Second 4x5 lessons

[markbarendt]

Had fun & frustration yesterday.

First, I went and found a fun spot by a hiking/biking trail intersection with a great background of snow capped mountains and gathering clouds.

Was hoping that the day was low enough in contrast for the Provia 100 to do it's magic.

The lesson for the day seems to be translating exposure to the camera.

Two shots were done with a home made pinhole. I had done my pinhole math with "Pinhole Designer". End result, they were both equally (way) over exposed. Nothing but a light yellow ghost of the foreground.

Two more shots were done using my 150mm lens with a Tiffen polarizer that the enclosed paper said needed a two stop offset, these came out equally overexposed.

So, my Seconic meter and I are going to have to have a conversation and it may need to be disciplined by Sekonic's repair department.

I shot the two pinhole shots last.

I set the Sekonic at 25 ISO to offset for the polarizer. I left the meter there when I switched to the pinhole hence the overexposure for the pinhole shots.

That doesn't explain the problem with the 150mm lens.

My guess is that I corrected twice, once at the meter and once at the lens for the two stop offset for the polarizer.

Ah well...

 

[DJGainer]

The hardest lesson I learned when I switched to Large Format was that I needed to reduce the number of variables as much as possible. So, instead of switching the EI on your meter each time you change filter factors, just meter through the filter. Also, try getting into a strict routine from setup to composure to breakdown and you will be able to pinpoint mistakes and hopefully realize when you're making one!

 

[SMBooth]

My biggest mistake is forget to stop down after focusing, perhaps that what you did.

 

[Katier]

My biggest mistake is forget to stop down after focusing, perhaps that what you did.

Yeah I found that actually taking the picture becomes very methodical. I did the forget to stop down once, and the forget to close the shutter before removing dark slide.


I now triple check the settings on the lens.. dry fire the shutter.. pull out the DS.. take the picture.

 

[papagene]

It's actually becoming fun seeing how many stoopid goofs I can repeat over and over again!

gene

 

[markbarendt]

Hey all,

I did not forget to stop down, just checked and the lens is still where I set it, f8 @ 1/50 for ISO 100 film. With the 2-stop offset for the polarizer I should have been one stop more open than sunny f16. Given that the clouds were probably covering 70% of the sky That should have gotten me something more than the pastel yellow stuff I got.

I actually setup and waited before each shot probably 30 second to a minute for something like a bike to happen by.

The weird thing is that all four shots were equally rotten, the more I think about this the more I think the problem might be somewhere else.

I'll have to try a few test shots when I get a couple of free hours.

 

[David Nebenzahl]

Just one question, and pardon me if I seem impolite: what the hell were you doing using a pinhole on a landscape shot?

Don't get me wrong: pinholes are great fun. They can create really kewl images. But if you're wanting to take a picture of a landscape, and you have a nice piece of glass in the shape of a lens, then that's what you want to use, not a pinhole. Save the pinhole for situations demanding extreme depth of field, soft effects and such.

Sounds as if you're just putting more obstacles in your way than you need to.

 

[markbarendt]

Just one question, and pardon me if I seem impolite: what the hell were you doing using a pinhole on a landscape shot?

It was world pinhole day last Sunday, if I got the right info, and I had no experience with the pinhole I made Saturday.

Given Provia's latitude, getting a good result on my first try was far from a given, I just wanted to participate and learn.

To that end I was after a reasonable shot with the 150mm lens and wanted to use that result as a benchmark for the pinhole. All four shot were of the same scene.

 

[PHOTOTONE]

A one stop error in overexposure should have produced an image, although the highlights would have been washed out. The fact that you got a much more overexposed image (according to your description) would mean something else was not quite right. So, you did remember to stop the lens down after focusing? I have had (on an older Ilex shutter) the little screw come out that attaches the external ring and pointer to the internal iris and thus you could turn the outside pointer all you wanted but the iris wouldn't stop down. Check to make sure your iris stops down when you adjust the f-stop pointer on your lens. Also, if you left your shutter on "open"-for focusing then you could have gotten overexposed images, even though you thought it was giving you a 1/50 sec.

 

[PHOTOTONE]

If your exposure outside was f8 at 1/50 sec, with PROVIA which has an ISO of 100, cloudy bright conditions would indicate an exposure of f8 and a fraction @ 1/125. So you by all indications were about a stop off and with the polarizer would have been a stop UNDER exposed which would have given you DARKER images not washed completely out images. It is a puzzle, and could be one of several things....Light leaks, defective lens/shutter, etc. But the fact that the pinhole images were equally bad might lead one to suspect bad film processing. I'm not saying your exposure computations were spot on, but they were not off enough (on the shots made with the lens) to give you completely washed out images-IF all your equipment was working properly.

For 4x5 color transparencies, I always shoot a Fuji Instant print and evaluate it, because I hate to bracket with expensive transparency film.

 

[markbarendt]

Phototone,

I'm going to try again this weekend, thanks everybody.