Intermediate large format questions/photography misadventures

[MARTIE]

Yes, I misinterpreted the adjective/objective thing!
But now, I can follow why your lens selection boils down to size, weight and budget rather than the look and feel, in the print.

My apologies for the interruption and I'll let you get on with your ramblings!

 

[MTGseattle]

No problem. Interrupt away.

There are a lot of threads comparing various lenses, and I tend to think that a lot of t "feel or look" in the print itself can be accomplished in the darkroom regardless of a lens generally speaking. Take my 2 competing 90mm designs as an example. There are quite a few examples of people talking about the Nikkor SW 90mm f8 as being too sharp or clinical in its rendering. I haven't exposed nearly enough negatives with 90mm lenses to say for myself if I buy into that line of thought. I will say that if at some point I do want images that are perhaps softer and dreamlike, I will likely need to experiment and possibly seek out a different lens.

The shuffling of the dry mount press (old Seal 200) went fine. I had remembered it being crazy heavy, and while heavy it wasn't unmanageable. The rest of my basement/shop/darkroom has become unmanageable, and I feel like I am no closer to being able to print after most of Thursday and Friday spent down there trying to organize and sort. I even have a large donate pile loaded into the car.

Goal today: get things into printing shape. I have a specific negative in mind already, so I can disregard time at the light table sorting through binders at least.

 

[Roger Thoms]

It's the Seal 350 that's a real beast, although the 200 is no light weight either, glad you got it moved successfully.

 

[Vaughn]

No problem. Interrupt away.

There are a lot of threads comparing various lenses, and I tend to think that a lot of t "feel or look" in the print itself can be accomplished in the darkroom regardless of a lens generally speaking. Take my 2 competing 90mm designs as an example...

I hope it all goes well!

I did all my MF (6x6) printing ages ago at the college darkroom. Generally, I liked using the 135mm lens the D5-XLs had in their turrets rather than the 80mm. I'm tall, so I think it was just easier for me to work with the enlarger a little higher. True of not, I also liked to think I was using the 'sweet spot' of the longer lens, rather than a normal lens at its limits.

 

[JensH]

Ok, a LF misadventure happened to me.

Ordered two adapters to fit both, a lens with rms microscope thread and one M36 lens in front of a 1928 dial set Compur #2.

I had looked up the specs online - saying those shutters have M40, M45 or special sized threads. Took a caliper, aha: 40mm. So ordered adapters for M40x0.75.

They arrived today. Nice work in brass, but useless.
It turned out my shutter uses M40.5x0.5 to mount optics...

Sometimes you better look twice...

 

[eli griggs]

Ok, a LF misadventure happened to me.

Ordered two adapters to fit both, a lens with rms microscope thread and one M36 lens in front of a 1928 dial set Compur #2.

I had looked up the specs online - saying those shutters have M40, M45 or special sized threads. Took a caliper, aha: 40mm. So ordered adapters for M40x0.75.

They arrived today. Nice work in brass, but useless.
It turned out my shutter uses M40.5x0.5 to mount optics...

Sometimes you better look twice...

Yes, a minimum of twice when ordering kit is always a good thing.

Not LF, but earlier this week someone bought me a boxed thin LED string with remote, only, when the box was opened, it only had the remote, no string of lights, and the box was clearly labeled as just a remote for such lights.

Double checking has saved me many times and would had again, in this case.

They went back and bought the right lights yesterday, so all is well but, often times, if it's not there in the box where you buy it, you might never find the right one.

IMO

 

[MTGseattle]

Even though I have 10 screw bins (think sortimo or Dewalt or Milwaukee) full of various hardware, whenever I get into a project that is photography related, I am always missing needed hardware. For my Packard shutter adventure, it was expected since I don't deal with small machine screws very often but there are times when I have only 2 out of 4 needed lengths of common stuff and it's pretty annoying.

The basement shuffle is mostly done. Well, done enough to get printing at any rate. I did get pressed back into some actual work this last week, so I haven't filled any trays and exposed paper yet. I think we have nice weather today, so today might be a photography day rather than a darkroom day.

 

[MTGseattle]

Curveball time. I have some expired Velvia 8x10 sheets. I'm not holding much hope for it behaving like it would have when new and shipping it down to Portland to get it processed will cost more than I paid for the film itself. Can I process this stuff in a Stearman sp810 tray or is keeping a tray temperature stable way too hard?
I would like to get out and see if it's still viable film but the expense of having a lab process it makes me shy away from experimentation.

I just looked again. c41 processing is $7 per sheet and E6 is $7.50 (shipping would be extra) I thought it was twice that, so maybe I will expose and ship a couple of sheets.

shipping a couple of test sheets will cost about what a basic c41 or e6 kit would cost. Fujifilm site said c41 but that doesn't seem right? Anyway.

 

[abruzzi]

Color Processing and the Thermal Profile of the SP-8x10

People have been asking about using the SP-8x10 for color processing. The real question is: "how do you control the temperature?" So we ran a thermal profile of the tray. The procedure is pretty simple: Fill the tray with water at the desired temperature and presoak for 1 minute. Empty and...

shop.stearmanpress.com

I've had reletively good luck processing fresh E100 5x7 sheets in the SP810, but I don't have the level of color sensitivity that some have.

 

[MTGseattle]

That's promising. My easy thought was simply to rest the sp-810 in an 11x14 tray with warm water in it during the process.

 

[abruzzi]

That's promising. My easy thought was simply to rest the sp-810 in an 11x14 tray with warm water in it during the process.

That will probably help. I simply tested temp drop over the dev time, and adjusted to that the desired temp was right in the middle. Since E6 has 2 dev steps that may not work perfectly, so I prioritised the dev time for the color developer. It looses temp faster than you would expect because the developer is spread out in a narrow flat sheet rather than a more compact area like say a patterson tank.

 

[cirwin2010]

No problem. Interrupt away.

There are a lot of threads comparing various lenses, and I tend to think that a lot of t "feel or look" in the print itself can be accomplished in the darkroom regardless of a lens generally speaking. Take my 2 competing 90mm designs as an example. There are quite a few examples of people talking about the Nikkor SW 90mm f8 as being too sharp or clinical in its rendering. I haven't exposed nearly enough negatives with 90mm lenses to say for myself if I buy into that line of thought. I will say that if at some point I do want images that are perhaps softer and dreamlike, I will likely need to experiment and possibly seek out a different lens.

The shuffling of the dry mount press (old Seal 200) went fine. I had remembered it being crazy heavy, and while heavy it wasn't unmanageable. The rest of my basement/shop/darkroom has become unmanageable, and I feel like I am no closer to being able to print after most of Thursday and Friday spent down there trying to organize and sort. I even have a large donate pile loaded into the car.

Goal today: get things into printing shape. I have a specific negative in mind already, so I can disregard time at the light table sorting through binders at least.

In regards to comparing large format lenses, there basically is little optical differences between lenses if they are used how they typically are, stopped way down. After f/16 or so, your sharpness becomes diffraction limited anyways and the optical flaws that are often romanticized as character tend to vanish. There might be some differences in color cast or overall contrast, but if you shooting and developing your own black and white film and printing in the darkroom, that becomes the great equalizer. You tend to be better off selecting something based on other characteristics like maximum aperture for focusing, image circle, and weight.


If you are shooting subjects with an open aperture, then what I wrote above is no longer relevant. Same with much older, vintage lenses or specialty lenses (soft focus).

 

[MTGseattle]

@cirwin2010 Up to this point, my choices have mainly been driven by largest image circle in a given focal length that I was willing to pay for. So far, I haven't had any issues related to small aperture and focusing (in daylight anyway).

I'm not sure my strange journey to get 600mm suitable for 8x10 without paying for a Nikkor T-ED convertible is in this thread, but I did it and I really need to get out and use the damned thing.

 

[DREW WILEY]

With large format, diffraction doesn't start visibly kicking in until the aperture is distinctly smaller than f/32 with 4x5, and smaller than f/45 or even f/64 with 8x10. In fact, with typical film holders, lack of film flatness itself is more a factor, and smaller stops are necessary to compensate for that. I happen to use precision adhesive holders for 8x10 color work, which in my personal scenario is most likely to be used for big enlargement. Still, even a 30X40 inch print is only about a 4X enlargement for 8X10.

Therefore, it's an error to state that lenses are diffraction limited at f/16. We're not talking about 35mm photography. Even my 6x9 lenses don't exhibit any effect of diffraction until f/22, and even then it's minimal, really hard to detect even nose up to a print. There is some variation between specific lens types and focal lengths in this respect. But it's nowhere near the problem being suggested. But there are other factors which might highly influence lens choice, even between different options of the same focal length.

 

[cirwin2010]

With large format, diffraction doesn't start visibly kicking in until the aperture is distinctly smaller than f/32 with 4x5, and smaller than f/45 or even f/64 with 8x10. In fact, with typical film holders, lack of film flatness itself is more a factor, and smaller stops are necessary to compensate for that. I happen to use precision adhesive holders for 8x10 color work, which in my personal scenario is most likely to be used for big enlargement. Still, even a 30X40 inch print is only about a 4X enlargement for 8X10.

Therefore, it's an error to state that lenses are diffraction limited at f/16. We're not talking about 35mm photography. Even my 6x9 lenses don't exhibit any effect of diffraction until f/22, and even then it's minimal, really hard to detect even nose up to a print. There is some variation between specific lens types and focal lengths in this respect. But it's nowhere near the problem being suggested. But there are other factors which might highly influence lens choice, even between different options of the same focal length.

Realistically, you are correct. Diffraction won't be noticable until smaller apertures. I said f/16 because the theoretical limit of f/16 is about 100 lp/mm. Most conventional films can record around 100 lp/mm assuming a suitable developer and good technique is used. Realistically you won't get a 1:1 lp recording from lens to film, but that's getting really deep into it.

I have a bunch of formulas in my books for determining what you can record to film, but I'm straying from the point I was trying to make. In my previous comment I was trying to say that most modern lenses tend to level out at around f/16 because physics demands it. Yeah some lenses are sharper than others, but f/16 and smaller apertures will start to nullify those advantages.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

With large format, diffraction doesn't start visibly kicking in until the aperture is distinctly smaller than f/32 with 4x5, and smaller than f/45 or even f/64 with 8x10. In fact, with typical film holders, lack of film flatness itself is more a factor, and smaller stops are necessary to compensate for that. I happen to use precision adhesive holders for 8x10 color work, which in my personal scenario is most likely to be used for big enlargement. Still, even a 30X40 inch print is only about a 4X enlargement for 8X10.

Therefore, it's an error to state that lenses are diffraction limited at f/16. We're not talking about 35mm photography. Even my 6x9 lenses don't exhibit any effect of diffraction until f/22, and even then it's minimal, really hard to detect even nose up to a print. There is some variation between specific lens types and focal lengths in this respect. But it's nowhere near the problem being suggested. But there are other factors which might highly influence lens choice, even between different options of the same focal length.

Any reason to not just keep it at f32 for 4x5 for landscape shots?

With large format, diffraction doesn't start visibly kicking in until the aperture is distinctly smaller than f/32 with 4x5,

 

[DREW WILEY]

There are numerous interrelated variables, Alan, including film speed, risk of things moving in the scene, etc. But I would say that my routine "go-to" f-stop in 4X5 work is f/32, and that rule-of-thumb applies to numerous other photographers also.

 

[DREW WILEY]

cirwin - I think the whole LPMM resolution obsession gets overblown, especially in large format work. I have graphic lenses like symmetrical Apo Nikkors which I used in the lab, especially for enlarging, which in terms of resolution and apo correction probably outperform any kind of official large format taking lens. Add a shutter and board, and they could be used with a view camera themselves (and some practitioners do adapt such lenses). But for all practical purposes, I wouldn't really gain any visible advantage in even a large print which my more typical modern view camera lenses provide in a more portable manner. Perhaps in some specialized application.

I know a person (a tele specialist) who even used a 360 Apo Nikkor (which will easily cover 8x10 film with movements) adapted to 35mm Nikon camera via a big solid Toyo G 8X10 bellows system, because it optically surpassed any of the dedicated 35mm tele lenses even at infinity focus. And this fellow was also both a Nikon and Celestron dealer. But the Achilles heel of distance photography is nearly always atmospheric conditions itself - the "great equalizer" in that kind of scenario. Talking about the best possible LPMM's doesn't mean much when haze or heat waves are involved.

 

[MTGseattle]

Ok. First 8x10 outing in quite a while. I left my loupe at home, it was pretty windy and I still don't have a good way to keep the Toyo lens board with Packard shutter safe. ( one could also say that the Goerz 24" Artar is also not safe, but I could at least use a lens wrap for that hunk of brass and glass).
Since I forgot my loupe, I'm not sure I nailed focus at all but we shall see. 2 sheets exposed with the Artar, and 2 sheets exposed with the Fujinon C 450mm. I had entertained the thought of exposing all 4 sheets with the exact same tripod location to get a very comprehensive focal length/field of view comparison but I found a different scene I liked.
The Seek Outside backpack I bought during a sale does hold all of the gear and carries well I simply need to refine my kit so that everything can be reasonably safe when thrown together in one big sack.
The other drawback to the Artar is filtration; I think the front threads are somewhere between 65-67mm with 67mm being too big. I may contact SK Grimes and see how much a custom adapter will set me back. If they can make a Lee 100 style ring, at least I already own some filters.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

There are numerous interrelated variables, Alan, including film speed, risk of things moving in the scene, etc. But I would say that my routine "go-to" f-stop in 4X5 work is f/32, and that rule-of-thumb applies to numerous other photographers also.

That's good to know, because as a new large format photographer, I was under the impression that the go to was F22. F32 go to would give me another stop of depth of field right away, which I would prefer with my landscape pictures.

 

[MTGseattle]

Hopefully I can process yesterday's sheets this evening. One of my exposures with the Goerz was at F90 so I am curious if anything strange happened. I think the lens has a lot of coverage, so I am likely ok. I was forcing the issue trying to get a 1 second exposure since I am unsure how accurate the claim of a Packard #6 giving one 1/30th-ish (1/25th maybe? I need to watch their video again) is.

 

[MTGseattle]

Another carry-over from the LFPF site: I won a nice Crown Graphic top rangefinder a while back. I then stripped everything off of it that makes it a press camera. (please resist sending hate mail). I was very careful with the disassembly, and placed all parts into an orphaned 8x10 archival storage box as I was doing the job. As you may know, the complete tube assembly does not store very well unless one places it into a much bigger container than the other parts would require. Yesterday I became worried I would eventually lose or break some parts and decided to re-assemble. The process almost ruined my day. I think my camera while looking very nice and being of late production was missing some parts; a washer here, the proper screw there. I also am a bit thin on correct tools for working on small parts.
I am well aware of the main resources for manuals for the Graflex stuff, but I feel like there is a more recent version of the document that I could not find. I highly doubt I got the cam lever spring installed correctly, and I couldn't even see the spring on the schematic on the southbristolviews page. I think there is also another bracket or something that inhibits the plungers extension out into the bed/focus rail area since when closing now I need to push the bar back in a bit for fear of bending it. On the schematics available I cannot figure out which parts fills this role.
I feel like the bellows put up a much stronger fight than the last time too.
I felt bad for taking apart the camera (even though I will never use those features) but trying to put it back together was painful enough that I may just pull it all apart again.

 

[MTGseattle]

It's becoming more and more clear to me that I need to mess with some film at a minimum of once per week to keep "muscle memory" going.
The last time I loaded 8x10 holders was mid to late 2025. I did have the presence of mind to label them. Each film slot has a number, and on the rpt case, I placed little labels at each zipper noting which film was in that particular holder.
Fast forward to my early April outing and I grabbed the holder that still had paper in it thinking it was Delta 100. I have subsequently processed a sheet of Oriental seagull vcII as if it was delta 100 in Rodinal 1:25. There is an image albeit a flat looking one. The real crap part about this is that those 2 negatives were my first test images with my Goerz 24" LD Artar and Packard shutter. I can get a small bit of solace in that there is an image on the paper. Now I know that the other sheet in there can/should be processed like paper.

I then ham fisted a roll of 120 because it turns out that I had a bent 120 reel. Next we have a roll of Ilford Pan F+ which I have never used. The roll isn't completely dry yet, but I think I have uneven development due to areas of washed out detail/underdeveloped film in the middle of the roll. It made me wonder if my Rodinal is failing, but the 8x10 sheet I processed after looks just fine.
I'll need to process a roll from last week to rule out some odd camera problem.

A bit of consistency with my film choices may help me out as well.

 

[DirtCat]

Hey, I'm a large format dabbler in SEA as well! What photography class did you take? (Or still taking?) I've been interested in trying a class lately, I've been shooting entirely unguided since I took a photojournalism class in high school in 1998 haha.

 

[MTGseattle]

The class was a b&w analogue landscape focused one. It was 2 or 3 years ago now. You can certainly learn on your own. I was fortunate to have photo in high school as well.

Did you see our post about a meet this Saturday at the Georgetown Steam Plant? 10-12 if you're interested.