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One of the most common questions from fellow photographers is about the types of color films I use and why I use them. I figured this would be a good subject to write about to provide some insight on film types. The question frequently comes from someone who may have just gotten their first film camera and wants to know what kind of film to use for landscapes, as well as those who are committed to one film type but curious about trying something new…
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Whether you’re just starting out with large format photography or looking for the next lens to expand your shooting style, choosing the proper focal length for the scene makes a big difference. What I’ve noticed with 4x5 is that unlike smaller formats, it’s a lot harder to pick out what focal length a photographer used when taking an image. When viewing an image shot on a DSLR of a flower bush pressed close to the lens and a grand mountain scene in the background, it’s often easy to tell that an extreme wide-angle lens was used. This becomes a little more difficult to pick out when a wide angle lens is 75mm compared to 24mm and distortion almost unnoticeable. This has led to a lot of people asking me “what focal length did you use for this image?”…
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Over the past few months, I’ve had the honor of being a guest on two fantastic podcasts and it’s time to share them here for your listening pleasure. First, I was a guest on Adventures in Creativity hosted by David Szweduik, and second I was on Matt Payne’s podcast F-Stop Collaborate and Listen. Both of these podcasts have excellent hosts…
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This is just going to be a quick one! As many of you may know, new CT scanners are being installed in airports around the world at a rapid pace. These new scanners are being used to inspect carry on baggage and Kodak has reported that only one pass through the scanner will destroy your film. For decades it has been the recommendation to simply let your film go through the carry on X rays, but that is no longer the case….
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“Sunflower Sunset” - Backlit scenes are no trouble with color negative film. A filter was left off for this image to avoid flare troubles with the sun. The foreground (also the important part) was average metered and the sky ignored when taking the meter reading. Ektar 100 4x5, 210mm lens, 2 seconds at f45, no filters.
Color negative film has increasingly become a larger part of my workflow over the last several years and with good reason: the flexibility of the stuff is just phenomenal. It can be used to capture all the delicate subtleties of a low contrast scene as well as landscape scenes with intense dynamic range. If you don’t know what you will be getting into when you head out for a shoot it’s an excellent choice because it can handle anything you throw at it, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be used for a specific purpose or aesthetic either. Color negatives are the film type that I get the most questions about, mostly because people see such a wide variety of looks coming out of the same film types…
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This one is for you DSLR scanning folks, or those who want more control out of your film scanner. It’s been just about three years now that I’ve been using a drum scanner which has drastically changed my scanning process with color negative film. While the software for this scanner is incredibly powerful, it falls apart when it comes to inverting color negatives. This means that I had to develop a method to do this on my own that can work for every image I throw at it. While I love sharing my findings with the film community, I wasn’t sure that a technique I developed for drum scanning would be helpful to the average shooter. It turns out that this manual inversion can work no matter what you use to scan your film with…
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“Elevator Sunrise” - Colorado, January 2019
If you’ve been following me on Instagram lately, you’ve probably seen a new and different type of work coming from me in the recent months. While this series of images is still growing rapidly, I feel that now is a good time to share the beginnings and what I’ve created so far. Many of you know that I’ve photographed the plains of Colorado for, well, about as long as I’ve been photographing anything. It’s always been one of my favorite areas…
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“Twilight Spire” - Velvia 50 4x5, 135mm lens - 3 minutes at f22, no filters
If you’ve browsed through my images, chances are you’ve noticed that I’m a big fan of twilight and early morning light; the soft warm glow on the landscape is just sublime. Shooting in twilight comes with its own set of challenges, but those are greatly increased when trying to use a large format view camera. I’m going to share some tips that can help you out when the light is fading fast, or when you arrived well before sunrise and don’t want to miss the morning glow because you can’t see anything…
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The new Intrepid MK3 4x5, looking good in red in the wild.
After a year of backpacking with the intrepid 4x5 camera, I realized I was really falling in love with the idea of just using a lightweight wooden box to create images. I used the “older” mk2 version last summer during several trips…
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"Corn Lilies in the Rain" - A fresh image from the Tango drum scanner
Many of you who follow me on social media have heard that I acquired a drum scanner about a year ago. I spent much of the last year learning how to properly wet mount film and operate this beast of a machine. Now after scanning about a hundred sheets I now have some results to share...
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It’s time for me to answer another set of frequently asked questions, one that I get almost weekly so I need to make a blog post about it. Do you use GND filters, how do you choose the right filter, which ones should I buy, how do you position them, and how do you meter for them? Well the answer to the first question is a big definite yes, I use GND filters for the majority of my images and I will explain the rest throughout this post in great detail...
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It's time for a long overdue post. Looking back through my archives, I realized that I've covered topics like film selections and scanning film but to date I've skipped one really important part: metering and exposing color film. This is something I get quite a few questions about so bear with me while I try to be very thorough and cover topics from different lighting conditions and how I would meter with the various film types, both color negatives and slides...
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"White Sands and Organ Mountains" - Prints available.
Right at the beginning of this year, I decided to mix up my photography with the addition of a new and rather unusual type of camera. This decision took me many months to make as I usually try to avoid the desire for new equipment and get a great deal of pleasure out the fact that I have been using the same camera and lenses for many years...
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My camera at a remote backcountry lake in the Never Summer Wilderness.
The backcountry is where it's at for landscapes! The feeling of waking up in a remote location that only a few people see in a year and capturing a sunrise that no one else witnessed is amazing. Many times when I get to my destination there isn't another person to be seen anywhere! It really lets us connect with our surroundings and create better landscape images. It has changed the way I photograph forever. After being in such remote locations and having a whole mountain valley to yourself, it's really hard to imagine...
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