I took my Kodak Recomar 18 plate camera on a walk north of Jemez Springs where the Jemez River and its East Fork come together near Battleship Rock.
The Nagel-built Recomar is a little bulkier than the Patent Etui or the Bentzin Primar, but it is solidly constructed and it accepts the Rada film back, which is sturdier than the Rollex. While the accessory film backs make all the plate cameras more practical to shoot, the added bulk interferes with the use of the wire-frame viewfinder by keeping the eye too far behind the rear sighting aperture. The little swiveling reflex finder is small and subject to confusing reflexions. The ground glass back can give very precise framing, but is awkward to swap out with the film backs.
I like to shoot 400-speed films in my medium format cameras because they give a nice range of tonality and grain is not perceptible in moderate enlargements from the big negatives. My past favorites were Fuji Acros and Kodak TMAX, but I'm not willing to pay the current asking prices for those brands. In fact, the only 120 roll film which meets my cheapskate standard is Fomapan at about five bucks a roll. For the Jemez outing I loaded a roll of Foma 400 which I shot at 200 ISO for processing in PMK Pyro. I haven't been too impressed with the performance of Fomapan in the past, but I thought the results on this occasion were acceptable and worthy of further experimentation.
I ran out of energy walking the river trails when I had only used half the eight frames in the roll of Fomapan. I stopped at the church ruins near Jemez Springs on the way back to make a couple more shots, and finely finished the roll on a walk around my neighborhood the next day. These last shots were hand-held at 1/100 and f/16. For the river pictures I had to use a tripod and shot at 1/2 sec. and f/22.
Accurately estimating distance and proper framing are the two big challenges with all the plate cameras. I shot at small apertures to get adequate depth of focus and I had to crop all of the pictures to produce compositions which matched my intentions. So, I clearly need some more practice with these cameras, but the nice qualities of the images they produce encourages me to keep at it.
10 comments:
I've not much liked Fomapan 400 at 400. I've had better luck with it at 200. But then I lose the benefit of an ISO 400 film.
I've tried hard to economize with film but am reaching the conclusion that I just need to pony up for the good Kodak and Ilford stocks.
I shot the roll at 200 as PMK Pyro works better with an extra stop. The negatives were still a little thin, though they scanned ok. I'll likely try some in L110 next. I also have some Foma 100 which I may try first in Rodinal.
I'm happy with Kentmere and wish it were available in 120.
I love the river shots. Very pleasing tones and nice sharpness. Really enjoyed looking at these this morning over coffee. Thank you for sharing.
I was pleased to get some shots I liked from the Recomar which I haven't used in a while. I was glad I had taken along the tripod as the light was pretty dim, in part from forest fire smoke. Even in bright light the 105mm lens demands a small aperture for adequate dof in this kind of shot.
The tones and composition of the river scenes look great. Well done. As for Jemez Springs, did you go to the hot baths and sit in the natural hot water? It is soothing and makes you feel mellow and calm afterwards (or it did for me). Then you read the news and all the mellow evalporates.
I've never been much of a fan of hot springs. The Jemez area is really nice, however, and I'm looking forward to returning there again soon.
I hear Tri-x works great in these cameras. :-) I agree with you that the lower priced 400 speed films aren't always the best option. I haven't been displeased with Kentmere 400, but like you say it's not available in medium format.
I'm getting a bit pessimistic about the future of film. It may be time to start learning how to make my own glass plates.
Mike, I think the outlook for film production is good for the time being. Sure, prices will go up, but demand among new photographers and some of us oldsters looks pretty strong. The time of pessimism was the mid-period of the digital tsunami, when Kodak went bankrupt, Polaroid closed completely, everyone rushed to Best Buy to grab their DSLR with its kit zoom, and every new digital convert was chanting, "Film is dead." It did not happen; film revived. However, you may want to stock up on favored film types and store them in your freezer. B&W is good for decades.
It is hard to sort out what is currently due to Covid shortages and what to overall demand. I'm acturally in pretty good shape at present. I bought ten rolls of Fomapan 120 recently and then lucked into fourteen of frozen/expired Tri-X. For 35mm I am perfectly happy to shoot nothing but Kentmere. Kentmere's price has doubled in the last couple years, but it is still viable even in my penny-pinching budget.
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