Yesterday was my sons 16 th Birthday , we invented a trip to the dentist and let him surf before school . The light was dull so I pushed the 400 HP5 to ISO at 800 .By the time I had paddled across to the reef the sun had broken trough . Perhaps I could have shot at ISO 400 , explanation to follow .
If i had paddled out with my Sony Digital I would have come away with 500 sharp frames to shuffle through rather than 28 of mixed quality , The light was quite beautiful , that can be lost with Hp5 at 800 , Perhaps I should have gone for Portra 400 , but then I would have to wait 10 days and more importantly pay to see the images rather than develop and scan them at home for peanuts .
Lessons learned today
Get closer to the subject , These all looked close enough at the time but they were actually wider than I thought. I dont seem to suffer the same distance issues when i shoot digital, more importantly i'm starting to think that the nikonos performs far better at shorter ranges than it does wide and long , I was shooting F 16 - 22 , 10 foot or so to infinity in the zone focus but looking at the good and bad images its evident that the camera wants to focus closer despite what the focus zone is telling me on the dials . Ive yet to take truly bad portrait with the Nikonos V , it is a dive camera and when you think of that , how often do images focus on something 150 feet away ?
Its time to stick to the plan and stop pushing the film unless it's completely necessary, shoot at 400 ISO, open up the lens and have faith in the zone focus area and take the risk . ,
First shot on the pier before jumping in , Chris Levi . This is what I mean about the zone focus at close range being reliable.
Chis looking for his nuts which have possibly frozen off
Backlit , I had to have a try , it looked good to my eye , so glad I did , very little tweaking here , this is pretty much true to the negative . Love it when it works !
Yea I'll take that one, no shame in grain
Small wave big grain , 6 x 7 crop , I want a proper medium format camera so much it hurts
Evidence that the closer you get the sharper things get on the Nikonos
Matt was killing it this morning , not that I really made the most of it , sorry Matt
Notice the crease in the film from loading onto the patterson system 4 , bugger !
HP5 Pushed showing its colours
Time to duck
Birthday Boy cutting back
My Son and my Dogs hair
A wave
Blurred wave but something I like and some fluff on the neg
A wave!
Scruffy cut back son , note the focus quality in the foreground and more dog hair
Mat killing it and a Dog hair killing it and too wide
Oli sliding out at the end of a nice wave , once again that closer range focus showing itself
I saw the composition so I spent £0.13 p on it ( Plus chemicals )
I absolutely must start waxing the glass lens , total fuck up
Thats it , what a lovely swim ,I paddled out on my board after and had a few silky waves myself . This has photo of Matt has become my favourite. The chemicals are in the trays , the negatives in the enlarger , fingers crossed it pops out of the paper !! ??