Pinhole tests

I was out with the TiTAN 4x5 pinhole again...it's so light it seems kind of cheating.  Glass is heavy!  Saturday mid-morning and Portstewart Strand was already pretty busy.  If you're wondering, driving your car onto the beach is a Irish thing and has been known to confuse non-natives.  There is a risk involved, of course (see here) but if you're sensible (debatable, given what we're talking about) then usually you're OK.  Some beaches around here are best walked onto, though - the beach at Castlerock is well known for shifting sands and many times people are caught out as they try to leave the beach.  The local farmers make a few quid by towing cars out with their tractors.  

I didn't go down to the beach on Saturday - just stayed up top and got the cobwebs blown away by a strong westerly.  The temperature has dropped about 10 degrees lately but it was bright and sunny so not unpleasant in spite of the cold.  I took one shot - this is it:

Portstewart Strand on the TiTAN pinhole.  Ilford FP4+ Delta on MGV RC paper.  Pretty amazing what you can capture without a lens.

As I think I've said before, with the camera you get a DIY Exposure disc to help calculate what the exposure should be for a 'lens' that is an effective aperture of f/206.  I'm rating FP4+ Delta at 50 and most times the indicated shutter speed is more than a couple of seconds, so a bit of extra is required to compensate for film reciprocity failure.  Up to now I have been going by Ilford's recommendations but I tried cutting back a bit for this shot, as previously I've been losing highlight detail.  The other, probably more significant aspect is of course developing time and here things are a little more complicated as I'm using continuous agitation in an old Unicolor drum with a motorised base.  Up to now I've been cutting back on recommended dev times by 15% but this time I reduced it even further.  The negative came out looking better, with good highlight detail (in the blacks on the negative, of course).  There was still a bit of burning in on the sky required for this one but at least there was something on the negative to work with. 

The Sea, The Sea

 One taken a while back which I printed the other day - Portballintrae East Strand, on Foma 133 in lith developer:

The sea at Portballintrae.  Lith print, Foma 133 paper

The River Bush empties into the sea just behind where I was standing to take this shot.  That would be the River Bush of Bushmills Whiskey fame - the town of Bushmills is only a mile or so upstream from here.   Bushmills Whiskey's claim to fame is that it is the oldest licensed distillery in the world - with the emphasis on licensed, since whiskey, poteen and no doubt countless other spirits have probably been made since man learned to stand on two legs.  But still, 1608 is a fair number of years ago and there ain't many companies who have been trading that long.  It's a big tourist draw (being next door to the Giant's Causeway doesn't hinder, either).  I'm not a whiskey drinker but in my youth I would have taken the odd measure, although mostly in the form of a hot whiskey, which is a popular tipple here in the depths of winter.  My mother liked the odd hot whiskey if we happened to be out and about and I can remember her disappointment when in one hostelry, the barman didn't know how to make it.  Well, what can you expect - we were in England at the time.  Heathens, eh?!  But that didn't deter Mother, as she proceeded to tell the barman how to procced.  The classic version would have cloves in it, whiskey (obviously), perhaps a little sugar (optional) and boiling hot water.  The boiling part means you either need a good strong glass or you put a teaspoon in it to draw the heat and prevent the glass from cracking.  It's a very warming drink and slips down rather nicely, I recall - particularly when it's blowing a hooley outside and you're sitting in front of a roaring fire nicely protected from the elements. 

Witches Hat

 I took the 'Blad for walk along Portstewart Prom a while back - this was one of the better shots.  Yer man in the foreground is helping his friend finish her tub of ice-cream.  As I've said before, I think it's the law that you have ice cream when in Portstewart.  There are a number of sellers, including the famous Morelli's, which has been on the Prom since 1927.   I'm not a huge ice-cream fan and neither is my wife but we're the odd ones out around these parts.

The Crescent at Portstewart, on MGV RC paper

The 'Witches Hat' bandstand is quite the thing, isn't it?  In the summer time you get all sorts happening there - preachers and bands and that sort of thing.  But its main purpose, it would appear, is to provide a handy shelter from the rain when it comes (as it inevitably does).  It can get a bit cosy in there at times!  Well, pre-COVID times, that is.

As you can see, unfortunately I had a rare process fail on this film - doubly annoying when there were one or two half-decent shots on it.  It was the very last bit of a 5l batch of ID-11 developer and by the look of things there must have been some undissolved particles in it, which I failed to notice.  It's the first time that's happened (to me) and if it happens again I'll consider switching to a developer that comes in liquid form.  But I'm used to ID-11 - it's pretty cheap and I like it for HP5+, so I'll stick with it for now.  

Finn McCool shops at Sheila's

Sheila's, on Portstewart Prom, is a bit of an institution.  It's been there for ever, I think, and, unusually, hasn't changed much over the years.  A real traditional sea-side shop selling buckets and spades, fishing nets for kids to see what they can find in rock pools, plastic windmills, plastic footballs, plastic kites, sweets - you name it, if it's seaside-related, Sheila's sell it.

Queuing outside Sheila's on The Prom, 2020 (Ilford MGV paper)

Finn McCool, if you didn't know, is our local giant (him of Giant's Causeway fame).  I doubt very much he does shop at Sheila's - he'd be far too big to get in, for a start.  And can you imagine him with a quarter of Liquorice allsorts?  Sure he'd be needing more than that to keep his strength up...

The signage at Sheila's hasn't changed much over the years either - dulse and yellow man.  Dulse is a reddish sort of seaweed that grows on the rocks around the coast here - it's the sort of thing I remember my grandmother eating and would still be fairly popular with a lot of folk.  You can pick it yourself if you know what you're looking for - I think it can be found around the bottom of rocks at low tide.  It's a while since I've had it but I remember it being very salty.  Full of goodness, apparently - the old minerals and trace elements and what have you.

Yellow man is a kind of chewy homeycomb rock, sold in small cracked bits in paper bags.  It's bright yellow in colour, in case you were wondering...

Due to COVID-19 and social distancing, like a lot of smaller shops Sheila's was limiting the number of people inside at any one time, so there was small queue to get in.  There were a lot of people on the Prom that day, but most were masked up, even outdoors.  I didn't hang around, though - I just snapped a couple of shots on the 'Blad and headed for home.

Portstewart Strand

Not a bad place to find yourself in:

Portstewart Strand.  HP5+ on Ilford FB Classic paper

Not too busy on the Strand these days, as you can see.   This print needed a little work - the sand was dodged quite a bit (it still appears darker in the scan than in the print, for some reason).  The sky was burnt in as well as dodged at the same time - two hands were necessary and the foot switch is also a very handy accessory at times like this. I was holding back the lighter part as otherwise it would have all gone a bit uniformly dark.

I’m not a ‘print by numbers’ guy.  I don’t mark up the first print like some would appear to do.  I just think - a bit lighter here and maybe here...quite a bit darker there...and then I get to it. The one you see here was the third print...first is nearly always just a straight print, or maybe straight plus a very rough dodge/burn. I’m getting better at reading a negative and so have a fair idea what will be needed.  Second print gets closer but is typically too much or not enough. Then hopefully the third print is there, or thereabouts.  At that stage I’ll sit back and think Is this negative really worth any more time and money? Most times the answer is a ‘no’ but occasionally - very occasionally - I’ll work on to get it as best I can. I see this as not just an indulgence but more as a ‘something that I need to do’.  If I never do it, then I won’t build that knowledge & skill.  It's a subtle craft, darkroom work and as I’ve said before, the more time I spend doing it the more intuitive printing becomes. 

Afterwards, I might make a few rough notes on a sticky in the negative file but to be honest that’s rare. If ever I do return to re-print a negative I usually start from scratch again...although I’ve a pretty good memory so maybe scratch++. 

Thirsty morning in Dervock

This one was lurking inside the square-shooter for a while but it finally got to see the light of day.  We were driving through the village of Dervock a while back (July, I reckon, from the flags) and this scene caught my eye:

Thirsty Morning in Dervock.  Ilford MGV RC paper.

The North Irish Horse Inn must be affiliated to the very old yeomany unit of the British Territorial Army in Ireland of the same name - dating back to the Boer War, Wikipedia informs me.  The flags are out, no doubt, to celebrate the Twelfth of July Celebrations - the one on the right is the Ulster Banner, then although it's hard to see I think it must be a regimental flag next and then of course the Union Jack.  And then a plastic Tennents sign...Tennents being a pale lager type drink that is best left well alone if you ask me.

It wasn't the flags that caught my eye, of course - 'twas Yer Man's company car parked up outside the bar.  And as I got out to photograph it the woman sweeping the pavement behind it had to be captured too.  They're clearly very house-proud in Dervock and Why not, eh?  

Most people around here would instantly recognise the tractor as one of the Massey Ferguson stable (for it was the genius that was Harry Ferguson from County Down who invented the modern agricultural tractor, of course - and what a service to land workers everywhere that was.  Not only that - he was, apparently, the first person in Ireland to build&fly his own aeroplane and as if that wasn't enough for one man in one lifetime, he designed and built the first four-wheel-drive Formula One car.  The four-wheel drive system went on to be used in Range Rovers, I read).   I think that's a 135 parked up, but I can't be sure and I'm not country enough to know the numbers by sight - though believe me, there's many that can.  If the Agricultural Shows are on again in 2021 then expect a few more photographs of Massey Fergusons - assuming I'm living and spared, that is, and sure who can take anything for granted in these uncertain times...

Anyway, I hope he enjoyed his pint of the black stuff that morning in Dervock and that it 'set him up for the day', as folk would say around these parts - although I also hope he had a designated driver with him.  Sure there's worse things you could be doing with your time on this Earth than having a mid-morning sup in Dervock...

Pinhole Pleasures

 A bit late to the whole pinhole party thing but that seems to be typical for me.   Anyways, I bit the bullet last week and splashed some of my hard-earned (well, once upon a time, anyway) cash on a rather splendidly made Titan Pinhole camera, made by the fantastic Mr Mike Walker in conjunction with Harman (Ilford).  It takes 4x5 sheet film, which is just perfect as I can rattle off one or two sheets at a time.  Mr Walker, by the way, exemplified good customer service...I emailed him a question last Wednesday morning and he replied promptly.  When I said I would be ordering one then and there he said he would delay going to the Post Office until he saw my order come in.  And indeed he must have done, as less than 24 hours later the thing was in my grubby little hands.  It didn't matter that my hands were grubby, by the way, since it's made from injection moulded ABS...I think I read somewhere you could put it in the dishwasher to clean it - although I think I'll pass on that.  

The pinhole has an angle of view of 72 degrees (which I think equates to about 30 degrees wide-angle lens in 35mm space) and an effective aperture of f/208.  The kit includes a ready-reckoner cardboard spin wheel to help you get the exposure, since meters typically don't include an option for such a small aperture.

Coincidentally, on the same day I received some paper from Ilford (thanks to their 10% voucher last weekend), which included the new MG V RC paper, so these shots are printed on that.  More about that paper in a future post.

My first ever pinhole shot...Portstewart Prom, of course (lower deck):

Ilford FP4+ Delta, on MG V RC paper

Impressive considering there's no lens...makes you wonder why we bother, really.  On Saturday I drove round to Portrush...there was quite the choppy sea but it got smoothed out with the long exposure:

Portrush West Bay

With the small aperture/large f-stop and a fairly slow film (Ilford FP4+ Delta has a box speed of 100ISO but I was rating it at 50) you're always going to get long-ish exposures.  And once you're longer than 1 second there's film reciprocity failure compensation to take into account. Ilford recommend a factor of 1.26 for FP4+ (take the suggested shutter speed and raise it to the power 1.26). From memory the first shot in Portstewart was 12 seconds and the second one in Portrush about 30s, hence the smooth sky and sea.  There was a bit of burning in to both sky and sea above.  Contrast in the negative was a bit high in both shots so in the future I need to pull back on exposure, or developing, or both a little but I was reasonably happy for the first attempts.  

Pinhole photography is simplicity itself - no aperture controls, no shutter speeds and with the 4x5 sheet film there's not much to do there either - simply pull the dark slide, lift off the pinhole cap and count the seconds.  The Titan Camera is so light - even on the tripod it's so easy to carry.  I'm hooked already!

Country Life

Most days I try to get down the road for a bit of a stroll and this is what I see when I turn for home:

I pointed the camera directly into the sun and that meant I had to burn in the sky a little under the enlarger.  OK, a lot and not very well at that, but it's easy to overdo.  Not the greatest of shots or prints but I said some time ago that I would try to show more of my immediate area, so here yah go.  On Fotospeed RCVC paper.

Our house is somewhere in the middle of the trees just left of centre and Yes you'd be right in thinking it's a bit closer to thon big wind turbine thing than is desirable.  We were here first, in case you were wondering but that counts for little when you're the little guy up against a £100m University that wants its turbines (there are two of them - the other is out of shot on the left).   It could be worse, I suppose - there's not much noise from them (thanks to the trees) but the shadow flicker in the winter months can be visually very disturbing. 

We're looking almost due West here - away over the low-lying hills in the distance and you're en route to the City of Derry/Londonderry, about 40 minutes away by car.  To the left (South) is the University and then the town of Coleraine.  To the right (North) we have Portstewart and the Atlantic Ocean.   Coleraine-Portstewart-Portrush is called The Triangle Area and we wouldn't be too far from the centre point, so although we're in 'the country' we're only a mile or so away from the three towns and the beaches at Portstewart and Portrush.  We're not bothered by too many neighbours, thankfully - although from time to time we do get the odd intruder in the garden.  It comes as a bit of a shock when you look outside and see a couple of tons of cow staring back at you through the window, but a call to the local farmer solves that particular problem and it's not long before the animal is back in the fields beside us, the fence repaired and I'm out with a bucket and shovel to collect the soon-to-be-fertilizer for the vegetable patch.  Ah the joys of country living, eh?