30-50-80 - Photos from Ship Island

This weekend I finally developed the last roll of images from my "30-50-80" trip in October. I just hadn't been able to get that done, and then I ran out of FX-39 developer, but finally I did it so now I have all the images scanned.

On the first full day we went to Ship Island, off the coast. I went once when I was very young so I always wanted to go back. There is a small fort on the island. Here are some photos from the fort:

There are big cannons on top of the fort, but one of them was apparently blasted apart by thieves (with dynamite!) who thought they could sell the scrap iron, or something like that, but the pieces were still too huge and heavy to take:

A couple more from around the fort and/or island:

 

All of the above were with my 4x5 and 6x17 cameras, with my 47mm, 90mm, and 150mm on the 4x5, and also the 90mm on 6x17. I also carried my Pentax 67ii and a 105mm lens (yes, it was a heavy pack!) and shot a few rolls on the ferry boat:

It was kind of a big deal when my mom made her way to the front of the boat since she is a bit scared of boats:

 And here's some on the island:

 Here's my uncle with a tiny horseshoe crab we found:

And finally here's Meagan and I:

That's it for ship island, I'll post more from the trip later.

Wacissa River Canoeing

As I mentioned last post, my second canoe trip was along the Wacissa River. We went to the so-called "Slave Canal."

I took a few photos along the way at a large Live Oak that had fallen into the river. Here was the shot I printed and showed last post:

And here is Dominick on top of the same tree:

He was shooting down at the roots, which I shot as well from a different perspective:

While canoeing I shot one image from the front with my Rolleiflex:

At the Slave Canal I wandered a bit in the wilderness and shot a bit as well:

Testing the Horseman Optical Exposure Computer along the Alapaha River

I recently discovered this meter made for medium and large format view cameras - the Horseman "Optical Exposure Computer." This is a CdS meter made to slip into the camera just like a film holder and meter directly through the lens - a somewhat uncommon thing, but perhaps a helpful accessory for the intrepid large format photographer?

I found the meter on eBay and got it for next to nothing - about 1/20th the original sale price. There are a few different versions, some made for 6x9 style cameras and some for 4x5, with a correspondingly larger metering area. I got the 6x9 version as I can use it on my Linhof 70, and it has an adapter piece to use it on 4x5 cameras. I figured the smaller meter area wouldn't be too big of a deal, but I'll have to be careful of what exactly is in the meter area!

In use, it was very simple to operate. The biggest issue is the batteries - it was designed for older mercury cells that provide 1.5v, while modern equivalents only hit about 1.35v when fresh. This causes a discrepancy in the readings - but from what I've read it's equivalent to about 1-stop overexposure. This means you can set the ISO to one stop higher than your personal EI. Practically speaking, I metered a gray card at home and compared it to my spot meter, and this seemed to be the correct offset. Testing this for yourself is important.

The results were good. I compared the meter reading to my spot meter calculations before shooting and was pleasantly surprised to see they matched for the most part. When using an R25 filter, I gave it an additional stop of exposure compared to the meter reading as I normally do for any TTL meter (due to the spectral sensitivity of the film). I believe this is a general rule of thumb for red filters.

Here is a video showing the operation of the meter and several images taken on this outing:

Here are the images themselves:

As I mentioned in the video, it wasn't perfect - I underexposed the last image here of the overpass. I'm not sure why though, I might've knocked the ISO setting (which is easy to do on this unit) or perhaps it simply biased to the sky/clouds too much. However, overall I am very pleased to have this meter, especially for close-up images where bellows extension factors in.

Reed Bingham, Rain

Every time I want to go shoot somewhere lately it seems to start raining. Three times this summer I drove to Reed Bingham to shoot and despite weather predictions saying low chance of rain, it started to storm fiercely.

This last time on Sunday I just said to heck with it and went out shooting while it was raining.

I shot some 6x12 with my 38mm XL. I wanted to give it another try - last week I found a shim from a lens on the floor that I apparently dropped when placing a lens on a board. The only lenses I had off their board was the 38mm and my Nikkor 90mm f/8. I put the shim in the 38mm XL but it definitely didn't help. Check out the corner areas:

Okay, so apparently it was for the Nikkor. I hope. Now I have to check that one too. The other problem I think I'm having is the 38mm has to be perfectly aligned to the film plane. I think I'm having a very slight left/right angle to the lens, causing this. I noticed the poor corner performance when I first shot this lens (without the shim) but this is much worse.

Here are some more photos. Most of these were shot while it was still raining but the exposures were up to 15 seconds, so you can't tell anyway, except for the shiny leaves and moving brush.

 

And finally one more I shot with my 150mm APO Symmar of this big spider, a "golden silk orb weaver:"

Films were Pan F+ and Provia 100F.

Wilds of Florida, near Tallahassee

I was out with some friends in the middle of nowhere Florida. I guess we were technically in a WMA, but I really didn't have a clue where we were. Florida has such a large amount of wild land, compared to Georgia - it's great.

We found a gator, dead, on the side of the road, which was strange:

That's Dominick, trying to figure out what happened here.

I also took a couple landscapes. Here's a couple on T-Max 100 (with my Bessa R2S and 50mm f/3.5 Heliar or Nikkor 85mm f/2):

I also took some panoramas with my 4x5 and 6x12 back, using the Schneider 47mm f/5.6 XL. These had a 2-stop GND on them:

Some really great scenery out there. It was so hot though, it was hard to shoot a lot before retreating to the car.

Finally, here's a few 4x5 images, shot with T-Max 100 and either 90mm, 150mm, or 300mm lenses: