Post Your First Successful LF Picture

**ic-racer** · 20-Dec-2022, 09:41

This is from around 2007. I had just restored this Century. This image came about half way through the first box of film.
Originally it was contact printed, but later I enlarged it to 16x20in. The bigger sizes in fiber base are a little hard to handle, so this was enlarged onto Ilford RC.
The first head on my enlarger had a horrible hot spot in the middle, so a lot of work was needed to make this image.

I think I could do better printing it with my current head if I printed it today. I see areas I'd burn more since I would not have to be fighting the uneven light source.

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**JMO** · 20-Dec-2022, 10:22

I think for me this is the first LF image I consider to have been successful. It is of a former fire house (I think) on Racine Street and 14th in Racine, Wisconsin. It was at 7:30am on a sunny Sunday morning in August 2014, and I was out with my new (to me) Linhof Master Technika using Acros and Velvia 50 films and a 90mm Super Angulon lens with no filter for the Acros and a CPOL for the Velvia. At the time I barely knew how to set-up and use the LMT, had no way to develop any films, nor any darkroom to make any prints. I loaded and unloaded my film holders in a Harrison tent, and sent the films off to labs for development. It was later that fall of 2014 that my older brother came out from New England to SE Wisconsin to help me build a darkroom in my basement (photos of that are in the "Show Us Your Darkroom" thread on this Forum). When I had a darkroom I was able to make a reasonably successful B&W print of this image, though compared to my subsequent B&W work my film hygiene in those early days was poor and the Acros sheet for this image has a fair number of tiny specs in the sky and elsewhere.