip the shutter to expose the film. Replace the dark slide. Reverse the process to disassemble everything and find another scene.
It turns out my camera had an issue with the shutter speed, and I had to put the shutter speed on manual. Then I would make it so that the exposure would be as long as possible, so I could get the right exposure by counting the seconds. There's no way I could have counted a tenth of a second, so I'd do it at ten seconds.
I made one mistake in the field. The film holders are two-sided. For my third shot, using first side of the second film holder, when I was ready to take the shot I pulled the wrong darkslide from the film holder. This exposed the back sheet of film to the light, ruining it. I'm just glad it hadn't been used yet, and there was no image on it that would have been ruined.
So then we went back to Carl's house, to develop the negatives. I really had no idea what I was doing, there. There were six trays we had to put our film in, in turn. Water, developer, stop bath, fixer, water and water. Then more water. I just followed his instructions. Fortunately whatever lapses in instructions due to his distractions didn't have ill effect on my negatives. Another guy did have some damage to his.
So of my four sheets of film, shot 1 turned out OK, not great. Sheet 2 turned out well. Sheet 3 turned out badly, and sheet 4 was ruined. I'll count that as a success.
Then three of them left, and three of us went out to eat. That's when the day caught up to me. So tired. I had been carrying the heavy camera up and down the muddy trails. And using a lot of brain to figure everything out. And trying to figure out everything that was going on in the darkroom. And basically being on my feet for the entire afternoon. And trying to keep up in conversation. After that I drove home, talked with Cindy a little bit, and now I'm trying to write about it, and scan and process my images.
( extras )
