Today I took my Instant Box Camera kit on a practice session afield, placing a visit to my brother. I found it best to pack all the gear in my small car with the camera and tripod in the trunk, and the wheeled crate dolly, loaded with all the supplies and chemicals, including a container of water, in the back seat.
Once at my brother's, I loaded it back into one kit and wheeled it into his front porch area, where I set up for several portrait sessions. It took me all of about 20 minutes from arrival to having it set up, ready to seat him for his picture.
I seated him under the shaded porch, near the edge of the shadow, with the camera in the sun. Note to self: bring a sun hat next time. Actually, I have a list of lessons learned from this session, which I'd rank as successful.
The first negative went well, as did the processing. I had brought a container of rinse aid, along with a separate container of rinse water, and so I did a minute or so of rinse aid prior to a short water rinse, then squeegeed off the negative and flapped it dry in the sun.
Printing the negative was a bit more troublesome. I'd gotten used to printing under my back porch at home, but the light was a bit different at his house. I used incident metering for the print, as before, but the first print came out too light. I ended up adding an extra stop of exposure, for a nice print.
I then shot a second negative, and it too went well, this time I reflected metered his face, which worked well. For printing this second negative, I applied the same exposure as I'd found with the first. The result, shown below, is a bit dark, as there's more shadow detail that a better print might reveal, but I'm pleased with the light in his eyes.
Don001a by
jvcabacus, on Flickr
I'm thinking that I should employ my Pentax spot meter for metering the prints. The reason being is that the Gossen is just not accurate enough to get a reading just off the face on the negative, and getting the meter that close to the negative means the shadow of the meter comes into play. This is on my to-do list, getting the spot meter running and calibrated for this purpose.
A few more lessons learned, such as I need to bring some plastic baggies to store negatives and prints. I'm thinking I could present the print to the client in a baggie, with an insert sheet printed on gray/silver paper with some description of the process, care advice for the print and my contact information. For the negatives, I'll store each one in their own baggie, with a preprinted form included that has the date, customer's name, email address, phone number and exposure information. Once I'm back home, I can archive these negatives, along with their data sheets, in a binder for future reference.
I also need another small plastic storage bin to hold the non-chemical related items, that end up cluttering the top of the camera, such as the bubble level, film squeegee, light meter case, spare printing filters, spare printing masks, etc.
Having the container for waste chemicals was handy, as I'd started with two day-old developer and dumped it and repoured fresh developer. My developer bottle I've marked with lines indicating the 150mL of water and 15mL of concentrate, so it was easy to pour up more working solution. For the fixer, I brought a spare bottle of fresh fixer, along with a small bottle of test solution, to test for exhaustion. I'll just pour the exhausted fixer back into its storage bottle and use the other, if needed; that way I don't mix used fixer and waste developer in the waste container.
I brought a roll of paper towels, which came in handy, along with a plastic bag for trash.
All told, it was a good session, and I now have a list of things to do to make the next one even smoother.
~Joe