Baker's Dozen #2: Ilford fp4+

If the first iteration of my Baker's Dozen series kept me at home, the second has me venturing out a little further on a familiar road. I spent a Friday afternoon after school along the Columbia River, crossing the Oregon/Washington border and traveling on through the Wallula Gap and its neighboring overlook.

Port Kelley, Washington. The first frame on this roll and my first stop on the trip.

This route is a great standby for me. A familiar friend that I join when I can't take a longer trip. Or don't have that option or the time. It hasn't gotten boring to me yet, even after dozens of trips over the last 12 years or so. And every time I go through there with a camera, I see something new. Or something old in a new way.

Twin Sisters, Washington is just around the bend from Port Kelley.

This particular mid-May afternoon had some beautiful, puffy clouds against a blue sky, with just a hint of a wind coming from the west. I chose fp4+ for this trip because of its familiarity and predictability with a red #25 filter. This is a contrast to my first post in this series, which involved a film that I was shooting for the very first time. Bringing along a film stock that I've shot dozens of times before in that scenario gives me the confidence to fully consider my compositions and what I want to accomplish with a photograph.

Hatch Grade Road provides some spectacular views of the Columbia River at Wallula.

Film photography being, well, film photography, we're subject to the mechanical limitations and inevitable failures of our equipment. As successful as this roll was on this trip, I did come back home with a casualty. About halfway through the roll, I discovered that the aperture blades weren't moving smoothly through each setting. I set the timer to bulb and gently tested each one. Sure enough, the blades weren't meshing from f/8 to all the way open at f/2.8.  I still had a few frames to shoot to finish the roll, so I left the aperture at f/22 and hoped it would do its job until I got home. We came in on a wing and a prayer, as I've heard a few WWII vets say in my younger years.

Ruh roh. Looks like I'll be minus a TLR lens for a few weeks. #mamiya #tlr #ishootfilm #believeinfilm #filmphotography #mediumformat #120format pic.twitter.com/an5ocfFkZQ

— Rick Scheibner (@rickscheibner) May 17, 2020

So, I'm sending the 80mm f/2.8 off to be serviced.  I'm told they'll have it 4-6 weeks, which doesn't sound unreasonable during this age of Covid. In the meantime, I do have a 180mm f/4.5 that I don't use nearly often enough. I keep wondering if I should do this same trip using that lens, and then see the difference.

An abandoned thresher sits along Hatch Grade Road in Eastern Washington. It deserves a little more of my attention when I go through there again.

Because, after all, the same route next time could bring completely different results. Here are a few more images from this roll:

Edit: As I look a little more critically at a few of these photos, I'm seeing a little light leak creep in at that top left hand corner. It's slight, and barely perceptible in most cases, but it's come up before. I need to be mindful of sunlight hitting that corner of the camera. When I shoot some higher speed film at 1600, I wonder how much of a problem it will be given the increased sensitivity to light? Looks like I need to do a test to find out. 

End of Summer Round-up

I don't normally like to get behind on my film developing, but I found myself with a sandwich bag full of unprocessed film last week and decided to do something about it. Most of it was 35mm format, and at least one roll dated back to last spring. There were one or two rolls that, even when I took a glance at my notes in FilmTrackr, I didn't remember shooting. I had to actually pull them out of the final rinse before I could see what was on them.

Ilford hp5+ @ ISO 1600, shot on Canon Rebel 2000. Developed in Ilfotec DD-x 1:4 for 13 minutes. 

I'm pretty certain my only purpose for this roll was to practice pushing hp5+ to 1600. And it looks like I still need some practice.

Rather than create a new blog post for each roll, I decided to just post the best ones here. Or the best of the worst frames, as the case may be.

Ilford PanF+ on a Canon A1. Not the ideal for capturing motion on a bright sunny day, but shoot what you've got. 

In some cases, it's the end of a camera system for me. I've said good-bye to my Canon EOS cameras as I've sold off my digi 5DmkII and most of the lenses that went with it. My remaining Canon system is the resurrected A1 with some FD lenses.

Ilford PanF+ on a Canon A1.  Standard development in d-76 1:1. 

School is starting up again soon and, for my own internal calendar, a time to update and refresh things that are going on in my life. Out with the old, in with the new. For some people that takes place in January. Given my 28 years in and around school systems, mine occurs at the end of August.

Sacajawea at Fort Clatsop. Ilford hp5+ shot on an Olympus Stylus Infinity. Light leak from bulk loading (or at the factory), not from the camera. 

I'm continuing my 2018 goals of printing more of my work. I have some sitting at Blue Moon Camera as I write this. And, I still need to shoot more medium format film with the C220. I'm finding that that's not really the ideal walk-around camera, but something to be used deliberately and purposefully. It's really ideal for landscapes and portrait work, something I need to do more of. And I will as soon as the hot weather and smokey skies go away for the year. Those are my film plans for the remaining third of 2018.

I don't know how, but this shot made Flickr's Explore section for that day. Ilford hp5+.

I much preferred this one. 

Columbia Inland

I love shooting color negative film, but don't always trust myself with developing it myself. Time and temps are supercritical, and my color scanning workflow can sometimes give me results I don't want. I only send my most important and most promising color film out for development.

Cliffs in the Wallula Gap of the Columbia River, SE Washington state.

I recently shot a roll of Kodak Ektar in my C220 medium format camera because 1) I needed to test out a new 180mm f/4.5 lens and 2) the clouds were looking really, really nice that day. This wasn't a roll that rose to the level of important/promising.  So, I broke out my bottles of c-41 developer. This was a batch that had been mixed together 6 months ago or so--the outside recommended limit--and had about 8 rolls of 35mm film through it already.

McNary Dam

For the most part, I was pleasantly surprised with the results. A few frames I wasn't able to quite get the colors I was looking for, but had some nice images from others.

Hat Rock. Development streaks duly noted, and another reason to send out your film.

I'm shooting more color film in the Zero Image pinhole camera these days, and I won't necessarily send all of that out. When I can't, I know I should be able to get at least acceptable results by doing it myself. Usually. Hopefully. And hey, there's always the b/w conversion trick when it doesn't work out the way I wanted it to.

Ektar converted to monochrome. 

Faulty equipment

I'm somewhat at a crossroads in my film photography right now. No, I'm not having an existential crisis about what film to shoot, what format, Ilford vs. Kodak...nothing like that. I've had several cameras develop problems which have impacted my shooting abilities lately.

My AV-1 was overexposing by at least a couple of stops before I changed out the batteries. The sky is completely blown out here, of course, but you can at least see how Kentmere 400 deals with overexposure. Every frame in this roll was affected, several much worse than this one.  Souped in d-76 1:1.

To date, here are the camera issues I'm dealing with:

• Canon A-1 with a sticky shutter and infamous 'Canon squeal'.  I'm told that this is actually fixable, and I just might put out the funds necessary to get this done.
• Canon Elan 7, at one time my flagship film camera body, has a broken door shutter. Up until a couple of years ago this was easily fixable by ordering a $12 USD part.  Everywhere I'm looking that part is showing "NLA".  
• My Canon AV-1 was overexposing every single frame, and I thought something was wrong with it. A quick battery replacement solved that problem. 
• My Mamiya C330 continues to display vertical lines on either side of the frame, sometimes randomly, effectively turning it into a 645 when I crop.  I still am very interested in a regular 645 SLR/Rangefinder at some point.

Same camera, same film after changing out the battery. Note to self: Always check AE settings against what feels reasonable at the time. When in doubt, check with a DSLR or light meter. Saling House in historic Weston, Oregon.

As luck would have it, I just picked up a Canon Rebel 2000 in pristine condition, and for a very reasonable price. That will boost my EOS shooting, but I'm still not sure what to do when that film door comes apart...

Kentmere 400 in d-76 1:1, shot in a Canon AV-1 with a fresh battery.

So, I'm down to a single functions Canon FD and two EOS film cameras to shoot with. A Mamiya TLR if I want to put up with its quirks. And a Zero Image pinhole for those times I'm feeling all pinholey.

Kentmere 400 in d-76 1:1, shot in a Canon AV-1 with a fresh battery.

My priorities right now are to get my A-1 working again if possible, and replace it if not. Both are about the same cost when purchased from a reputable dealer (I don't do eBay). I'm really hoping that a door latch for the Elan 7 can be found. At this point, I'd be happy if I could get somebody to 3D print something. We're on the cusp of winter, and I'd like to shoot up some higher speed, bulk rolled films I have in the freezer.

Color Pinhole: Seattle

I spent a few days in Seattle last week and spent a couple of hours walking around with the Zero Image 618. This is my first attempt at color C-41 film in a pinhole. If you're going to shoot C-41 in pinhole, Kodak Portra seems to be a good choice. I thought it was going to be grossly overexposed, even accounting for reciprocity failure, but these came out ok.  My goal was getting some motion blur in traffic, but that seemed to be obvious on only one of the frames. Still, I was able to get a few frames I was happy with and came away with some things to consider for next time.