Tim Parkin - Landscape Photographer

Some days just don’t seem to work creatively, no matter that there is potential; your mind can sometimes only see what it is looking for. Sunday was one of these and because we had just arrived in Elgol, and I had the amazing rocky foreground and the Cuillins in the background, I wasn’t looking in front of my feet for opportunity. The day was overcast and often raining and even though I knew it wasn’t the weather for the Vista I was still looking for it, and in the process missing lots of opportunities.

Sometimes you need to forget what you came for in order to find opportunity.

The Monday was a total transformation however. By 10am we were over on the other side of the Cuillin at Fairy Pools and it was T Shirt off weather and I had a completely different problem; Too much light and a completely blue sky with no clouds. I also think I was in the same problem head space where I wanted to make the most of the larger vista; However this time at least I tried to take some more intimate shots, even if they weren’t forthcoming. The intense light bleached everything of interest and gradation. The best result I got was as follows.

I also, in desperation it must be said, took a single 4×5 frame of a tree in a ravine. I used an 81A filter (but the B might have been better). However I think I took a photograph of what I saw rather than what was on the ground glass, often completely different things. In this case, I saw the 3D depth of the ravine, the fine detail of the leaves and the flowing water – all of which don’t translate well into a composition. Next time I’ll close one eye and listen to my and go with my gut feeling when I see the groundglass.

The photo at the top of this is a picture looking up to where we walked (if you look carefully at the one of the river, you can see our car just below the forest).

The first version of the exposure record turned out to be less easy to use than expected and I also started using EV to calculate exposure (which I would highly recommend).

The second version includes a space to draw a quick sketch of the subject matter, on which can be placed EV measurements. It also includes spaces for reciprocity readings (and a little recipocity table for velvia at the bottom).

This table has proven very useful during the Scotland trip and the only screwed up exposures so far have been down to either me panicking about not having enough light to get back (and curtailing exposure prematurely), not reading very low light well (below 1 EV) and finally suffering from too much wishful thinking regarding the dynamic range of Velvia. The remaining exposures have mostly been OK and also, because I have made very good notes, I can reassess exposure when I get back to check I haven’t made any obvious mistakes (which I have used a 2 or 3 times varying from a -0.5 to a plus 1.5).

Since the holiday I’ve reviewed the exposure chart again based on usage and realised that the sketch is the most useful item if you have time to do it and, along with the check list and general record taking, is sufficient to store all the information about exposure, filtration, tilt/shift/swing/rise/fall/warp/weft.

Elgol is a small, remote village that overlooks the bottom of the Cuillin range of hills. Our self catering cottage was almost on the beach itself which meant quick access if we had great weather.. Unfortunately we had some pretty bad weather but it was only wet on two days out of the six so I won’t be complaining.

On the first night I went out and passed three photographers on the beach who were quite snooty (I imagine they’d expected a quiet time on such a secluded beach). At least we don’t have the American symptom of herds of photographers at key spots.

I took a photograph of the abandoned croft house which appears at the top of this page. Unfortunately, I didn’t take into account how fast the light was fading and the photo is about one to one and a half stop under exposed and appears as below (and I didn’t take a second shot in order to prevent spousal retribution). I need to take a reference light check just before exposing the shot (or get a bit faster at reading exposure levels).

I took a photograph out of the window in the morning to show the view however. If anybody is interested in staying in this accomodation, the website is here, the prices are very reasonable and you get free, fresh lobster, prawns and fish as the owners own a fleet of fishing boats.

Richard Childs
is a professional percussionist .. actually scratch that .. Richard Childs is a professional landscape photographer, and a very hard working, talented one at that. I met Richard during the Hebrides Light and Land course where he was assisting David Ward and he brought some pictures along which were instrumental in inspiring me to move to Large Format(tm). When we planned the holiday in Scotland and realised it would be good to stop off somewhere on the way up it allowed to me to spend more than a passing visit to his gallery in Oban.

I asked if he could provide some tuition on the Ebony in preparation for the holiday and he said we should go out an take some photographs near Oban.

The gallery is a real gem and is an upstairs room on the main road in Oban. If he can get the downstairs room which has a main street frontage, he will have something very unique in many UK holiday resorts (a ‘tourist’ gallery that actually has good art in it). Richard’s pictures are nearly all Ilfochrome enlargements of his 4×5 transparencies and are really worth seeing in the flesh to appreciate them.

We sat and chatted about where I might be developing bad habits and mostly discussed exposure but also some focussing, then we went out to Port A’Mhuillin, Isle of Seil where there were some fabulous slate and granite outcroppings with a great view over Easdale. The main picture is a digital version of the LF shot I took which has come back exposed almost identically (although I had to pull it by half a stop on the LF shot due to my inability to read a watch, reading 40 seconds as 80 seconds. The good news is that it could probably cope with half a stop more exposure anyway). Richard gave me an old Velvia RVP to try alongside my new Velvia which I will be sending for processing next week.

The other shot is looking over towards Scarba with the last of the live thrift in the foreground. I would highly recommend Richard as a good lead on a photography trip and a wonderful host in his studio.

So we went on a final ‘training walk’ before Scotland today and now are completely knackered.. We drive over to Ingleton and as we drove into Ingleton at 7am the sky was intense in it’s Magenta/Pinkness. The clouds were that settled rounded semi-thundertop shape that you only see in a morning and the valley was shrouded in mist. Unfortunately, it all went wrong about 20 mins later – just as we got to the start of our walk.

This sort of thing used to frustrate the hell out of me but it’s almost inevitably going to happen so it’s better to be prepared than it is to get stressed. This time I didn’t fancy getting Charlotte to stop for a 20 minute shot before we’d even got to the walk so I let it go, hoping that the light would remain. However, the walk was strenuous and intersting, up over Twistleton to get some blood flowing and then around the whole of the Waterfall route.

The right hand route down by Bezeley Falls was fantastic and that whole stretch was beautiful. Unfortunately the return trek cost us £8 and was like the M25 on a Friday Afternoon. I was hoping to use one of the new lenses but there were so many people around Thornton Force that I needed the 210 to make sure they were out of frame.

I’ve got the checklists printed out now and they proved very useful in recording my metering and I took a frame of new Velvia 50 and a frame of Velvia 100. As usual I took a digital shot immediatley after to see if I got my metering anywhere near OK.. Boring light but it’s more practise for when the light is good.

I also took a shot of Bezeley Falls with the 5D only (see below)

I’ve been busy developing a gallery website for a colleague over the last three weeks and in return I am the proud owner of a 110XL Schneider and a 150 Sironar S Rodenstock. They are tiny little lenses (well, the 110 is slightly bigger than tiny but still smaller than any of my old Canon L’s).

I’ll be walking the Ingleton waterfall trail tomorrow so should get an opportunity to try them out. I’ll take some digitals along the way for a record.

In the meantime here is another picture from the Lakes walk to Stickle Tarn last week.

We went to visit a few old school friends in the Lakes last weekend and Dave Knight (my oldest friend and housemate from university in Manchester) chose a loveley stroll up Stickle Tarn. Well, it would have been loveley had I not been hideously unfit and carrying a 50lb rucksack.

Despite my moaning however, I loved the walk and we got some great views back towards Windemere and when we rose over the top we were treated to a magnificent view of Jacks Rake (which my braver friends then walked). If you look closely at the diagonal line in the following shot you might see a yellow pixel that is Paul Austin 🙂

I took a couple of shots with the Large Format of just this view, hoping that I’ll be able to make out my friends as more than a blurry yellow pixel.. it was a little windy so we’ll see what comes of it soon 🙂

Went out to the Valley of Desolation near Bolton Abbey in Yorkshire and managed to get a few shots.. I think I screwed up another shot by forgetting about the filter factor. I’ve made myself a checklist now so I don’t forget simple things like this. I took two exposures of the subject in question anyway (see photo below) so I think I may be able to push it the 1.5 stops it needs.

I’ve added all I can think of that might be important to my checklist and am still thinking about how to print this out.. I might try to get it spiral bound on stickers so I can put the details on the quickload. Then again, it might be better just to put the number on the quickload. Any ideas?

The Valley is a great location to take a walk is incredibly lush and green. So much so that the digital camera seems to suffer a little bit in getting a good colour reproduction (the greens seem a little too green and if you balance it, other stuff ends up too pink).

The good news is that my extra Velcro on the BlackJacket worked a treat and I could nearly see the whole of the 80XL even with the dramatic light drop off in the corners. Some people have said that using a centre filter has a dramatic effect on the apparent ground glass brightness of this lens and personally I don’t see it. The centre of the frame does get darker but it’s not really significant. I think if you have a good darkcloth, focussing at f8 shouldn’t really be a problem so the equivalent f6.5ish with no light fall off is pretty damn good. The above was taken at f13 but my LF shot was f22 at 10s.. This should really have been about 25 seconds but I’ll learn hopefully.

The last photo here was a grab shot as we were passing a gate. I’m not totally sure about it but I do like the curve of the wall.

I’m still very happy with the BlackJacket apart from one or two things. The first is that it’s just slightly too small for the Ebony. However, I’ve managed to work around this by putting the neck of the BJ around the bellows.. It doesn’t push the bellows much and can be loosened off. This allows easy access to the knobs for back tilt and rise and will allow the back to rise to it’s full extent. It also means it’s easy to use even when the rear standard is not extended at all.

The only problem now arises in that the velcro on the inside of the black jacket is not underneath the camera and so the Black Bag won’t attach. I’ve added my own pieces of velcro and the end result is a very light tight view. There is a little light that is passing in on the left and right hand sides but I think the judicious sewing in of a couple of pieces of black felt will solve these and leave me with as dark a view as possible without adding considerable weight.

My advice for anyone getting the BlackJacket for their ebony is to buy the larger version unless they don’t mind a bit of customisation. If anybody wants a picture of how it all fits, just leave me a comment and I will add one.

When I decided I’d really like to start using 5×4 (4×5? one of them is US I know) I also knew that I didn’t want to forget about the 5D. It has produced some amazing pictures and will enlarge to 16×20 if I’m happy to sacrifice dpi (I think it’s about 160dpi for a 16×20) but will enlarge to 10×16 at a resolution most people wouldn’t notice was a compromise. So it’s still going to be a tool in my arsenal but I also want it to play double duty if possible. So I’ve bought a set of focussing screens for my 5D that mask out the sides of the viewfinder to give a 4×5 ratio (there is a square one if I ever feel that Charlie Waite urge).

This makes my 24-105 lens on the 5D a very good finder for 110-400mm large format. If I ever want to go smaller I’d get the 17-40 (Which is still under consideration but to do so I’d have to sell my 24 Tilt Shift and at the moment I’m still unsure how much I’m going to use it.. If I don’t use the 24 then it will get traded in for a 17-40).

So the 5D becomes a functional finder and scouting tool. But can it do any more? Well I figured it would be very good at giving me an indication of exposure range and to give me an idea of what to expect if I take a large format shot. In order to do this, I need to take into account a couple of details. The first is that the Canon has a large dynamic range than the transparency film. So in order to get a good assessment of highlights and shadows I need to make two exposures. The first exposure should be taken at the reading you are going to use on the LF camera (i.e. whatever you’ve read with the light meter). This will give you a good indication of whether you are going to blow any highlights. The second exposure should be taken 1.5 stops below (or 1.333 which works better for digital camera 1/3 stops). This will now give you a good idea of where shadows will be blocking up.

One thing to bear in mind whilst you are doing this is that the histogram and the preview on the back of the 5D use the settings you have entered for your jpg view (i.e. if you’ve set the camera for high contrast, the meter will reflect this.) So if you want to have an accurate histogram that will reflect the contents of your raw file, then don’t play with the contrast setting. However, if you want to emulate transparency film, setting the contrast as maximum does a fairly good visual approximation of what to expect.

I think I’m heading towards a situation where I will be using the 5D as an exposure meter to support my spot meter readings. I also think I may end up using the 5D as a a full exposure meter but not using the internal meter, just looking at the results on the back of the camera. I have a feeling that this will be a LOT faster and more accurate than taking the equivalent readings with a spot meter (when I say more accurate, I don’t mean the individual light meter readings, for which I imagine the dedicate light meter will be better, but I mean the accuracy of the overall exposure).

Time will tell with this one and for the near future I plan to use the spot meter and then check the results I get on the 5D. The 5D will also then give me a good ‘scrap book’ picture to represent the results of the Large Format.

addendum:
Using the 5D as a meter doesn’t really work unless you can mount the SLR on the same tripod so you can see the result as you are looking.