8x20 Full-body Portrait

Finally! Success!

I received my 8x20 back and holder, repaired, as well as an additional holder from Mr. Ritter a few weeks ago. I was finally able to shoot some negatives yesterday - my first successful images.

The weather has not been cooperative so I got fed up and shot some in the studio. I tried out an idea I had - full-body vertical portraits. It worked pretty well!

Setting up the camera was a real chore. It's not really designed to work sideways. I had bellows-sag issues and I didn't have enough movements to shoot this how I wanted it. But I wrestled it to where I could shoot this finally.

Here is an image of Dominick. This was with my Nikkor 450mm f/9 lens, on Efke 100, developed in Rodinal 1:40 for 9 minutes in a home-made rotary tube, shot with 3 ProFoto flash heads:

Here is a quick cellphone shot of the camera in the studio, sideways:

St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge - Part 2

And now for part two. These are the 4x5 images I took at St. Marks. Most were done with the Nikkor 90mm f/8. For the wildlife images I used my Nikkor 720mm f/16 telephoto (my first time using it successfully!). I also used my Nikkor 450mm f/9 and Schnieder 210mm f/5.6 for a couple:

Big Shoals State Park and White Springs, FL

Meagan and I went hiking over the MLK weekend down in White Springs, FL. I shot mostly 4x5 and some 120. The light wasn't great but it was still fun.

Here's my 4x5 b&w images:

 

In White Springs was a really cool store that looks transplanted right out of the old west. I used one of my last precious sheets of Velvia 50 - I'm really happy with the results:

Here is one more b&w shot of Big Shoals, with the Kodak E100VS color shot I took right after. You can see the huge difference in color rendition between the Kodak film and Velvia. Both are good, but the Velvia is just special (some may say over-the-top, but not me!).

Medium format images after the break...

Re-evaluating 8x10 x-ray film

I've started working with the 8x10 x-ray film again. I have had plenty of good shots from it, but I still am stymied at times with high-contrast scenes, especially those with sky in it. I shot four sheets out at Langdale Park as an experiment. I developed them in Rodinal 1:100 for 7:30 at 68F, and I rated the film at ISO 50. The negatives look good, but as you'll see the sky in one photo is totally gone, and causes issues with the tree tops. So I think I need to try cutting the development in a scene like that drastically, to like 6 minutes. Perhaps I will man up and just shoot a half-dozen sheets of a scene with sky and see what I can do.

Anyway, here are the photos. Lenses included the Graphic Kowa 210mm, Nikkor 450mm, Gundlach Radar 300mm, and Nikkor 120mm: