Newtown Town Hall

[Alastair Moore]

My lovely Toyo 45AX, Nikkor-W 150mm. TMax 100 in Rodinal for 9:24 (at 23c). Scanned in Epson scan, a little bit of toning in Lightroom.

Is it just me or does the toning look slightly odd in that the sky is a slight shade of blue and the building a sepia tone? Strangely the scan came in more blue than anything. Oh well. I quite like the look of it.

[Walter Glover]

Alastair,

I am not quite sure of what happens with scans in Lightroom, but in Photoshop I first go into Hue/Saturation (Command-U) and reduce the Saturation slider to -100. This gets rid of any cast from the scanner and then I apply any toning I want after that. It may be that there was a lot of blue in the scan to begin with.

Just a thought.

[Maris]

An interesting composition but it has me perplexed!

The crop on the facades takes away the doorways, the footpath and the bottom of that nice tree in favour of more somewhat bland sky. Why?
The conspicuous bit of vertical convergence (on the right hand side) can emphasise building height but the "landscape" format of the whole picture mitigrates against this. Hmmm?

Maybe I'm seeing pictorial conundrums where there are none.

[Walter Glover]

Alastair,

Based on the cop of the bottom and the upward orientation of the camera illustrated by convergence on left and right vertical edges of thew structure, I'd suggest that perhaps the camera shifted as you inserted the film holder. Are you using the lifting bail to open the camera back to accept the film holder?

If you are using your geared head, I doubt that the head moved, but it could well be that the tripod itself moved. It is not like you to get such errors.

Do you have a spirit level in the accessory shoe on top of the Toyo?

[Alastair Moore]

Maris,

The reason for the composition was because of the line of cars all along the road in front of the building. I did think about including these and perhaps might should have included them as they were part of the scene, however I thought they looked a bit ugly!

The convergence will be due to me pointing the camera upwards to get the cars out of the scene and not compensating for this with tilts. I'm going to go back and shoot this building as I really like it and have other ideas of how I might compose a shot of this building but I need less cars in the scene!

Walter - no spirt level although I have been using Clinometer. I'm heading into town to look for a new camera bag so might see if I can pick one up. I have been meaning to do so for a while. The Toyo 45AX doesn't have a lifting bail unfortunately so having to be a bit careful when I load the film holder. Perhaps not being careful enough!