Tangled Garden Weed

[Ian-Barber]

Fetching in the washing in I noticed this tangled mess of weed growing out of the gap in the path. Clutching the damp towels in one hand, I bent over and ejected it from its roots.

As I raised the dustbin lid, I stopped and glanced at this object in my hand, pondered for a second and then decided to make a photograph of it before sending it on its way to wherever then contents of the green dustbin go to.




FomaPan 200 5x4 Film
1 Minute 8 second exposure @ f/64
PyrocatHD Developer N + 2 (39 minutes)

 

[Alan Clark]

Ian that is really very nice indeed. I can imagine a whole series of photographs on this theme. You must supply some more details. Lighting? I'm guessing there wasn't much of it given the 68 seconds exposure. Reciprocity failure? How did you calculate this? 39 minutes in the developer. Was this semi-stand?
Tell us more!

Alan

 

[Ian-Barber]

The object was placed on a table and a small soft box with an LED house bulb as the light was suspended above it.

I had an idea that I wanted the background to be around Zone VII.
I spot metered the darkest part of the weed and then the background, in total I had 1 1/2 difference.

I placed the low value on Zone IV which indicated that the high value was going to be around Z V 1/2. The metered exposure for the low value at f/64 was 8 seconds. Adding one more stop for bellows extension this brought it to 15 seconds. With my Fomapan reciprocity chart, the 15 seconds became 68 seconds.

Using the EMA (Extended Minimal Agitation) process by Steve Sherman in PyroCatHD the N+2 gave me a development time of 39 minutes.

 

[Alan Clark]

Thanks Ian. So it was taken in very flat light. Does the negative have much contrast?

Alan

 

[Ian-Barber]

Thanks Ian. So it was taken in very flat light. Does the negative have much contrast?

Alan

The EMA process is designed to give you a density in the high values of about 0.95. I do not have an accurate way to measure the true density but the means which I have indicate on this negative that the highest density is around 0.98