Buckshot’s Blog

stopped for a rest during a nice ‘happy birthday’ drive in the mountains!

I went to the VARA races yesterday (Vintage Auto Racing Association) with a photographer friend, I brought my 4×5 speedgraphic and 8×10 to shoot some of the vintage cars! Here are a few of the 4×5 shots, I’ll post more of them later, as well as the 8×10 shots.

And here’s me doing my thing, thank you Aaron K. for the photo!

some photos from my 4th of July weekend. I enjoyed using the Bausch & Lomb lens and speed graphic, it makes an interesting combo! For the tree shot, I had to hold a few ND sheets infront of the lens to get my shutter speed down to something the speed graphic can handle. f2.0 aperture plus 320 ISO film sucks up alot of light! The sheet of ND filter got the shutter speed down to 1/500th

The last image (of the door) was taken with an achromatic doublet lens element held inplace by a piece of cardboard onto my speedgraphic.  About a 6″ focal length, and 2.75 inches across (roughtly f2.0 aperture) Interesting effect, but I don’t like it as much as the Bausch & Lomb lens, the B&L doesn’t stretch the edges of the picture, it curls them around.  The single achromat element smears the edges right off the edge of the frame.   I may play around with sticking another doublet lens behind the first lens (mirrored), see if I can get something a bit more interesting to happen!

The Ritter 8×10 went on it’s maiden flight this past weekend, and it was great! The weight savings was very noticable, I didn’t have to take my pack off until I reached my destination! Same with the return trip, wonderful! It does seem to pick up a little vibration in the wind, though I guess this is to be expected with a large camera that doesn’t have much mass. I’ll be rigging up (or purchasing) a stabilizing rod to connect the front and rear standards together, see if that helps out in windy condition. I’ll develop the negatives tonight!

A lens for my speedgraphic arrived today, I don’t know much about it, but according to the person I purchased it from, it’s a “Bausch & Lomb Theater lens”, about 145mm f2. I’ll be using this lens to see how I like the odd effects that this type of old lens can produce. First negatives from this lens are going to be developed tonight!

Here’s the first two shots from the Bausch & Lomb:

And the first 3 shots from the Ritter 8×10!

In an effort to make my 8×10 hiking photography easier on the back, I’ve picked up some light weight items to replace some of my current items.

First up is the lens 450mm Fujinon-C f12.5 weighing .6 pounds to replace my monster 360mm Sironar-N f6.8 weighing 3.4 pounds! And give me some extra length that I was wanting as well. Next up, the 8×10 camera made by Richard Ritter to replace my Tachihara 8×10. The Ritter comes in at about 1/2 as much weight as the 12lb Tachihara, and gives me room to store a lens inside the front standard while it’s closed up. This is a feature I really grew to like while learning on my uncle’s 4×5 Wista. The addition of front and rear lateral shift, as well as more rear swing and longer belows extension are a welcomed upgrade from the Tachihara as well.

The design of the Ritter is very different from the Tachihara! It folds up mostly the same, front standard supports fold backwards and the standard flips facing down, the rear standard folds forward on top of everything. However, the workings of the camera are quite different, most of which I assume are done out of the desire to save weight. It seems to be a very ingenious design, and seems simple to operate once I gave it a good look over. I’ve noticed the camera to be a bit less ridged than the Tachihara (which was very solid) However, I haven’t had a chance to securely lock down the Ritter camera to a tripods because my tripod screw isn’t short enough, so I haven’t been able to really evaluate it’s rigidity.

I hope to be out and shooting very soon, as soon as the shorter tripod screw arrives!

And some obligatory “pretzel” shots, showing off movements to the extreme that I’ll probably never do! But it’s a cool way to show the camera, haha!

While visiting friends in Phoenix, I ran out of my usual tri-x 320 (only brought a few sheets that fit in my holders) and had to pick up some film along the way. Tmax 100 was the only thing I could find in 8×10, so that it was!  I got lucky with some interesting weather and clouds!  In the last shot, it started raining (413th Avenue) right as I finished packing up my camera in the car, just in time!

So I’ve got a new toy, an old Zeiss Ikon 6×9 camera! It’s nice and folds up slim, fun to use!

Here’s some shots taken with it from the first two rolls:

I’ve been enjoying the wider aspect ratio of 4×10! Using 8×10 film, with a dark slide cut in 1/2, I can get two 4×10 shots onto each 8×10 sheet of film!

buildings around Hayden Ave in Culver City

90mm on 4×5, photos at El Matador beach in Malibu, getting my feet wet!

beautiful clouds this afternoon! Hiking with the digital this time.

A very cool looking old school motorcycle! I like it! First shot with Canon 1Ds2 and 85/f1.2 lens, 2nd shot with an Anniversary Speedgraphic 4×5

Poppies from the california poppy reserve, also an abandoned Cadillac! First time trying velvia 50, the film looks beautiful! But as I I’ve read and been told, it’s not as easy to scan as less saturated color film.

Quite an interesting thing, shooting the very slow speed paper with limited highlight/shadow range in broad daylight! It seemed to have worked though, better in some images than in others. Here are some scans that closely resemble the prints.

An abandoned Cadillac in our parking structure, have been meaning to shoot it for a while now, finally did this weekend! One 8×10, and two 4×10 shots projected onto the other 8×10 sheet. Used a cut dark slide to cover up the other 1/2 of the film, and vice versa for the second panorama shot. An interesting way to do panoramas, I can fit two of them on a single 8×10 sheet! The other panorama didn’t turn out as well.

taken with a speedgraphic 4×5, an interesting photo I think

More photos from the speed coming soon!

Here is something nifty, Efke makes a positive paper! http://www.freestylephoto.biz/sc_prod.php?pid=1000002925

Sticking normal photographic paper into a camera (may shoot pinhole cameras this way) and shooting the paper instead of film will give you a negative image on the paper. Well, this positive paper gives a positive image! A positive print straight from the camera! This could make pinhole cameras much more fun! Here’s my first test shot of my kitchen, on an 8×10 inch sheet of the Efke positive paper. Shot at ISO 6, developed in Dektol. The print came out very dark, so I’m going to try metering for a lower ISO next time to get a brighter image. I’ve brought up the brightness in the scan a bit so that the photograph can be seen better, but the actual print is darker, way to dark. More tests on this to come soon!

(edit) ok, here’s a better test! I did two identical exposures (this time at ISO1 instead of ISO6) that got my image much brighter now! I developed the first paper in Dektol at 1:3 dilution from working solution for 3 minutes. The second exposure I developed at 1:6 for 6 minutes. Both came out identical, very high contrast. I’ll have to see if there is something I can add to dektol to reduce the contrast, or maybe dilute it alot more than 1:6, if it will make any difference.

I’ve never seen anything like this, so much color! No smell from the flowers at all, and no bees, butterflies, or other critters usually associated with flowers (accept for a few lady bugs). With the lack of smell and the super blue (and cloudless) sky, it was like a dream! I also shot some 4×5 Velvia 50, but in retrospect I think velvia will be way to saturated for these bright flowers! Heres some digital shots:

8×10s from Charmlee Park meadow area.

Here are some 8×10s from this past weekends hike in Red Rock Canyon

digital photos from a hike through the Mojave’s Red Rock Canyon area.

El Matador Beach in 8×10 (cropped to 5×10), as well as two more scans from my outing in the snow a month back or so, just developed them this weekend.

I’m going to be trying my hand at shooting 8×10! Here’s the Tachihara 8×10 next to a Wista and Chamonix 4×5, as well as an SLR.  The 8×10 is big, but I think it’ll be manageable.  the 4×5 will still be my usual hiking camera, I’ll reserve the 8×10 for locations that I know would provide relatively easy hiking and shorter distances.

scans of the 4×5’s I shot in the Mojave Desert last weekend.

I’m sure this looks exactly like everyone elses shot, but hey… who cares

I was given the chance to borrow an 8×10 camera, which I enjoyed very much! 4×5 scans coming later.

Here are some digital shots of the Mojave Desert, film scans to come later.

Went out shooting on Mt. Baldy this weekend, lots of snow! Here are some quick digital snaps, film scans will come later when I have time.

burned trees from the fires of late 2007. There were new plants starting to pop up in a few places, I’m not sure if the trees will survive or not. They looked dead to me, but I don’ t know.

This arrived at the very end of December, a Chamonix 4×5. So far I like it quite alot, it’s got simple features, ample movements, great bellows range and is quite sturdy.

Recent architecture photographs from near by my office, on 4×5 tri-x.

some recent 4×5″ film images from around the Malibu area. All are Tri-x 320 developed in HC-110.

Some recent hiking & camping images

I had trouble restoring my old blog, so everything was lost. I’ll be posting up some images for the next few days to catch the blog back up. Sorry about this!

My blog went down when I transfered my site to a new host.  I’ll resume regular posting soon, but before then I’ll upload some of the photographs from the old blog, to bring back some of the content.