Back to Pinhole

 I found a shutter on ebay to replace the broken one on my pinhole camera.  It is a Vario like the old one and it works perfectly.  To celebrate I loaded a roll of Arista 100 and went to Tingley Beach to give the camera a trial run.

My sunlit exposures were in the four to seven second range, which seemed about right judging by the negative density.  Arista may be Fomapan by a different name and it requires rather extreme compensation for low light work because of reciprocity failure. Not a problem on this occasion however given the Spring-like weather we have been enjoying.

Shooting the pinhole was a good opportunity to refresh my ability to foresee what would actually end up on the film.  The endless depth of focus of the pinhole means focus is not an issue, but there is some guesswork in framing the subject given the ultra-wide view and the lack of a viewfinder with corresponding coverage.

Ready for the New Year

Both Arista and Fomapan yield pretty nice images, and the good contrast of the numerals on the backing paper is superior to about any other available 120 film.  The reciprocity failure issue needs careful attention, but there is a good chart available online to assist with that.

Update:

Some of the pictures from my second roll through the rebuilt camera had poor contrast and flare stripes right through the center.  It seemed likely that the cause was reflections off the interior of the threaded lens mount.  I've covered that surface with some black paint, so we'll see how that looks in the next roll.

Theory vs Practice

I had a fresh roll of Arista Edu 100, so I decided to shoot it in my Vivitar Ultra Wide & Slim and process it semi-stand in RO9 (Rodinal) at 1:100 for an hour.  I thought that should give me good control of contrast and tonality.  Wrong.  The pictures were excessively contrasty and the tendency of the vuws to vignette was emphasized.  Here are the best ones from the roll.

The rest had mostly blown out highlights.  I may have not gotten a fair test for my idea behind semi-stand processing.  I'm down to the dregs on my old bottle of RO9 (Rodinal), so there's no telling if the results would have been better with fresh developer.  

Close to Home

 

Selective Focus

I decided recently that I have not given adequate attention to the possibilities offered by selective focus.  The main components of that technique to restrict depth of focus are lens focal length and aperture.  With that in mind I mounted the  Nikkor-P Auto f:2.5/105mm on my Nikon F loaded with a roll of Arista Ultra Edu 100.  I shot most of the roll at 1/1000 which allowed a wide aperture even in the bright New Mexico sunlight.

I cannot recall ever feeling the need to use very high shutter speeds for the purpose of stopping motion blur.  What this experience has shown me, however, is that 1/1000 or higher along with the associated wide apertures can offer much better control over the separation of foreground and background and better emphasis of the primary compositional interest. Of course it is also important to pay attention to the capacity of the lens being used to perform at wide apertures.

Dusting Off the Retina 1a

 It has been four years since I last shot my Retina 1a.  Perhaps partly because of that neglect I had difficulties with framing, focus and exposure.  In spite of my inept performance the Xenar lens brought home a few nice images.

The focus was a little stiff, so I'll attend to that and try to get out with the Retina 1a again before another four years goes by.

Third Thursday

The Albuquerque Museum puts on an evening event on the third Thursday of each month.  The theme for September was Lowriders.  Five convertibles were parked on the lawn in front of the museum.  Inside were a variety of family activities and a bar.  A musical program matching the theme was presented in the outside theater.

I shot the cars with my Olympus XA loaded with some Arista Edu Ultra 100. I'm not sure where I got the film, but I was pleased with the way it looked after semi-stand processing in HC-110 at 1:160 dilution.

black and white

I'm liking my initial results from Arista.Edu Ultra 100, though I think can do better with some adjustments in exposure and processing.

more semi-stand

I shot a roll of Arista Edu 100 in my Contessa 35 and decided to try processing it with the same semi-stand recipe I had used with the Arista Edu Ultra 400.  The search results I got on my prospects for success in this were sparse and often contradictory.  One fellow insisted that it was impossible to get good results with hc-110 and Arista films.  That was clearly not the case given my experience, so I forged ahead.