Do your own head!

We're firmly stuck in Still Life mode for the foreseeable, I fear, so let's see where that takes us, eh?  As you know, I've been setting up a couple of tabletop 'scenarios' recently - this one with the briefcase and telephone and one with the garage paraphernalia, of which this is the latest offering:

Do your own head! On Kenthene fixed grade paper with a very light sepia tone

As I may have said already, I'm beginning to enjoy the tabletop photography.  I don't think I'll ever get into Macro, but I can see myself getting down to 1:1 without too much trouble.  Ha - there I go bandying about phrases like 1:1 as if I've always known what that means.  The rather embarrassing truth is, I've had to read up on what these ratios mean (obviously at one point I knew what they mean, I'd just forgotten.  Yes, that must be it...).  So if you're ahead of my curve, skip to the next paragraph.  1:1 means the subject that you are hoping to capture is the same size in real life as on the film/sensor frame.  So, if you are shooting 120 film, for example, which I happen to know is approximately 6cm x 6cm, 1:1 would mean a 6cm tall (or wide) object (or scene) would fill the frame.  If your object is 3cm long and fills the frame that means you are shooting at 2:1. If it's 12cm long, then you're at 1:2.  I think that's how it works, anyway...  What does it matter, I hear you ask?  Well, that's not an altogether stupid question and the answer is I think it helps to understand the physical scenario you are faced with and then try to relate that to the tools you have at your disposal.  Most lenses, for example, are not optimised for close-up work but are fine for anything from 10:1 to infinity.  Of course you've got your specialised macro lenses, bellows and even plain old extension tubes to get you closer to your subject.  At 1:1 and beyond you can run into problems of lighting the scene, since mostly your camera/lens will be very close to your subject.  Depth of field is also likely to be very shallow...millimetre shallow even, and that's where bellows on a tripod/rail setup can come in useful.  There are other options if you haven't got specialised gear - for example, with the appropriate adaptor you can reverse-mount your standard 50mm lens and get really close to your subject.  Or you could take your enlarging lens and mount that to your camera, which again will get you really close (assuming you can focus).

But mostly these big challenges start at 1:1 and closer and like I say, for the moment I'm not intending to go there.  The table-top setup above, for example, is roughly 40cm wide and deep, so on 6x6 film that's somewhere between 7:1 and 6:1.

I should maybe say a little about the table in the scene above, or rather the things on the table.  The magazine dates from 1979, when the brother was getting into fiddling with cars.  The receipt is a tad earlier, 1970, and details some bits&pieces my dad had bought for his Triumph motorbike (the one he had before he got married, sold to pay for the wedding and then bought it back a couple of years later - that one).  The empty packet of Woodbine belonged to my grandfather, who kept it in his fishing bag to hold lead shot used for weight).  The other tools and boxes I found in my mum's shed (good old mum).   I used the 'Blad with 60mm CB lens and had a softar filter on the front, hence the rather pronounced blur at the edges of the scene.  Natural light from a window on the right lit the scene.  Exposure was in the 1 to 2 second bracket.

A quick note about the Kenthene paper, which came in the job lot from the local school art department clear-out last year.  As the name suggests, it's a Kentmere RC paper, but fixed grade 3.  So, similar to the Barclay paper I've been using recently.  I  tried bleaching and toning it in the normal ferricyanide-bromide bleach but nothing happened.  Then I remembered I had some cupric sulphate bleach on the shelf (mixed for another project some time ago) which is a different formulation and to my immense satisfaction that worked - hence the light sepia tone on the print above.  It's a shame I can't get the Barclay paper to bleach in it too, but I'll keep working on that.