Pig Sty Avenue

I put the camera onto manual focus, and aperture priority. No filters, so no need to tweak the ASA or EC. And away I went to the Necropolis on a sunny day. This one was my first proper find for the photography students' ABC - finding an image which looked like a letter of the alphabet. It's more difficult than it sounds, and actually I don't know if this qualifies, because actual letters (for example, the "P" indicating a car park) can't be used, you have to find something which accidentally looks like "P".  And is this "H" intentional? The first idea was set the camera to fully manual, metering with Sunny 16, but that was too much; I might try that in future... With Aperture priority, I would use only the aperture to get the exposure right, checking on the shutter speed in the viewfinder. Which sounds obvious, but I realised once I got started that hitherto I've been using the F4, frankly, like a point-and-shoot, not really thinking ab...

 I thought this would be interesting: the notice in the shop window is untrue, it's not open, but that's not really clear from the photograph. Anyway, there's the plate glass, the miscellaneous gear in the 'shop"; then there's the reflections: me, the tenements behind me. Overall, it's a messy photo. It is slightly sharper than the two I looked at this morning, but it would never make a decen't print, even setting aside compositional shortcomings. Next step: go out again tomorrow, take the time and do everything manual so that I can be sure what I'm focusing on. Very straightforward subjects. And no filters. Breathe... 

"Fullsizedrender.jpg" is the name given to this photo by the MacBook or perhaps by PhotoRaw. It's 900-something KB. The midtones are fine. But it's about as sharp as a blancmange. Something clearly wrong. I'ld love to be out taking photies, but obviously not if this happens to them. It could be when scanning from negs to the iPhone? Or this small copy has been created by PhotoRaw? And, honestly, post processing, even just opening up a file, is not my favourite thing.  The good news is that, assuming the fault here is scanning or in post, then I'm exceedingly happy with the developing in Beutler A+B yesterday: I want to be able to go out in the morning with the pooch, snap a roll of film, dev it as soon as I get back, scan and then post a couple of frames on Flickr before tea... But I'm falling at the final fence, here.  Here's another very low res one, (also saved under the fullsizerender.jpg name). The composition makes it inappropriate for printing, ...

  That swan was most definitely not sharp enough , and I've found out why: hands up. all my fault, but valuable lessons have been learned.  I had an R(25A) filter on the camera by default because I love what it does to the sky. So a couple of rolls of film were underexposed. I jumped to the problem being EC and spent some useful time tweaking the dial on the top right hand side of the F4, so that's a new skill. But a bit more YouTube research suggested shifting the ISO would be better. Well, using older, cheaper film cameras, lacking in bells and whistles, I've become accustomed to using the ISO on the box, and when I got the F4 I was delighted with DX making the process automatic.  This week I realised that my camera, just like a digital one, can get ISO adjusted frame-by-frame if wanted. Duh! And so now, waiting for the rain to abate so that I can get out, I've got a roll of Kentmere 400 in the camera, and I've set the ISO to 50. AND I've learned that the ISO...

  Attempted to make a small batch of PaRodinal on Friday (today's Sunday). As can be seen, it has still to settle: at the bottom a cloudy white layer, (likely from the paracetemol's chalky excipient) topped off by the teak-coloured actual rodinal (one assumes) .  It'll likely be a few days at least before I can use it, and, having a couple of weeks off before returning to the University to teach my final term and wanting to shoot a couple of rolls meanwhile, I was flicking through Anchell (1994) I re-encountered Beutler's A+B (p119). S sulphite and a wee bit of Metol in solution A, S carbonate alone in solution B. So I washed out two heavy 70cl spirit bottles (one had contained brandy, the other rum) I'd been keeping for a job like this, and made up enough Beutler A+B to do 20 rolls of 35mm.  I was encouraged to do this after looking through some old photos on Flickr: taken with an Agfa Isolette with a Solinar lens on HP5 and developed in Beutler. This one, for exam...