[pure-silver] Re: Optimum results pushing 4x5 Tri-x 320 at 800 or 1600iso??
- From: Jean-David Beyer <jeandavid8@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: pure-silver@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 28 Sep 2012 14:20:03 -0400
mark@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> I agree with the others. I know Ansel didn't bracket, but how many of
> us have his knowledge and talent?
I knew a lot of people with (most of) Ansel Adams' knowledge. The
populated the camera clubs around her. All they lacked was his talent.
They probably had better cameras then he used for most of his career. I
called them equipment freaks. They talked all about their equipment,
using SB-4 stop bath on 35 mm film to get sharper images, and miracle
developers to turn badly seen subjects into works of art. And so forth.
I quit going to camera clubs.
> I bracket.
Not me. I did once in a while when shooting color slides, but it was too
expensive when shooting 4x5 transparencies. And my color images are as
boring as those of my friends who threw away their negatives because
they never ever wanted a duplicate of their images. So I pretty much
gave up on color work. I have even sold a couple of dozen of the images
I have made over the last 40 years or so, but they were all black and
white. Not many, in other words. But unless doing compulsory shots (kids
birthdays, weddings, etc.) I usually put the camera on a tripod. And
when I finally got I tripod I liked, I stuck the 4x5 on it. And when
doing that, there is usually plenty of time to meter the stuff enough so
I did not need to bracket. During my obsessive-compulsive stage, I would
fill out the Ansel Adams Exposure Record for most of my images, and
noting where on the image each zone was metered. I then compared the
densities on the negatives with the densities I was trying to get so
they would print on the right zones of the paper. A year or so of that
was helpful, but it was too tedious (of course) to do once I got over my
obsessive-compulsive stage. I did not really do a lot of night
photography. I did do color slides of fireworks, and they were fun, but
not great works of art. Evening stuff can be metered; i.e., sun set or
almost set, but the sky still light.
> ISO is really not going
> to make that much difference when all the other factors come into play.
> Better to set the camera on a solid tripod and if need be add a bit of
> weight to make sure its rock solid. Try to pick a calm night. Id use
> the f stop that happens to be the sweet spot for the lens, then keep
> adding seconds.
>
> One thing you might do that would get you close is to take your (sorry
> guys) digital camera. Put on the tripod and go up in time till you get
> something on the display that comes close to what you are looking for.
> The exposure will not transfer directly over, but it should get you in
> the ball park and you can bracket from there.
I did not get a digital camera until very recently. It is not bad for a
point-and-shoot, and good enough to put images on a computer, but I
would never make a paper print from it. I would worry about the
'reciprocity failure' being different between the films I used (TMax)
and the digital camera. Using the digital might be better than nothing,
but I wonder if it would be better than my Zone VI digital spot meter.
>
> Many of old timers remember doing things like this with Polaroid film.
>
--
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