the photography thread

[Fran]

Prompted by jaybees post elsewhere - here's the place to post your favourite pics - I know some of you out there are budding photographers. Hey it matches the audio addiction!! Maybe its the only other way to spend more money than hifi!!


To start things off, here's one of my own. I normally shoot film and print my own, but I've been doing some work recently with studio strobes.


don't look back by francis morrin, on Flickr

[cybot]

That's a stunning image Fran. I won't ask you about the studio strobes ;)

[Fran]

well they aren't cryogenically treated anyway!

[cybot]

well they aren't cryogenically treated anyway!

:)))

[jaybee]

lovely light Fran...

you must shed some light on the salt print process too...

two of the thing competing for long term funds are hifi and a new Hasselblad...

I've got a perfect spot for a teeny darkroom and I feel like it's time to rediscover chemical photography

in hifi terms, I'm moving from my dCS stack (canon 1ds mkiii) to an sme model 30!!!

[Seán]

Fran, that is a beautiful photograph, I love it.

[Adrian]

Great shot Fran.. are you using 35mm of MF?

[Fran]

So I use a range of cameras - on the digital side I have a canon 7D. For film... well I use a few different ones. I have a canon eos 5 and a 10 - these are both regular SLR cameras - the 10QD is especially for infrared stuff as it was the last model before canon moved to an infrered diode for film counting - which messed with the IR film. The lenses are compatible with both these bodies. I also shoot on a QL17 rangefinder as a walkabout camera. For MF I have a kiev88cm (russian hasselblad cline) and a zeiss ikon nettar 6x9. I also do some LF work and I use a chamonix 045N-2 for that. She be a thing a' beauty arrrr...





The shot above was using the 7D with a russian 44-2 helios lens.


Salt process goes back to the early days. William Henry Fox Talbot was the main man here. Basically, you need a big negative (I'd say 5x4 is as small as you could go which you contact print onto coated and sensitised paper. Good quality paper is coated with a solution of gelatine (to act as a size) and salt. Before use, the salted paper is coated with silver nitrate, dried and then cntact printed. The exposed paper is then washed, toned and fixed. Its a bit more complicated than that, but thats the basis of it. There's a lovely look to the images at the end (once you get past the frustrations of it not working of course!).

Salt Print by francis morrin, on Flickr

That one was one of the first I got a decent result on. The scan didn't go too well - the texture on the paper showed up much more prominently than real life.

The lure of chemicals is strong!! I would say deveopling the film is the easy bit, but the darkroom (printing) is where the art is at. When you see that image coming up in the tray its magic every time.

Fran

[Diapason]

I probably only understood about 50% of that, but it's fierce feckin' interesting all the same! Great stuff, Fran.

[DaveF]

Impressive stuff there Fran. That camera looks very intriguing indeed.