Feet First 4x5

In our last episode I managed to find a plan to shoe-horn large format darkroom capability back into my life without too much disruption to the rest of the household. There's still a bit of work to be done on that front, getting the door fully light sealed and whatnot. It could have been done some time ago but after years of staring at 4x5 camera equipment there seemed little point in using I couldn't put off the urge to get shooting with it any longer. That situation only became more acute when I managed to pick up a 150mm Schneider Symmar-S lens for just under $150 US.

You may recall the post "Success at the Tinker Table" in which I detailed the unlikely triumph of my efforts to get the shutter to my 135mm Wollensak Raptar working again. That was fine for what I intended at the time, but now that large format may begin representing a significant portion of my work again some serious glass is called for. I have fond recollections of the 210mm Symmar-S I owned back in photography school. Whatever else I may have achieved photographically in the intervening years the most luscious prints I have ever made are from negatives made through that lens. Of course the more regular darkroom practice and toned fibre based prints I was making back then may also have contributed, but to me there is no doubt that the Schneider was the best I've ever owned. When finally some eighteen years ago changing life circumstances forced me to admit there was faint hope I'd ever have much occasion to use it again I regretfully sold it. While the Symmar-S series has been superseded in the Schneider line by Apo-Symmars and Super-Symars, it feels like a small, reassuring sort of home coming to see the name back in my photo backpack. 

The images here are from a quick little shakedown outing in the field. It was a simple jaunt out to the stretch of beach I've shown you images from countless times before, but as so often happens things were just a little different than they've ever been before. The inukshuks were the first surprise. Some ambitious individual or individuals had built half a dozen of these structures within about a thirty metre radius along the beach. The shot at the top was of the only one of these that both allowed me enough room to shoot and didn't have some horribly distracting element in the background. It was was just good fortune that I decided to go out that day as when I returned the next day hoping to get additional compositions using the greater selection of lenses I have with the Bronica outfit someone had toppled all but one of these.

The other surprise was the water level. While images of the Great Lakes can appear effectively ocean-like, they lack a proper tide.and the photographic variations that may present themselves as they go in and out. That said wind and weather do combine to alter water levels, and while in my experience it seems as though on average the shoreline has on average been creeping back a bit year to year, this year it has surged forward so that sections of beach I used to walk accompanied by shore birds have been reclaimed by fish. Though it's been a few years since I told myself I had photographed the concrete structure in the above image to death I keep finding new ways, and on this day I saw it for the first time in my own memory not as something 10 metres or more from the water, but as something coming out of the water. It was evening and light levels were getting low enough that combining the light lost through a red contrast filter with a small aperture setting allowed a 15 second exposure, enough to get a nice blur effect with the water to contrast the rough surface of the disintegrating concrete.

While I imagined my lack of a scanner that's built to handle large format negatives would bring the forced discipline that at the very least would compel me to make contact prints I must confess that I've become fairly proficient at scanning both halves of a 4x5 negative and stitching them together with software. While it feels like cheating it has brought a few issues to light. One is that the traditional 4x5 hangers I have been using to develop the negatives have resulted in a few issues that need to be dealt with. The first is that I have gotten some rather nasty scratches that appear to have resulted from the sharp corners of one of the metal hangers contacting the surface of the negative in one of the other hanger during processing. It's difficult, especially in the dark, to keep all the hangers together as a group when agitating or transferring to another tank and I assume this the problem. Another is that on some images I've seen density streaks, similar to those sometimes seen with 35mm film that line up with the sprocket holes, except these seem to match up with the holes in the sides of the film hangers that exist to let the chemistry drain away. If I don't find a solution I'll probably abandon the hangers and get myself a MOD54 unit and process in my disused Paterson tank, with the added benefit of being able to keep the lights on through most of the process. I'm sure there are many more lessons to come as well. In a way it's part of what keeps us all going.