The Rascal Photographer

London Heathrow. Waiting for a return flight to Boston MA with several hours to kill. With the airport being almost deserted at 3:30am, spotted a solo traveller leaving terminal 3. With the bright neon lights overhead, I had to act fast to get this shot. Looks pretty good I think?

Dead trees on Forgotten Lake, just outside Apex, a small lake off Jordan Lake, North Carolina.

With dusk setting in, I made a calculated exposure of around 2 minutes with and aperture of f45, ISO50.

The sky had very little detail, the water had minimal ripples created by a kayaker who was on the lake at the time, neither of which can be seen.

Despite having a lengthy exposure, I did calculate it incorrectly and underexposed by what I worked out to be somewhere around 3 stops. The resulting image was a very thin negative. Developed in Rodinol at 1:50 dilution for almost 4 minutes, the tonal range wasn't was I was hoping for.

After scanning the negative at 600d.p.i. and using photoshop, I did manage to bring the exposure to almost where I wanted from the original exposure.

Taking everything into consideration, I am happy with the outcome, although I will be returning to shoot it again.... .... correctly!

Dead trees on Forgotten Lake, just outside Apex, a small lake off Jordan Lake, North Carolina.

With dusk setting in, I made a calculated exposure of around 2 minutes with and aperture of f45, ISO50.

The sky had very little detail, the water had minimal ripples created by a kayaker who was on the lake at the time, neither of which can be seen.

Despite having a lengthy exposure, I did calculate it incorrectly and underexposed by what I worked out to be somewhere around 3 stops. The resulting image was a very thin negative. Developed in Rodinol at 1:50 dilution for almost 4 minutes, the tonal range wasn't was I was hoping for.

After scanning the negative at 600d.p.i. and using photoshop, I did manage to bring the exposure to almost where I wanted from the original exposure.

Taking everything into consideration, I am happy with the outcome, although I will be returning to shoot it again.... .... correctly!

10x8 monochrome shot on Fujifilm HR X-ray film of dead trees on Lost Lake near Jordan Lake, just outside Apex North Carolina. With a 2 minutes exposure at f45, ISO50. The negative even after entended development time came out very thin. Despite being underexposed by nearly three stops, after scanning and correcting contrast, levels and brightness and shadow levels, the image turned out surprisingly satisfactory.

The Mayton Inn, downtown Cary. Two separate photos, the low resolution shot of the building, and a small section of the 1200d.p.i. scanned image from the full (692mb TIFF) file. The detail from a 10x8 negative can really be appreciated with the impressive results seen up close. Even though the process is definitely more labor intensive than shooting digitally, the results are so worth the time and effort.

The Mayton Inn in downtown Cary, NC taken on Fujifilm HR X-ray film. These two photos show the difference between low resolution show the entire building, and a small cropped view of the street lights with the chimney stack at a scanned resolution of 1200 d.p.i. This image was captured with an aperture of f45 and a shutter speed of 15 seconds, ISO 50 at 5.30p.m. With a scan at 1200d.p.i. saved as a TIFF, this created a file of somewhere around 690mb. Photo taken with an old school Korona 10x8 field camera and developed with rodinol at 50:1 dilution by hand.

I took my large format Korona camera using Fuji HR X-ray film to try out a new lens I have had sitting around for a while to see if I could get coverage on a 10x8 negative. This image was taken @ f64 with an 8 minute exposure, the film is rated at around 50 ISO. This was taken in Umstead Park,NC just before dusk. I was doing some research into potential coverage of a large format lens, the Rodenstock Grandagon 75mm f4.5 which apparently is designed for use up to 4x5. I had made a lens board for the lens in order to fit it to my Korona field camera and much to my surprise and delight, the image circle produced has plenty of coverage for my 10x8 negs. This image was the developed in Rodinal for 6 minutes and scanned to 1200 d.p.i. resulting in a TIFF file of over 692mb’s. I had previously considered selling this lens before this image. Now it’s going to be my go to lens for landscape photography with my 10x8 format...!!! This image on IG is a very small example of the scanned image. The real quality of the image cannot truly be appreciated here. I’ll be posting a higher resolution example later.

Getting some awesome results with the 8x10 Fuji HR-U X-ray film with excellent fine grain. Using a stand development method for processing, all under a 15w Paterson Darkroom light enabling me to watch the development process and maintain visual control over the negative. With an 8x loupe, it is possible to really appreciate the fineness of the grain and contrast.

Finally got my hands on a scanner today (Epson V700) to get some of my 8x10 X-ray film negatives into digital format. Scanning at 72, 300 and 600 d.p.i. for different size files, my initial scan from a few test shot were very much to my liking. Due to time restraints, never managed to get as many done as I would have liked but got a good start! Some minor blemishes to the negatives as the film is extremely sensitive with emulsion on both sides but this adds character to the image in my opinion.
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