Canadian Prairies Roadtrip!, A Visual Report! Options

[Marc Koegel]

Hello everyone!

To start things of in this forum, I thought I post some images I took during a recent road trip to the Canadian Prairies. I drove over 3000 kilometers in the span of only 5 days, most of these images were shot in Saskatchewan (Saskatoon and surrounding area).

I brought along my Canon 5D Mark II and Nikon D3, as well as my trusted Toyo 4x5 Viewcamera. Yes, I am still shooting film, very large negatives to be exact.

As you can see in some of the 'action' shots, I am often shooting 2 cameras at the same time. This gives me the best of both worlds. Knowing that film still handles long exposures better than even the highest end digital camera, I often set my Toyo up to expose for an hour or more. That way, I can just let the camera sit there and do its thing, while I can devote my undivided attention to my digital camera. Exposures on digital are usually limited to 15 minutes, even though I have taken it as long as an hour as well.

Let's take a look at some of my results:



This was a Ghost Town I couldn't resist visiting. Very spooky place, you could actually enter each building and there was still tons of stuff on the shelves....



The above image is an HDR shot I took inside the building you see above. Like I said, pretty interesting place. It turns out that this Ghost Town has been spared by most treasure hunters and vandals, it was pretty hard to find and I learned that this was kept like this for the purpose of conservation.

Here are some of my other shots:















On my way back to Vancouver, I came across this incredible tree in one of the fields I was passing by. Only half of it is blooming? Had to take a quick snap of this:



Most exposure for these images were over 15 minutes in length. It is necessary to go this long to pick up movement in the often very slow moving clouds. The long exposures also have the great side-effect of removing any moving subject from the scene (like tourists walking around).

Images were downloaded or, in the case of film, scanned into the computer. I used Photoshop CS4 to edit and work on each image. For this series, I used a plug-in called SilverFX made by NIK Multimedia. This little program helps you create very quick but high quality black and white conversions. For the film shots, I can still use this program, eventhough I do not have to convert to black and white. I use SilverFX to accentuate the grain. For these images, I decided to go for elevated grain structure, and high contrast.

I want to post some images of my 'working setups in the field, but will have to do this in a separate post.

Let me know what you think about these images - all feedback is encouraged and appreciated.

It was definitely a strange subject to choose for the long exposure technique, but I think it worked. I like the dark character and moody looks of the images....

See you next time...

Marc

[IanB]

You've really caught that high lonesome feeling of the prairies, isolated structures and flat land for miles around. The long exposures work really well to the feel as do the high contrast and grain levels. It looks like the harvest was in already. Too bad. One of the most striking prairie images is of enormous fields of gold ripe wheat blowing in the late afternoon sun. The each stalk has a surface that reflects light more than another so, when they wave, It really looks like a golden ocean. If you catch that shot against a blue sky it makes a great image.

Great work

[IanB]

Marc, any thoughts on a unified theory of reciprocity failure. I've been trying some film based long exposures for the September photo contest. I reached into my grab bag of inherited film and came up with some 4 x 5 Tmax 400. The Kodak recommendations is +1/3rd stop at 10 s and +1 1/2 stops at 100s. I ended up setting my shot to expose for 5 minutes. I hope the clouds were moving fast.

Kodak's recommndation seemed loose to me. Ilford provides a graph that's easier to understand. That all said, in there an equation out there that would predict reciprocity correction across all film emulsions or is each so different it needs to be treated individually? I bought some 50 ISO Pan F if these shot don't work out.

[David Pitcher]

Thanks for sharing these images and details of the process in which they where created.

The image of the church is my favorite and has the greatest impact and emotional connection, not to mention the cloud formations are stunning. Some of the others are a little to contrasty and a bit over the edge with noise/grain, which seems to go against the smoothy and gentle feeling from the long exposure.

Cheers,
David

[Marc Koegel]

Thanks for your feedback David - it is much appreciated!

I agree with your comments about the very elevated contrast and grain effects. I processed these images rather quickly, so it is possible that I may revisit my approach.

You have rightfully noticed that the contrast/grain effects are not exactly equal across all images (yet). For the final series I will be looking for greater visual harmony. I usually make a final decision and commitment by the time I start my test print. Nothing like seeing your images on paper right in front of you. It's really hard to judge images by looking at your screen alone.

Let me know when you'll be in Vancouver next. I have to give you a tour of our new studio!

Take care and thanks again for your thoughts,

Marc

[Marc Koegel]

Marc, any thoughts on a unified theory of reciprocity failure?

Great question Ian!

It turns out that each film needs to be tested individually, as reciprocity failure varies dramatically among emulsions. I noticed that Kodak does provide graphs that look awfully alike, maybe that's why there are also incredibly difficult to read exactly. I find them useful as a general guideline at best, if you want to make sure you gotta' do your own testing. BTW, reciprocity failure is one of the biggest reasons for me to chose Across 100 film for my long exposures. This film has an almost complete lack of reciprocity. Even at exposures of over an hour I only give it 1 single extra stop. In comparison, when I was using Delta 3200 with my Holga panoramic pinhole camera, reciprocity was so severe that the film's working sensitivity dropped to below 100 ISO at only 5 minute exposures...
The only fact about reciprocity that can be told as an universal truth is that it gets worse with longer exposures and (generally) higher ISO emulsions suffer stronger. You can see this on the literature Kodak and Fuji provides (the graph mentioned above). 99% of film is underexposed, so if you're unsure of how much to adjust your exposure, I would recommend to err' on the overexposure side. Unlike digital, film can handle overexposure better than underexposure....

Let me know how your experiments come along!

Marc

[IanB]

Great question Ian!

It turns out that each film needs to be tested individually, as reciprocity failure varies dramatically among emulsions. I noticed that Kodak does provide graphs that look awfully alike, maybe that's why there are also incredibly difficult to read exactly. I find them useful as a general guideline at best, if you want to make sure you gotta' do your own testing. BTW, reciprocity failure is one of the biggest reasons for me to chose Across 100 film for my long exposures. This film has an almost complete lack of reciprocity. Even at exposures of over an hour I only give it 1 single extra stop. In comparison, when I was using Delta 3200 with my Holga panoramic pinhole camera, reciprocity was so severe that the film's working sensitivity dropped to below 100 ISO at only 5 minute exposures...
The only fact about reciprocity that can be told as an universal truth is that it gets worse with longer exposures and (generally) higher ISO emulsions suffer stronger. You can see this on the literature Kodak and Fuji provides (the graph mentioned above). 99% of film is underexposed, so if you're unsure of how much to adjust your exposure, I would recommend to err' on the overexposure side. Unlike digital, film can handle overexposure better than underexposure....

Let me know how your experiments come along!

Marc

So exposing for the shadows and processing for the highlights still applies does it? I'm getting my first long exposures back tomorrow. Shot on old TMax400. Here's hoping.

So, by extension, I cannot use the results I get on Fuji instant film to predict reciprocity of sheet film of the same ISO, right?

This is a really interesting time for me then. I've got Tmax 400 and both 125 ISO Ilford FP4 and 400 ISO HP5 on the go all in sheet film, 50 ISO Ilford PanF in the 120 back and ACROS 100 in 135 in my old F1. Good tip on the ACROS. If I can take one variable out of these equations I'll be further ahead.