Endgame

Two of the many ornaments that live in our house - not surprisingly, more to do with my wife than me:

8"x10" print, Ilford Cooltone RC.  From the Hasselblad, 50mm lens with close-up filter on HP5+

Although it looks like these were photographed in the middle of the night it was actually around midday and the light was good - I overexposed a bit under the enlarger and burned in the edges quite heavily.  Now it looks like two heads poking up through the ground - or maybe a dustbin.  Let's call them Nagg and Nell, in homage to that Irish fellah Beckett.

Composition in the camera was tricky, since I've only got a waist-level finder and I was pointing the camera down.  Not easy to get it right unless you're a bit of a contortionist - which I am definitely not. Some sort of prism finder might prove more usable in these situations but as usual there are a lot of different choices and after a bit of poke about I feel I could write a dissertation on the subject of finders for V-series 'Blads.  The genuine Hassy ones, surprise surprise, don't come cheap - particularly the metered ones such as the PME45, which seem to fetch ridiculous prices.  But there are more affordable non-metered ones like the PM45, which get good reviews from the folks on FADU.   And then there's cheapo (relatively-speaking, that is) Russian jobs which might just do the trick, considering that it might not get that much use.  I do like the standard waist-level finder - it's very light and it's great to be focussing directly on the ground glass.  We'll see.  A less costly option might be to use a tripod and then rotate the camera 90 degrees - since it's a square negative it won't make any difference on the film.  I'll try that first, methinks...