Paper Focal Planes - More Adventures in Large Format

I find it immensely enjoyable to make "slow" photography with my large format (9x12cm) camera. But I also find it difficult to arrive at the state of mind that this type of photography demands.

I shouldn't use the term "slow". A better term is Deliberate, which is how a photograph in the large format has to come to completion. If a mistake is made; if one of the several steps made to produce an exposure is missing, there will be no (discernible) photograph.

I have come to realize that (manual) photography demands a lot of me. Sometimes too much. I do have difficulties to concentrate when my attention is divided, so repeatedly make simple but decisive mistakes. And it happens in social situations - when my attention is on both making photographs and on the people being subjects or company. And the frequency is something like 75% of the time. My rate of success when working alone is maybe 90%.

So what do you do? Practice method; practice social skills; practice concentration. All the while sneaking off to make those truly important exposures on my own.

It is a depressing thought: To avoid making portraits because of lack of concentration. Portraiture is something that I wish to do more of.

Chrismas wreath on April snow.

This paper positive (3 ASA) was very overexposed. I post-flashed it in development and kept it in the developer for several minutes. That didn't do it much good. The first photo in the post (top) went through a similar process.

All but the first photographs in this post were made in the 120+ year old garden of my in-laws. Most were made on expired photo paper which I've rated at 0,007 ASA. All were exposed for two minutes or more in my Dallroid camera.

Check out my Instagram and my Etsy shop!

Comments

Chaika Leica

Well, here's a Chaika 2M that I bought from Alex Helios via Instagram. It's a great full manual viewfinder half-frame camera. The wheel on the top is for shutter time selection, from B to 1/30th to 1/250th of a second. The square button on the front right of the camera is the release/exposure. The lens mounted on the camera in the picture is not the original Industar-69. The Chaika is a rare model compact camera since the prime lens is detachable. What is more is that it has M39 screw mount. But - like with the Paxette M39 system - you can't get focus with a lens from another M39 system. Unless you adapt the lens or - in this case - the camera (mount)! The Chaika mount is easily detached from the body by loosening four screws. If I want to mount the Leica thread mount M39 (LTM) lenses on the Chaika - which is my goal with this mod - I have to add 1.3mm to the mount. That is what is needed to change the camera's flange focal distance (FFD) from Chaika system to L

A busy photographer

This photographer is now an owner of a house with all that entails. That is my focus since October and will be for some time.

Lomo-Modd-Orama

A Lomo Smena 8 camera with a faulty shutter. An Olympus Pen F camera. Part of a microscope adapter for the Pen. That's what I started out with. 45 minutes later I had a new lens! Mount The mount came off a microscope adapter. I got the adapter from my first (of two) attempts to buy an Olympus Pen F. There seem to be some unscrupolous ebay sellers around peddling useless Pens with microscope adapted prisms. Luckily - in hindsight - I got a microscope adapter with this first Pen. Which I now trashed when a Lomo Smena 8 without a future landed on my doorstep (figuratively speaking). Conversion / Havoc Smena I only knew the camera as a half-frame camera [Correction - it's a full frame camera!] called Smena 8 and hadn't thought to place it in Lomography-land until I read the name Lomo on the lens when it was already modded. Unwittingly I had tread the tiles of lomo-dom twice in as many weeks, also having put two rolls through a Praktica CX-1 which appears to be Gr

getOBphoto

Search This Blog