MorseBlog

Previous posts showed how I built and tested my 8x10 camera. Ugly but it so far works quite well. I have more work planned for it (blackening the interior, adding a landscape mounting, shutter etc) For now I wanted to try real film. As mentioned before 8x10 film is expensive which is why people often use paper negatives or ortho lith film for economy. Silverprint had some Fomapan 100 8x10 on sale so I got a pack of 50 sheets. Fomapan is popular because it is so economical. It has trouble with being contrasty and it has very high reciprocity failure so is difficult for long exposures. Many people like it in fact and I have learned recently how to tame contrast in film. I took two photos in my back garden. The first I focused on the chair back and the second the brick wall. I wanted to see about depth of field. I metered the scene at ASA 80 to help with the contrast I would give a slight over exposure and then under-develop the film. Both shots were the same exposure 1/2 sec at f45. ...

I first explored paper negatives when I wanted to print a color slide and needed to create an inter-negative in this post . I have since made an 8x10 large format camera and made paper negatives to test it.   Andrew Sanderson at thewebdarkroom has written a nice treatise on the paper negative and I highly recommend buying it. It is available on Blurb . Andrew's book introduced me to new ideas about paper negatives. Surprisingly for me he moves beyond contact prints and suggests loading paper in a medium format or 35mm camera. This can then be put in an enlarger. The result while not as crisp as a film negative has its own quality that he shows suits some subjects. I was inspired to try this out. Some time ago I found a good price on ebay for a rolleiflex/cord back that takes dark slide glass plate holders along with 4 plate holders. At the time the price was negligible and I  thought it might come in useful if I got into making glass plates. It sat in the shelf for som...

I had joined the original Galaxy Kickstarter campaign for direct positive paper and bought a pack of 8x10 paper. I generally support new film activities (for instance I also support the Ferrania Film Project as well.) It turns out Galaxy convinced Slavich to repackage their photo-booth paper into larger formats and perhaps reformulated the reversal chemistry. As annoying as the website is I think it is all to the good that they are generating interest and support in traditional photography. The biggest complaint I have is there is very little technical information about the product and as such one is reliant on their chemistry which is fine but never seems to be in stock at least in the UK. (This seems due to some restrictions on shipping some of the chemicals in Europe.) Having a 8x10 large format camera now I want to use the paper so I suppose I need to create my own reversal chemistry. Reversal is a clever process used in slide film and black and white and colour movie st...

After a failed attempt to use old Russian 16mm film I decided to get new stock and after perusing ebay and reading up on B+W film the obvious choice was Kodak XX (Double X) 7222 16mm movie film. It  is a proper negative film and has a fan base that admires its speed (200 in Tungsten and 250 in daylight) even tones and low grain. 100 ft (a lifetime supply for my purposes, About 1300 photos.) set me back £42. The subclub  has tons of resources for these small cameras. The loading for Minolta cartridges is covered here . I loaded about 8 inches into one of my film cartridges and took some quick test photos with my Minolta 16PS. I shot the photos at ASA 200. I developed the film according to Massive Dev chart in my normal film developer Ilford LC29. The timing for this development was for ASA 250. For properly metered shots the negatives came out well balanced. Scanning 16mm is difficult as I don't have a proper holder and I could not locate the small glass plate I use for t...

I wanted to run some more tests and settled on a portrait (myself) for a subject. I set up the Big Eye in the driveway and would use the sunny day to keep the exposure reasonably short. I would use my Ortho Lith film as I did in a previous post  and try and adjust for what I learned. I rate the film at ASA 3 this time and a metered exposure at f45 called for 2 seconds. My wife ran the shutter. I developed it in HC-110 1+165 (6ml+994ml water) for 14 minutes. I got this on the film. UltraFine Ortho Lith Negative A print revealed something workable. However the strong sunlight and Lith film makes it high contrast and the background is completely black being entirely in shadow. I used only a #0 filter given the high contrast of the negative and exposed for 23 seconds for good density of black. Final Print f16 #0 23 sec Ilford MGIV Deluxe

Having built an 8x10 camera I am now exploring making images. The great expense is the cost of film. Below are some examples...per sheet! Ilford     FP4+/FP5+     £5.20 Ilford     Delta/Ortho+  £5.50 Foma     100                  £1.90 Foma     200                  £2.90 Fuji        Provia             £17.50 (Colour) Ultrafine Ortho Lith     £1.15 Ultrafine Continuous Tone £1.20 Some reading reveals that in addition to paper negatives (use of photo paper for negatives) another cheap alternative is ortho lith film. Like paper is it insensitive to red light and this renders the same problems/effects one sees with paper negatives like white skies as it is very blue sensitive and darkened reds. It is also comparably slow (hence ortho). It is also very contrasty being made to...

What have I gotten myself into? These are my thoughts after completing another project today. Do I really need this? Was this a project for the project's sake? Or perhaps I found myself enthralled by the romance of a truly large camera. Well anyway this is how I got here... I had managed to collect a number of cheap components and a couple of weeks ago I realized I was close to having a large format camera. I had bought a 300mm f5.6 Rodenstock Rodagon lens for £18.60+£6.00 shipping because I couldn't pass it up about a year and a half ago when I was thinking of making my own 4x5 enlarger (I know way too big a lens for 4x5). I also bought a 5x5" bellows in good condition for £18.00 for the same project. Finally I saw a few weeks ago three 8x10 dark slide film holders for £75. The seller threw in a fourth decrepit one which was fortunate. A subconscious plan had developed with this third purchase. Build a large format camera. I spent a two weekends putting it together....