8x10 portraits, or the boredom of the large format photography model

Last weekend Kim and Nikhilā visited and I decided to try and take their portraits with the 8x10.

See the full gallery on posterous

I took Nikhi's picture out on our front porch using existing light. The light was failing and I had to spend a long time focussing on the very dim ground glass of the old camera. Depth of field is very limited with these cameras - which lends a special character to portraiture, but makes setting up the shot difficult. Nikhi was very patient but as the series of photos shows, it was a trial for her I'm sure. The final image is a full scan of the negative - with edges visible.
 
I shot Kim's portrait indoors. He was reading contentedly so the situation was ideal. "Just sit there", I said. The light was even dimmer indoors and I had a lot of difficulty focussing. I pulled out an old maggy-lamp to give some more light, and rigged up a reflector to cut the shadows a bit. That gave me an extra couple of stops. In the end it was an 8 second exposure. Got a little motion blur but it's only noticeable in larger sizes. The final image is a crop.
 
Kali, Nikhi's bearded dragon, watched on with interest. Helen took the colour photos.
 
Difficulties I have with 8x10 are mostly related to focussing. The ground glass on this camera is dim, and in low light my eyes are really struggling to tell what is blurry and what is sharp.

Posted via email from jayavant's posterous

image circles and cropping

the lens on a camera projects a circular image onto the film. to shoot with large format film one needs a lens with a large image circle - big enough to cover the film and more. my 8x10 shooting is very low budget. i have been using a 210mm rodenstock lens which has an image circle more suitable for 4x5 film to shoot 8x10. most of the time it covers it, but in this shot it didn't. the reason is i used a lot of front tilt in order to get the foreground and background in focus. this swung the film sheet out of the image circle - resulting in the radical vignette effect seen here.

sadly i did not notice this on the ground glass when i was setting up the picture, probably because there was so much wind i could barely hang onto my darkcloth.
 
the solution? for now, a drastic crop... which i think looks good anyway. in the long term though i need a lens designed for 8x10 film. until then i'll try to avoid large movements.

Posted via email from jayavant's posterous

see on flickr

incidentally this is a photo of an old bridge near the lemontree feedlot, north of millmerran, on the darling downs, queensland.

suffering for art

my legs are aching from unaccustomed exercise but I console myself that I got this picture for my pains. sometimes we have to suffer for our art.

taken on a little cove in noosa national park after a 4 hour drive then a 6km walk over sand in hot humid conditions, carrying a heavy 4x5 camera and tripod. i want to go back with the 8x10… and maybe a welsh mountain pony.

on flickr

Posted via email from jayavant's posterous

at the door

i'd like to gain some portraiture skills. i would like to use natural light as much as possible - i have enough gear without carrying lighting equipment around too. still feeling my way with the new format, i tried a double challenge here - utilising the very narrow depth of field of the rodenstock 210/5.6 lens, and coping with very broad exposure latitude from light to shadow.

the focus was very critical. so much so that i kept having to refocus, even after i had inserted the film holder. a lot of patience needed - esp by the model. perhaps that's why the pose became a little wooden.

i am fairly happy with the result though. the light on helen's hair is barely adequate, but her face is well exposed, and the focus is confined to a very narrow field indeed. also the outside world is displaying some wonder bokeh. i need to work more on getting some ref;ected light in the foreground for this sort of shot though - i used a small reflector for this but it was not enough.

as for the knack for directing a model - i don't think i have that as yet... back to landscapes....

photo info -

camera = burke & james 8x10 inch view camera

lens = rodenstock apo-sironar 210mm 1:5.6

film - kodak t-max 100

exposure - ½sec at ƒ/45

processed in t-max developer

Posted via email from jayavant's posterous

Bellows extension

Canna, originally uploaded by The Central Scrutiniser.

Took the Shenhao 54 out in the garden today looking for something to shoot close up. Lit on this Canna seed head.

With the 150mm Nikkor-W 1:5.6 lens I was able to achieve something approaching 1:1 size on the ground glass with a bellows extension of about 9 inches.

Now here's the thing - when the bellows is extended beyond the focal length of the lens, one must increase the exposure to compensate for light drop-off.

Lens focal length in inches = 6. Take that as an f-stop, f/6. Close enough to f/5.6.

Bellows extension measured from ground glass to middle of lens board in inches = 9. As an f-stop, f/9 is close enough to f/8.

f/8 is one stop narrower than f/5.6. So we must increase the exposure by one stop.

This was taken in full sun, using 100ISO film (Fjui Acros), so, using the "sunny 16" rule, we would expect an exposure of 1/100 at f/16 (i.e. in full sun the exposure is 1/ISO at f/16). Increasing that by one stop gives us 1/60 at f/16 - and that's what I used.

It would have been nice to stop down more and get a little more depth of field, but there was a slight breeze and the Canna was moving a little.

I processed the Acros in Rodinal diluted 1:100. I tried to achieve 18 minutes at 20ºC but the developer warmed a little during the process. At 15 minutes it was 20.5ºC so I cut the time short at 17 minutes. The perils of processing film in the sub-tropics.

I like the tonal graduation and the sharpness. Rodinal is great stuff. I normally use it at 1:50 and it gives a bit more contrast but I like this a lot and will stick with it.

Lots of good info on bellows extension factor

And lots of data on film and deevelopers at massive development chart

dusk on the ground glass

dusk on the ground glass, originally uploaded by The Central Scrutiniser.

Using large format gear takes a bit more time than medium and smaller formats. Nikhi and I drove out to Millmerran the other evening to cath the golden hour of sunset light on the cotton fields.

We called at the Yandilla church on the way to see how the light looked there. This was a mistake. The church faces east and the nicely lit aspect is not to attractive, so after a few shots (I think I only shot digital here) we headed for a nearby cotton-field where I had seen some big bales (modules)of harvested cotton.

The cotton looked great in the golden light, but we had only minutes to get a photo. As I was setting up the Shenhao a farmer came by to check what we were doing.

By the time I had spoken to him the light was gone. All that was left was the aftergolw of the sunset. I shot this digital image of the ground glass of the Shenhao. It shows the inversion f the image well.

Chinchilla Weir 4x5 : 2

Chinchilla Weir 4x5 : 2, originally uploaded by The Central Scrutiniser.

It's a long learning process fiddling around with large format cameras. I have a distinct hankering to get into 8x10 photography but have decided I need to be getting consistently good results with 4x5 before I make the shift up.

Chinchilla is town on the western edge of the Darling Downs in South Queensland. It's a pretty quiet place on a Sunday when we went there for a look-see. Out at the weir, just south of town on the Tara road, there were a few grey nomads camped and a few locals fishing.

I'd like to go back there for a dawn shoot. It's a peaceful spot, with a lot of interesting photographic subjects.

새해복 많이 받으세요!

scene of the crime, originally uploaded by jayavant.

New Year's wish - a darkroom.

Oh and a house...