A favorite photograph.

Taken at the grand Prix de I'A.C.F.

Like a lot of people I enjoy watching the Grand Prix. By coincidence one of my favorite pictures is by the turn of the century french photographer Jacques-henri Lartigue.

He took this picture while he was still quite young. It is one in a series of a 169 shots taken at the Grand Prix de I'A.C.F. using the comparatively large Ica reflex camera with Zeiss 1:4.5 150mm lens onto a 3 1/2" x 4 1/4" glass negative it had a top mounted focusing screen and a focal plan shutter, it is this set up that accounts for the elliptical shape of the wheel. For me it is the feature that conveys the excessive speed the car is travelling more than his panning of this heavy camera to emphasize the rate of progress.. Originally he thought this picture was a failure because he had not been able to capture the whole car in the frame. This is the other part of the composition that adds to the sense of great speed. It is one picture I do not get tired of looking at, I always wonder what it would have been like to stand there as these early cars thundered by.

Focusing. Soft prints why!

Ilford FP4+, Iso 125, developed in ID11
Printed on Ilford paper

There are reasons for your photographs to be out of focus. If we assume that the negative was sharp when it was exposed, it could be if you are using a glassless negative carrier that the negative may have popped and requires refocusing. Another cause is vibration, you need to make sure that you are not knocking the enlarger when you are exposing. If the enlarger is mounted on an uneven surface or rickety table this will not help nor will living near a main road with lots of heavy traffic.

If when looking at the photograph it looks  blurred, it has not been focused properly. You can cure this by using a focusing negative. To make one you need a negative of no value as you will have to scratch the emulsion in several places. It is simply a case of placing this negative in the enlarger and focusing until the scratches are razor sharp. Alternatively you can use a special focuser.