My first 8x10 - Eveleigh Railway Yard machinery

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Alastair Moore
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My first 8x10 - Eveleigh Railway Yard machinery

Postby Alastair Moore » 22 Aug 2012, 00:27

It's not going to set the world alight but thought I'd share it all the same. I think I made a bad choice on the aperture.

Image

Fomapan 100 tray developed in R09.

Walter Glover
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Joined: 31 Jul 2012, 22:31
Location: Leichhardt, NSW

Re: My first 8x10 - Eveleigh Railway Yard machinery

Postby Walter Glover » 22 Aug 2012, 03:28

I think you could do with a higher placement of the low values in order to increase the tonal separation in the machinery itself. That may well lead to reduced development to ensure that the light wall and window don't blow out.

Did you use tilt to extend the plane of focus from the foreground thing to the bigger pieces of plant in the background.

I was no great fan of the work of David Moore but he did a book on the last days of the Eveleigh Workshops which might be worth looking at for a clue. Although, of course, he was a fairly biased 35mm shooter so there should be no problem doing better with LF on a detailed subject like this.
Walter Glover

"We see things not as they are. We see them as we are."
Emanuel Kant

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Alastair Moore
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Posts: 668
Joined: 26 Jul 2012, 09:29
Location: Darwin, Australia
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Re: My first 8x10 - Eveleigh Railway Yard machinery

Postby Alastair Moore » 22 Aug 2012, 10:23

Hi Walter,

Thanks very much for your advice! I metered this with the incident meter on my Sekonic 758D meter, which is something I rarely use but wanted to try and get an understanding of using it. To be honest, I did little more than point the meter at the camera from the machine and used the value offered. I usually meter with my spot meter and check my low values - set my shadows into zone 3 - and check my highlights for over exposure. I've been thinking about using BTZS but until I've figured out a proper methodology for incident metering, I'm not sure it's an option.

Are you suggesting that perhaps I should have increased exposure on the shadow areas by perhaps half a stop or so and then decreased the development by a percentage (which I'll figure out through testing I guess!)? I will have to try that but might get the 4x5 out again to practice rather than throwing $5 a shot at experimentation :)

I did use a little bit of tilt which brought a bit more of the scene into focus - I'm still not fully confident with using tilt. I still find that if I use front tilt just a tiny bit then I start getting mo into focus, but using much more than what feels like only a degree or two of front tilt and then I end up with a very shallow area of focus. I'm heading out most lunchtimes to experiment though.

How you guys learned all this before the Internet is beyond me! I've got this wealth of information at my fingertips and I'm still not getting it right! ;)

Walter Glover
Posts: 1270
Joined: 31 Jul 2012, 22:31
Location: Leichhardt, NSW

Re: My first 8x10 - Eveleigh Railway Yard machinery

Postby Walter Glover » 22 Aug 2012, 11:12

Alastair,

I know that Phil Davis worked on the principle of determining the final parameters (the paper curve) as a first step. But you can still get better negs by choosing your own sequence of testing.

Double the ISO rating (remember, you have not determined an EI [exposure index] for your whole workflow yet. Take an incident reading in an un-illuminated area of your scene. Keep in mind, we are talking light levels, NOT the reflectivity of the subject matter. Then take a reading in the lit areas to determine the SBR (Subject Brightness Range) and make a not of the range - it will assist in deciding the development time. It will not have the ins and outs of a duck's bum accuracy of matching the curves, but it will get you into a damned fine ball park.

I think this scene might have done with a stop or more additional exposure.

It was dead easy before the internet. All that was available were facts from experienced hands. The best of the LF books was "Large Format Technique" by Leslie Stroebel. The internet is awash with far more misinformation and disinformation than useful facts and, if you are new to the game, it is a daunting task to sort the gems from the dross.

I have a copy of Stroebel if you'd like a loan.
Walter Glover

"We see things not as they are. We see them as we are."
Emanuel Kant


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