Eastern Sierras Weekend

[Too Many Cameras]

Back in September I had a chance to take in the Eastern Sierras around Mono Lake with my Anniversary Graphic and Dallmeyer Pentax 8" f/2.9. The curtain might as well be a screen door in places, so I cloned out a lot of light leak pinholes, but here are some of the shots that I liked and pertinent details.


Kodak Ektar, 1/400, f/8.
The Pentac stops down to f/11 only. From f/8 to f/11, it's at it's most sharp.


New 55 Atomic-X, 1/100, f/4, Rodinal 1+100 stand developed for 70 minutes
At f/4, the unpalatable softness of f/2.9 starts to ease, but there's no visible change to the field depth, especially up close. As you can see, the trooper's face is in focus but his wrist watch is not. So anyone with a shallow-DoF fetish, this lens delivers even better than the Aero-Ektar.


Kodak Ektar, 1/1,000, f/2.9
I hope you didn't expect to make it through this post without a wide-open shot. The house we rented had this old (65 or 67, I think?) Mustang convertible in the driveway. So, yes, of course I was going to take a photo of it. I like the Petzval-type coma swirl around the periphery. It's not overbearing, and, combined with the paper-thin DoF, lends a nice and semi-surreal feel to the image.

If you're interested, and will excuse the diversion away from LF, here's the digital shot I took that night from a similar standpoint:

Pentax K-1, Pentax 31mm FA Limited. For lighting I used a Pentax 540 FGZII at four locations evenly on a 180-degree arc around the car (from outside the lens AoV) during a 30-second exposure and then took a separate shot with the camera's astrotracking function for the Milky Way. This is one of only a dozen or so photos I've ever taken that I could never replicate on film through the use of careful exposure, filtering, etc.

To be continued.

[Too Many Cameras]

Ilford HP5+, 1/1,000, f/8, also stand developed.
Honestly, my favorite photo of the trip (on film.)


Kodak Ektar, 1/200, f/11
I don't do many diptych or triptych shots. Using a 35mm half-frame Konica recently has led me to try it in other formats. An otherwise ho-hum photo, but the difficulty of getting the two images to align well, even with all the planes on level, surprised me.


Kodak Ektar, 1/200, f/8
So there I was at Olmsted Point with my head under the dark cloth focusing on Half Dome when I heard someone off to my side say "I bet that guy knows where the good photo is!" Two people ran around behind me and I heard one sit on the wall beside me. The other says "Oh yeah, I told you he'd know where the good photo was." Anyway, Ektar's capacity as a landscape film always impresses me. The level of shadow detail and detail recovery are superb. Now I just need a lens that's suitably sharp to make the most of Ektar's image quality capacity.

For metering, I just used my best guess. I don't usually carry a meter with me when I use all-mechanical cameras. So that should explain why the Ektar has inconsistent color casts.

Anyway, thanks for paging through these photos. I figured that since I've never actually posted LF photos here that I should share some shots when I have ones worth showing off, or using as learning tools.

[chassis]

Great images, thanks for sharing!

[scheinfluger_77]

TMC, great photos thanks for sharing. As for the Mustang 641/2 to 66.