vendredi 5 novembre 2004

Loco Fascination... For Large Format Back in November 1981 whilst freelancing as a stills photographer for Thames Television I was assigned to an episode of the Agatha Christie drama-murder series which was on location for a week at the famous Bluebell Railway in East Sussex. During the lunch breaks I was able to do a bit of my own photography... basically shooting "stock" images to add to my personal files of the world famous preserved steam railway. I'm also a scale model railway enthusiast and fiddle away with wagon kits and bits of buildings or scenery for an hour a day to keep me sane... but the real thing is something else! One lunch hour was extended because the weather was no good for filming being particularly overcast with a fine drizzle blowing in. But, the light was flat, soft and therefore ideal for product photography. And what a product... a 100 tonne oily, steel machine, belching smoke and steam... namely the Southern Railway Maunsell U-Class 2-6-0 Mogul #1618. Having covered general views of the station, train, actors, extras and stills of the action on 35mm throughout the working day I was keen to set-up my 5 x4 inch Wista field camera and look at the potential, in my own time, offered by the locomotive's very interesting valve gear. I normally carry two large-format lenses in my camera-bag... a wide-angle Nikkor 90mm f/4.5 (equivalent to 25mm lens on 35mm format) and a slightly long standard Nikkor 210mm f/5.6 (60mm on 35mm) which more or less dictated a viewpoint from on the tracks with the wide-angle... or from the platform across the tracks with the long standard lens. The track side view was absolutely out of the question whilst another locomotive was in steam and close by, so I opted for the safe viewpoint of the opposite platform and settled on the 210mm lens for the image. An initial exposure reading for the shadow detail was taken from the centre of the driving wheel - highlight readings being taken from the shiny shaft of the piston (lower right in top photo). Between clouds of steam - and there was a lot about, it being a cold, damp winter's day - two sheets of FP4 were exposed... one for "normal" development with the second sheet kept in reserve for "plus 1" development if required (and it was!) Half surprisingly, or maybe as expected, one sheet developed in Kodak HC-110 dilution B produced a thin negative so I processed the second sheet for 33% longer than the original development time. Although I still had a thinnish negative it was just about right for the dark, heavy effect I visualised. In the darkroom my main problem was extracting maximum information from the negative. Repeated test prints indicated paper grades between 3.5 and 4.5 and an exposure time around 10 seconds in order to bring out some separation between the shiny steel valve gear and the much darker, shadowed wheels and loco frame. However, that was with my original 5 x 4 inch Durst condenser enlarger and my method of working back in 1981. Roll on almost twenty years to the late 1990s and I had the newest Durst 1200 Laborator Multigraph installed in my darkroom. I won't exactly say that my past umpteen years of monochrome printing were a struggle, far from it, but to literally "swish" the Multigraph's exposure probe across the projected image on the baseboard easel and be instantly presented with a set of figures on the computer console indicating, in this negative's case, a recommended paper grade of 2.8 (slightly harder than a normal grade) and an exposure time of only 2.54 seconds with my 150mm f/5.6 El-Nikkor stopped down to f/11 filled me with disbelief. Had I pre-programmed the manufacturer's specific paper data into the Multigraph's memory incorrectly? Or had I been printing completely haphazardly for the previous... well... almost too long to think about in terms of many thousands of sheets of paper bought and used as well as bodged and binned! I exposed a 16 x 12 sheet of my favourite Agfa Multicontrast Classic at the saved computed setting, processed the print (unseen) in a Nova Quad slot processor for the recommended time... then viewed the print with incredulity. I cannot remember having achieved what I still regard as a perfect "straight" result first time - especially from such a difficult negative. There's not much more to say... the processed print was toned with Fotospeed Selenium Toner at 1+9 for 5 minutes, washed for 30 minutes and air dried overnight taped to a board so that it remained flat. I hope you will be able to feel the strength of the image on the screen even at 75 dpi... it certainly demonstrates to me the advantages of the large-format regime of 5x4 inch sheet film coupled with a programmed "closed-loop" enlarger. Of course you won't see this advantage on your computer screen... but I have five prints of this image and offer it, as a 12x9.5 image on 16x12 paper for $100 including postage to anywhere in the world. 9:26:25 PM    comment []