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 got up an hour later than planned! There was a light mist in the air and the sun stayed behind clouds to keep the light diffuse.
The color photos I will post here when they return from the lab (see below). Here are a couple of black and white versions I took on Ilford FP4+ 4x5 film. I took two different angles on the subject. I like the second angle better. The first negative I scratched the emulsion during development however. I fixed it in Photoshop but of course it will be of no use in the darkroom.
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| Full 4x5 Image (90mm) |
What drew me to this is the dead tree reaching our to the left and then the gnarled slender tree in the upper left. I experimented with a couple of alternate crops below.
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| Crop with Less Foreground |
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| Tighter crop to emphasize the twisty tree. |
I think this teaches me I should have used a tighter lens. The more I look at the image the more I like it and now I have resolved to return soon to re-shoot it and fix that torn emulsion.
The next image should be better. It is much clearer what I am shooting (less visual complexity). I took this with my 150 mm lens. I hemmed and hawed a lot on which lens and how much of the tree to capture. In the end I needed the fern to seem more in proportion overall so opted for this.
I also used my 2-stop Grad ND filter to bring down the light from the sky. I learned from shooting woodland last time the bright sky is more of factor than I had imagined. This diffuse light through he cloudy sky seems to give more light on the upper portion of the trees where they are not shaded as much.
I also find that metering the sky through the dense branches shows a lower Ev than if you can find a blank patch of sky. For instance the scene here metered at Ev 7 for the darker portions and through the trees the sky metered to Ev12. However a larger patch of sky revealed Ev14. The Graduated ND filter allowed me to place Ev 7 at zone IV or III and keep the sky at XI or VIII. Overall the exposure is more consistent top to bottom. (Both photos were shot at F32 2/3 at 4 and 8 seconds plus reciprocity.)
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| Fern and Tree (150mm) |
Updated: Color Photos
The color photos were a little disappointing. I only had the Portra 800 with me and the roll is quite old and been in and out of the freezer a lot. I am still analyzing the results but in addition to one under-exposure I seem to have some kind of light leak when using the SINAR Zoom. In any case here is what I could salvage.
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| Kodak Portra 800 6x12 |
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| Kodak Portra 800 6x12 |
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