Yesterday I was out and about again in Denver, first sunny day out of several snowy ones.  I was carrying the Bronica 6 x 7 loaded wit Expired Adox CHS ART, sadly no longer available in the US.  It is really really wonderful film sharp not too contrasty fine grain, and not as big a pain in the ass to work with as CMS 20. These two vastly different looking images are from the same roll.  The oddity is that the image below was scanned using color transparency preset on my Epson 4490.  Once the image was in GIMP I just inverted the color.  This roll was processed in caffenol CM with 25% reduction in soda from my last day of developing.  Everything else is the same.

New images new format.  First day of Shooting  6 x 7 from Bronica GS 1 do I love this camera it is big beefy substantial everything works.  I did a lot of shooting using the AE finder and it seemed to corroborate to my Luna Pro quite well.  These
images are on Fuji Acros 100.  Super sharp, super constrasty.  I don't like the high level of contrast that much, but I do like the sharpness.  I need to learn more about how to control contrast with my wet process, as my current tool set for dry process, GIMP and Aperture are unable to tame it without other consequences arising from the adjustments.
    The tale of the two icicle images. The first image above is what I intended the image at the right to look like as it came out of the camera.  I had placed a single strobe under the sandstone overhang to add some highlight to the ice.  I could not get the flash into position without the risk of it getting soaked from the dripping snow melt.  I didn't have my optical slave with me so I only had a three meter cord which was not long enough to get the light where it was needed.  With some effort I was able to simulate my flash intent with OnOne FX.  

The recipe that I used for these images is in the table below.  I was going to develope for 13 - 15
minutes but right at the time I was going to pour in the developer I noticed that my chemical temperature was 21.3 C so I shortened the time to compensate.  I am not very good with floating variables in the process.  So I do not know if my compensation was correct.  The negatives were extremely dense so I think I am good with that.  It has been suggested from Mike(mikeinlagardette at flickr) that I reduce the amount of soda or the under expose during shooting to minimize the contrast of the Acros 100 film.  I need to shoot another roll and follow through with this experiment.  The negative in the second shot by the way was beautiful.  The staining and coloration was completed post production.  To illustrate the fine grain and clarity of Acros I did what is close to a 100% crop with this shot and still have very clean and distinct edges, and only slightly more grain.

Negative Fun

This is a negative that had problems.  It is completely under exposed to the point where I almost didn't scan it.  But....the beauty of scanning is instant gratification via twiddling the histogram sliders.  I don't leave the sliders in a "Twiddled" state to complete the scan I set them so that the maximum data is acquired for 255 shades of gray.  Also aside from the dark image, which I kind of like by the way, are the two racing stripes that are consistant with water residue running down the length of the negative strip as it is hanging to dry.  I am not sure why this is happening as I used very clean wash water and wetting agent to help the water sheet off of the negative.  My next processing will utilize nylon negative clips of a different design that will not retain a little pocket of water to be released as the remainder of the strip had dried???

Given the issues mentioned above I cropped most of the gunk out of the picture then brightened and adjusted contrast to retain the overall creepy feel that I really like about this Happy Accident(Thank you Bob Ross).  I then imported the image into Aperture to use some of the Aperture Expert texture presets that I like, but don't get much opportunity to use.  I also ran this image through OnOne Perfect FX 4 because I really some of the effects available with that package also.  I believe that I used "Cross Process" and a "Dano" border, what ever that means?  A large version of the image can be viewed at my flickr site here is the link to the image:http://www.flickr.com/photos/brownda/8622282173/in/photostream

Adox CMS 20 Miraculous Film Developed in Caffenol LC+C

Yesterday I was shooting in downtown Golden(again) and was standing at the intersection of 10th and Washington.  This building has intrigued me.  I would like to live there and have a Gallery on the first floor.  Why not.  It is perfect just look.  The image is a 1 min exposure using a variable intensity neutral density filter.  It was set at about 8 stops, that's why the  1 minute exposure.  This is Adox CMS twenty film and I was shooting at ASA 12, so it doesn't take much to slow things down.  Notice the highlight squiggly things infront of the door to the building.  Those are left over from cars passing through the camera's field of vision while the shutter was opened.  Neutral Density(ND) filters are neat as they allow you to capture images in busy locations without too much worry about cars and gawkers finding their way into your pictures.  Unless of course you want gawkers in your pictures.  Sometimes thats cool.

Yesterday I was out to test some different, for me, practices utilizing Adox CMS 20.  It is my most beloved of all films, and now that I have overcome the expense of developing in Adotech II developer, ( through the usage of Caffenol )I am truly happy.  Like a witch in a broom factory Jimmy!  The Pedestrian Bridge image was taken while I was waiting for the fog and cloud cover to clear over Lookout Mountain in the background.  The clouds did not clear while I was waiting.  The image developed very flat.  I had to "GIMPit"considerably to make it look reasonably presentable.  I did a little extra experimentation with textures in GIMP to arrive at what is seen here.  I hope it isn't too excessive.  I am going to send a jpg out to print at 20 x 30 on a nice matte paper to see how it looks printed I think it will be pretty cool.
Larger versions of these images can be found at Imbricate Silver 1at www.blindcurveimages.com
and  Pilates at www.blindcurveimages.com

Shooting Ilford Pan F 50 along Clear Creek

A very misty foggy day with low very neutral light, and slow film, add to that a 10 stop Neutral Density filter and I had a pretty interesting day of shooting and processing.  The foot bridge image was taken with a Bronica ETRSi with the 40mm lens.  I was shooting at F:22 as I wanted everything in the frame to be as well focused as possible.  I later found a problem that I don't usually try to account for during processing that I will discuss later.  Using a Vivitar Variable Neutral Density Filter (NDX) was an attempt to provide more shadow detail and less contrast as I was shooting up at the sky from a tripod set approximately 1 foot from the ground.  There was enough light scatter in the sky to make my incidental meter read EV of 17 - 18.  So I used a spot meter to read the undersides of the bridge beams, and placed those between Zone III and IV. at EV 15.  My spot reading for shutter speed at F:22 was 1/2 second. I  set my shutter to Bulb and kept it open for 1 min.  (This was approximately 7 stops?)

The processing headache encountered later aside from the usual dust was that the lens correction for this image due to the location of the camera and proximity to the bridge was extreme to say the least.  

I processed this image in Caffenol STD for 7min and 45 seconds.  The negatives looked EXTREMELY thin and very pink.  When looking at the Zoomed image in Epson Scan however they were quite contrasty.  I was very happy with the detail given the film.  I do not shoot Ilford films very often so I did not know what to expect.

This image was taken a small distance up stream from the bridge scene.  I again utilized the NDX filter at 8 stops this time.  The light for this shot had lessoned substantially and I was shooting down into a very dark area of the canyon with a 150mm telephoto lens on the same Bronica camera.  I measured the scene via my AE finder set at F:22 the meter returned a 1/2 second exposure duration.  I then measured the dark shadows on the near ground rocks with my spot meter and got an EV of 12 this correlated to a speed of 2 seconds at F:22.  Adding the NDX at 8 stops and a wishful correction for the 150mm lens I decided to set the shutter at Bulb again and leave it open for 10 minutes!  This is the result with only minor exposure correction but a huge amount of dust removal.  And after looking at it on my computer for a day I decided to add some contrast back in.  I think that Pan F is pretty neutral film for my taste?