Above is my first image shot on a 5x4 before being given a lesson on the tilt and shift technique which is why the foreground in out of focus but seeing as I focused on the bridge without a loupe I am quite impressed these old eyes managed to get such sharp focus.
Yet to be uploaded is a 4 shot landscape trial bracketing my shots to get a feel for the camera.
I also have a single shot on colour slide to try but have yet to plan the shot.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
updated 25th 'oct
(Still a work in progress)
In the hope of gaining a better understanding of of 5x4 or 4x5 (depending on which side of the pond you live on) I decided to attempt some landscape from the side of Cleeve hill over looking Cheltenham so I took the camera apart down to its bare bones, loaded it into a camera bag and strapped it all to my back, tripod and all and headed off on johns bike on a cold sunday morning at 8am and started on my journey.
I have to say I'm not the fittest guy on the planet but that was seriously hard work! The cold was bad enough but the uphill ride with all that equipment on my back was a killer.
Anyway I finally made it and set up a relatively uninteresting shot but it was all about learning the process and not the view, although, it was important I got alot of close foreground as well as a horizon that went into infinity so I could try to balance the exposure.
Once I had a reading from the light-meter I took a couple test shots on my Nikon DSLR.
I ended up bracketing four shots, the only issue with this process was the time between the shots, loading the film and checking the focus the light was constantly changing with the early morning sun constantly breaking through the clouds right over Cheltenham.
The light meter was telling me to shoot at f6@60/s so this was my original shot and as you can see it was slightly overexposed losing just a small amount of detail but would have been manageable in the darkroom.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
updated 25th 'oct
(Still a work in progress)
In the hope of gaining a better understanding of of 5x4 or 4x5 (depending on which side of the pond you live on) I decided to attempt some landscape from the side of Cleeve hill over looking Cheltenham so I took the camera apart down to its bare bones, loaded it into a camera bag and strapped it all to my back, tripod and all and headed off on johns bike on a cold sunday morning at 8am and started on my journey.
I have to say I'm not the fittest guy on the planet but that was seriously hard work! The cold was bad enough but the uphill ride with all that equipment on my back was a killer.
Anyway I finally made it and set up a relatively uninteresting shot but it was all about learning the process and not the view, although, it was important I got alot of close foreground as well as a horizon that went into infinity so I could try to balance the exposure.
Once I had a reading from the light-meter I took a couple test shots on my Nikon DSLR.
I ended up bracketing four shots, the only issue with this process was the time between the shots, loading the film and checking the focus the light was constantly changing with the early morning sun constantly breaking through the clouds right over Cheltenham.
 |
| shot at f5.6@60/s, scanned in and crudely adjusted through photoshop |
 |
| Above: Four individual details taken from the bracketed shots, unaltered. |
Without being able to see the results I then decided to alter the shutter speed down to 30/sec as I remembered in the tutorial that I need to adjust for the light traveling through the camera, obviously increased the overexposure.
the next two shots were taken by eye, with the light being as it was I chose to soot at f8 and f6 adjusting the shutter speed accordingly.
From the detail it is visible that the shot at f6@125/s recorded more detail and was relatively well exposed.
-------------------------------
A quick update.
I have totally changed my idea for this project which I haven't yet mentioned.
The original idea was shoot at the Gloucestershire and Warwickshire steam railway so I got in contact and gained permission to shoot on the platform but as the railway only runs on saturday and sundays I had few choices as when to shoot, with other things going on I missed a couple of opportunities to shoot at the station but after a week or so I decided that I am very bored of shooting press style photos and really could not be bothered with this original idea and decided to push myself with something I have struggled with, Portrait photography and studio work.
I had an idea of making this project extremely difficult for myself to try and motivate me into changing my style of work so I planned a shoot that involved a single shot colour slide self portrait as well as recoding the studio shoot with a 2nd 5x4 camera in a 'fly on the wall documentary' style.
This involed to camera's a number of different lenses, 2 assistants, 2 separate sets of lighting and 2 hours to complete the project.
So far the colour slide is the only thing to have been processed but it came out pretty well I think.
The framing isn't as great as I had hoped as I composed the shot with Dan as a stand in for myself so I could focus and frame as well as checking the lighting etc, I then stood in his place for the actual shot.
What I didn't take into account is the fact that Dan is Slightly taller than me and I tend to slouch.
The Black and whote fly on the wall shots are yet to be processed, I decided not to use flash for this to push myself into using the ambient lighting in a situation... This could have been a terrible decision! I may not have any shots for the final hand in but that is sort of the point of my experiment. To step away from my normal style which I am getting extremely bored of and is causing me to lose all motivation to shoot anymore.
Fingers crossed!
No comments:
Post a Comment