Fire, Motorcycles, and Whiskey - The Results

As I mentioned in the last post, Friday night the Adv. Lighting class as well as their professor and I had a little photoshoot / get-together.

I brought a few cameras and tried to snap a few photos here or there. I wasn't the one directing the shoot so I tried to stay out of the way.

The first, and best, photo I took was with my Linhof Master Technika, 150mm f/2.8 Schneider Xenotar, and Fuji T64 film. I used the rangefinder to focus, because seeing anything out there on the ground glass would've been impossible. This is the image straight off the film, with no color tweaks. The fire is a tad yellow and the model a tad blue, due to the color temperature of the film, fire, and flash interacting. I somewhat guessed my exposure at f/8.

After some slight color tweaks/masks this is the image I am going to print:

I also shot one frame of Velvia 50. Sadly this one didn't work out as well. The fire kind of petered out and so we just winged it and the chrome ended up very underexposed and without the sweeping fire effect. It's interesting in its own way I suppose. I decided at this point not to waste anymore precious 4x5 chromes due to the totally unknown results, so I'm glad that first T64 sheet came out so well!

Next I pulled out my Pentax 67 and loaded up some really old Kodak EPT. I was given 5 rolls of this stuff randomly and have been using it occasionally for shooting tungsten chromes on medium format. It's really old and has shifted kind of blue, and has some base fog, but it's fine when scanning.

I shot a few images with it and either my 105mm f/2.4 or 35mm f/4.5 fisheye. First the 105mm:

And here's the one image from the 35mm. I screwed up the composition as I couldn't see anything going on due to how dark it was. Also, I think I mis-focused it. Or the Pentax 67 fisheye is just a dog of a lens...actually I think it's both. Anyway:

Finally, I also had my Nikon F4 loaded up with some Kodak T-Max P3200 and a 50mm f/1.2 AIS. This film was way expired and had clearly lost a lot of sensitivity, as well as had some base fog, but I still got a few usable images. These were all just for fun and handheld, wide-open, at usually 1/15 or so:

Fire, Motorcycles, and Whiskey

We had a little class field trip (unofficially!) to fool around doing some late-night shooting with fire, motorcycles, and whiskey. I didn't set up the effect, but I tagged along with the Lighting class students and shot this image with my Linhof Master Technika, Schneider 150mm f/2.8 Xenotar, and Fuji T64 film:

That's straight off the film, no special effects in Photoshop or whatever. A very slight tweak in the colors (mostly blue/yellow balance, and a bit of magenta).

I'll post more tomorrow.

Suwannee Springs Park, Florida

I went to a new place last weekend, Suwannee Springs. This small park has a swimming area at the springs and nice views of the Suwannee River. I was trying out a couple of things here - first, a new lens for my Pentax 67, a 55-100mm f/4.5 zoom. This handy zoom covers a lot of the typical focal lengths for the Pentax, though with the penalty of being slightly slower than the equivalent primes, especially compared to the 105mm f/2.4. But it's a really nice lens with a great reputation, and indeed it is very sharp.

I also tried a new developer. I shot HP5+ and developed it in Spur HRX. I really like the look of this combination - the tonality is fantastic (I have never liked HP5+ until this). But the developer is very expensive. A small amount of it costs $25, and I used 1/10 of the bottle to do just this one roll of 120. $2.50 per roll is untenable. I am not sure what I'll be doing therefore with this developer. It might be that I need to develop several rolls in a session to get the best economy. I also have another developer, FX-39, to try, which appears to be much cheaper per roll. Anyway, here are a few photos:

Great Blue Heron at the Okefenokee Swamp

I was at the entrance to the Okefenokee in Fargo, GA last weekend, and snapped several images of this Great Blue Heron. He was a bit skittish but less so than some I've shot.

I shot with my recently purchased 500mm f/5.6 Pentax 67 lens. This huge beast is like 7 pounds, not including the camera! I hand-held these images and shot at f/5.6 or f/8 and 1/500 or 1/1000 as needed. The closer ones were with a #1 or #2 ext. tube.

This lens is quite remarkable and sharp considering its age. I used to have the 400mm f/4 Pentax 67 lens and I think this 500mm exceeds it slightly in performance at the widest aperture, but they are about the same stopped down.

Here are the images, shot on Portra 400:

 

At the source of the Suwannee River

Last weekend Meagan and I went for a little hike near the source of the Suwannee River - Fargo, GA.

We went to both the Suwannee River park area right outside of Fargo as well as the Stephen Foster State Park. The river is incredibly low as the drought continues. We do have rain occasionally but not nearly at the levels of the last few years, though today we did have quite a deluge. Anyway, I shot my Leica M6 and an old roll of Fuji Sensia 100 slide film. I used mostly a 21mm f/4 Cosina-Voigtlander Skopar and 50mm f/1.4 Millennium Nikkor:

Bonus Content!

I had a few shots left after this so I took the M6 along to Valdosta's "First Friday" this September, to visit my friends who were working at a brand-new coffee shop - Grassroots Coffee. As the sun was setting there was a double rainbow that I barely caught:

Here's my friends Andrew and Tara working:

After several coffees hand-holding the 50mm at 1/15th of a second became a bit untenable:

And that was it for the roll!

More Withlacoochee Panoramic Images - 72mm XL

I bought a Schneider 72mm XL last week. Couldn't help myself...it was such a good price for such an amazing lens.

Finally took it for a spin on my Shen-Hao 6x17. Here's some images, on Pan F+ and Rodinal or Provia 100F:

VSU The Happening 2014

Like last year, I went out to VSU's The Happening on the Front Lawn with my Linhof Technika as well as my Polaroid 900. Unfortunately I messed up and had the wrong cam for the lens on my Technika so I only could use the 900 and 135mm Xenotar. It was brutally hot and I couldn't stay long anyway so I only got a few photos: