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.

Inside the Live Oaks at Grand Bay

Last weekend I went hiking at Grand Bay right after a big rainstorm. I had a goal - to photograph inside the two Live Oaks way out near Moody AFB in the hunting tract of Grand Bay.

I brought along my 4x5 and a few lenses, including my 47mm XL lens. I knew I wanted an ultra-wide-angle lens.

I took a few photographs - here's the best shots from inside the huge trees:

I shot another one but somehow it turned out blurry. Must have kicked the tripod? It's too bad because it would've been a great shot. I'll have to redo it sometime. Here it is for posterity:

As I was leaving, I realized I only had one more sheet to shoot so I went ahead and shot it out at the field of what I think is tobacco? I did some heavy burning on the sky here, and cropping:

Experiment - 35mm film in 6x12 back on 4x5 camera

I did an experiment this week with some 35mm film, in an effort to use a bunch of it I have around. I bought some cheap adapter things that allow a 35mm roll of film to be mounted on a medium-format (120) camera. They worked well on my Horseman 6x12 back, which effectively exposes the entire frame and sprocket area (about 30mm I think) by the length of the back, 112mm, so about 30x112. Putting that on my Linhof Master Technika, I then focused my Schneider 47mm f/5.6 XL lens to about hyperfocal and shot a few rolls of film at f/16 or f/22.

It worked perfectly and was a really cool effect. It's basically a mini 6x17 camera. By comparison, the Hasselblad XPan takes images of 24x65, so this is a significantly larger and wider image even compared to that camera with a 30mm lens. The downside is no focusing (well, you can focus on the ground glass just like normal, but I was shooting handheld!), and no easy way to frame. After practicing though I was able to estimate pretty well where the frame was going to be.

I think for general fun shooting, this may be a great way to shoot a roll of 35mm. I was able to get 8 frames onto a roll of 36 "normal" images, so I don't have to have a roll of film sitting around for ages trying to shoot so many photos if I just have 30 minutes or an hour to shoot some images, and I'm not shooting expensive 4x5 or 120 film (I literally have about 150 rolls of expired color film to go through that I picked up for practically nothing).

Here are some images. You can see that I gradually got better at framing. All with the 47mm XL lens, but of course any lens will work with this, including rangefinder-coupled lenses. I need to try some of my longer lenses next.

The other good thing about this technique is that I have a 100' bulk roll of Portra NC that is "unperforated." This allows me to shoot the whole thing easily and even get the whole 30mm width exposed. This is why some of the images above have no sprocket holes. Of course those sprocket holes are kind of interesting.

When I get a chance, I'm also going to try stretching a roll across my 6x17 camera - so that will be a 30x170 image, a roughly 1:6 image ratio. A "specialty" ratio for sure but probably quite dramatic.

Providence Canyon Camping Trip 2013 - Part 1

The last weekend in October, I went camping near Providence Canyon with some friends and students from the VSU Photography classes. I shot a lot of 35mm as well as 4x5 and some medium format.

Here's some 35mm snaps, made with a Nikon F2 and 2.1cm f/4, 3.5cm f/2.8, 5cm f/2, and 10.5cm f/2.5 lenses:

 

Most of those were done just walking around the first evening and some fun snaps around the campfire. The second day I shoot 4x5 and some 120 during a long 8-hour hike. Images were taken with various lenses including the Schneider 47mm XL, Nikkor 90mm f/8, Voigtlander 15cm f/4.5 APO Lanthar, or Nikkor-M 300mm f/9. I also used some of my precious Velvia:

Well that's it from Providence. We also stopped in some small towns on the way back to Valdosta, which I will post soon.