William Barnett-Lewis
17-Sep-2005, 23:27
Good Evening,
This could reasonably belong in either Beginners Questions or Film. I hope that film was the correct choice. I have very recently begun using a 4x5 Anniversary Speed Graphic with a nice 127mm/4,7 Ektar and a 5x8 B&L Zeiss Tessar (sweet but capable of amazing mega-flare. Then again it's at minimum 91 years old.) Having searched and read all I can, here and elsewhere, I am looking for film advice.
I prefer to use Diafine for my developer. There are several reasons for this, but the two most important for me are the fact that it produces negatives that scan well and it's lack of time sensitivity. I have a 3 1/2 year old son and being able to walk away while the sheets are in my patterson clone tank and come back to them 5 to 10 minutes later with no real problem is extreamly helpful. Given this, I need to learn which films "play well" with Diafine. My interests are a combination of people shots and landscapes, 75+% of which are handheld. Frankly I tend to use it as a press camera - which is to say as a large MF camera. I barely even notice what limited movements are available on this camera. I meter all of my 4x5 with a GE PR-1 selenium meter; it's nearly the age of the camera... ;)
I have only been using this camera for about 2 months. I started with a partial box of expired (but freezer stored) Tmax 400. It does not "play well" and I ended up developing most of it in D-76. Then I got some FP4+ which has played very nicely. I currently have coming to me a box of Arista.EDU Ultra (rebadged Fomapan 100, IIUC), a box of Tri-X, and, wholey unrelated to this, Velvia 50...
I believe that these two B&W films should be fine, but I am interested in knowing what other films that the you good people would recomend, given the above. I also will admit to giving priority to cheap right now; both from a budget standpoint and from the fact that as a beginner I trash far too many sheets for sanity. (The Velvia mentioned above is going into the freezer for quite awhile I think. I just wanted to get some before the 50 disappears completely.)
Thank you in advance,
William
This is my first post here, so hopefully it's not too out of line.
This could reasonably belong in either Beginners Questions or Film. I hope that film was the correct choice. I have very recently begun using a 4x5 Anniversary Speed Graphic with a nice 127mm/4,7 Ektar and a 5x8 B&L Zeiss Tessar (sweet but capable of amazing mega-flare. Then again it's at minimum 91 years old.) Having searched and read all I can, here and elsewhere, I am looking for film advice.
I prefer to use Diafine for my developer. There are several reasons for this, but the two most important for me are the fact that it produces negatives that scan well and it's lack of time sensitivity. I have a 3 1/2 year old son and being able to walk away while the sheets are in my patterson clone tank and come back to them 5 to 10 minutes later with no real problem is extreamly helpful. Given this, I need to learn which films "play well" with Diafine. My interests are a combination of people shots and landscapes, 75+% of which are handheld. Frankly I tend to use it as a press camera - which is to say as a large MF camera. I barely even notice what limited movements are available on this camera. I meter all of my 4x5 with a GE PR-1 selenium meter; it's nearly the age of the camera... ;)
I have only been using this camera for about 2 months. I started with a partial box of expired (but freezer stored) Tmax 400. It does not "play well" and I ended up developing most of it in D-76. Then I got some FP4+ which has played very nicely. I currently have coming to me a box of Arista.EDU Ultra (rebadged Fomapan 100, IIUC), a box of Tri-X, and, wholey unrelated to this, Velvia 50...
I believe that these two B&W films should be fine, but I am interested in knowing what other films that the you good people would recomend, given the above. I also will admit to giving priority to cheap right now; both from a budget standpoint and from the fact that as a beginner I trash far too many sheets for sanity. (The Velvia mentioned above is going into the freezer for quite awhile I think. I just wanted to get some before the 50 disappears completely.)
Thank you in advance,
William
This is my first post here, so hopefully it's not too out of line.