Well, I am absolutely buried by the amount of photos that I need to process right now, but these two probably take the cake for most delayed. Here’s a couple of shots from the Frontier Days Train, but it was the 2007 edition of it! Yikes!
I’ve had these 4x5 negs sitting around ever since then, and I finally found a free night where I could spend a little time in the dark room.
This was taken with my 4x5 Burke & James Grover View Camera. I think I was using my Schneider 150mm Schneider Convertible with it. Film was Efke 25 developed in Rodinal 1:100 for 15.5 minutes at 71ºF. I added an antique feel to these photos in post-processing, and I rather like the effect.
Here’s the second shot, and it’s definately something a little different!
So yes, this is a little different. All I can say is that being able to control the plane of focus thanks to the movements of the view camera made both of these shots possible.
In the other shot, I used the Scheimpflug principle to give me essentially infinite depth of field along the plane of the train. In this shot, I did exactly the opposite to very much limit the area of sharpness. Both are useful, and I think successful, but I think I like this shot more.
With the crazy difference between the sharp and non-sharp and the antique post-processing, this shot has a very vintage feel that I rather like. Who says film is dead?
BTW, same camera, lens, film and development data as the previous shot.
As always, comments and critiques are more than welcome!
When clicking to enlarge the photos, especially the first one, the details really showed up very sharply. The loco must have been cleaned, polished and shined up a few hours before on show for your benefit. Great photos
The short depth of field of the second shot gives it an almost model-like quality - such as you often see when a modeller tries to shoot available light, usually resulting in an F2.8 aperature.
Now if you could just afford that large format backplane…
Morseman - Thanks for the kind words. The UP crews do a nice job of keeping the special stuff clean. 844 has always looked her best when I’ve seen her. Now, if we could just get them to keep the road engines a little cleaner, LOL!
Larry - I’ve seen large format photographers go out and specifically try to get the model look going on. I didn’t really intend it on this shot, but it certainly does look like that, doesn’t it!
Tim - Thanks for the kind words. Of all the shots I developed, I think I liked that one best, too.
Man, you can’t beat that old soup for tonal separation with slow films. I am really glad that it is still avalable in an off-the-shelf mix, because I may yet want to dig out the tanks and do some monochrome.
Chuck - I haven’t messed around a whole lot with difference developers, but of the few I’ve tried I definately love Rodinal the best. I really need to get out and shoot some Tri-X and develop it in Rodinal, too. There’s nothing that looks like Tri-X in Rodinal!
DUDE… I am not a fan of 4x5 (becasue I think it takes too much work to get that perfect shot) But this almost makes me want to go get one… Great work, If the buildings werent in the back of the first one I wopuld have thought it was an photo from the prime days of steam. WELL DONE!
