Thursday, November 1, 2012

Sports photography...with 4x5??

Yes, I am a little crazy sometimes. For me, it's often enjoyable to attempt to do things that most people would consider crazy, or impossible, or just downright silly. One of those things would be shooting sports photos with 4x5 film.

Yes, I know many people did it back in the day with Big Bertha cameras - Speed Graphics with huge lenses that took several people to operate and had to be pre-focused where they wanted the photo. But I didn't do that. I took out my US Army Signal Corps Speed Graphic (which I was chastised for using by one person because it's a collectible!) with the standard-issue 127mm f/4.7 Ektar and snapped a few photos of the VSU Homecoming football game as well as the marching band half-time show. I used T-Max 100 film since it was a nice sunny day. I didn't meter anything, I just shot sunny/16, mostly at f/8 and 1/250 since I shot the T-Max at ISO 64 and developed in Rodinal at N-1:





You might notice some odd DOF effects on the second and fourth photo. That's because I was messing around and did some backwards tilt on the front standard to give that effect.

I also decided to bring my "new" Bessa RF 6x9 folder to the game to make some snapshots using some outdated Fuji 400H film. Here's the results, developed myself using a Tetenal kit. I had some light leaks from forgetting to close the red window and also a slight amount of uneven development.






As you can see, none of these are up-close, in-your-face sports photos. But that really wasn't the point (though I can crop for miles if I want on the 4x5). Either way it was a ton of fun shooting film instead of digital at this game! I am going to try to do it more often.

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