Trying my hand at some still-life images.

I've always loved still-life images and detailed images of objects. I haven't done a lot of them so yesterday and today I tried a couple. I just took some photos of things I had on hand that mean something to me. First up is my piccolo, a Powell Custom model that I got about 5 years ago I think. It's my main instrument when I play in orchestras. For this shot I used my 4x5 with the Schneider 150mm APO lens. The image is at about 1:2. I used heavy front and rear tilts to get all of the instrument in focus and stopped down heavily for additional DOF. I wanted the black-on-black effect so I exposed this a little under and overdeveloped (about an N+1.5). Here is the result:

The second shot I did was of my Nikon F4 and a new lens, a 28mm f/2, that I bought as a small and fast wide-angle. I like the combination and space-age lines of the F4. I used a white background instead on this one and used my 8x10 with green x-ray film. I recently found an extension rail for the 8x10, but it was slightly different in construction and didn't work with my camera. After some modifications with assistance from my good friend Mr. Kilgard I was able to make it work and now I have about 700mm of bellows extension! I used my Nikkor 300mm f/9 lens for this at about 1:1. I exposed the film at an ISO of 50 and developed it in Rodinal 1:100 for 6 minutes @ 68 degrees. This is giving me nice negatives after I strip the rear emulsion with bleach. Here is the result (unfortunately I did have some dust issues, as well as Newtonian Rings. Oh well):

Here is a quick shot of the setup:

I am looking forward to doing some more.

Pine Cone Still-Life

I bought a muslin backdrop and all the necessary bits and pieces for lighting in my apartment a few months ago but only last night finally got around to setting it up. I wanted to try a very stark side-lit shot of this pine cone I picked up last year that I had around the house.

I used a Schneider G-Claron 150mm lens that I bought specifically for macro shots. This was at approximately 1:3 magnification. I used f/22 and had an external strobe at full power at 11 o'clock and aimed about 45 degrees from the camera with a snoot. I developed the T-Max 100 negative at N-1. I should have stopped down to probably f/32 or even /f45 but I just don't have a really high-powered flash for this kind of work.

I really like the moody side-lit feel of this shot. I think it will make a nice print: