Showing posts with label Agfa Rodinal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Agfa Rodinal. Show all posts

Monday, April 18, 2016

Stumbling Into The Light

You know there's that thing called a Preternatural Glow that can precede dawn (so long as it isn't overcast)?
Well, as a long-time very early riser, I can confirm that there is - it's my favourite time of day too and often brings to mind the best photograph I've ever seen in my life.
Well, at least it might have been the best photograph I've ever seen in my life, had I had
a/ a small tripod
and
b/ a loaded camera!


My Dad used to have this great saying: 

The Things You See When You Haven't Got Your Gun 

It's a great saying and in my case could easily have been applied to my photographic unpreparedness.
I was driving along near The Caterthuns in Angus - they're two iron Age hillforts outside Brechin and my goodness the view from the top is astonishing. Anyway, it was pre-dawn, really dark, and I was bumbling along a lane in my old Nissan Micra and there before me (outwith the reach of my headlight beams) was a spread of land that opened out from the high country I was in, for miles and miles downwards to the Eastern horizon and the North Sea.
It was like the land had been cut away for my pleasure and wonder and I had this downward slope of immense landscape to bask in; and there, huddled together in the field beside the road, was a smallish herd of cows.
I like cows - you know where you stand with a cow, anyway, this lot were all lying down, cudding away, and to a cow, were watching the dawn coming on in the same way I was.
The light was so faint it only lit them gently, but they all had a look of utter peace on their faces.
Cows appreciate the unusual and art - did you know that? It's true - whenever my Mum used to hang washing on our whirlygig washing line, it always attracted a herd of interested moos who would stand and watch for ages until they'd eaten all the grass nearby in the adjacent field and then wander off murmuring appreciatively. .
Anyway, I digress - I stopped the car on the tight verge, switched off the engine, rolled down the window and listened. There was a massive silence gently filled with warm cow sounds (no not that Jenkins . . . report to the headmaster immediately) and a sense of all not only being right with the world, but also a sense of peace which literally did pass all understanding.
It was incredible and had I a camera that could have frozen the moment, I would have done so and astonished people, but sadly, that was not the case, and so the scene is forever only imprinted in my memory until I shuffle off to the immortal skip . . .
But that was the glow, the preternatural glow. It softened and made so very beautiful the faces of the cows and draped itself so gently over the world that it turned the astonishingly ordinary into something otherworldly and timeless.
It was a herald of good portents for the day and lifted my spirit to soar upon the morning breeze (yes you've got to feed the inner caveman sometimes) and this is what it did.


Photographic, Silver Gelatin prints can have that glow too. 
It's a rare thing but does seems to be do-able. 
I've seen it in real prints from the masters at exhibitions, I've seen it in a wonderful book on the Maggie's Centre in Dundee, by Peter Goldsmith and I've also seen it in some incredibly early Photogravures from the pages of Camera Work. 
Incredibly to me, I've even sometimes seen it in my own prints . . . but it's rarer than rocking-horse shit, however sometimes you just stumble upon a combination that works.
In my case, it was FP4 rated at EI 80 developed in 1+50 Rodinal (well, R09) at 20C. 
The resulting negatives were printed on ancient, long-expired Agfa MCC at Grade 4 (100 Magenta on my DeVere head) - I've had to use this equivalent grade to bring the paper back to life - anything less and the paper is mud - my goodness though, I wish I had a dozen or so boxes of it.  
The prints were developed very ordinarily in Fotospeed developer, Kodak stop and Ilford fix and given standard Selenium toning for archival purposes. And that was it! Incredibly exposure was standardised at 16 seconds at f22 on my Vivitar lens, with a tiny (and I mean tiny) bit of burning judiciously applied here and there. 
There was no Split-Grade Faffing, no Wizard-Cape Theatricals, no Snake Oil - just straight printing
I often wonder with the screeds of books written about the darkroom dark arts, how much of it is snake oil. Get the exposure right in the camera, and printing should just come down to either expansion or contraction of contrast and a modicum of artistic license in the form of dodging and burning. To me, printing should be like that marvelous recipe your Grandmother passed down to your Mother - simple; any amount of tarting up just takes away from the utter simplicity of the original thing.
Anyway, scans below. Of course scanning can never duplicate the physical presence of a print, but you can get an idea - believe me, they do, on the whole, glow.































Please feel  free to comment - I am quite proud of these - they're printed about 8.5" x 8.5" on 9.5" x 12" paper and obviously I've cut the borders off to accomodate the image area in scanning . . . . 
Bruce Robbins reckons the look comes from a combination of light, surroundings and circumstance, and he could well be right. I'd set out to photograph some shoreline, but this being Scotland, it started pouring and I ended up getting stuck in the underpass bit of a certain well-known road bridge near me. It was really chucking outside, but inside it was weird and reflecty and damp and photographic! 
And yes, I know the third one has rendered me as a Brass Rubbing . . I quite like it. 
And I also know there's a bit of squintyness in the form of converging verticals - it was pretty dark in there.
Film as mentioned was FP4 - I like the look of it so much I am thinking it would be good to standardise on it - a truly great film.
And that's it really - I had a fantastic time photographing these and an even better time printing them.

TTFN and remember, pease pudding hot, pease pudding cold, pease pudding in the pot, nine days old.

Saturday, November 28, 2015

Tales From The River Bank

Sadly not a FB devoted to the children's programme that probably no one remembers . . . ah where are you Hammy Hamster when the world needs your brand of innocence!




 . . . but a FB devoted entirely to photographing a tidal estuary shore! 
Oh yes, pure excitement here at FB towers!
Well, I suppose it was exciting actually - 7am on an Autumn morning with a guarantee of low tide and nothing but a tripod, a Hasselblad 500C/M with 60mm Distagon and a pair of wellies.

It's alright, don't panic . . . the oxygen tent will be here in a minute!

I've timed myself on these sort of expeditions before and they take me approximately 2 hours. Now this is sort of strange - that is per roll of 120 - so either my body has found a natural rhythm to making photographs with MF or else I am thinking far too much into it - whatever, 2 hours it took and actually, very pleasant it was given that I was downstream from Newport's sewerage outlet!
The pipe is a wonderful, seaweed covered, ceramic job and wends its way far out into the Tay. You can see it in Frame 11 (middle frame, far right) on the contact sheet below. Fortunately I was not troubled by the usual sewerage effluent that can beset many tidal shores downstream of such things, and actually, very clean is how I would describe it. Not that I'd want to eat my tea off of it, but it was smell and debris free and the massed banks of bladderwrack were very fresh looking and rather healthy.
So, you're asking why Sheephouse?
WHY?
Why did I want to do it?
Well, I've been there before at high tide and the place was intriguing - it's a small area of intensely wooded, shallow cliff, heading eastward from the Fife end of the bridge, and I dunno, it just made me itch in a photographic way, so much so that I awoke from a pleasant Wiessbier/Woods Rum induced slumber and hauled my weary bones out into the pre-dawn light.
Oh yes, you've got to up and at 'em when the feeling calls!
I have been deeply aware all Summer, that I have barely used my newly acquired 500C/M and I felt ashamed of that - it is a first class tool and should be used all the time - that thought was a goad in my side.
I was also aware that I have a Scottish Photographers meeting coming up in December and I needed some material for that . . . and also, I wanted to make some pictures!
So, wellies on, everything readied, off I went!
Just a quick check though . . . are you wearing yours too? Those deck shoes are going to get awful messy if you aren't light-footed . . .

Onwards.
Obviously you have to be careful in such places - I had no wish of just being a Hasselblad raised high on a quickly sinking tripod above the incoming tide with me being sucked down first by soft mud, so it was easy-does-it and careful treading and testing some areas that looked dodgy just to be sure.

Exploring small areas like this in this way can be rewarding - I can't have walked more than about 300 yards beyond the point where I climbed down - and seeing as there was plenty to see, time seemed to stop and all there was, was me and my camera and the river . . . oh, and The Bridge as well - it is enormous from this side of the river, towering over you on massive concrete pillars but despite the early morning noise from cars and more cars, it was relatively quiet where I was.

I don't know if you find photographing therapeutic, but I do. Away from the demands and noisome mess of modern life and in such unlikely places as I try to find, you can just take your time and concentrate on the task at hand  - it's a form of meditation to me.
If you find it the same I'd love to hear what you have to say!

I used the Hasselblad mounted on my ancient Gitzo the whole time - I also used my small Giottos ballhead, which was tbh barely adequate and I had a few massive camera flops, which isn't the sort of thing you want to happen. I was also lucky it was quite still, as I fear the camera would have vibrated on the Giottos like a pair of flimsies on a washing line. To maximise me chances of sharpness on such a precarious set-up, I used mirror lock up and a small wait of time and then a cable release for each exposure - it would have been foolish not to. This being said, I still don't think I have extracted the maximum detail from the lens, but then I should have used a sturdier head (more on this in an upcoming FB - "Kenny Jazz And The Ballheads").
But the deed is done now, so scroll down a bit and have a gander.

Now I realise that when you look at the contact below you're going to say
"Hmmm - he could have exposed those better"
Well granted I probably could, but I've done years of trying to get the 'perfect' negative and to be honest, I am not sure there is such a thing - these days, my processing regime is very very simple - using the Rodinal replacement R09, I process to the times detailed on the side of the bottle! There, that was easy wasn't it! My old Agfa Rodinal leaflet ties in almost exactly with the bottle times and seeing as I have had some nice looking negatives from said times, I see little reason to change.
My only caveat to this is that I will down-rate every film.
In this case it was FP4 and I exposed it at EI 80.
Why?
Well I always felt that when I used box speed, my negatives were OK in a sort of dull, 'OK' way, but they had no oomph or guts, down-rating just gives that extra edge of over-exposure, and unless you are really really careless or shooting in vastly contrasting conditions on the same roll, the film's latitude (it's ability to deal with differing light) is generally able to take care of things (in other words your shortcomings as a photographer!).
So whilst the contact below has washed out skies, in reality, the information is there, it just needs slightly more careful handling in the printing stage.
Remember a contact is just really a visual check to give you an idea of what you have - it also has to balance any differences in the negatives and actually for such a seemingly simple thing, making a good contact is surprisingly hard to do - in fact I don't think I have ever made a perfect one.
The general concensus seems to be 'minimum time for maximum black' and I'll say I try and adhere to that.
There's a very good article on contacts and the 'un-zone' system on the late, great Barry Thornton's site - you can read it here
Anyway, if you can be bothered looking at the contact, you'll see the start (bottom left) and the end (top right) of my little adventure.
OK, it's a bit squinty/wonky but we're friends here - what's a little wonkiness between friends eh?



Contact Sheet 


Right, so now we've got some pictures!
As I said before the processing regime was simple (more of that in a minute) but so was the exposure regime.
You know that saying 'a little knowledge is a dangerous thing'?
Well yes, and no, it is and it isn't.
I've studied and applied the Zone system to my LF work and everything else too, and after years of following Bruce Barnbaum's "Ansel was wrong, expose shadows on Zone IV" methodology, you know what . . . I now expose shadows on Zone III.
WTF Sheepy?
OK,

a brief excursion into simple metering.

Your meter. Yes, yours.
It is your friend, but it is still going to average out that scene for you!
Multi-matrix, centre-weighted, spot, whatever you're still getting an average reading that will give you an average exposure that works really well with colour materials.
It is designed to ensure that you (stupid human) at least come home with something and that something is a Zone V exposure.
Average.
Balanced Colour.
In Black and White terms - Mid-Grey. 18%.
An average rendering of the scene, and there's nothing wrong with that.
But in monochrome (our concern here - these are B&W photographs after all and FB is primarily monochrome-based) we don't necessarily want an average grey picture.
Strange as it seems, but this is a common mistake with people taking B&W photographs. Yes, even in a world filled with helpful photographers and more articles on the subject online than you could comfortably read in a lifetime, this mistake is perpetuated.
Just about every online gallery I have seen is filled with mid-grey exposures.
But wait a minute - This is monochrome.
It is an infinitely expressive medium.
We want to jazz it up a bit.
You need to play with the light, adjust it to suit your vision of what you see in front of you. You can make a photograph where everything is visible and rendered clearly; where ever single nuance of light is captured in grey, but what you want is a bit of drama, some light, some shade and some total black, or pure paper white.
Hence the Zone III shadow.
It's simple to understand - if you're using a hand-held meter move it around the darker area of the scene you want to photograph; if it is an in camera meter, sway that camera around like a hypnotised cobra . . there, that's better. Got the lowest reading you can get?
Good.
Now if you were to photograph that dark bit at the exposure your meter is suggesting, you'll end up with grey, not lovely, all-encompassing, luscious darkness, nope, just grey . . . mud. Folks that is Zone V.
Mid.
Average.
Mud.
OK, in Roman numerals V=5, so III = (er)3!
So to achieve a Zone III exposure, you're going to underexpose your scene by 2 Zones (1 Zone = 1 Stop as per standard shutter speed/f-stop marking).
So if say your meter reading was 1/30th of a second at f16 (and you want to keep the depth of field that f16 brings) then your exposure is going to be 1/125th at f16 - you've lost two stops of light and the lovely black shadowy-bit is rendered more akin to how it looks and not an 'orrible muddy grey.
And that is an incredibly simplified bit of Zone-systeming that works for me.
If you now process at your chosen film developer's recommended timings, you should get some negatives that are pretty alright.
Obviously I've not gone into the Zoney/Wonderful World of Expansion and Contraction of negatives by development, because I don't feel it is applicable to this .  . so there.
So your negatives are pretty alright, and of course, sometimes, things will go wrong (and you'll end up with all sorts of 'orrible images) but mostly they won't. You would be amazed at how much a film's latitude can deal with things - I've exposed rolls and rolls at guessed exposures in all sorts of conditions and on the whole they've worked out fine.  
The only cardinal sin is underexposure, hence it is always a good idea to downrate the speed of your film - it just gives that little leeway
It's like a Lazarus moment though, is guessing exposure - your crutch is cast aside and you can walk!
You see it can be very easy to get sucked into the drive for perfection, metering everything so carefully, so much so that you miss the whole point (which is to make images which are enjoyable to look at) and not to mention missing the light and the moment too!
Remember the greatest landscape photograph ever made (just about) Ansel Adam's Moonlight Over Hernandez was a guessed exposure by a master who knew exactly what he was looking at and the luminence values of everything.
Anyway, all this is besides the point, so onwards.

Ooops - OK - I did mention processing, so here goes:
For this roll of FP4 rated at EI 80, I used 1+50 Rodinal (R09) at 20 C. I gave one minute of constant agitation and then one inversion every 30 seconds . . for 18 minutes!!!
Yep - it has imparted an edge of contrast to things, but to my advantage I think - especially the picture of the bladderwrack - the slight over-development coupled with a slight error in exposure (oh alright then, under-exposure) has imparted a 'vintage' air to it which I find very pleasing . . . and the detail is extraordinary . .
But anyway, where were we - oh yeah - Agitation - again a seemingly simple thing that can go horribly wrong.
Most people think it is OK to chuck the developer in and slosh it around like they're mixing cocktails.


The Young Photographer's Guide To Home Developing - Page 34

NOPE!
STOP!!
ABSOLUTELY NOT
Agitation is a gentle, lovingly tender operation. It has to be done calmly AND GENTLY.
Did I mention GENTLY?
To get all metaphysical, in making good wine you don't chuck it all in a cement mixer, slosh it around, ferment it in a fervour and expect it to come out feeling nice and fresh and treated with respect do you? 
No, it takes time and care, and it is the same with film. 
Treat it with respect, like you would your loved one.
Really - you think I am exaggerating, but I am not - certainly with a developer like Rodinal (and its derivatives) and even the various dilutions of good old HC 110 and D76, it really pays to agitate as gently as possible. And I can't emphasise that enough - if you chuck in the developer and slosh you'll end-up with negatives that are so hard they could penetrate Batfink's wings. So one gentle (and slow) tilt (tank upside down and back to normal) per recommended inversion. You'll thank me for it.

OK, so after I got the negatives, what did I want to do? Yep . . . I wanted to print them too!
I love printing - it is one entire half of the photographic process, and is so sorely neglected these days . . . well, don't get me going. It is not easy setting up a darkroom though and I understand people don't have space etc etc, but you kind of owe it to yourself as a photographer to try and do something, even if it is just contact prints off a 6x6cm negative with the paper being exposed by a baffled torch.
Anyway, Paper.
It was 10 year old Agfa Multi-Contrast Classic - yep, ancient and as such it all has to be printed at the equivalent of Grade 4 - anything less than that old 100 units of Magenta just doesn't cut through the inherent base-fog of a paper that age. And you will get base-fog on something very old and especially Multigrade. For some reason, Graded paper seems to hang on much better . . . so look, I've saved you time and effort already - got old MG paper? Expose it on the highest Grade it can deal with and take it from there.






















OK, session over. It took me about 2 hours to produce 6 prints, of which the best are above. With my current developing/paper/chemicals/printing regime (and at the same height on the enlarger for 10x8 paper) I seem to have hit a magical exposure time of 16 seconds at f22, using my 100mm Vivitar lens. What you see above are pretty much straight prints. 
No split grade or any form of trickery. 
Just neat (ish).
Oh alright then . . . I will admit to having cheated a tad on these with just the merest tickle of PotFerry bleaching too, just to up the ante - and it worked. 
I immerse the print in a weak solution till it looks about right, take it out and wash under running water then store in a clean tray of water till I am ready for the next step - Selenium Toning. Again the same procedure and then it is a quick blast in rapid fixer and then another quick blast with Kodak Hypoclear and into the wash tank for a couple of hours. 
The prints are then air-dried (suspended by plastic clothes pegs [not wooden - they adhere to the surface]) and filed away in archival sheets in an archival box for doomsday until they meet the great skip at the end of the line . . .
Such is life.
I love these prints though and the last is my favourite - I think it has that old-skool tonality I love in the work of Adams and Bullock and to aspire to the work of those masters isn't a bad thing methinks..

So there y'go folks, from field to plate, an analysis of what this particular photographer does to while away the time on some weekends.
Hope you enjoyed it.
TTFN.

 




Thursday, May 07, 2015

Il Buono, Il Matto e Il Cattivo - Parte 1.3

OR


HOW TO SPEND A HAPPY COUPLE OF HOURS NEXT TO 
A RIVER


Morning folks - fed up of the election yet? 
Remember a vote for Sheephouse is a vote for fair dealings and honesty, so I urge you to go and put your X in the correct box - we're fielding candidates all over the country - YOU KNOW IT MAKES SENSE.

Well, here we reach the happy conclusion of something started a while back - you can read about part 1 here . . . and part 2 here . . .
I'll let you get on with that if you haven't read them already, and for the brave and exhausted souls who have . . . on with the show! 

OK, so I'd been weathered off and decided that I simply must take some pictures, so I found a nice riverbank and did something I haven't ever done with a 5x4 camera - 
I parked myself
Wot's that Sheephouse? Parked?
Yeah, parked - dumped my rucksack, unpacked it, set up camera on tripod, attached LowePro bumbag to my bum and over the next two hours wandered up and down the riverbank taking pictures leaving rucksack where it was and packing/unpacking nothing apart from at the start and at the end. I made 8 photographs - this would normally have taken approximately 3 total hours of time were I having to pack up and move on every time, so essentially I shaved around an hour off of valuable time. 
Light waits for no man and I was alternating between astonishing, bright sunshine, heavy cloud and deep freezing shadows. The river was running fit to bust. The air was filled with clouds of water droplets all diamondy and wonderful in the sunshine. The noise was incredible and my soul flew. 
It was a pleasure which I can hardly describe
How wonderful not to have to think about packing up and moving on! Never done it before, but I will from now on. I dug deep into the landscape and felt that having the freedom to just wander about paid out in spades. If you are a LF photographer, please consider using this approach:

study your maps
pick a spot that looks good
PARK
and then have fun

It made all the difference to me.
Anyway . . . 
Right, well what have we here Sheephouse?
It's prints M'am innit.
Oh really?
Yes M'am . . . proper prints, made on proper paper and developed in proper chemicals. The paper, if you don't mind me telling you M'am, is some ancient Agfa Multicontrast Classic (or MCC if you like) - it's at least 10 years old and has lost about a Grade of sensitivity, however it doesn't appear to be fogging. The paper developer was Fotospeed - it is excellent and very fast, and then they were archivally fixed and toned in Kodak Selenium.
Really young man . . . that's jolly interesting.
Yes M'am, I agree

So, here they are as promised at the start of this lengthy process - film was the last of my well expired TMX 400 (when it cost £50 for 50 sheets) and some of my well-expired TXP 320 (when it cost £50 for 50 sheets). All were developed in 1:25 Rodinal at 21 Centigrade. Some of the negatives were sorely underexposed (because I'd knocked my meter and hadn't noticed) and I had to try and enhance the upper Zones by Selenium toning the negative - this works quite well actually.
The lenses were a 1980's Schneider 150mm Symmar-S and a late production Schneider 90mm Super Angulon. I like them both - they are superb lenses.
Camera was the Wista DX which is a superb companion and my tripod was the Gitzo Series 2 Reporter - it is ancient but operates as new - testimony to great engineering and build.


So, kick back, dip your bagel in your coffee and tell me what you think.


















OK - the eagle-eyed will notice that is only 5 contacts . . well the other 3 were impossible to get looking right so I haven't included them, I have however printed one of them!
So now for the projection prints. All printed on my DeVere 504 through an ancient 150mm Rodagon.



This was actually bleached and then toned - unfortunately it was a bleach too far and it has given it this lith look. That being said a number of people have said they really liked it . . so there.




I like the tonality of this one - it did need a little bleaching, but I was careful and then toned in Selenium




This is a little section from the above - you can see how well the Super Angulon has rendered the water.




And finally . . . this is my favourite - it reminds me of John Blakemore.
It's hardly original, but I find it pleasing.
The thing that attracted my eye first was the reflection of the tree at the bottom of the frame.
Bleached selectively along the water's white and then Selenium toned.



And that folks is that - was it worth the wait? 
Only you can decide. 
LF takes a huge amount of effort, and sometimes I am not sure it is worth the effort, however with that last print, I can say to myself (as I wash up on the beach of emptied and dying LF photographers, spent before their time on the river of photography) 
"Yes . . . at least I think so."

TTFN - poiple pills - yum yum yum.

Tuesday, November 05, 2013

The Ralph Gibson Experiment (Part Three)

Mornin' Maties.
Eggs
Or in the words of me old mate Gollum (the original one, you know the one that has lived in my head since I were young, not the fake New Zealand one):
Eggss's!
Oh yes, Easter is a comin' and there's nothing yer Cap'n likes more than a nice Easter egg. As many as possible so that I can put me ol' seaboots up on my cabin table come Easter morn, give thanks to the Lord and stuff myself full o' Albumen and Yolk.
Chocolate I hear you ask?
Nah, not here.
It gives me the monster-jips. I remember a time when we was runnin' a Brigand full o' Cacau beans down in the Southern Seas - oh yes. Very nasty. But you don't want to hear about that. Suffice to say I can't look a bar o' Lindt in the eye in the same way no more.
Nope, a good ol' hard (or soft) boiled hens egg, and as many as you like.
That does for me at Easter and bless the chicken that lays 'em.
Remember Cool Hand Luke? He's got nothin' on me come Easter Monday.


***


Well, as regular FogBlographers (why didn't I think of that before?) will know, I can drone on with an intensity which could send a caged and smoking lab Beagle to sleep, so today I am going to do something different.
In the words of the world-renowned Buitoni Ravioli TV advert from the early 1970's:
Don't talk . . . Eat!
(Actually, go on, search for a picture of a tin of Buitoni . . I dare you . . you won't find one . . again . . why?)
I am going to let the pictures do the talking and save my fingers the walking.
I will refer new readers back to The Ralph Gibson Experiment Part 1 and The Ralph Gibson Experiment Part 2, in which the whole ludicrous thing is explained, but if you are short of time, here's a précis:
The preface is simple:

Make photographs with a standard shutter speed that does not change and a standard aperture that does not change. All that needs to change is the focus, and even then . . .
Have a standardised processing procedure.
The camera I used is a 1960 Leica M2 - it's as sweet as a nut and I love it. The lens is an uncoated 1934 Leitz 50mm Elmar. It lacks contrast, so to help things, it is also fitted with a FISON lens hood.
The film is developed in a particularly strong solution of Agfa Rodinal (or R09 as it is now known) - Mr.Gibson's objective was to achieve a dense negative, and strangely this has helped me, delivering better results from the rather soft Elmar that are more akin to a modern coated lens.

I'll detail the procedure now:

SHUTTER SPEED: Well Mr.Gibson states his sunny day shooting speed is 1/250th of a second, however this is Scotland (Hoots!) and I chose to use 1/125th of a second, just in case.
APERTURE: Ralph uses a standard f16. He believes this gives his pictures a uniformity. It is a very cleaver move because it removes all faffing around and means you concentrate on the picture. I used f16 for every picture on this film.
FILM: he uses Kodak Tri-X, with EI's ranging from 400 down to 100.
DEVELOPER: Agfa Rodinal (or R09 as it is now known). He uses this at a dilution of 1+25 and a temperature of 68° Farenheit, with a 10 second agitation every 1 minute and 30 seconds, for a total time of 11 minutes.

And that is it.
Simple?
Well yes.
Brilliant?
Well yes, because you are freed of the general process and apart from focusing can make images pretty much on the fly.
My variation on this for this post, is that I had no Tri-X and was down to the last roll of fast film in the house, an expired (November, 2010) roll of Kodak TMY 400.
Because of this, obviously development times were different from Tri-X, so I roughly grabbed a figure out of the air, and settled on 9 minutes, with Ralph's agitation regime. I used 10ml Rodinal to 280ml water in a small Paterson tank. The Massive Development Chart recommends 5 minutes for this combo at EI 400, so this is well over!
The other variation is that for some of the last shots, I took the shutter speed down to 1/15th and 1/60th at f16, simply because the shots were of interiors and through windows. Yes I like the idea of a set speed, but I am not stupid and film is expensive.


Contact Sheet


***


After making two shots at the bus stop, I hit the upper deck of a bus on the way home from work. And as you can see, it has been fine in one shot, but, worried about the unholy way in which the bus was throwing me around and camera shake, I upped the shutter speed to 1/250th and with f16 the combo hasn't worked for shadow detail at all.
The sun was low, but it wasn't exactly dark, but it was a stop too far!
This being said, Frame 3 (the only one at 1/125th) is a corker.
I'll call it The Buddha On The Bus, simply because the rear of the man's head reminds me of Buddha's serene pose.
What isn't seen is his young son, who was running around causing chaos. I think the guy just closed his eyes for a second and assumed this serene pose!



The Buddha On The Bus
The Buddha On The Bus


Now certainly, on my monitor at work, this seems too contrasty, and very dark (and the same for the rest too - you might need to adjust accordingly) but at home and of course in the actual print, there is a nice glow and the subtleties of the shadows work very well.
I am also happy with the fact that it looks kind of weird because of the composition.
Printing-wise, I tried to get as Gibson-esque as possible with this. It was printed on Kentmere Fineprint VC fibre-based paper at Grade 5. Now that is a nominal Grade 5 simply because the paper is really old. Filtration was 130 units of Magenta on my DeVere 504. The lens was the El-Nikkor 50mm f2.8, new version. It looks quite contrasty doesn't it. I think it has almost transformed the look I get from the Elmar, and yet at the left of frame, there is that lovely Elmar OOFA (out of focus area).
I was pleasantly surprised.


***


Cheese



Next up was a grabbed shot in St.Andrews of a Saturday morning. It was one of those things - a whole bunch of people were gathered around this bloke applying window stickers to a bank. It looked quite surreal, so I just set a hyper-focal distance on the Elmar and went in like a sniper, one shot. The chap on the left looks like he has been stuck on, and strangely the shadow inbetween the two men looks like it is something out of Peter Pan, if you know what I mean.
I love the super-cheesy look on the model's face, don't you? and also the fact that someone has smeared the remnants of a 'kerry-oot' over the window near her face . . .
The world's (nearly) richest students?
Come on guys . . . keep yer lovely town clean.
Again, this is on Kentmere and a full-on Grade 5.


***


The next frame I am saving till second last as I am very happy with it. So I'll substitute in this one:



Cardboard Cat
Cardboard Cat



Why on earth someone would have a cardboard cut-out of a cat in their window, I have absolutely no idea! But they did, so I took a not very good picture of it. As you can maybe tell a bit, the film/dev and lens combo have made sterling work of the tracery of the curtain.
Old Elmar's seem to work very well in the medium/close range . . in other words, really, I believe they were optimised for people photography. Too close can be a bit mushy, infinity too, but in the 5 to 10 feet range, marvellous!
This was a Grade 3 print, but I reckon could have done with more, so I gave it a sharpish bath in Potassium Ferricyanide to tickle the highlights up a bit, and it has sort of worked. As I say, I don't think I am getting the full range of grades from the Kentmere paper as it is a number of years old.



***



Self Portrait With Dirt
Self Portrait With Dirt



OK - another one of my dirty window pictures. I tried to get in as close as possible with the Elmar, but I have just mucked it up as the dirt isn't as crisp as I wanted it to be.
This being said I rather like the ominous look of my reflection in this - it suggests something 'other-worldy' if you get my drift. This was a Grade 4 print.



***



Now I am going to shove in the print which should have come before the cat. I love this. 
It was one of those photos: I saw the shop display of the girls whispering, saw the street reflected in the window, and waited till the woman was walking in the right part of the frame and bingo.



Have You Heard About Her?
Have You Heard About Her?


What I just love about this is that you can see the girls whispering to each other "Have you heard about her?" and there she is reflected . . Walls have Ears etc etc.
I did actually print this a tad too dark, so have had to selectively pot-ferry the faces. This was simple enough to do - about half a teaspoon of crystals to about 300 ml of water; mix well; remove print from wash, let its wetness stick it to the back of an empty developing tray and use a shower head to wash the print as you are doing it; then paint the solution onto the areas required and almost immediately wash off - keep repeating till desired lightness is achieved; give print a good final blast of water and pop it back into some film strength fix for a minute or so. 
If results aren't still to your liking, then repeat the procedure. 
It is important to return the print to the fix, and the reason I use film strength is so that the print isn't in the fixing solution for a prolonged period of time..



Sectional Enlargement - 800 DPI


The sectional enlargement of one of the girl's eyes gives you an idea of how big the grain can be with this combo . . it isn't alarming. Also bear in mind that scanning isn't an actual substitute for seeing a print. In the print, the grain is super-crisp and quite a delight.


***


And onto my final frame, although it was an extra one, so number 37.
This was taken at Vision - Dundee's 'digital hub'. 13 units to rent, and only 3 occupied. It is a beautiful looking building inside and just the sort of place that should be rethinking its strategy and using its great space for exhibitions and workshops and things. I was so taken by the light and the reflection in the window and also the look of the window through the window and the tree in the car park that I had to make this. It was made by bracing the camera against the window and taking things down to 1/15th. This is easy to do with a Leica as there is no mirror flapping around making a nuisance of itself. I will happily say I love it.



By Evening's Light
By Evening's Light


I made the print darker than I should have and again there has been selective bleaching to the window and the highlights, but I feel it works. It is sort of a 'nature is just waiting to reclaim all this' picture, and I am fond of making such images.
Again, Grade 5 on Kentmere, oh and I forgot to mention - all prints were developed in Kodak Polymax and fixed with Agfa Agefix.


***


And that's it folks - hope you enjoyed it.
I suppose it does take a modicum of courage from me to stick the contact sheet at the start - my heart is on my sleeve . . . you can see my rubbish as well as my decent bits, but hey that's walking around with a camera!
Again, any questions or anything, please feel free to ask!
You should have a go at using Ralph's regime - it is surprisingly flexible and gives results which can surprise and please.
As usual, take care, God Bless and thanks for reading.

Friday, May 10, 2013

Piste-off (Part 2)


Mornin' Turnips! 
Regular yawners will note that last week I took them on a long and documented photographic journey into some semi-wild country . . . with a very large camera . . . well, this week we are going to see the evidence.
It is hard opening up oneself like this and bearing all, after all, most photographers generally keep their contact prints to themselves, like a private collection of vacated snail shells (a hobby so unusual that any mere mention of it would have the thought-police around).
Well, rather than just saving the best and posting them in a ooo-aren't-I-clever sort of way, I thought I would just show you the mistakes that can be made, and the final triumph of a handful of prints you are happy with held high as you dash across the finishing line.
So here goes.
Film was Kodak TMX 100, which I exposed at EI 50 (so half the recommended speed). Why? Well, to be honest, although manufacturers recommended speeds are their recommended speeds, I would rather deal with a negative that had a bit of bite to it, in that it has been well-exposed, rather than a thin, sorry, battered whippet of a negative skulking in a corner.
Will I get 'blown' highlights? probably, but then again, with some basic darkroom dodging and burning, even a well-cooked negative can be salvaged. And actually, my eye, which is what I am using to view life, does get beset by flare. Bright sunny sky, gosh that is hard on the eyes. What I am trying to say, is that to me for a photograph to work, the skies don't  have to be a wonderful interlaced-lattice of mystical clouds. Yes clouds are important, but sometimes they are the be-all and end-all in a landscape photograph, and to be honest, unless you are capturing the majesty of them with an incredible grey scale and broad range of tones (a la Adams - and God is it ever so difficult), then why not try and let them burn-out, flare, whatever.
The photograph is a dimensional world between you and the real world.
It isn't life.
It is the world, narrowly caught by light and glass and chemistry onto a sensitized piece of plastic, so why not (at times) let it be obvious that it is a photograph and a print, rather than trying to be a soulful mirror.
Developer for this was that aged Rodinal I have been writing about recently. Dilution 1:25, temperature 20° Centigrade.
Each negative was tray developed individually - yes it takes bloody ages, but then I don't like the eel-effect, of trying to handle several sheets of film at once.
Stop was Kodak Max stop, Fixer was Agfa AgFix . . and that's about all you need to know!




Well, that's the evidence - sorry about the orange cast - I don't possess a lightbox and it was pre-dawn when I took this, so you have an orange blind behind the negative holder. Oh and as you can see, it is a PrintFile holder - they're nice and soft.
And the proof of the pudding:


Contact print.



Well, what have we here?
Yep, four big negatives.
The contact is on Ilford RC multigrade, a paper I am not fond of, and the contact was printed at Grade 2 and about a stop darker than it should be. Muddy isn't it. I have no idea why, every time I do a contact on MG it looks muddy, but it does. I also find I have to slightly overexpose MG for some reason, but them's the breaks, I have little choice . . .
The chronological sequence they were made in is:

Negative #1 - Top Right
Negative #2 - Bottom Right
Negative #3 - Top Left
Negative #2 - Bottom Left

Right, we've got that sorted!

A word about metering:
Now this is interesting for me.
I use the Zone system, in a strange way, but it works for me. To me it is the most accurate and wonderful way of envisaging print tones. I am not going to go on about it, however if you have a scout around, there's a TON of great articles online, or indeed, for the olde fashioned, in books.
My meter is a Gossen Lunasix 3S. It is fairly old (1980's), but was refurbed by Gossen a few years back and it is a great light-meter. It can take reflected or incident readings and with the addition of attachments can be used as a lab meter, or a spot-meter. I have the spot attachment and it is very useful, however, in recent times I have thought, why not (in trying to get a fairly natural representation of what I sort of see) use incident readings from the main subject matter of the photograph, place the LVs on the Zone you want and let the rest of the picture deal with itself from there. In other words, say you were photographing rocks as I was in Negative #3. Use an incident reading from the rock, place it on Zone VI (1 stop overexposed) and let it all roll out from there.
Most landscape photographs are made with spot-meters. Generally, this is because Ansel Adams and all the guys said they found it easier and more accurate, however accuracy is not necessarily my intention.
I half-close my eyes, look at a scene, imagine the Zone values in my head and take it from there.
I have spot-metered for more years than I care to think of, and I have made a lot of very poor imitations of The Masters.
I rather like the incident way, because you aren't necessarily going to render your shadow detail as a Zone III (although most people should read Bruce Barnbaum on this, or indeed watch his talk about it on YouTube) or Zone IV, it'll just fall how it falls, but the weird thing is, it is incredible how consistent Light Values are, and you can often get a good idea of where things will go.
Anyway, as you can see from the following snippet:


I incident-metered the lightest values on the gate's wood and placed them on a Zone VI and took it from there - the result is a fairly decent looking Zone VI (that is the darkest parts on the negative above) Some of those shadows (the lightest parts) have fallen away to a Zone II/Zone I and that is fine by me!
 I am using the film's latitude too - it is amazing how irreverent and abusive of exposure you can be, however, when in doubt develop  the film more rather than less - there is nothing in this world worse than an underexposed AND underdeveloped negative.

Right, just to refresh things again:

Contact print.
Chronology is:
#3 - Top left                        #1 - Top Right
 #4 = Bottom Left           #2 - Bottom Right


As I have said, the contact is about a stop darker than it should be, hence the Zones don't look correct . hey ho!

Warning . . here comes the techy bit!

Exposure and development details:

#1 - Lens: Schneider Angulon - 90mm f6.8
     - Reading: Incident. Wood of gate placed on Zone VI
     - Exposure: 4 seconds (extended to 6 seconds to deal with reciprocity) at f45, front tilt on camera.
     - Development: Rodinal 1+25. 6 minutes at 20° C. 
     - Agitation - constant first 30 seconds, then 15 seconds each minute.                                    


#2 - Lens: Schneider Angulon - 90mm f6.8
     - Reading: Incident. Wood of gate placed on Zone VI
     - Exposure: 2 seconds (extended to 2.5 [OK, say 3] seconds to deal with reciprocity) at f45, front tilt on camera
     - Development: Rodinal 1+25. 6 minutes at 20° C.
     - Agitation - I lost count of the time (easy to do) so, constant first 30 seconds, then 15 seconds each minute. To deal with my panic, I thought I had better stop agitating, so, I either stopped at 5 minutes and let the negative sit, unagitated in the developer until 7 minutes, or (more likely) stopped at 4 minutes and let the negative sit, unagitated until 6 minutes. Looking at densities, I think it could well be the latter.

#3 - Lens: Schneider Angulon - 90mm f6.8
     - Reading: Incident. Stone of Cairn placed on Zone VI
     - Exposure: ½ a second (extended to 1 second just because) at f45, front swing on camera. The wind was gusting to approximately 40/50 mph . . Ever heard a View Camera hum? The negative isn't that sharp, but neither is it that bad.
     - Development: Rodinal 1+25. 6 minutes at 20° C.
     - Agitation - constant first 30 seconds, then 15 seconds each minute, however at 4 minutes I gave 30 seconds agitation and then let the negative stand, unagitated to 6 minutes. This has worked well in terms of compensation, as the light was all over the shop.   

#4 - Lens: Kodak 203mm f7.7 Ektar.
     - Reading: Incident. The cotton of the curtain placed on Zone VI
     - Exposure: 1 second at f32, no movements
     - Development: Rodinal 1+25. 6 minutes at 20° C.
     - Agitation - constant first 30 seconds, then 15 seconds each minute.                                  
                            
Agitation is a very strange thing, but thinking about it, it can be used creatively to help or hinder a photograph . . this could be the most snooze-tastic FB ever . . hmmm, must think about that one.
Well the proof of the pudding as they say - here's the results.
I didn't print negative #1, because it is the dullest photo I have ever seen, but here's the rest.



Caravan To Nowhere
Adox Vario Classic, Kodak Polymax Developer
Grade 1.
Bleached.

I initially printed this on a Grade 3, however it didn't work, so I did something I have never done before and printed on Grade 1, and you know what? Slightly overdeveloped negative/soft paper grade = Vintage Tone!
I was surprised. Oh and here's a sectional enlargement - the performance of the lens is superlative, same with the TMX 100/Rodinal combo. I struggled to find any grain printing a 10x8 print.


Sectional Enlargement of print - 800DPI


Ah yes, a tale of two prints - first is shite.


Cairn Of Barns
Adox Vario Classic, Kodak Polymax Developer
Grade 4

Rubbish - over exposed print. Grade 4 was useless too, so guess what . . grade 1 again:



Cairn Of Barns
Adox Vario Classic, Kodak Polymax Developer
Grade 1
Selective Bleaching

Now I will admit I had to do a fairly extensive bleach on this, firstly the whole print into a fairly weak solution, then refix, wash a bit, out and use a brush.
With bleaching, I'll paint some on and wash off with a shower hose, repeat and repeat until the desired effect is achieved and then fix, however if you want to get a blammo extra-bright bleach just add the print with the bleach still on it straight into a bath of fixer. It works.
I am chuffed with this actually. I left the vignetting from the lens at the left side, because it is a photograph.
And now for my final print.
This is printed down slightly, simply for the fact that I like it that way.
The gate wood is a nice Zone VI and as I mentioned before, everything else has fallen into a decent representation of how I saw the scene in the first place. Metering this way, has given me the Wynn Bullock look (not that I can photograph like him, but he's a hero and there's no harm in trying to emulate them in the furtherance of your own artistic endeavours).
I like this photograph. The little Angulon (widely disparaged as a cheap and fairly hopeless lens) has done a beautiful job.




Broken Gate, Coremachy
Adox Vario Classic, Kodak Polymax Developer
Grade 3.
Selective Bleaching.



I did, overprint a tad too much, so good ol' Pot-Ferry came to my rescue on the gate. As you can see from the sectional enlargement below, results are pretty fine!

Sectional Enlargement of print - 800DPI


And that is it folks - hope you've enjoyed this - if you want any more detail, drop me a line and I'll do my best to answer - no FB next week, the Highers are here and Alec Turnips needs the computer . . .
Take care, God bless and thanks for reading.