Banks Lake Drawdown

A couple of weeks ago I was riding around and made my way to Banks Lake in Lakeland, GA. I discovered the lake was almost dry - apparently they "drawdown" the lake every few years to manage plant life and/or erosion. I stopped and shot a few images that evening as the sun was setting:

 

 

The clouds were just beautiful that evening. The above were taken with my Linhof 70 and a 105mm APO Lanthar or 53mm f/4 Super Angulon, on Plus-X and Velvia 50. A few days later I went again in the afternoon, which was a harsh and cloudless sky unfortunately. I brought along my Shen-Hao 617 and 72mm XL with my new center filter for that lens:

I wanted to shoot some color again so later that evening I returned once more with my Pentax 67ii and a few lenses, and shot another roll of Velvia, 100F this time. Yes, I went a bit too far with the polarizer...

 

 

I have been meaning to go back when the light/clouds were better and shoot some larger formats. I haven't had a chance though - I hope it is still low when I get there!

More Pentax 67ii Fun

Last week I spent a sunny afternoon at Langdale Park (again) shooting with my new Pentax 67ii. I wanted to try a few things - first I tried out a set of 35mm film adapters that I have, and they worked fine. I was using some old junky Portra 160NC film, so the colors were a bit wonky but here are some shots:

 

Next, I had a really old roll of Shanghai GP3 film. This stuff is terrible and apparently they use some kind of bad ink that gets onto the film from the backing paper. I figured I might as well shoot it anyway since I was just enjoying the day - but yeah the ink has transferred to the film and you can see the numbers and circles from the paper on the photos. Also this film just generally sucks in my opinion - terrible tones with any developer and very curly and hard to work with. Here's a few shots to show the results:

Around this time I found myself in a more sunlit area with nice colors so I thought I'd put a roll of old E100G into the camera to see how it exposes E-6 film, since I hadn't shot any of that with it yet. I did set the meter at 80 and used an 81C filter, as I've found that expired E100G does better that way. I was pretty happy with the results:

Overall the exposures were beautiful and I am very happy with the AE abilities of this camera!

Wandering with the 6x17

Last weekend I went out driving around the back roads of south GA.

One of the places I knew I wanted to go was this field with an old plane in it:

I also shot this in a corn field:

It started getting cloudy so I made my way to the back entrance of Reed Bingham. I was walking along the Little River when it just started pouring down rain. I shot a few photos during the rain:

I was soaking wet so I went home.

Here's a video from the outing though:

Late Spring Catch-Up 2

I mentioned in the last post about the rains we had this Spring. One of those days though, I caught the clearing storm right at sunset out at Grand Bay. The fire tower that stands at the end of the boardwalk trail is especially nice for sunrise/sunset images and probably the highest unimpeded view you could find in Valdosta.

This evening I brought along my Shen Hao 6x17 and 72mm XL. I shot a few images on Plus-X:

We got to the fire tower and then I shot a roll of Portra 160 of the clearing storm;

More 35mm Panoramas, with Agfa Optima 100

Just wanted to post a couple color images from last week. Winter has set in and it's been very cold. I feel like these images captured that coldness a bit.

Taken with some old bulk-load Agfa Optima 100 film in my 6x12 back, with either a Nikkor 90mm f/8 or Schneider 58mm f/5.6 XL:

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: