Lynwood Arboretum: A couple of 4x5 photos.
A couple of weeks ago I was getting a little antsy that I hadn't been doing much photography in a while. I had some time to myself and so I set out to Lynwood Arboretum where my wife and I had visited a few weeks earlier.
It wasn't a particularly special day for photography, it was a little rainy and broken weather but I felt I needed to do something to keep my skills and habits from getting too rusty.
Lynwood Arboretum is on the edge of the Fens in East Anglia. The Fens, which I have to drive through are unremittingly flat. They are reclaimed wetlands with works beginning at the time of Charles II. Using the help of the Dutch, a vast area was eventually drained and reclaimed to be rich farm land. Now my family stock come from Iowa and Illinois in the Midwestern USA but there are areas of the Fens that rival these places in terms of flatness if not scale.
On the way to the Arboretum I did stop an take what I hope will be a good representation of this landscape on my Fuji G617 on Fuji Acros black and white film. I need to finish the roll however and may update this page when I do.
I arrived and walked the short distance to Lynford Water, some lakes formed by abandoned and reclaimed gravel quarries. I was glad to see not many people were around.
I brought my Intrepid Mk III 4x5 large format camera and prefer to use it unobserved and undisturbed as I enjoy the focus and singled-mindedness involved in photographing with large format.
The lake was frozen over with groups of ducks and swans on the ice resting and preening. Here in the UK in the winter there is always a low sun which gives off a warm glow even at mid-day. Not golden hour but warmer than winter light in lower latitudes.
I managed two photos. One I took with Kodak Ektar 100 and the other on Fuji Velvia 50. They are a study in some sense of the differences between the two films. I applied very similar amounts of contrast and saturation. For such a flat day the Velvia gave a better color pallet.
I metered the scene with my Pentax spot meter. The light was flat and the entire range of the scene was about 5 stops with the sin over my left shoulder. The sky was cloudy so I waited for the sun to come through for the better light and a chance for some changing emphasis in the scene. Even so still 5 maybe 6 stops of range. This would save me on the Velvia shot.
I had loaded the film months before in the film holder and even though I mark on the dark slide the film type and speed with a grease pencil, I failed to take proper note of the Velvia being ASA 50. Normally I shoot Velvia 100. I metered and shot the first exposure at 100 Ektar. Then I used the same exposure for the Velvia 50 which meant I over-exposed the scene by one stop. ypicall it was only later on the way home as I reflected on the day that I began to have niggling doubts. When I got home and unloaded the film to send to the lab for development I confirmed my error.
That being said I believed at the time that the limited range of light during the would be my savoir and indeed this is what came to pass. The highlights were not blown as I would expect with overexposure of Velvia and the exposure was well within the range of the film. I had metered the shadows into zone III and the highlights just reached zone VII. No doubt exposing a stop less would have improved the saturation and color of the image.
The results are below...
It wasn't a particularly special day for photography, it was a little rainy and broken weather but I felt I needed to do something to keep my skills and habits from getting too rusty.
Lynwood Arboretum is on the edge of the Fens in East Anglia. The Fens, which I have to drive through are unremittingly flat. They are reclaimed wetlands with works beginning at the time of Charles II. Using the help of the Dutch, a vast area was eventually drained and reclaimed to be rich farm land. Now my family stock come from Iowa and Illinois in the Midwestern USA but there are areas of the Fens that rival these places in terms of flatness if not scale.
On the way to the Arboretum I did stop an take what I hope will be a good representation of this landscape on my Fuji G617 on Fuji Acros black and white film. I need to finish the roll however and may update this page when I do.
I arrived and walked the short distance to Lynford Water, some lakes formed by abandoned and reclaimed gravel quarries. I was glad to see not many people were around.
I brought my Intrepid Mk III 4x5 large format camera and prefer to use it unobserved and undisturbed as I enjoy the focus and singled-mindedness involved in photographing with large format.
The lake was frozen over with groups of ducks and swans on the ice resting and preening. Here in the UK in the winter there is always a low sun which gives off a warm glow even at mid-day. Not golden hour but warmer than winter light in lower latitudes.
I managed two photos. One I took with Kodak Ektar 100 and the other on Fuji Velvia 50. They are a study in some sense of the differences between the two films. I applied very similar amounts of contrast and saturation. For such a flat day the Velvia gave a better color pallet.
I metered the scene with my Pentax spot meter. The light was flat and the entire range of the scene was about 5 stops with the sin over my left shoulder. The sky was cloudy so I waited for the sun to come through for the better light and a chance for some changing emphasis in the scene. Even so still 5 maybe 6 stops of range. This would save me on the Velvia shot.
I had loaded the film months before in the film holder and even though I mark on the dark slide the film type and speed with a grease pencil, I failed to take proper note of the Velvia being ASA 50. Normally I shoot Velvia 100. I metered and shot the first exposure at 100 Ektar. Then I used the same exposure for the Velvia 50 which meant I over-exposed the scene by one stop. ypicall it was only later on the way home as I reflected on the day that I began to have niggling doubts. When I got home and unloaded the film to send to the lab for development I confirmed my error.
That being said I believed at the time that the limited range of light during the would be my savoir and indeed this is what came to pass. The highlights were not blown as I would expect with overexposure of Velvia and the exposure was well within the range of the film. I had metered the shadows into zone III and the highlights just reached zone VII. No doubt exposing a stop less would have improved the saturation and color of the image.
The results are below...
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| Ektar 100 |
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| Velvia 50 Exposed at 100 |
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