Keeping alive the black arts of the darkroom
What was it Forrest Gump said about life being like a box of chocolates? Almost six years ago, we moved to St Andrews in Fife and I remember vowing that the only way I'd be moving house again was when I'm carried out in a box. Well, as it turns out, boxes were involved but I was the one doing the carrying - metaphorically, as my brilliant sons did all of the work (I also have an equally
Scroll down for the Pan 200 tech sheet and development infoHarman Technology today revealed that it has added a third film to it's Kentmere line-up with a "brand new" 200 ISO emulsion slotting in between the company's existing 100 ISO and 400 ISO offerings.Kentmere Pan 200 has been developed as a "high contrast" film which features a low density base for potentially deeper shadows whilst still
I've been to the cemetery in Cupar, Fife, that's home to this angel, quite a few times without paying the sculpture much attention but it was the cage around it that caught my eye this time, particularly the torn parts. Driving past with the dogs in tow, I actually thought someone must have erected the structure to protect the public because the sculpture had become a bit wobbly.However,
A taped triptych? Just think of it as the distant cousin of the stitched panorama and you won't go far wrong. The Epson 1400 printer I have does quite well as far as printing out panoramas goes being capable of 13" by 44" but I had a triptych in mind for these photographs and no real pano paper to hand just A3 and A3+.So I got a couple of sheets of Epson's A3 premium glossy photo paper and taped
Cairnsmill Burn flowing between bridges that once allowed access from the east to Mount Melville StationAbout a mile or so south of where I live in St Andrews, a short way into the countryside, is the site of an old railway station called Mount Melville. It didn't have a terribly long life, opening in 1887 and closing 43 years later. Not much of an innings really as these things go.It's purpose
The iPhone 16 (not the Pro model - that was too expensive) has impressed the hell out of me. I used to view my old iPhone as a note-taking device for identifying potential locations when I was out and about and didn't have a "proper" camera with me but the 16 has turned into a really useful tool that's capable of serious photography. Or at least my version of it.I've been having a great time
Not sure why I like this pic. Maybe it’s the stark nature of the scene or the atmosphere - I love a bit of mist. I was sitting at the PC looking through old files and it popped up in a folder I hadn’t looked at for a couple of years.I took it while out for a walk in the mist not long after we moved to St Andrews. I thought the freshly-cropped hedge looked a bit sad and pathetic, like someone who
Sometimes I look at a print made using only a pigment black ink and wonder if it’s too warm.Alongside one from the dye equivalent, it usually looks to be a little too brown - even for my taste and I like a warm print.Of course, the pigment print can have the effect of making dye prints look too cold but that’s what I get for comparing them side-by-side.Take the print above (the wee one
Carse Graveyard from a few years back showing the characteristic warmth of Fomatone 133Having left the darkroom behind - but hopefully not permanently - it might seem a bit cheeky of me to be complaining about the disappearance of a particular type of enlarging paper.My favourite silver gelatin surface, which I first discovered about 44 years ago, was Agfa’s stipple. I then proceeded to forget
An iphone pic I took the other day whilst out for a walk with the dog. I've since tweaked the curves for the dye and pigment blacks so they match better in terms of shadow detail as the colder shadows were cutting to black quicker than I wanted.Fine-tuning the printing process with the Epson 1400 now allows me to select cool, warm or neutral toned prints at the click of a button. I thought it
That’s my tweaking at an end as far as printing on Marrutt’s velvet fine art paper is concerned. The linearisation process (see previous post) was straightforward and I don’t really see how I can make any significant improvements to the results I’m getting.What’s coming out of the printer is very close to what I’m seeing on the computer screen. No unwanted colour shifts under different lighting
Well, here’s something I never thought I’d ever be writing about, especially in relation to inkjet printing.A densitometer is as exotic to me as a fusion reactor and yet it’s now part of my everyday language. “Cath, have you seen my densitometer?” “Yes, it’s in the corner beside your spectrograph.” Don’t worry, I don’t have a spectrograph. Yet.But I’m sure you get the idea. Densitometers were the
I’m beginning to feel like Alan Whicker (for those of you with grey beards). First Pitlochry, then Enochdhu and now Kirkmichael, the small village nearest to our log cabin holiday home. A whirlwind tour of Perthshire but in the company of the not at all rich and famous.There’s not a lot to tiny Kirkmichael from a tourist point of view. It has a village shop, a hotel and a pub so I suppose it has
It’s the Highland Perthshire town of Pitlochry we’re visiting today - not that you’d have any clue from these wee vignettes. This isn’t really photography time but more visiting-the-tourist-spot time with wife and 14-year-old blind and deaf bichon frise dog in a kids’ buggy.So no carefully considered compositions as such but walk-by shootings in the hope something interesting happens. And
Near Enochdhu. D700 and 28-105 AF Nikkor at 105mm.We're in the middle of a week-long break just a 90-minute drive from where we live, a situation brought about by the operator of our original destination, which was hours away, deciding to close down their holiday home business and leaving us with little time to find an alternative.It's turned out to our advantage as the spot where we're staying,
Frozen PuddleBlogger provides lots of statistics to the publishers/writers of blogs covering a raft of things from viewing platforms, most popular posts, readers’ locations and what the top referring sites are.Searching through these had me chuckling - and wondering how to explain myself. The reason being that the two most popular posts for readers over the last week have been one explaining why
Lochwood, DumfriesshireI’ve been fairly inundated with desperate pleas (well, three people have asked but I somehow sensed the pent-up demand eating away like leprosy at many more readers) for me to share some of my methods since moving back to digital.First of all, I’m no expert. On anything. During my first dalliance with digital, c. late 1990s-2007, I considered myself to be handy with
The Road to Mount MelvilleI thought I’d show the first print that got me thinking I should maybe stick with digital. It’s a country scene a mile or so from my home in St Andrews taken on the D700. Normally I’m hopeless with titles but I called this one The Road to Mount Melville and quite like that, Mount Melville being a well-to-do little hamlet half a mile along the road.Had I shot this
When my daughter asked me this morning if I was ever going to update my blog I looked back and discovered that it was exactly a year since my last post. Spooky, as she said.A lot has happened photography-wise over the last twelve months but not much that my old readers would find encouraging - which is probably why I stopped posting. The brutal truth is I’ve been back using my old DSLR for most
The iphone view of the pool. The two conical shapes on the horizon are the Bass Rock island on the left and North Berwick Law on the southern shore of the estuary. Both are volcanic plugs. The rounded one in the centre is, I think, Traprain Law in East Lothian.Yes, straight from the "Don't do as I do, do as I say" department of the Online Darkroom comes a tale of what might have been that
Long term readers will know that I’m not normally a big fan of “one lens” photography, preferring a few focal lengths when I’m out and about.With a Rollei TLR you don’t really have an option which is probably the main reason my 2.8F, lovely though it is, doesn’t see a lot of use. A few weeks ago, however, we drove down to Balsall Common, not far from Coventry, for a few days to see our daughter
I've been feeling for a while now that I needed something to give me some extra motivation and get me heading out the door with a camera. For the last several months - probably most of the year to be honest - the only photography I've done is when I'm out with Phil on one of our monthly-ish photo trips to a place of interest in Tayside or Fife.When you've photographed most of the landscapes,
No more HP5 mottling after this post - promise. I thought I’d use it to answer a reader who asked why I kept on using the defective 120 rolls if I knew they had issues. That’s a fair question suggesting, as it does, that I might be suffering from one of the signs of madness - doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome.The problem was that the mottling wasn’t always
Following on from my previous post about mottled HP5, here’s another example of the fault. The question is, can I use it to my advantage?The pictures are from the very last roll of the defective film I had and, believe it or not, are from 6x9 negative scans. They’re possibly the roughest MF shots you’ve seen for a long time. However, I was looking at them and wondering if the mottling has maybe
Credit where credit’s due. I bought ten rolls of 120 HP5 a few years back but found quite a bit of mottling (see below) in many smooth toned areas such as skies. It was so bad that I used about half the rolls and put the rest away. Spending time and money driving around looking for pics only to come back with something that was largely unusable was pretty pointless. Not every frame was spoiled