Diary of a medium format virgin.

[Carl V]

Thanks for showing us your pictures. I know what you mean with regards to fences, damn nuisance at the best of times. Near where I live, there are some National Trust properties which have deer roaming around with no fences to worry about, however most of the time they are that far away you need a telescope to see them.

 

[david1701]

Tis funny. Regardless of how dispondant I get with a lack of progression in my photography I never stop learning new things. Unfortunately those lessons normally come at a cost of some sort.

This week I learnt that when you're pre-mixed developer which has been sitting on the shelf in the garage for an unknown period of time turns brown there really is little point in trying to develop a film with it. That'll be one roll of Neopan 400 straight in the bin then.

I've also learnt that when shooting through fences at acute angles, even if you think you've got between to lines of wire in the fence you probably haven't. That'll be a load of film wasted because they've got blurry fences in them then.

Split image focus screens don't work with lenses below F4 unless you have really good light, my eyesight is terrible, giraffes and elephants don't stand still long enough for manual focus, I still can't load a film into a reel without creasing it (but I blame the reels for this), passing the squeegee over the film twice doubles the likelihood of scratches, metal grips get so cold in winter that even gloves don't stop your fingers from freezing and the gripped, prism'd, 250mm SQA weighs a bloody ton.

It's not even the end of the week so there's plenty of time for more lessons yet (especially as I'll be pushing Neopan and HP5 to ISO1600 for the first time).

Pics to follow, don't hold you're breath in anticipation though, disappointment is a given.

Oh dear, woooossaaaaaaa

its just being wierd you'll make a massive leap pretty soon and it'll all work
I had this with printing and ocf and everything really.....

 

[ekimeno]

Kev, I love no. 3... pity 'bout the bloody fence though!

I feel your pain BTW... it all went away when I switched from manual focus to auto focus, however The AF and metering on my Fuji rangefinder is spot on, but yes, I am limited to a fixed 60mm lens on 645 format. I would like to do some longer lens shots on film too, but I think I may leave that for when I get a proper 35mm SLR with AF and a nice selection of long lenses.

 

[jamesb84]

Working in the darkroom gives me a funny feeling in my tummy and it's nothing to do with the fumes. I want one.

Many moons ago (well, 6 years) I spent a summer working in a hospital X-Ray department's Darkroom (before they went digital) and there is something very magical about working in one...you're right, nothing to do with chemicals but just something very methodical once you close the door and start playing around.

The upside was that they used Ilford safelights which were exactly the right type for photographic film, so evening shifts...when it was quiet, process a roll or two using the enlarger for the CT scans.

I even once had a play with some expired chemicals they used for X-Ray dev and fix...interesting results with FP4, but a really short dev time!