Howdy from the Lone Star State

[Darren H]

Hello all.

Long time fan of this site but finally got around to posting. I have been reading posts and learning here for several years and feel I "know" many of the people here even if I have just been an observer.

I do landscape work in 4x5, medium format, 35mm, and even with a DSLR. My 4x5 is an Arca-Swiss Discovery and I have been quite happy with it as a tool. I work mostly in color and prefer the wide angle landsapes of Texas and the American West.

If you are in north Texas, come check out the 150 member strong Fort Worth Camera Club, where I have been the Outings chairman for the past few years. I have several great trips on the books this year including Big Bend National Park in March, Caprock Canyons State Park in May, The Texas State Railroad in June, Arches National Park in October, and Lost Maples State Park in November. New members are always welcome, even if you just want to talk and enjoy a good cheeseburger someplace.

I also have photo blog that focuses on my 4x5.

http://thetravelingcamera.blogspot.com/

Glad to be here.

-Darren

[Kirk Gittings]

Welcome!

[Uri Kolet]

Welcome from Vancouver, Darren; glad to have you here.

[Ralph Barker]

Welcome, neighbor.

[Rob_5419]

Nice blog - Saturday....it was cold.....Monday - it was also cold.....last week...was also cold.. 6 images of snowy set-ups on the front blog page alone ;)


Welcome and keep up the hard work. It's 6 degrees here in England. Weather permitting, I might haul my large format camera downstairs to the central heated lounge. If I'm really adventurous, I might wrap up and venture outside to the patio ;)

[Darren H]

[QUOTE=Rob_5419;315700]Nice blog - Saturday....it was cold.....Monday - it was also cold.....last week...was also cold.. 6 images of snowy set-ups on the front blog page alone ;)
QUOTE]

Yes it was alot of snow and cold, but now I am back in Texas where "winter" means 40 degrees at night and 65 in the daytime. Not too bad. :-) But I still have a few cold images to post over the next week or so.

BTW- I am never sure if people pick up on this part, but the whole blog is pics of my camera set up someplace. The long story in short is I used to send emails of images to friends. One day I sent a pic with my camera in it and that evolved into me just emailing pics of my camera set up someplace. It seemed "wrong" to make a 4x5 chrome and then send everyone a 4mp snapshot form my wife's old point and shoot of the same scene. So then I sent images of my camera making those images. After doing that via email for a few years I decided to go blog with the same theme. Hence The Traveling Camera.

[Rob_5419]

Hi Darren,

you must be fed up of the lone ranger comments out there ;)

-40C is quite something. It was 2 degrees earlier on the week here. Last week in Scotland was enough to freeze me getting into the car for the first 20 minutes. If I was younger or better dressed I guess it would be less of an issue.

I did pick up the cue......I had thought about it in my own blog, but decided that after seeing 10 photographs of the same old wooden wreck in different locations would make me too depressed to continue! End of blog. I like blogs, partly because I am so unadventurous that my front door seems like a new discovery. Well, maybe not all blogs - the ones which let female teenage hormones rip all over webspace and slit wrists - mostly the travel ones.

How on earth do you stop the ground glass freezeing or cracking in -40C? How do you stop freezing or cracking in -40C? I'm not sure I'm spelling freezeing right, it's been that long since I was accustomed to the experience....

[Darren H]

Hi Darren,

you must be fed up of the lone ranger comments out there ;)

-40C is quite something. It was 2 degrees earlier on the week here. Last week in Scotland was enough to freeze me getting into the car for the first 20 minutes. If I was younger or better dressed I guess it would be less of an issue.

........

How on earth do you stop the ground glass freezeing or cracking in -40C? How do you stop freezing or cracking in -40C? I'm not sure I'm spelling freezeing right, it's been that long since I was accustomed to the experience....

Well it mostly has to do with us Yanks still using Imperial units :-)

We had alot of temps in Wisconsin that would be air temp of -10 F to -20 F. When the wind chill was factored in we had some temps goto -30 F. So not quite as cold as -40C. Although if I remember my C to F conversions -20 is the same for both.

With air temps of -10 F it is still cold but it really is the wind that makes it worse. Wind is never a friend of large format, but wind and negative temps can make me really think how much I want to make an image with the 4x5.

We had a couple of days where the wind was blowing the snow so much you really needed goggles, those were days, I went to just the DSLR. Now when it was fairly still or a light breeze, I was out on the ice regardless of the temp.

The only factor of the equipment I really worried about was the breathing on a cold lens and icing it over.

But I can think about that in the past tense as I am home in Texas and it was 50+ deg F this morning so shorts was all I needed and no fear of ice at all.

[Rob_5419]

Hey Darren - us Brits use imperial too (when it suits).

http://thetravelingcamera.blogspot.com/search?updated-min=2007-01-01T00%3A00%3A00-07%3A00&updated-max=2008-01-01T00%3A00%3A00-07%3A00&max-results=19

'On the rocks' is my favourite.


Does a UV filter do much to stop cold moisture getting onto the lens?

I breathed on my ground glass one cold summer's morning and that was enough. I had to wipe the groundglass to remove the moisture - it just wouldn't evaporate.

[Darren H]

Hey Darren
'On the rocks' is my favourite.


Does a UV filter do much to stop cold moisture getting onto the lens?

.

Rob-

Glad you liked that image "On the Rocks". I got that in color and I even did it on Acros and both turned out very nice. I had my local lab do me a nice 16x20 B+W print from the Acros negative and it looks great in b+w (and color too).

I do not use a UV filter unless the conditions (like blowing sand) require protection. I guess it is probably a good idea in the cold too, but I have one but have never actually put it on a 4x5 lens.

[John Kasaian]

Howdy, Pard!:)

[Rob_5419]

Darren,

does the Fuji Acros render snow well? Not that it really matters to me, since we never get much snow here other than on television.

Fuji Acros is such a great film. If it was available in whole plate, I'd snap it up and betray my loyalties to Ilford FP4+ in an instant. Whereas I love FP4+ in whole plate, I'm less happy about it in smaller formats. Fuji Acros is just superb in 35mm Leica format all the way up to half-plate stuff.

With the kind of material you've written in your blog with the photos, I think you should really re-work it into a magazine article and get it published...you know...push the quality of the reading material up a bit, rather than getting all of that overfiltered sunset stuff that they do.

Bump bump for Darren's blog for all the illiterati out there :cool:

[Joe Forks]

Welcome Darren,
I'm yer neighbor to the south, down in San Antone.

Forks

[Darren H]

Darren,

does the Fuji Acros render snow well? Not that it really matters to me, since we never get much snow here other than on television.

Fuji Acros is such a great film. If it was available in whole plate, I'd snap it up and betray my loyalties to Ilford FP4+ in an instant. Whereas I love FP4+ in whole plate, I'm less happy about it in smaller formats. Fuji Acros is just superb in 35mm Leica format all the way up to half-plate stuff.

With the kind of material you've written in your blog with the photos, I think you should really re-work it into a magazine article and get it published...you know...push the quality of the reading material up a bit, rather than getting all of that overfiltered sunset stuff that they do.

Bump bump for Darren's blog for all the illiterati out there :cool:


I do not know about Acros and snow. the few sheets I use of it (maybe 12 per year) are always in the desert.

Thanks for the kind comments on the blog. I do it for fun but maybe it will gather a following that could lead to an article sometime. I don't know where that road will lead and I am sure enjoying the journey.