Road trip to Maleny and my first 4x5 photographs

These are just some initial scans from my canoscan 8400f, stitched in photoshop. Two of the five photographs I shot on large format. I will develop the rest another time. Developing was fun and didn't seem like such a long and hard task as I imagined. I cant wait to get back in there.

The sky was completely overcast so I didn't use any colored filters though I think I should have used a light graduated neutral density filter. I think what looks like uneven development is just some different toned clouds, though you tell me. Any comments on my developing technique that show are appreciated. I could only find two tiny scratches, one on each sheet. Thank you jmcd for your information on the tray developing technique. These were shot in very heavy wind so all foliage is blurred.

Fp4 at 125 in Rodinal 1+25



For some reason I felt the sky was too white and tried to burn in a little detail as I would in the darkroom. In photoshop this made the sky grainy and terrible, though it looked fine on that particular computer's monitor - go figure.



In this shot I was just testing the front rise so the subject to sky ratio inst great.

They look good.
Congratulations!

Frankly the foregrounds look too dark but it is hard to say if this is true.

My computer monitor, an aged CRT 17", might be a bit dim. The image you are showing is one version of a potentially infinite range of Photoshop re-manufactures of what you presented to the scanner. Basically I have no idea of what your camera original material, the FP-4 negative itself, looks like. And I am intrigued about the actual exposure settings and development protocol you used.

I've been recently shooting under the same overcast sky as you and the soft light conditions means a big exposure error is very unlikely. Your negatives are probably superb but until a tradition of showing actual negatives on this and other forums comes to pass there is only guesswork.

Consider them test previews since both of my monitors are terrible. I will be making some contact prints tonight. Hopefully they will provide a better insight when scanned. I used an incidence meter and developed two sheets for 9 minutes at 20c. Shuffling/agitating every 30 seconds. I will make an exposure log next time.