Hi everyone

It's been ages since I posted here, and I'm afraid I don't even lurk as much as I used to. I'm glad to see everyone is still around.

Well, alot has happened for us since moving to NZ, but the most significant thing photographically is that I'm learning to develop my own film. Before I left the US, I picked up a 4x5 view camera and I was mostly shooting Velvia before I left. Just before we moved to NZ, I bought a couple of boxes of B&W film to try out. I finally took my first shots with the B&W a couple of weeks ago, having to learn to load the film and then develop it.

Below is my most successful attempt to shoot and develop the film on my own. It costs $7.00NZ (roughly $4.10US) to develop a single 4x5 sheet here in NZ, so it's a financial necessity to develop my own film.

This is my daughter, Katie, who just turned 11. I shot this in my dining room using softly filtered sunlight on a cloudy day. Film is Kodak Tri-X 320, developed in ID-11 1:1 for 9 minutes and scanned at 2040 dpi on my Imacon Precision II scanner. I'm using a couple of patterson tanks designed for developing role film to develop these films.

Lens was a Nikon 210mm at F8. This is one of the first times I've used that lens, so I'm not sure how good it is or what.



I know tri-x 320 is grainy, but I'm not sure if my development is overemphasizing the grain or not.

I'm also not sure if the grey curve in the upper right is an artifact of my developing or not. It might be as I've had some difficulty with uneven development in my earlier attempts. This is actually a bit of a crop of the original frame, so much of that grey curve is gone.

I wish I had more catchlight in her eyes, but I didn't want any artificial light. Her eyes are also just slightly out of focus, as the DOF is quite small at that focal length. Despite my attempts to get it perfectly in focus, I'm sure she moved back just a bit to shift her eyes out of the plain of sharpest focus.

I've adjusted the white and black points just a bit, and added a small amount of smart sharpening in PS CS3. I've also cleaned up a couple of dust spots as well.

All in all, I'm pretty pleased with the shot. I hope to shoot and develop a few more frames tomorrow, so I may have more to show later.

I hope you like it, and of course constructive criticism is always welcome.

Jason


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