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Pentax 645n

raingirl has particularly liked this photo


Comments
 raingirl
raingirl club
i hope you are still using this camera. this is incredible. what film are you using? how do you process the photo to get it an the internet? ah, all this to say how much i love this photo. the composition, the depth, the tone, the focus.
5 years ago.
 Jim Kerslake
Jim Kerslake club
Thank you so much Raingirl... this is another of my favorites too.

Back in those early days of photography, discovering a waterfall of any kind was a very exciting treasure...

So after I had messed about with Holgas for a while, I bought myself a second-hand Pentax 645N... a really amazing camera... pretty heavy. I still have it with me... perhaps I should still use it (it has been a while since I last shot film - though I love it more than digital).

So I hauled the camera around the North York Moors (out towards Whitby... I used to go there from York on the bus, with a tripod and the camera kit).

I expect the film would have been Ilford HP5+
(if not, then there is some slight chance it might have been Ilford FP4 or Fuji Neopan).
I was not yet developing it myself - so I guess I sent it away.

I think I would have scanned the negative using my Epson Perfection V800 (also in storage a long way away right now) - into Photoshop - probably I would convert it to black and white and then into a brown duotone - I do feel in retrospect that I over-did the brown tones on a lot of these images, and would have been better sticking a bit closer to pure black & white.
5 years ago.
 raingirl
raingirl club
your comment: "(it has been a while since I last shot film - though I love it more than digital)." is exactly how i feel. i have a Hasselblad that was gifted to me, and i need to respect it more by using it (no digital back, just film carrier). it is heavy as well, though i'm sure not as heavy as the Pentax 645N. i frequently can tell if a photo was taken with film, even when seeing it online. there's just something about the quality, though i'm not sure exactly what it is.

as to your toning of this photo, i think it is perfect. there is a subtlety that let's one see into the photo and all its details.

hey, i have an Epson Perfction scanner, but it is a 4490. i get a bit frustrated with it at times, but it is really nice to have for scanning negatives. I think your V800 is probably a step up from mine, even if yours is older than mine.

we have some great waterfalls near Portland, Oregon, my city. i doubt i can get a photo as good as this one, but it will be a good excuse to get out of town and try using the Hasselblad again. fall is a good time of year to catch the waterfalls once the rains start again.

have a good week.
peace,
raingirl (laura)
5 years ago.
 Jim Kerslake
Jim Kerslake club
Thanks Laura -

I do hope you manage to get out with your Hasselblad... I'm guessing that you probably have a Carl Zeiss lens on it? I never owned a Hasselblad, but I have always totally loved the qualities of the old Zeiss lenses - I have used an old Pentacon Six, and an 'Ikoflex', both of which produced that great medium format 6x6 Zeiss 'Tessar' look... something about the razor-sharpness and then the way it falls off into out-of-focus bokeh.

I know what you mean, that the 'look' of 6x6 film from that kind of camera is pretty distinctive... I guess with digital you have a smaller sensor to start with, so the depth of field behaves differently - and also digital feels more like shooting 'positive' slide film, because you always have to battle against over-exposure: once you over-expose on digital (or slide film) then you have blown the highlights, whereas with b+w film it's kind of the opposite... it feels like there is more latitude, and Ilford HP5+ would always give me some kind of interesting result, no matter how much I messed up the exposure or the developing times :)

The more time goes by, the more I like the old large-format photos by Eugene Atget and Julia Margaret Cameron and Alfred Stieglitz... those are worth staring at for inspiration...

Good luck with the waterfalls :)
All the best
Jim
5 years ago.

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