4x5 at last!

© 2011 Simon Hucko

So, after much talk, planning, gear acquisition, changing bag panic, back strain, missed exposures, a broken tripod and a botched night of developing, I finally have an image to share with you guys from the 4x5. I'm not particularly thrilled with it, but it was the best of the 4 sheets I shot, and I felt like I owed you guys *something* after all the build-up.

Long story short, 4x5 is hard. There are a lot of ways to screw things up, and I managed several of them. But, learning is part of the fun (and the reason I rushed out to shoot a few sheets in less than ideal conditions), and I'm excited to keep trying and get a handle on the process. Once I'm finally competent, the payoff will be amazing. As badly as these shots came out, the level of detail I was able to get in some of the images was stunning. I still have to work out my exposure and development (something I've been struggling with all along this film journey), but once it gets there I expect to make some of my all-time favorite images with this camera.

Unfortunately, I broke my tripod on day 2 of shooting with the beast, so no more photos from it for a while. Double unfortunately, it's prime waterfall season and I'm stuck here without any tripod, so I have to rectify that asap. That seems to be the way of things, though.

Once I have a more solid and reliable workflow in place I'll do a post about the process beginning to end. For now, enjoy my blurry, scratched, low-contrast shot above. Certainly more to come in the future.

~S

[title of blog] on flickr