Early Riser For A Change

 I've been in a bit of a creative funk lately.  Partly due to working on writing for some projects, I haven't been doing any thing photographically that's notable.  Some of the places that I really enjoyed taking a camera to have lost their attraction because of the damage from last fall's hurricane Helene.  I used to be an early riser back when I was working, as I was usually up by 6 am.  These days, it's a rare day that I am out of bed before 8.  Well, this morning was different - I was awake early, and looked out the window and saw that we had some thick fog outside. I got dressed, grabbed a camera bag and was out the door by 6:30.   

Because we are in the mountains, it's not unusual to have low-level fog in the mornings, and usually it's gone before 9 am, or at least so attenuated that it's not worthwhile going out in search of some good foggy scenes. I could see that this morning was different, so I grabbed my bag with the Nikon Zfc to get some instant gratification if I saw anything that was interesting.  This morning was just what I needed to get back in the groove.  I was full of energy as the fog cloaked familiar scenes into mysterious tableaus.  

My Nikon Zfc had a TTArtisans 35mm f/1.4 manual focus lens attached, and it was the perfect combination for this morning.  For one, auto-focus lenses hunt around in fog, so just keeping the lens at infinity and f/4 to f/8 was all that I needed to do. I shot at ISO 100 and 200 for the most part, so handheld shots were possible.  The thing about fog is that if reflects and scatters a lot of light, so it's actually brighter than you think because above the cloud bank, it's a perfectly clear sky.  Unless of course, it's at night. I was prepared to work quickly, because the fog could dissipate at any time.  So, in the span of about an hour, I drove and visited several sites that I felt would be interesting, and they were!

My first stop was just down the road from my house, at the Weaverville Mulch Yard.  The mountains of mulch looked like a mountainous view, with the diffused light creating silhouettes of mulch piles.

My next stop was a little over a mile away at lake Louise Park.  There, the water and the fog created a very special combination of diffused light and reflection.

After that, I ventured right into Weaverville, and shot some street scenes, but the views into the nature park were the most rewarding.

I then drove over to Reems Creek Road, and the old Balcrank factory building was dissolved in the mist, much to my delight.

A little farther on Reems Creek Road, I stopped at the Karpen Soccer park and was happy to see that a lot of the damage along Reems Creek had been ameliorated.  There were some great views of the creek and the surrounding vegetation that caught my eye, especially the bamboo thicket on the opposite side of Reems Creek.

In the span of a little over an hour, I shot a lot of images in b&w, and I am quite happy with what I got. There are a lot more excellent images other than the ones  shown here. The Nikon Zfc really did the job. Sometimes it just takes getting up early to set the day off to a good start.  Carpe diem, they say.

Agfa Cinerex - Another Oddball Film

I purchased a couple of rolls of Agfa Cinerex IC1N film from Ultrafine last year, and finally finished up a roll in my Nikon FE a few weeks ago. I had forgotten to put a slip of paper in the film reminder slot on the back,so all I knew was that I was shooting an ISO 50 film.  I hate it when I do that, but in this case, my subject was a good test for the film.

First of all, what is Agfa Cinerex?  It's a fine-grained orthochromatic film (not red-sensitive) that was used in the medical industry as a cineradiography film.  There is no antihalation layer on the polyester base, so it's a good idea to load it in subdued light to avoid light-piping (which definitely shows on the sprocket area of the roll that I shot). It seems to have first become available online around 2012, as entries regarding the film appeared on Rangefinder Forum and APUG that year.  At that time, someone was selling 300 ft. rolls of it.

There is a dearth of information online from the manufacturer. I'll say one thing about Kodak -- they published technical data for their films and made the pdfs available online.  Thankfully, Ultrafine Online has some basic developing information available, and the links to the forums are helpful. 

When I loaded the film back in September, I did a few shots around town and forgot to indicate the film on the camera. I picked up the Nikon FE last month, and shot some beautiful fog shots to finsih the roll.  I shot more fog on a roll of Svema FN-64, and I will compare them sometime.

I developed the Cinerex film in XTOL 1:1 for 11 minutes at 20C, with my standard fixing time of 8 minutes.  The film dried quickly, and I scanned the negatives on my Epson V700.  There is a slight curl to the film, but it sat nicely in the 35mm filmstrip holders. 

See the light piping? Load in subdued light!

It's an odd film, of course, and probably not well-suited for low-contrast images such as the fog scenes.  However, with sunny conditions, and even low-light, it performed pretty well. Lots of good contrasty results in full sun.  The fog scenes are very grainy, and yet are very interesting.  That's probably pushing the film to accomplish what other films do better, so my next roll will be shot in strong light, and maybe even with LED lighting, just to see what I get.

Until recently, you could buy this unusual film in 36-exposure rolls from Ultrafine Online (also known as Photo Warehouse), but they are no longer selling it in 100-ft bulk rolls, and the individual rolls are listed as "out of Stock". That's too bad, because it's an interesting film. However, like I always say, "If you are late to the party, don't complain about not getting cake."

These all look pretty darn good 

As you might have guessed from many of my posts, I enjoy trying out strange films, especially if they are black and white.   While any film emulsion can be used for some sort of still photography, the challenge is often to see what a film is capable of doing well.  Sometimes the limiting factor is the low ISO of some cinema-specific films -- i.e., those used for making titles and special effects, or for copying to make positive masters.  With some films, it might be the spectral sensitivity that is a factor.  In some instances, we just have to wing it when it comes to the developing of the film.  With a large film user community, we end up having some good data on developing these films, and with sites like the Massive Development Chart, we have an easily-accessed knowledge base.  The gang at the Film Photography Project also have been providing us with some oddball films from Eastern Europe.  If you have been experimenting with any of these films, remember to share your successful results with the larger community.

After adjusting brightness and contrast post-scan 

Almost looks like a pen and ink image.

In a Fog

In the literal sense.  The past two days have been wonderful for shooting in a dense fog.  While it is late January, it feels like March, as the temperatures have been mild for this time of year. The fog yesterday lingered until the sun burned it off around noon, but today's hung around quite a bit longer.

One of the fun things about shooting in these conditions is the soft light, and the muted details. Forms become important, rather than the details, and such weather just screams for b&w, or at least it does for me. With the backgrounds obscured by white, it becomes a dreamland where you really can't quite pin down where an image was taken.

I shot mostly film yesterday with my Nikon FG and 50mm  and 36-72mm E lenses.   I took along my Fuji X100S digi, and therefore have some lovely b&w scenes to share right away. Today, I was running errands, and stopped along the Huron River, again with the X100S. The scenes I was seeing reminded me of some Japanese woodblock prints.  With such a serene, soft landscape, one can lose those negative thoughts and live in the moment.  It was a needed break offered to us by nature.