Rob MacKillop
Edinburgh Correspondent
These are from my first full roll with the Pentax 6x7 medium-format camera, which is a HUGE tank of a camera. Weighs a ton. The lens is the 105mm 2.4, which I had read a lot about. I used Ilford 400 at box speed.
Well, it was a game of two halves, as they say...
The first half is from my wanders around the museum of modern art in Edinburgh, and I'm really knocked out at my first shot, a silver birch:
I put all the shots through Lightroom, but did nothing to this one. There was a beautiful soft evening light on the bark, which I couldn't resist. As the camera is new to me, I wanted to test its exposure calculation, so made sure with every shot that the needle was bang in the middle of the scale. I think it got it perfect here.
Another from the same area:
Again, the soft light drew me in as it landed on that figure-of-eight shaped thing - sorry I don't know the architectural term for it. Not bad.
From just over that wall and to the left:
There is lots of detail for me to bring out in the branches, but every time I did so it started looking like a digital image, so I left it as is.
So far I was delighted with the camera and lens, and also the film.
Then the second half arrived, in the vicinity of North Berwick beach. I had made no changes to the camera or lens, but things came out rather more badly.
The grain has increased beyond where I am happy with for these images, and there is a light double line going completely across the frame, about a fifth of the way down from the top, which is much more noticeable in the full-size version. I developed the film myself, so there may be an issue there. Everything went as planned, and I gave the film 5 hours' drying time. Any suggestions? Maybe the exposure on the camera could not take the light of the beach. Although a cold and windy day, there was a lot of sunlight. I was shooting at .250 speed with 400 ASA film.
But overall I'm delighted with some of the shots, especially the birch tree, and the lens does seem all it's cracked out to be.
Well, it was a game of two halves, as they say...
The first half is from my wanders around the museum of modern art in Edinburgh, and I'm really knocked out at my first shot, a silver birch:
I put all the shots through Lightroom, but did nothing to this one. There was a beautiful soft evening light on the bark, which I couldn't resist. As the camera is new to me, I wanted to test its exposure calculation, so made sure with every shot that the needle was bang in the middle of the scale. I think it got it perfect here.
Another from the same area:
Again, the soft light drew me in as it landed on that figure-of-eight shaped thing - sorry I don't know the architectural term for it. Not bad.
From just over that wall and to the left:
There is lots of detail for me to bring out in the branches, but every time I did so it started looking like a digital image, so I left it as is.
So far I was delighted with the camera and lens, and also the film.
Then the second half arrived, in the vicinity of North Berwick beach. I had made no changes to the camera or lens, but things came out rather more badly.
The grain has increased beyond where I am happy with for these images, and there is a light double line going completely across the frame, about a fifth of the way down from the top, which is much more noticeable in the full-size version. I developed the film myself, so there may be an issue there. Everything went as planned, and I gave the film 5 hours' drying time. Any suggestions? Maybe the exposure on the camera could not take the light of the beach. Although a cold and windy day, there was a lot of sunlight. I was shooting at .250 speed with 400 ASA film.
But overall I'm delighted with some of the shots, especially the birch tree, and the lens does seem all it's cracked out to be.
