Planet Randy

So we decided to head out to Long Beach and take a night time shot of the Queen Mary. It’s a good opportunity to try out my new “old” 1920′s 5×7 Korona large format camera with the 1951 Kodak Commercial Ektar 12 inch (~305mm) lens. Grabbed some film, tripod, shutter cable and my dark cloth – here’s a film scan of what I saw.

It turns out, the Kodak CE was too long from our vantage but luckily I brought the Schneider 240mm lens and the field of view barely covered from bow to stern.

I used Arista’s EDU Ultra 100 film (re-branded Fomapan 100, manufactured in Czech Republic) and it’s notorious for reciprocity failure at exposures greater than 1 second. Proper exposure at F16 during this time was 30 seconds so I cooked it for 10 minutes (a wild estimate).

Whenever a patrol boat or a cruise ship would cross by the shot I just covered the lens with the dark slide and compensated for more time, a benefit of long exposures. Once I got home, I souped it in Rodinal 1:50 for 8 minutes with the Jobo drum.

Next time I’m bringing the 75mm so that I can use my home made 5×7 to 4×5 reducing back.

My adventure in platinotype printing has begun! I had the opportunity this weekend to receive a one on one Platinum/Palladium training with Per Volquartz and the results can be seen below.

The scan doesn’t do this justice – the tonality is incredible. It’s amazing that a print can be made without turning down the lights, though they are contact prints. As long as there are no UV light source, prints like these can be made. The platinum and palladium salts are expensive but the developer can never be exhausted. In fact, you can use soda pop to process these prints – Coke for developer and Sprite or 7-Up for clearing baths; it’s more expensive but in a pinch a quick run to the market is all you need.

My darkroom will still be open for silver gelatin prints but will reserve this method for the wall hangers.