Grad ND, Contrast and Color FIlter Setup with Center Filter

[Drew Wiley]

Alan, like I suggested, simply experiment with the CF for color film applications at least, without adding an accessory ND grad system, and then keep it in your field kit if necessary. And then experiment with shooting black and white images without the CF, giving them a bit extra exposure so that there is still content in the corners you can print. Yes, there will be quite a bit more falloff with a 75mm lens, so you will need to get accustomed to a darkened corner look in open skies etc, and how to accommodate that creatively. These are all individual tools which can be used selectively as needed.

[Alan Klein]

What's interesting is the vignetting in Clyde Butcher's photos. I don't know if they were added when printing or because he didn't use a CF? Whatever, it doesn;t hurt his sales.
https://clydebutcher.com/pc/photogra...da-collection/

[6x6TLL]

As I recall from a recent exhibition at The Getty, Sally Mann also had vignetting in quite a lot of her shots. She explained that she had gear that had been given or gifted to her, or bought cheaply just to have something to work with, and she invited "happy accidents" both in front of and behind the lens.

The vignetting aspect didn't seem to interfere with her success, and in many cases helps to draw the eye into the photograph. In others I do agree that it can be distracting and not what you want.

[Corran]

Clyde uses ultrawide lenses a lot. I mean really wide...90mm is practically a telephoto for him, unless you are talking about on 8x10.

[Drew Wiley]

Clyde seems to like to make very big prints intended to be viewed as if you were standing within the scene, rather than looking at it like a framed picture on the wall. The combination of big formats and achieving great depth of field in swamp etc scenes almost mandates very wide focal lengths anyway. It's an interesting strategy. Sally Mann in one of those persons who likes to do all kinds of artsy deliberately flawed things. She also sometimes used lenses with fungus growing between the elements. Does that mean you or I should? One person's ticket to success soon becomes just another cliche commodity. Falloff or the lack thereof is just another compositional tool, a choice. There's no sense making a religion out of it, or becoming a mimic of somebody else just because they're well-known. One needs to find their own shoe size.

[Bob Salomon]

Clyde seems to like to make very big prints intended to be viewed as if you were standing within the scene, rather than looking at it like a framed picture on the wall. The combination of big formats and achieving great depth of field in swamp etc scenes almost mandates very wide focal lengths anyway. It's an interesting strategy. Sally Mann in one of those persons who likes to do all kinds of artsy deliberately flawed things. She also sometimes used lenses with fungus growing between the elements. Does that mean you or I should? One person's ticket to success soon becomes just another cliche commodity. Falloff or the lack thereof is just another compositional tool, a choice. There's no sense making a religion out of it, or becoming a mimic of somebody else just because they're well-known. One needs to find their own shoe size.

I visited him at his studio in the Everglades a couple of times. You could look out his window and see alligators walking or sunning behind his house and when leaving he warned about moccasins possibly on the front steps!

Quite a place!

[Drew Wiley]

I sometimes had rattlers right on the front doormat. Not here, but up in the hills. Then there was an incident at an Arizona voting station a few days ago where they had to temporarily hold the voting line back in order to remove a rattler. At least they rattle; water moccasins don't.

[Corran]

A friend of mine built one of Clyde's cameras. I could tell you a lot more about how some of his images are made and why they are like they are but that's not the point of the thread. Anyway, the fall-off from a 110-120 degree ultrawide lens like the 47mm XL on 4x5 is a much different situation than a 90mm on 4x5, and as I've shown above not even much of a concern for transparency material, Drew's ridiculous statements not withstanding.

As one guy near here likes to say, just "Shoot some Film, Dangit!"

[Drew Wiley]

You've obviously never been involved in serious repro work, Corran. I had glossy magazine publishers who refused to accept anything Velvia, period. And they had real scanners, not toy ones, and entire art departments. I've shot and printed various flavors of Velvia in every format up to 8x10. I recently printed a big Fuji Supergloss from a very nice interneg made from a master interpositive made from a triple-masked 8x10 Velvia original. Would you even know how to begin doing that? Every single step requires exact control. If the first step is off, like an uneven exposure to begin with, every other step just makes it worse. Do what you like, and if you enjoy it and get results acceptable to you, I certainly can't criticize that. But at the same time, you give out some blatantly ignorant advice. If you can afford to waste film with shoot from the hip amateurish methodology, that's your choice.

[Corran]

Drew, you really need a reality check. Absolutely none of that blather matters one iota to anyone here. In case you've missed it or forgotten, the commercial market has moved on from film, so "serious repro" work on film is dead and buried. Alan is not asking about repro work, nor is he asking about magazine images, or internegatives, or anything of the sort.

The problem with your "advice" is that it's irrelevant, even if you are correct for that use-case. There are perhaps a handful of people still printing positive images in the darkroom in some way, while the vast majority are scanning+digital printing, and so again, your information is irrelevant. You really do new practitioners a disservice by implying they are doing something wrong or half-assed because they don't follow some strict process standards from a dead and gone industry. Please stop and consider where the vast, vast majority of LF users come from TODAY, and not decades ago.