The Monomagician

Having had our Italian class cancelled this evening gave me the opportunity to process the other scan that I made yesterday.  Both shots have now been printed on Permajet Fibre-based glossy paper at A3 and they look lovely.

Here’s the second shot:

Shen Hao HZX45II 150mm Apo Sironar N, HP5 plus developed in Perceptol 1+2, 12 minutes at 24 deg C.

I think I prefer the vertical composition and the post-processing isn’t as harsh as that in the other picture.

You can view more of my large-format work at monomagic.co.uk

Yesterday, we finished celebrating our 25th Wedding Anniversary at Raymond Blanc’s Le Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons in Oxfordshire. We had a wonderful time. The food was exquisite and the service was incredible. I had arranged for a bouquet of red roses to be presented to Karin as we went into Dinner, so for the moment, I can do no wrong :-).

Today, I had a day’s leave. I had an urge to use my large format camera. As the weather was appalling today, I decided to stay indoors and turn my attention to the bouquet. I spent a good couple of hours experimenting with two lenses: a 150mm Apo Sironar S and a 90mm Rodenstock Grandagon ‘N’ f6.8. It’s been a while since I have used my LF kit, but it didn’t take long to get back into the swing of things. Though as I write this, my back and neck are a bit stiff from contorting myself to look at the ground-glass.

The shot below was taken with the 90mm lens fitted with a red filter. I wanted to lighten the red of the rose and darken the foliage so I would get a better separation of tones.
It was necessary to factor in some bellows extension to the exposure as I estimate the magnification ratio to be about half life-size.  The shot was taken on Ilford HP5 plus film, rated at EI200. The exposure was 5 seconds at f22.
The film was developed in Ilford Perceptol diluted 1+2 for 12 minutes at 24 degrees Celsius.

This image was originally scanned at 1200dpi, giving me a maximum print size of 20″ x 16″ at 240dpi.
Post-processing consisted of using the history brush to remove any dust and scratches, converting to greyscale (it was originally scanned as a colour negative to maximise detail) then a little adjustment using curves and levels. Then I flattened the image, converted it to eight-bit and then converted it to a duo-tone.

I resized the image to fit on A4, and applied a little sharpening before making a workprint on Permajet Oyster 271 paper.
I’m pretty pleased with the result.
Here’s the jpeg…

Shen Hao HZX45II, 90mm Grandagon, HP5+ EI200, Perceptol 1+2 12 min 24 deg C

It’s inspired me to make more use of my LF kit - though I suspect I will be scanning my negatives now rather than making wet prints. Retouching is just SO much easier that way!

Someone I know said the following about the Apple I-Phone:

“It’s a bit like Paris Hilton. Expensive, quite nice to look at, but what does it actually do?”

I guess it’s possible to make a similar observation about Leica M cameras and lenses. Sure, they are expensive. Arguably, they are nice to look at. But what do they do? Well, they enable the photographer to produce absolutely stunningly sharp images with beautiful bokeh. Or in my case mediocre pictures that are stunningly sharp with beautiful bokeh

Take the new 28mm ASPH Elmarit lens for example. I bought one for myself as a special treat a couple of months ago. It makes the perfect partner (in my view) to the M8, as it more or replicates the field of view of a 35mm lens which is my preferred focal length on the M6TTL or M2.

This lens is bitingly sharp - almost too sharp for some things. Its rendition of detail is incredible. I think this is definitely my favourite lens on the M8.

Another lens that I am coming to love is the wonderful Voigtlander 12mm Ultra Wide Heliar f5.6. I managed to get an ex-demonstration example of this lens from Robert White in Poole, Dorset. It gives a field of view equivalent to a 15mm lens on the M8, which is pretty wide by anyone’s standards! In fact you have to be careful not to include feet, errant fingers and any other bodily protuberances out of the shot!

This lens isn’t rangefinder-coupled. Mind you with the sort of depth of field that you get using a lens like this, it’s hardly an issue. For landscapes and some interior shots, this lens is pretty hard to beat. Whilst it’s not exactly a ‘body cap’ in the same way as the 28mm Elmarit, it’s a damned useful lens to have when you’re out and about.

One thing that I haven’t tried with it yet is my Lee RF-75 filter kit. I have a feeling that the filter holder will vignette. If it doesn’t then it will probably be worthwhile having another custom filter adaptor made by Lee. It would probably be worthwhile as the lens lends itself to using ND grads to tame skies.

And what a week! Politically anyway. Not just from the perspective of what’s just happened in the US, but at work, the issues I mentioned in my previous post just won’t go away. I think the best strategy is to keep a low profile. Once the project goes live on December 1st, there will be so much back-slapping that whatever caused the original issues will have been forgotten.
Still on to more interesting things… I made three black and white prints using Permajet’s Fibre-based glossy paper this afternoon. It’s a thick, luxurious paper with a slightly textured finish. I used the Permajet ICC profile for the 3800 and the prints were spot on! Nice deep blacks, plenty of shadow detail. I would have taken hours to produce these in the darkroom. One was a scan from a very old negative taken with a Bronica ETRSi and 50mm lens.
The size of the negative meant that the scan resolution was relatively low and consequently there wasn’t much work to do in the cleaning department. It took a while to get the print to look “just so”…here’s an electronic version. Let me know what you think…

Wind-blown grasses and young oak trees in Savernake Forest, England

I’m in two minds as to whether use this shot for tomorrow night’s “Trees” competition at Shrivenham Camera club. The alternatives are:

Avenue of trees, Coate Water, Swindon

or

Horse Chestnut, Lydiard Park, Swindon

They all look lovely as prints. The last two by the way, were taken with a Leica M8 and the superb 28mm Elmarit ASPH lens. I treated myself to this lens in September and I have been blown away by it’s sharpness. It has become the ‘body cap’ on my M8.

The Horse Chestnut is my favourite of the three. This was quite a tricky shot, as I was shooting into the light. Rather than use the camera’s meter, I opted to use a hand-held meter and take an incident reading.  It took very little post-processing in Lightroom to produce what I believe is a “fine” print.  There were no blown highlights and there’s oodles of details in the shadows.  This is definitely one for the wall!