First 4x5

[Barney]

first 4x5 shot

Fomapan 100 Ei 100 in R09 1+100 for 18 mins

PP 1 clock auto, I can make it significantly better but there is still a fair bit of halation around rhs of deck chair.
It was so much of a faf I forgot to take multiple readings of highlight and shadow areas Used incident meter.

 

[Ian Grant]

Soot and whitewash.

Fomapan 100 is only a 100EI film in ID-68/Microphen, that's according to Foma's own datasheet, I've always shot it at 50EI developed in Pyrocat HD with excellent results.

You need to realise LF lenses have vert shallow DOF, lenses need stopping down well, and movements like front tilt would help here.

Ian

 

[Ian Grant]

OK a harsh but pertinent comment, just stop shooting multiple formats for a short spell. You bare flailing around getting nowhere, you are just wasting time and film, and money, with no improvements.

You have to go right back to the basics of using film, it really is not difficult. At the moment it's like you are trying to sprint before you have barely learnt to walk, and you are just constantly falling over, helplessly.

Use a 35mm camera, really nail exposure, effective EI, and development, tightly, you can quickly see a huge increase in image quality. It's a no-brainer.

Ian

 

[Barney]

OK a harsh but pertinent comment, just stop shooting multiple formats for a short spell. You bare flailing around getting nowhere, you are just wasting time and film, and money, with no improvements.

You have to go right back to the basics of using film, it really is not difficult. At the moment it's like you are trying to sprint before you have barely learnt to walk, and you are just constantly falling over, helplessly.

Use a 35mm camera, really nail exposure, effective EI, and development, tightly, you can quickly see a huge increase in image quality. It's a no-brainer.

Ian

I am sure that you enjoy photography, far more than I ever could.

 

[StephenM]

Good for a first attempt. I may post mine later...

It's impossible to judge the negative when all I've seen is a digital version on a screen, with variations likely due to my screen, how you got from negative to file for posting etc., but the impression I have is underexposed and overdeveloped.

 

[Barney]

Thanks Stephen, what has caused the halation do you think?

The auto knocked everything darker, original is very bright indeed

 

[StephenM]

Just making sure, but underexposure in my comment was about lack of shadow detail, not how light or dark the image is. To my eyes the right hand side of the chair is the brightest detail, so it could come down to the antihalation backing of the film.

 

[Barney]

Just making sure, but underexposure in my comment was about lack of shadow detail, not how light or dark the image is. To my eyes the right hand side of the chair is the brightest detail, so it could come down to the antihalation backing of the film.

so if I had been considering the zone system instead of, how do i work this effing thing I should have exposed for the dark areas and knocked the development time right down.

I deliberately chose a tricky scene so that I would learn more

 

[StephenM]

Based solely on how the image appears on my tablet, which isn't calibrated in any shape or form, I'd say that most of your results show underexposure and overdevelopment. This subject doesn't look tricky at all to me. And I never consider the zone system, as it doesn't help me. It could possibly solve problems I've never encountered, but at the expense of complicating my working methods. Rather as I know about the dangers about going into cellars in Cornwall, but it doesn't impact on what I do.

In your shoes at this scene, I'd have put the pslm of my hand in the sunlight, taken an incident reading from it, opened up one stop, exposed my FP4 at 80 (not 125) and developed in Rodinal 1:50 for the time in the massive development chart. Mainly because everything I photograph works fine with this method.

 

[Barney]

Based solely on how the image appears on my tablet, which isn't calibrated in any shape or form, I'd say that most of your results show underexposure and overdevelopment. This subject doesn't look tricky at all to me. And I never consider the zone system, as it doesn't help me. It could possibly solve problems I've never encountered, but at the expense of complicating my working methods. Rather as I know about the dangers about going into cellars in Cornwall, but it doesn't impact on what I do.

In your shoes at this scene, I'd have put the pslm of my hand in the sunlight, taken an incident reading from it, opened up one stop, exposed my FP4 at 80 (not 125) and developed in Rodinal 1:50 for the time in the massive development chart. Mainly because everything I photograph works fine with this method.

I have just tried that with digital camera using my meter as the guide and manual settings on the camera, the histogram was perfect.

Now that I am confident that I have not ballsed up the loading of the film into the dark slides (no mean feat) I will have another go tonight.

Despite the result not being perfect I am pleased with my first effort, I made a couple of lens boards, replaced a defective shutter and swapped over the lens, loaded the film correctly, figured out how to view and adjust focus on the screen of an upside down image and then adjusted all my chemistry to huge quantities and I actually got a picture!
Success !
There is a lot that can go wrong at each stage.

 

[zx9]

I have just tried that with digital camera using my meter as the guide and manual settings on the camera, the histogram was perfect.

Now that I am confident that I have not ballsed up the loading of the film into the dark slides (no mean feat) I will have another go tonight.

Despite the result not being perfect I am pleased with my first effort, I made a couple of lens boards, replaced a defective shutter and swapped over the lens, loaded the film correctly, figured out how to view and adjust focus on the screen of an upside down image and then adjusted all my chemistry to huge quantities and I actually got a picture!
Success !
There is a lot that can go wrong at each stage.

Indeed there are so many new things to think about with large format many of which can cause a total loss of image, I think that you have done well for a first 54.

 

[myotis]

so if I had been considering the zone system instead of, how do i work this effing thing I should have exposed for the dark areas and knocked the development time right down.

I deliberately chose a tricky scene so that I would learn more

How much dodging and burning are you doing when you make the print or on the scanned file before posting?

Rather than going for perfection in the neg, I would go for a flatter neg, and bring the contrast back during the printing.

As I posted before, although I did use the zone system, a lot of the time, I just used an incident reading (Weston Master or Gossen Lunasix ), to get the equivalent of meter reading from a Zone V, and then bumped the exposure up or down a stop depending on the characteristics of the subject.
i.e if it was portrait, I would give a stop more than the meter said.

What would maybe have been useful in this picture would have been a spot reading from the highlight on the chair to see what zone that was going to fall on, at the exposure you chose to use

Which books have you read about the Zone system.

I've already suggested Ansel Adams Trilogy but the other "classic" texts from the time which gave step by step instructions were

The Zone System Manual by Minor White (1967) but with several printings.

The New Zone System Manual by White, Zakia and Lorenz (1976) My copy seems covered in chemical stains !

The Zone VI workshop by Fred Picker (1974) I can't find my copy of this, but I seem to remember it was one of the easiest to follow.

Even if you don't go through the tedium of doing all the work to fully use the Zone system, getting a proper understanding of what it involves is useful.