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First 4 x5 Negatives
I received 10 sheets of film back this week from The Darkroom. Thought I'd share a few of these with you. Everything about shooting 4 x 5 film is very different from making photographs with a DSLR. The full journey into the process might be the subject of another post. However, in a nutshell, slower, more deliberate and methodical, no instant feedback which results in my having to trust I did everything correctly and having to wait to see the results. I am very happy to report that I did ok with this first batch. I was happy to open the box and see that there was something on the film! After scanning them into my computer with an Epson V850 I got my first look. I love analog! I have a big collection of vinyl too and in a similar way these photos exhibit an almost 3 dimensional quality to them. The color represents just what I was seeing without much post work. They aren't quite as sharp all the way through the image, which is probably more to my lack of experience with focusing through the ground glass, but I love the warmth. I have made prints of all three of the photos in this post and they look great!
There are two from my outing to Sycamore a couple of weeks ago and one from Matador from a month or so ago so if you have seen those posts you will recognize the scenes. The compositions are a little different due to the choice of lenses, in particular the photo from Matador which was shot with a 125 mm lens that converts to about 40mm as opposed to the 17 mm wide-angle lens I used on the GFX 50s. I didn't have a wide-angle lens at the time yet and I think that the scene deserved the use of one but I love the color of the Fujifilm Provia 100 that I used for the photo. The black and white of the 'dead branches' was shot with Ilford 100 and the photo of Boney Mountain was shot on Ektar 100.
Needless to say I am enjoying shooting film again after so many years so there will be more photos made on film to share going forward. I have another 10 sheets from Figueroa getting developed now so I will share those when they come back.
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Thank you for taking a break and visiting this post. I hope you enjoy these. Let me know what you think in the comments below.
Cheers,
Jim