Petzval in the woods

Matti, interesting shot, sort of out of an old science fiction movie or something about spiders perhaps? I might try something similar with mine, as well just to see what it does. Will see what I can come up with for an outdoors scene. I don't have a shutter setup on mine yet. Still thinking about it for now. tim

Matti, Its a very creepy shot, I think the shallow depth of field works well for this shot. good work !

The Petzval lenses are meniscus lenses, correct? I like the quality they give. Very powerful and rich tones.
Nice subject matter. You've got a bit of a split tone there in the highlights. Was that intentional? Also, do you find that you're learning to see differently using one of these lenses? I think I may have to give Mr. Galli a call...
- Thomas

Actually, Tim, it is a couple of those cross country runners. They usually don't show up until snow melting in spring but with this greenhouse effect...

Thomas, I am not that home in optics. But a Petzval is made of four pieces of glass. I think two of them are meniscus lenses. The other two has two convex surfaces each.
I actually bought the lens for portraits, to have that super smooth falloff in sharpness. But of course I couldn't help myself. I just wanted to see how the lens would draw the details of the ground in the woods. I actually took some pictures exactly the same with the Petzval and my 150mm Nikon-W, just to see what it would be like. And one difference is that the Petzval images needs Forteezo grade H, where the Nikon image is super contrasty with grade N. Maybe I should find a shade and clean the lens a bit more.
So currently, I am just playing around, learning shutterless exposures etc. But I would like to try some still life with it as well.
About the split tone. I _did_ use some local bleaching to get some more light in the water on the ground, then I felt it couldn't be lighter than the sky behind the trees, so I lightened that a bit as well. It doesn't show up as clearly in the print, though, maybe it is the scanner.
/matti

Thanks for the insight, Matti. Perhaps you need to develop your film differently to make up for the lost contrast?
- Thomas

Yes you are right, or perhaps I need a shutter for the 1/8s exposures! This was a very dense negative. Or maybe just some nd-filters to make it managable to shoot at f3,5 outdoors with the hand as a shutter.
/matti

Utterly unique.

Hmmm...incredibly juicy. The choice of focus is perfect to mimick the hilight at back. K