Out for a stroll with the Zero

It is always a joy to be out with the Pinhole camera. But it must be a strange sight to behold as I walk up the street. A little brown box attached to what could be construed as a big black stick (tripod). On this occasion it was a lovely bright day with a biting cold wind; I had not appreciated just how cold it was until I had been standing about making the first image.

As I strolled around the local lakes I took warmth from the brilliant sunshine and the anticipation of some interesting image making. By the time I was half a dozen pictures in I had forgotten how cold I was. I think the cold must have gotten to me as I could not remember what the reciprocity factor should be. Times 2 up five seconds and times 5 from then on. Dam and I had left my note book behind with the reminders in. Oh well I'm not going back.

from T max negative

This walk is turning to a bit of a jokers holiday which had started before I had even left the house. My Zero is a multi format camera Just before I loaded the film I checked to see where the dividers were and in my mind it was set to 6x6 I loaded the film and used the centre red window to view the frame count. I should explain there are three for the different sizes of negative. Later that day I had the chance to develop the film only to find it was set to 6 x 4.5 – ehh! Fortunately the second film was only part way through so rectified it by using the top window for the next days images.

The wind was that strong it was producing lots of fine ripples across the water. I was not quit sure how this would look in the final images not having made many photos of water with this camera. It just go's to show how cold it was, on the eastern side of the lake I found a lot of glass thick ice being smashed up on the shore. This brought back how cold I was feeling. Time to get back, to a home made slow cooked beef Currie that should be bubbling away by now.

Contact print at 2 seconds
the print is
also showing signs
of exhausted fix. 

Just before I left the house the following day I filled my pocket with a mix of film from different manufacturers; I do not usually do this but so what! it was an off the cuff decision to go out picture making so why not mix it up completely! The previous day I had already loaded Kodak's T Max 400 which I thought might be a bit of a gamble seeing how bright it was, just as well I did, as I messed up the exposure completely. On subsequent trips I loaded Ilford's delta 100 and Fomapan 100 which is my fav film for the Zero. The others were first time use and this time I got the exposure right.

How badly the T Max was exposed showed it self when I contact printed the negatives. I had to re do it at 5 sec's instead of my usual 2, enlarging lens fully open with white light (with no grade filters set). The negatives when looked at showed full detail. The contact print indicated that the enlargement were going to need long exposures and a lot of dodging to get them the way I wanted.

From Fomapan 100 negative

I have developed all my negatives in Adox version of Rodinal. I use 1+50 for the time required. I have to keep reminding myself that this developer has a high acutance and therefore a lot more contrast. In some cases overly so. I had in mind to use Kentmere RC gloss but changed to Footspeed's RC gloss that has a more normal look. If I had kept to the original route they would have had super contrast. As it was, I had to drop the filtration for printing down to 0 from my normal grade 3 . With the contrast sorted it was time for the exposures. With the segmented test print in the holding tray the fun really started. As an example one print had a base exposure of twenty seconds but then needed an extra 40 seconds on top of that for the sky and some of the lake. Others longer.

From Ilford delta 100 negative.

I had a good time in the darkroom even though the printing sessions were challenging the prints came out a lot better than expected. They have a lot of atmosphere to them that I'm really pleased about. Some of the photographs show that there is ice on the lake in places. I was not sure if that would show up but it has in a couple of the images.

T max 400 a wonderfully smooth finish.

Whilst putting an order in and perusing a suppliers web site I suddenly had this urge to find out what the cost of using Kodak's T Max 400 would be in 120 format. I have no idea where this thought came from or why! Anyway I had a look and by chance it was out of stock. I still do not understand why I should want to use it. In the main I have not used film faster than 200 ISO for decades. I have been happy to go about my picture making at 100 or 125 ISO.

Some months later out of the blue I find myself buying ten rolls of 120 out of date Tmax 400 which just so happened to be part of a job lot. If I'm honest I would not have purchased them at all if it had not been for the Tmax. All I can gather is my creative subconscious has an idea of some sort that will reveal it's self over time!

I am no expert in the way the mind works but I get a sense of when it is the right time to get things done. I sometimes find myself sitting back waiting for that feeling to get on with projects, when it happens I find I am very creative for a short intense period of time. Once that need to be creative is fulfilled the project has to be more or less complete, which happened in this case with the images that accompany this article.

We had a pile of logs in the garden waiting for me to chop up when I had the time. They were starting to nag at me to get on with the job when I noticed the way a particular branch was lit - it brought out the texture of the wood in an interesting way. For some reason it also made me think of a severed arm the more I explored the pile of wood the more macabre it became to the point where another branch looked like a limbless torso. My god! my mind has gone into overdrive and it was not Halloween! It just goes to show how powerful your imagination can be - I could no longer bring myself to cut the wood up! 

Some weeks later I was looking out the window at the logs again - I know! But what struck me was the quality of the light. It was very bright in a soft way as though some one had put a soft box in front of the sun. I went out to look at the sky it was covered with very thin cloud, like a mist. All at once the idea for making images of the logs fell into place.

To make the images as surreal as possible I had to separate them from the landscape, which meant I had to set up a background in this case - I felt that white would do the best job. I worked as quickly as I could because I was not sure how long this wonderful soft light would last. I had no time to test the white background idea just go with the flow. The lumps of wood were very large and heavy for a set of still life images.

T Max 400 grain, film developed in RO9.

 As to what film I should use there were no second thoughts - the out of date T Max 400. I pulled a number of rolls out of the cupboard before I loaded them into my Bronica SQAi. I used my hand held light meter to check how bright it was. The rest as they say is history.

The light lasted the best part of the morning and a number of rolls of Tmax. Which was fortunate I was in a creative wonderland that stopped abruptly after about a couple of hours. The flow of ideas had gone so it was time to pack up and move on. The intensity of the project had left me worn out! The images do not convey the size and weight of the logs I had been moving around. It was time to sit down, regain my energy over a cup of tea and consider how they would be printed.

I was excited and apprehensive all at the same time. Excited to see how the negatives and prints turned out but also apprehensive at the possibility that the light readings could be wrong as there was not time to double check so the film could be empty of images. My other concern was with the development of the film. I had a time of 10 minutes at 1+50 for the RO9 I would be using. Having not used this film developer combination before I could not tell how well they would come out until the wet negatives were hanging up to dry. In these situations I process the film one at a time so I can adjust development if needs be.

I was shocked in a pleasant way when I first looked at the dripping negs. The detail and tone were superb. The superlatives kept coming as the printing got under way. The negatives have a super fine grain with great tone and detail. I printed them on Kentmere RC gloss paper because of the arctic white tint which tends to increase the contrast of the negatives. I would have used FB paper but I did not have any cool tone paper in stock so used the next best thing. I needed the bright white background to enhance the surreal look, not that they weren't that already.

It became clear that if I wanted to keep the stark white background then there would need to be some burning in of the light wooded areas to bring out the detail and maintain the softness to the shadow. It would have been criminal not to exploit all the fine details the negatives held. This extra work did not take away the Eminence pleasure it was to make these prints - even the ones that went wrong - believe me I make some stupid mistakes sometimes that I can't believe!

I really did not know what to expect from the T max 400 especially as I was using RO9 ( it depends on which manufacturer you use as some are finer working than others) not known for it's fine grain and less so with film as fast as 400 ISO. The grain produced is quite fine considering the developer used I suspect it would be even smoother with a developer noted for it. These T grain films really are a jump on from the more traditional emulsions. Is it better than Delta? it is difficult to say without doing a straight comparison between the two. I'm exceptionally pleased with the results.

Oh by the way the pile of logs are still there! Thanks to a friend the pile has grown in size and weight and will take even longer to chop up!