Fomapan is a Wonderfull film and so much underrated.
I often shoot my subjects on FP4 and Fomapan 100, often the one on Fomapan seems to be he better result.
There is something special with that film wich reminds me on analog techniques.
It's maybe not that perfect but with a soul in it.
Thanks for that. My interest here is just to determine whether I will have to conquer a contrast mountain with Fomapan when I get around to using it.In the case of the first image partly the lighting also I'd udsed quite a wide aperture so the base of the tree isn't meant to be sharp. They are phots of the prints which is not the ideal way of digitizing particularly when it's FB paper. So an artefact of copying there'splenty of detail in the prints.
This does raise another issue when an image is displayed quite smal lsometimes detail is lost.
Ian
Thanks for that. My interest here is just to determine whether I will have to conquer a contrast mountain with Fomapan when I get around to using it.
You do need to conquer the higher contrast of Fomapan 100 or 200 but it's not a big deal. it's mostly that the films build up contarst much faster than all other manufacturers films films during development so need about 75% of the development time of other films.
However once you do some simple tests for EI and Dev time they behave as well as any other films, if they didn't I wouldn't use them.
My current exhibition sets/project comprises images shot LF, 5x4 & 10x8, as well as 120 - 6x6 and 6x17, and the films used are Delta 100 & 400 (120), HP5 5x4, Forwepan 200 and EFKE Pl25 10x8, and some Fomapan 100 & mostly 120, all the prints are on the same paper Forte Polywarmtone. What's more important is the consistency of the prints, there's three shots made at the same location on three separate occasions over maybe 12 years, different films & formats, and times of day/year but they match as a tryptych, you'd think they were taken teh same day.
Ian
If there is nothing in the shadows that adds to the story one trying to tell in the image, then why get all bent out of shape about lack of shadow detail? If you want to simply record a scene with the most information, go and shoot high dynamic range digital. I realise of course this heresy means I may be stripped of my badges of 'big camera-ness' : my chemical stained hernia truss and spot meter of enlightenment ... but hey, live dangerously.
'Apples' to me breaks 'rules' delightfully. Others might have gone in and simply filled the frame with the fruit - @martin-f5 has creatively used 'dead-space' to make a wonderfully graphic statement. When I shot for theatre posters, designers cheered up when they got at least one image with creatively used dead-space for text to sit in comfortably.
Um ... and large format is good for moving subjects? I agree the novelty colour multi exposure HDR one sees is somewhat samey and over egged ... but it is still new technology and novelty breeds extremism.I think the point is that the photographer making the image needs to be as kind as possible to the photographer scanning/printing/interpreting the image for final presentation. You cannot present what isn't there, but you can always eliminate information that is present if you don't want it in your final presentation. I like my negatives to capture the entire dynamic range, but I then choose what part of that range to reproduce. It turns out that we're always doing this anyway - a negative holds far more dynamic range than either silver paper or even the best digital monitors so we have to pick what we want pretty much every single time.
Also ... and for the record ... unless you have government spy budgets, no rationally priced digital system remotely has the dynamic range of monochrome film unless you resort to painful HDR techniques which are A) Hopeless with moving objects and B) Painful to look at insofar as they are so overdone ...
Um ... and large format is good for moving subjects? I agree the novelty colour multi exposure HDR one sees is somewhat samey and over egged ... but it is still new technology and novelty breeds extremism.
My argument is prompted by the fact that generally I see too little discussion in this forum ... and others, about composition, emotion, the works of other photographers or anything aesthetic.