MorseBlog

Another quick trip to explore Holme Fen as part of my Woodlands project. Holme Fen as I have written before is a preserved area of the Fens here in East Anglia. It is predominantly Birch forest. Today I went to a different area  than last time. This area had a number large oak trees and so had a considerably different feel. I got off the trail and found my first subject. This was a fallen tree and some moss with a really nice sword fern. I only brought one roll of color film an old roll of Portra 800 120 film. I wanted to capture this is color so I loaded this up in my SINAR Zoom 6x12 film  holder.  Now I am still new to the Zoom but I am getting along with it. I wrote about it here including an update on some modifications I made to my Intrepid to make if fit better. I can confirm these modifications help a lot. I also find it is pretty easy to load it with film in the field. About the same difficulty as my Fuji G617. The day dawned very cloudy; so much so that I g...

In my last blog post I detailed spooling 35mm film onto 120 film backing paper to achieve a 5:1 aspect ratio panorama. In this one I used the same technique with 16mm film to get an even wider aspect ratio of 9:1. In this case I used some black and white movie film from Kodak called Double-X 7222. I used it in my Minolta spy camera which I discussed in a past post . It is a 200-250 ASA black and white film. I have a small spool of it in my freezer. I exposed it at 200 ASA (also bracket +/-1 stop but box speed seemed best.) I made some test exposures on a bittery cold and windy day. I decided to stay out of the wind and chose as a subject an old quarry wall. It was in a sheltered forested valley so wind was not an issue. I did find that it was getting quite dark. The light made focus difficult. I ended up metering between 3 and 5 Ev. This gave 1 minute at f32. I didn't have reciprocity data for this film so I used TMAX 100/400 values which indicated 1' 24".   I deve...

I really enjoy my Fuji G617 camera where I get a 6x17cm image for a 3:1 image ratio. I have recently bought a 6x12 film back for my 4x5 Intrepid camera though this is only 2:1 aspect ratio. Since I bought the G617 I have toyed with idea of putting 35mm film into it. My idea was to tape the film to some old backing paper and re-spooling it and loading it into the camera. There are some challenges however. 35mm film has a 24mm wide image area between the sprocket holes. With my 6x12 back this is 120/24mm or 5:1 aspect ratio. If I load into my Fuji G617 I get to 7: I could crop from 120 film of course and this may be the best answer. I do have a bulk roll of FP4+ so it could be cheaper. An extreme thought is to break out my roll of 16mm film and use that. That would give 7.5:1 and 10.5:1 aspect ratios. I suspect this would be extremely difficult to compose with little margin for error in terms of level horizon. I started by using an expired 120 film for comparison and measurement...

As I think about and explore the topic of woodland photography I naturally stumble onto other work and material that I think could clarify a vision. In this article I want to draw attention to two people I follow in one way or another and that now I find have something to say about my woodland work. The first is a Spaniard by the name of Adrian I found on YouTube. His channel is called AOWS . He does some very nice distinctive work. His videos are engaging and welcoming. He shoots film with a Bronica and I only recently learned about him. I was listening to a video called “why and how to add contrast to your images” . At first I wasn’t sure I even wanted to listen as I know how to add contrast to images. It was the why I suppose that drew me to the video especially in the context of his work. Adrian thanks of contrast not just as the technical definition of light parts of an image vs dark and the range of those values. Adrian views this in a more artistic sense of differences and d...

When I first dove into film photography some 10 years ago I started with a Mamiya 645 1000S and a couple of lenses. I had a preference for transparency films mostly due to my inability to get decent color reproduction/correction from scans of color negative film. This was coupled with my ignorance of challenges of exposing transparency films as they have such a limited dynamic range. I also tried a number of different films to see what liked. Little did I know at the time that many of these would cease be be available a few years later. Examples are venerable Ektachrome and Fuji Astia. Fuji Astia 100 Recently I found a photographer on eBay selling his frozen stocks of old film.With Fuji films so expensive now at £150 for a box 20 sheets of Velvia 100 4x5 I decided to give it a try. Properly stored film should be good for quite a long time. I picked up 10 sheets of Kodak Ektachrome 100VS and 100 sheets of Fuji Astia. (Update: Here are the results... ) Before I pulled the trigge...

As soon as I got the film developed from my woodland photography I wanted to print some of it. I started out with one of the 4x5 negatives. All of these negatives however are big enough to need my ‘ Beast ’ enlarger. Birch and Grass The Beast is on the third floor (American reference) (second floor British reference) with my conventional wet darkroom on the 1st/Ground floor. The process is involved as I run my print on the upper floor and then stuff the print in a light tight tube and troop it downstairs for developing and fixing. I chose to print this on Ilford MGIV RC 12x16” paper. I have been printing a lot this year on Ilford MG ART 300 12x16 paper. I really like this paper however it is very expensive and being fiber-based takes a long time to fix, wash, and dry. So I took the expedient route. Once I have printed something I like I can translate to the better paper those prints I think hold the most promise. I ran my new darkroom process based off Les McClean’s proce...