Good Afternoon.

Brianm

Brianm

Registered User
Joined
May 8, 2019
Messages
6
Good Afternoon,

Glad to be here! I'm up in Inverness and have been shooting 5x4 for a couple of years now, as well as medium format and 35mm, initially starting with an Intrepid MK2 then moving onto a Shen Hao which is my primary camera now. I predominantly shoot black & white on HP5+ developing my own film at home using a Stearman tank and print at a local community darkroom. I'm always looking at different ways of doing things and picking up tips and tricks along the way. I shot for a living for a number of years, on digital, but gave it up to shoot for myself nowand the challenge large format shooting gives. I'm looking forward to trawling through threads for information and chatting to some of you along the way.
 
Hi Brian,

Welcome to the forum from another large format addict from close to Ullapool!!

Mike
 
Welcome. There's almost too much scenery around you. Looking forward to seeing some of it.
 
Welcome, it's a few years since I was last in Inverness, great part of the world.

I use quite a bit of HP5 when I need to work hand-held (with a Super Graphic) or when I need to use a faster shutter speed, it's an excellent film. However often with 5x4 it's advantageous to use long exposures or even multiple exposures so my main films have always been around 100 ISO. Of course we all work differently :D

Ian
 
Thanks all! Mike, when I had my campervan I spent a lot of time up around your area. Very picturesque and a great place to shoot.
David M, it’s surprisingly very difficult to get near the good spots because of the sheer amount of tourists that now visit the area. Apparently this is due to, In a large part, the Outlander show on Amazon. Who knew?
Keith, I knew I wasn’t the only one! I tried other methods of film developing but the spp works for me although I have been known to accidentally put 2 films onto the same side of the holder. In fact, I seem to make a lot of mistakes when shooting large format but I’ll persevere!
 
I'd like to suggest that one of the attractions of LF is the opportunity to make mistakes. The only thing I can get wrong with my iPhone is putting a finger over the lens. You'd think that a blind donkey could avoid that, but I can do it. The obverse of making mistakes is creative control. Making mistakes shows that you're trying.
I did come across a photographer who found that a pinhole camera removed the tourists.
Flinders Petrie (qv) used a home-made pinhole to record his digs and the diggers were not recorded. If you don't want pinhole pictures, perhaps the Big Stopper would help, but you risk converting any stretch of water into cream of chicken soup. Is there an Even Bigger Stopper now? Perhaps it turns water into lobster soup.
 
David M said:
Is there an Even Bigger Stopper now? Perhaps it turns water into lobster soup.
Click to expand...
Format Hitech do their Firecrest Ultra filter range up to 24 stops; and they are amazingly neutral when it comes to colour rendition :cool:

Mind you, on an LF camera, I usually suffer from the inverse problem of not getting a fast enough exposure ;)
 
Brianm said:
Thanks all! Mike, when I had my campervan I spent a lot of time up around your area. Very picturesque and a great place to shoot.
David M, it’s surprisingly very difficult to get near the good spots because of the sheer amount of tourists that now visit the area. Apparently this is due to, In a large part, the Outlander show on Amazon. Who knew?
Keith, I knew I wasn’t the only one! I tried other methods of film developing but the spp works for me although I have been known to accidentally put 2 films onto the same side of the holder. In fact, I seem to make a lot of mistakes when shooting large format but I’ll persevere!
Click to expand...

There's a knack to avoiding tourists :D I learnt how when living in Turkey and shooting in very busy tourist areas, part of it is being able to work fast, in my case quite frequently shooting LF hand held, the other is picking the quieter times of day.

Where there's a will there's a way :D

Ian
 
Joanna Carter said:
Format Hitech do their Firecrest Ultra filter range up to 24 stops; and they are amazingly neutral when it comes to colour rendition :cool:

Mind you, on an LF camera, I usually suffer from the inverse problem of not getting a fast enough exposure ;)
Click to expand...

On a day like today, and the last two, 1/125 or even 1/250 @ f22 is possible with HP5 at box speed, makes hand holding an LF camera easy :D

Ian
 
Tourists are an issue in that there's normally no space to plant a tripod or they just stand in front of cameras. I've learned not to go out to the popular spots, they've been done to death, and I scour maps to find alternative locations. I shot a couple of images on Sunday that metered at 1/125 @f16 before adding filters but I've never fancied hand holding a LF camera.
 
I'd never considered shooting LF hand held until I realised that in some locations I had no other options. In my case that is because tripods are usually banned where I often shoot. It's too long a rigmarole getting a permit for each potential location, so I tried working hand held - something that was once common in the days when newspaper photographers shot LF.

It's not much of a learning curve, it's getting to know what the limits are in terms of shutter speed and aperture particularly as I didn't want to sacrifice quality. I quickly realised that I'd have to shoot with HP5 rather than my usual Delta 100, and that while I could get away with a 1/60 (or 1/50) hand held 1/125 (or 1/100) gave me consistently sharp results at f22, I might shoot at f16 in some circumstances.

You do need a camera taht's amenable to being used hand held, I started with a Crown Graphic as it wasn't really feasible to use my Wista 45DX hand held. I do use some movements and the Grown is limited in terms of movements so I acquired a budget priced Super Graphic, I'm also using lighter than usual lenses a 90mm f6.8 Angulon, 150mm f5.6 Xenar or 135mm f5,6 Caltar S-II (Symmr S), and 203mm f7.7 Ektar. The wire frame finder works with movements and different FL lenses although I compose and focus on the GG screen first. It's all very easy and quick :D That came as the biggest surprise, the other was no drop in quality.

Ian
 
In my corner of the wilderness, it's the NC500 that's to blame more than Outlander. It was most filmed in the central belt, though it was set in and around Inverness/Culloden.

Living up here full time makes it easy to get up long before the campervan brigade hit the roads and create moving roadblocks :) As a previous campervan owner myself, it was handy when you wanted to visit remote locations for early or late light without the pain of having to return home.

Mike
 
Ian Grant said:
In my case that is because tripods are usually banned where I often shoot. It's too long a rigmarole getting a permit for each potential location
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Get yourself a high-vis jacket Ian....no-one will come near you :)

Never done it myself, but have been tempted many times.

Mike
 
mpirie said:
Get yourself a high-vis jacket Ian....no-one will come near you :)

Never done it myself, but have been tempted many times.

Mike
Click to expand...
Now, that was something I had considered. I'm sure I have one kicking around somewhere.
 
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