For this project I used the view camera to take photos with large format film. The project was divided into a couple parts. The first part was learning how to use the camera to focus and take an exposure with Polaroid film. The second part was loading and using the normal film to take exposures. The third part was loading and developing the film, and the forth part was making prints.
Learning to use the camera wasn’t too complicated. The Kodak book explained the different effects that positioning the camera could provide, but most of those effects would have been hard for me to use in the studio, and it was winter so outdoors wasn’t a viable option. Loading the Polaroid film holder was easy enough, but in one of my first few tries I forgot to expose the film by pulling up the envelope and I was confused for a while as to why the picture came out black. Also during this time I used to the magnifier to help focus the camera more precisely. After a couple tries, I was able to use the Polaroid film to get a feel for the lighting set up and exposure.
Then I got the actual film and practiced using that. I used some exposed film to practice loading the holder, and then was able to load the holder in the dark pretty easily. I took four practice exposures of a stack of developing tank spools with the same lighting setup. I tried varying shutter speed because we were unsure if sync speed mattered on the camera. One of the problems I found was that after I loaded the tank and developed the film I had no way of knowing what exposure became what negative. The studio sheet with the exposure times and lighting information is attached. In the future perhaps some sort of card with a number on it would be helpful to have in the corner of the shot.
Loading the film into the developing tank proved to be the hardest part. I had practiced with the exposed film and thought that I had it down pretty well. Unfortunately, the tool that is used to make sure your film goes into the right slot of the tank on the top and bottom is designed to be used with different sized film, making it both more versatile and more difficult to use correctly. I tried to load the film correctly, and after I thought I had it right I sealed it all back up, took four more exposures with a subject, and loaded those in the other side. Those last four exposures all wound up sharing the same slot on one side, even though on the other side they each had their own slot. This meant that the negatives were touching, which was bad for the developing process. I think more practice with more practice film would have helped, but it is very difficult.
When I went to actually develop the film, I encountered more problems. I used the normal times and chemicals that are used for 35mm film. First when I was doing the pre-wash, the lid floated up a little bit instead of staying snugly on. I quickly pushed it back down and got some tape to hold it in place. Then when I poured out the water, it had turned a bluish color. This wasn’t a problem, as the negatives mostly came out well. The splotching on the negatives is probably from them being on contact and chemicals not reaching the film or not getting washed away when they should have. In the future it would be important to make sure the lid is taped down.
Once I had my negatives I needed to make prints. The negatives came out quite different from one another, which made making a contact sheet a little bit difficult. I split the difference and wound up with one sub-par contact sheet instead of two good ones. It was enough to get a sense of the photos, though. Only one of my exposures of the subject came out well. Two negatives were very splotchy from the developing process, and in one of them she had her eyes closed. So I took my one good negative and made a contact print from it. It came out ok, but I think I would use a contrast filter on it to bring the contrast up a bit. There was also a lot of dust and damage in the print, which was probably mostly my fault; this large format film is difficult to handle well and gets dusty because we don’t have sleeves. I also forgot to remove the numbering from the negative before I made the print, so there is a number “1” in the corner. I am going to fix these problems with the print in Photoshop. I’ve scanned the negative and will clean it up.
My advice to anyone attempting this in the future: Make sure you know what you’re doing really well when you load the developing tank. That was the single hardest part and negated half of the photos I took. Also, if it were warm outside, I would try to take some pictures of the school that emphasis the camera’s ability to change perspective by tilting the lens and back plate.
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