Category: Film

Film photography

The Make of the Picture Merced River Reflection

We carried our new toy, the Intrepid 4×5 large format camera to Yosemite in the past weekend. With this modern day remake of the old technology, every step of photography leaped back like good old school days.

There’s no WYSIWYG viewfinder but a half-transparent ground glass on the back of the camera — we had to wrap it with a silly black cloth in order to see the scene.

There’s no auto-focus but a nob at the bottom of the camera and a magnifying glass — we turned the nob and peeked through the magnifier on the ground glass to make our best guess of the focus.

There’s no metering system on the camera — we had to hand hold a light meter to measure the exposure readings of different areas of the scene and make our best judgment of the appropriate exposure.

There’s no memory card to store the images — we need to mount a pre-loaded film holder to the back of the camera in order to take one single picture. Taking a second picture requires a new film holder.

There’s no room for errors — we had to adjust the focus, the aperture, the shutter speed on the camera, check and re-check every setting, test fire before taking the actual picture. And there’s always a haunting thought afterwards about forgetting to set everything correct.

With every press of the cable release, a half cup of Starbucks coffee was gone. Thank goodness, we only “drank” one full cup of coffee that morning.

The result is hardly satisfactory. Nevertheless it was a fun experience.

Semi-stand Development with Kodak HC-110 Black and White Film Developer

Recently I’ve developed a few rolls of Arista Premium 400 (rebranded Tri-X) that I shot in 2016 and put away on shelf without freezing. The expiration date of the films is 2013 — they had always been frozen before I shot them.

I tried normal development for several rolls and pull development two rolls (just curious) in the past week but the results were just “boring” (a.k.a. normal). So yesterday I decided to experiment stand development with HC-110.

It has been well established that one roll of 36 exp 35mm film requires minimal 3ml HC-110 syrup for one shot development. Typically, I used dilution H and made 480ml developer solution from 7.5ml syrup. This solution allowed me to develop two rolls of 36 exp 35mm film in a 500ml stainless steel tank. It had worked very well in the past.

Call me cheap, I have always been wondering whether it is possible to use even less syrup, which would cut my negligible cost on the developer even further! I know many of you probably are already rolling your eyes at me. That’s OK. Heck, even if it fails, it’s just a small lesson of don’t be cheap!

The true reason to use even less syrup is to make further dilution and still fit into the 500ml stainless steel tank. So after researching a lot online with no conclusive result, I decided to conduct an experiment.

I diluted 5ml syrup into 500ml developer AND soaked two rolls of 36 exp 35mm films. The temperature at the beginning of the development was 70F. After initial agitation of 30 seconds, I put the tank in the refrigerator for 40 minutes. At 20 minutes mark, I gently agitated the tank twice.

The result floors me! The contrast, the well-controlled highlight, the deep shadow, and the grain are among the best I’ve ever got out of Tri-X. The pictures really shine in front of the other rolls developed last week. The only flaw that I can see is some small highlight at the edge of some pictures, which looks like a bit light leak. I got this similar issue a few years ago when I tried stand development with Rodinal. It is due to inadequate agitation. Agitating the development tank for one minute at the beginning of the development process largely eliminated this problem.

At this moment, it is hard to say whether it’s because the subjects of these two rolls were well thought through to make the pictures stand out, or the development method is the magic bullet. But I will definitely try this method again — still have several rolls of Agfa APX 100 and Plus-X to go!

Revealing First Large Format (4×5) Photo

Twenty years ago, before I purchased my first SLR camera, Canon Rebel 2000, an old friend, my college roommate had pointed me an humorous online article [1] about the danger of entering into photography — it will be a long and costly journey. At the moment, I didn’t think too much about the warning signs ahead of me. But today, I come to report that everything told in that article became true.

If there is one takeaway in the article that has left the deepest impression to me, it is the size of the photographic negative decides the most about image quality. In order to pursue better image quality, starting from 35mm film camera, I’ve come through Xpan, 645, and 66 medium format cameras. But there is always a dream hidden in my heart — large format.

Large format is the ultimate crown jewelry. After two decades of photography, I finally step into this world, and purchased my first large format camera, the Intrepid Mark IV 4×5 field camera. I used it once during the recent trip to Eastern Sierra, and took the picture, North Lake Morning Reflection, with two sheets of Ilford Delta 100 4×5 black and white film. The result is phenomenon — the amount of details captured by this primitive camera far exceeds the pictures made by state-of-the-art Nikon D850 digital SLR camera. Please forgive the small picture shared here. It does not do justification to the real image.

[1] https://www3.xitek.com/papers/viewfinder/viewfinder1.htm

Chinese Camp

Chinese camp, once a booming town with over 10,000 residents during the Gold Rush, is a small community today next to Highway 120, near the junction of Highway 120 and 49. We’ve passed by it numerous times but never gave a second thought about it. On the way back from Eastern Sierra two weeks ago, when spotting the sign of it, the impulsive nerve hit us. So we decided to have quick stop to explore it.

It turned out that, to this day, the community is having only about 120 residents, of which most are farmers. No gold is mined today. It still has a USPS office. However, the Main Street is largely abandoned, with deserted buildings slowly turning into ruins. The owner of the Chinese Camp Store & Tavern was kind to give us a brief history lesson of the town.

All photos here were taken with Fomapan 100 B&W films, which seem to be an appropriate media to record this out-of-fashion place.