Ditching the 'pod.

On the basis that readers who still frequent this blog do so because they like photography and not epidemiology, I'm not going to harp on about the corona-virus. We know what we're up against and it's hard to escape it. However, escape it we must, even if it's only for a little while so, hopefully, you'll be glad to know that The Online Darkroom will be a virus-free zone. With the UK now in lock-down, I'll have more time to post and you'll hopefully have more time to read my scribblings. It might prove difficult getting out and about to photograph stuff but I have a serviceable scanner now and there's always the negative files to draw on.

Ditching the tripod is the title of this post and I wanted to talk a little about this subject. Up here in Scotland, you need a fast film to have any chance of extensive shooting handheld. Throughout winter, the brightest part of the day is just about manageable with a 100 ISO film but light quickly drops off either side of that. A 400 ISO film is pretty good but if you're thinking of using telephoto lenses, which I use a lot, you need every shutter speed you can get.

Spring improves things a bit but it's never going to be Miami here. That's why I settled on Delta 400 rated at an exposure index of 800 and developed in Microphen stock for 8:30 minutes. I've exposed around four or five films like that and it seems to be working out pretty well. First of all, there's enough shadow detail for my needs.

Delta 400 maybe isn't quite as good as HP5 at 800 ISO in that regard but I can't say there's been a shot where I've cursed the lack of info in the dark zones. Secondly, the grain is reasonably good. Without printing from the negs, it's hard to make a proper assessment but scanning, which tends to emphasise grain if anything, hasn't scared me out of my wits yet.

It came close with the first couple of scans but that was because I had the scanner software on some weird setting. Once I'd figured that out I started getting better results but scanning remains, in my opinion, the best way to make 35mm negs look their worst. Overall, I'd say the grain is better than I'd get from HP5 but not as good as Tmax 400.

Sharpness is fairly good but, again, only making some prints would be able to confirm that. I've been using two Nikkor zooms with the F90X and I think it's fair to say that they're not nearly as good as Zeiss primes on the Contax, as if that's any kind of revelation. So sharpness has to be viewed in that context, too. I've no complaints at all about Microphen.

And so on to the tripod, or rather the lack thereof. Long time readers might know I'm not a fan. Tripods don't suit the way I shoot. Ha! That last sentence was a good one - must remember it. I'm aware that the majority opinion might be agin me but they tend to make me more rigid in the way I see things. That was quite a good sentence as well if you stop to think about it. They root me to a particular spot and make it harder, or at least less convenient, to take photographs from higher up and lower down.

I can also straddle a ditch or stand on a fence when I'm hand-holding. I can lie on my stomach but, right now, that doesn't get me as close to the ground as you might imagine - or I'd like. I still carry a tripod in the car and I'll use it when I have to but not when I'm out for a walk in the countryside.

Speaking of which, that's what I was doing when I took the pics in this post. They're from a spot in the countryside just a mile or so from our home in St Andrews. It was a misty day so I nipped up the road, parked the car and had a 40 minute walk past some fields.I had the F90X with the 28-105mm Nikkor on it. The matrix metering is so good that I can't remember having to intervene to correct any exposures, helped by the low contrast lighting.

I shot off about half a film but some are similar to those shown here and one or two others might feature in another post. How would you go about processing photographs taken in the mist? You could go down the literal interpretation route and have everything quite light and ethereal. There's certainly a good case for that. With these pics, I preferred a somewhat stronger approach, giving the foregrounds a bit of meatiness. I think it helps with the sense of depth.

I'd love to be able to say that I'd nailed it with Delta 400/Microphen but I won't know for sure until I manage to do some prints. At this stage, I'd say the results were quite good but possibly not all I'd hoped for. A little finer grain and more sharpness would be better. Maybe, the Contax/Zeiss combination will deliver on one of those. Could Tmax 400 uprated a stop in D76 be the answer to the other question? Or maybe the prints from the Delta films will look just fine. Time will tell.

I'd say the 800 ISO approach, either with Delta 400 or Tmax 400, is here to stay regardless, at least for much of the year. The tripod will definitely be in danger of rusting away, though, and that's really bad news as it's aluminium...