MorseBlog

This is a long rambling post. You have been warned... A New 75mm f4.5 Lens The Lens Nikon 75mm f4.5 SW I bought a 75mm lens for my Intrepid 4x5 fof eBay from Japan. My motivation was to replace my much heavier 90mm Fujinon SWD lens. It is a technically great lens but has much more movement than I need and weighs more than my other lenses.   Now I have purchased 3 similar lenses (90mm, 150m, and 210mm) along with my Fuji GW690III all from Japan through eBay with no trouble. Each was in excellent working order and excellent condition.  This time, however, my experience was different. I waited a week or so for shipping and to clear customs. (In the UK you pay about 20% VAT which FedEx invoiced me for.) The lens arrived well packed, and I opened it up and found it looked to be in immaculate condition. No scratches in the paint or signs of wear were evident on the lens body. The glass was in excellent condition. I fired the shutter at each speed, and they sounded correct. The ...

I ventured out today with Mollie after a hectic week of drinking, eating, and celebrating with friends and family over the holidays. It was all very enjoyable but I think both of us needed to get out in the woods for a while. For her part Mollie had a great time in Holme Fen. It rained so hard this morning when we got up she declined our daily morning walk and so by noon was ready for a romp. She quickly got up to her old tricks of jumping, spyhopping, exploring and chasing about the bracken and fallen logs.   Blog Post Cover Image For me this was more about some experimentation which I will get to shortly. The day was not really made for photography and the light incredibly variable with almost clear skies when we arrived to overcast to some clearing and intermittent clouds during the 3 hours or so we were out.  I wanted to have a good demonstration of what box speed on a film means and how this may not always be the best way to shoot film. This came up as a question on ...

I am re-evaluating my development of Ilford HP5+. I use HC-110 as my standard developer and have a good routine for measurement and development with it. Recently I was not happy with a 4x5 negative that seemed a bit contrasty and either underexposed or under developed. I used Kodak’s recommended 5 minutes in HC-110 dilution B at 20C. I am also trying to avoid full calibration of film and developer.  Beech Grove (HP5+ developed HC-110 dilution B 5 minutes 20C.) I have also been re-reading some David Kachel articles. David is very opinionated, a bit of a contrarian but I believe knowledgeable. He also has this ability to make you think you will never measure up :). In his article  Are You Using the Wrong Film Speed?  he points out that contrary to many practitioners of the zone system determining you film speed is actually not that important. This chimes with my own thoughts and in a footnote he answers the question by saying that in the end most people who determine thei...

The weather here in the UK has been horrendous this past few weeks. We have been spared here from the awful flooding but the wind and wet has been epic. Consequently I have not been able to get out until today to take any photographs. I have been shooting large format lately and wind is anathema to this with long exposures and the possibility of the camera getting knocked over. I went to a new section of Holme Fen this morning and arrived shortly before sunrise. I learned these areas are call coverts. A definition I did not know was the noun form of the word 'a thicket in which game can hide'. It makes sense in a wonderful way. The sunrise was lovely and I really did not have a plan to use the light. I was just having a look around (a recce in the UK) and would see what happened. The sun rose under the clouds and shown through the trees as I walked towards the east and the edge of the birch forest. This may be something to work on at some other time.... I did manage as fe...

Introduction This first section is meant as background to justify why I chose to do things the way I do. You can skip ahead to the developer mixing section to get to the gist of the article. In an earlier post I describe the re-purposing of Cibachrome drum s for 4x5 and 8x10 sheet film development. One-Shot Developer Part of that was my determination to use HC-110 developer as one-shot. I have come to understand that I am not a consistent enough user of film developer to keep bottles of it lying around. The result is that I worry about whether the developer is fresh.  I do not want to risk my images on possibly expired/old developer. You then get into the problem of tracking of how much film has been through the developer and possibly extending developing times depending on how much film has been through the developer. Eventually I realized there is a certain amount of developer that is used each time and so there isn’t really an idea of ‘saving developer’. This all lead m...

Introduction I want to start fresh on my Black and White photography. This is part of my effort improve in all areas of my photography.  In this post I want to concentrate on large format film exposure and developing. I want to follow a zone based system of exposure and development that utilizes my spot meter (as that is the meter I will mostly use) my choice of medium speed Black and White film (Ilford FP4+) and single shot developer (Kodak HC-110). My rationale for single shot developer and choice of HC-110 is laid out in this  previous pos t. First I need to create a zone-based test pattern. I reasoned that if I could do this all in camera it would be cheaper and easier than using a specific target. The methodology I figured out on my own though I doubt I am the first to think of it. The methodology is to aim the camera on an artificially lit uniform surface of uniform brightness. I then use the darkslide to progressively expose the entire sheet of film. I do this u...

I bought a Cibachrome daylight print processing drum a few years back when I experimented with Cibachrome using expired film and chemicals I bought online. Since then I have used the drum to process 8x10 and 4x5 large format film. It works well; already dimensioned for 8x10 print film, it has a light tight top where chemicals can be poured in an out without losing the light tightness. This means once the film is loaded it can be processed in normal room light which is a huge advantage. I have seen them sold for as little as $8.00. Drum-based developing has other advantages in that it is less likely you will scratch the emulsion compared to tray developing and can achieve more uniform development compared to tank developing. They can also be used in a water bath to regulate temperature if needed. The nature of the tank is also such that it does not immerse all the film all the time and so uses less chemicals. The lid is unscrewed and in the dark the film is loaded on the inside wal...