Posts tagged ‘100mm FD’
Catching up on my Scanning
HP5, DD-X
Continuing to catch up on my scans while I’m on vacation. It will end far too soon.
Getting Ready for What Comes
HP5, DD-X, toned in Silver Efex
Happy New Year to everyone, and thanks for your feedback on the theme. A theme has been chosen (you should be looking at it right now), and we are still in the process of migrating everything over and setting up the true landing page.
I thought that rather than setting goals for 2012, it might be more revealing to review, from my perspective, what I think I learned last year.
Film
The biggest shift this year was the inclusion of two Kodak films in my regular shooting regimen: Plus-x and Tri-X. I don’t know why it took me so long to truly see what these films had to offer other than to just assume that my historical influences kept me from really considering the options (my film teacher loved FP4 back in the day). I remember talking to Ray about HP5 and how I loved the contrast. He replied “yup, but once you have it, it’s not easy to get rid of.” And, indeed, once I started to shoot a lot with Tri-X, what I loved about it was the more gentle approach to drawing the scene. Who would have thought? And now, of course, Ilford is doing well, business-wise, and Kodak is going down the tube. Sheesh. Not that I don’t like FP4 and HP5, mind, it’s just that timing is everything. And I’ve spent enough time pulling Plus-X that I have feeling for how it looks. Now I need to replay those experiments with FP4.I’m just hoping that when Kodak sells off its film business, someone buys it who can continue with it.
My tests with older-style films have been a mixed bag. Fomapan turned out well, I’m going to try it in medium format, but my two rolls of Adox 25 were developed at grossly inadequate times (those times were gotten from MDC) and are extremely thin. I haven’t tried scanning them yet, so they may be salvage-able. We’ll see.
Rollei Retro holds great promise, but I think I need a different developer besides D-76. My two rolls of Rollei Blackbird were totally fogged and useless. I suspect I know when they got fogged, but I’ll never be certain.
I like the old-style films because they move further away from a digital look. The more I can find a style and look of my own, the better.
I’ll talk about developers in the next post.
Today’s Image
This image was from a portrait shoot for a client last year, and was a candid shot I caught on film while they were prepping. The main shoot was captured on my 5D.
The Destination of Photography
Santa Barbara, CA; Fuji 160s
“The destination of photography is to reveal what something or somebody looked like, under a particular set of conditions, at a particular moment in time, and to transmit the result to others.”
Bill Jay, On Being a Photographer
I have been reading a publication called Lenswork for about four years. It is a high-quality bi-monthly periodical centered on black & white photography, mainly but not exclusively digital. The editor, Brooks Jensen, has a Podcast and seems like a very articulate, well-educated photographer/publisher. I enjoy the issues quite a bit, and have listened to 90% of the podcasts over the years. Before passing away, Bill Jay was a columnist, and a wonderful one, within that magazine. Loved his insights into photography.
Venice Beach, California. Pulled Tri-X.
As you have noticed, of late I have been quoting Susan Sontag from her series of essays, ‘On Photography.’ I have been reading with great interest your responses to the quotes, but have not been responding to your thoughts. The lack of response is intentional, and my choice to quote from Sontag is also intentional. Other writers on these questions and issues will be quoted in the future, as with Bill Jay today.
Enjoy
Chicago Trip viewed through Tri-X
Tri-X, FTb, DD-X, 100mm FD f/2.8
In March, I traveled to a conference in Chicago for an organization I belong to, SIGGRAPH. I had loaded a roll of Tri-X in my FTb and that afternoon, before I headed out to the meeting hotel, I walked around downtown Chicago to get some shots. It was a cold, blustery March day, and my goal was to experiment with Tri-X developed in DD-X but using the 100mm FD f/2.8 lens on the street. Mind you, had not yet developed the San Francisco Tri-X rolls with the Sonnar in DD-X, so I didn’t yet quite know what I would be getting, tonality wise. The image above shows the ‘softer’ tonality on Tri-X at work. You know, it amazes me how I never really saw the beauty of this film until recently.
I certainly know why HP5 does appeal to me, I was always a fan of contrast (it can be very dramatic). I can remember reading an article about a Voightlander lens that could be purchased in either a Single Coated version or Multi-coated. The Multi-coated version had more contrast. I wondered when I read that article ‘why would someone want LESS contrast?’ Now I know and can see it, and, in fact, value it.
Recently I read (I wish I remember where) that Cartier-Bresson used to send his proof prints back to the printer asking for less contrast. While at one time that would have puzzled me, now I understand it completely.
Crossing the street
A ‘taboo’ in street photography is to use a telephoto lens. It’s viewed, I believe, as more ‘sneaky’ than getting up close to your subject with a normal or, lord, a 28mm (which is what Winogrand shot, apparently). But on this day I used the 100mm, more as an experiment than anything else. While I had to pre-focus on a point to get any traditional street shots (in the image above there was a light pole to this gent’s left that I had focussed on and waited for a decent composition to present itself), when the images worked they did so because of the slight compression of the telephoto effect.
Compression works for this one, as well.
Overall, I think the tonality of Tri-X souped in DD-X continues to work regardless of the lens/camera combo, and I will continue using the 100 FD on the streets.
Sometimes a surprise
Pulled Plus-X, FTb, 100mm FD 2.8, Clayton F76
Just a quick post late on a Saturday night. Today I scanned the last few negs from that roll from which I made last week’s post, and I got a real surprise when I took a look at those last dozen images. This image above really caught my eye, and struck me as a great example of the advantages of pulling film. This is from the Cubs game, and this usher is wearing a white ball cap standing in the direct sunshine and I still managed to maintain shadow detail in his face and his pants. Pretty amazing, honestly. Without using HDR (which, admittedly, pulling film is kinda like HDR, a little) there’s no way digital gets this shot, I don’t think.
This is from that early morning walk with my FTb and the 50mm 1.4 lens.
Gonna try to get some different images up tomorrow.
Looking at Photographs
Tri-X, DD-X, Canon FD 100mm f/2.8
“The photograph should be more interesting or more beautiful than what was photographed.”- Garry Winogrand
Images from this roll was captured as a test shoot of a new used lens I bought from ebay for my FTb, a 100mm f/2.8 FD lens from Canon. The experiment shooting with the Sonnar while I was in SF has really made me think through my standard set of equipment. For one thing, I want to use an SLR, film or digital, mainly for the things an SLR is really good at (telephoto, macro and extreme wide angle). For standard focal lengths, 35mm and 50mm, especially, I want to focus on using rangefinders. And, I want to use zooms as little as possible, both for image quality as well as shooting technique.
Thus, I purchased a 100mm lens for the FTb to add to my ‘walking around’ bag. This bag as my Bessa (with its 35mm Biogon) and my FTb (currently with a 50mm f/1.4 FD and, now the 100mm FD. After I buy the 50mm Lecia-mount lens (either a Sonnar or a Planar, I suppose), I will keep the 50mm FD as well as the 100mm FD. The great thing about that equipment is that it is light. That whole four-lens, two camera kit probably weighs about the same as my 5D plus the 17-40mm EOS Zoom.
After the 100mm lens arrived, I had an extra roll of Tri-X from the SF trip, so I loaded it into the FTb and used it to test the lens wide open on a snowy day in March, right after I arrived home. These images are all from that test roll.
As you can see, the lens is plenty sharp enough, and the tonal quality of the Tri-X and DD-x combo is still present, although expressed a little differently than it was with the Sonnar. Still, I gotta say I’m lovin’ it.
Then, while I was scanning the roll yesterday, I came across that Winogrand quote on the web. I was looking at the images, thinking about the quote, and looking at the images once again.
What a wonderful summary of photography that is. To take something, whether beautiful or ordinary, and capture it in some fashion that brings forth its ‘inner sense’ that makes what was photographed more beautiful than it was when you saw it.
Every one of the images in this post, to me, is more beautiful than the thing I saw on that cold snowy morning in March. The reflection, the chair, the leaves and twigs, the trees . . . all look more special than I remember them.
