The Monomagician

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!