We try to avoid pretty much anywhere in public on Black Friday…we hope to head to a rural park later (and I hope to bring the #CrownGraphic) but in the meantime I’m listening to a record I found last weekend. This is from the liquidated #VoiceOfAmerica record archive, and it’s in great shape.

…unlike #VoA itself presently…but I digress 😅

Wonderful mix of jazz saxophone and orchestral music. Will be spinning this again!

#Vinyl #RecordCollecting #NowSpinning #StanGetz #Jazz

I shot and developed my first sheets of color 4x5 (#Ektar100) this evening. My chems hadn’t been touched in a month or two, but they are sealed in glass bottles with little air space at the top. The developer wasn’t super brown so I felt optimistic. As usual, the Stearman Press tank leaked like crazy. Even after doing the “squeeze me” trick, and even while “burping” the blix before every set of inversions. It appears to be at the filling/venting caps as opposed to the gasket around the lid. If I shoot 4x5 regularly, I might try one of the Jobo tanks which would also allow me to use rotational agitation.

The emulsion on the color sheets seems to be a lot more slippery than on the Arista 100 I have shot previously in my #CrownGraphic. Several of the sheets fell out of the hanging clips and into the bottom of the bathtub…I had to pick each up, re-rinse it, use my finger to sort of “squeegee” the top edge of the negative, and use a fresh dry clip.

Four exposures now hanging safely to dry. Two are super overexposed. One because my shutter stuck open on the 1 second setting (I need to get the thing worked on, slowest speeds are unreliable) and one I forgot to stop down before firing the shutter. There went $14! I was at the very last bit of light before sunset so I had to shoot slower than I’d hoped - I was unable to access my first intended location so had to call an audible.

The negatives don’t look amazing, but I think that may be because I don’t shoot color much. Every other time I’ve thought they looked terrible once they’re backlit on the scanner they look nice. Hopefully this will be one of those times.

#FilmPhotography #AnalogPhotography #BelieveInFilm #DevelopYourOwn #LargeFormat #4x5

In case this helps anyone else: My #CrownGraphic came in a box with a number of accessories, including a push-on Series VI filter holder. There were a few filters, but they’re pretty hazy and the whole thing is fiddly to use.

I started trying to find a Series VI to threaded filter adapter, and it’s surprisingly hard to do, especially not having something to hold in your hand and see if it works.

After reading a variety of (what ended up being incorrect) comments on forums regarding the thread size, I ordered a pair of cheap 40.5mm to 52mm adapter rings in hopes it would fit the threaded area in the filter holder, but alas it did not.

BUT! It did fit snugly (with the help of some pliers) in the ring that threads *into* the filter holder. So I ended up creating a bit of a hacky adapter - but without a 52mm filter threaded onto it, it still folds into the camera, so it works pretty well and can be left on the lens. As there was an extra set of filter retaining ring and push on adapter, I felt okay risking getting pliers involved. Now I’ll be able to use 52mm threaded filters (of which I have plenty) for shooting with the Crown Graphic.

#FilmPhotography #AnalogPhotography #BelieveInFilm #LargeFormat #Graflex

Pleased with the results from my second jaunt with the 4x5. I tried scanning negs in the print file sleeve, which appears to have improved the focus on the scanner as I'm not able to use a negative carrier. I also had to scan each in two strips (V600 is designed only for 135 and 120 negs) and join them in Affinity Photo. Upside: focus improved. Downside: the sleeves themselves attract a *lot* of dust. The attached have been converted down for Mastodon...they don't do justice to the resolution these have. Full size scans are 15700 × 12500.

The truck picture was a pleasant surprise, it is one of the pictures I forgot to stop down after focusing…I metered a 3 sec exposure at f/22 but fired it at f/4.7 🤦🏻‍♂️ But, the fact that I overexposed by *counts on fingers* SIX STOPS and still got a decent image shows how flexible film is - although perhaps reciprocity failure saved me a bit as well?

I've got another 16-17 sheets of cheap film left to get a little better at this, after that I have a small box of #IlfordFP4 and a small box of #TriX I'm really excited to try.

📷 #Graflex #CrownGraphic
🎞️ #Arista100 (which is #Foma100 IIRC)
🔭 #Wollensak 135mm
🧪 #XTOL

#FilmPhotography #AnalogPhotography #BelieveInFilm #DevelopYourOwn #LargeFormat #4x5

My two keepers from this weekend’s experimentation. I can’t tell if the pictures weren’t focused adequately (shot at f/32), or if putting negs straight on the scanner glass affected the focus…even looking at the 3200 DPI tiffs you can’t tell if it’s in perfect focus. I’ll need to get a focusing loupe, I think. And maybe a copy stand to scan via DSLR.

📷 #Graflex #CrownGraphic
🎞️ #Arista100
🔭 #Wollensak 135mm f/4.7
🧪 #XTOL

#FilmPhotography #AnalogPhotography #BelieveInFilm #DevelopYourOwn