This weekend I noticed my Speed Graphic was feeling a bit underused. These days I display all my cameras in the open on a shelf so that they can look at me with lonely lenses begging to be picked up. That Sunday it was the Speed Graphic. I had the choice of going to a potentially mediocre movie or heading out to the local beach - easy choice.

Biking with 4x5 on my back

My Pacemaker Speed Graphic is one of the more portable large format cameras - it was made for the old school press guys and folds up into a box with lens. It still is bulky and weighs about 7lbs. Then I add my Benro tripod and head to it and four film holders and it stops being really 'portable'.

Did I mention that I have a bike that I don't use a lot? Its tires rub against the brakes and I barely understand the gears. But the beach is only about ten blocks away and it's the beach.

Did I mention I'm out of shape?

Metering and the 4x5 - will I ever get it?

After a few months of using the 4x5 I still don't have a spot meter or have been able to meter correctly with my substitutes. I brought a 35mm Spotmatic with 135mm telephoto and a Sekonic L378 light (incident) meter. Both of them told me about the same thing: 1/60th at f/8 in the reducing light on an overcast day.

I bracketed under and over. Four sheets. Velvia and Provia. They say that slide film has to be spot on in exposure. At this point, I'm barely above guessing.

Did I mention these are expired film? The exposure could be anywhere. But like a good Boy Scout, I'm going by what readings I get.

Tourists and older people

I find this picture of these geese grazing on the lawn of Jericho Park beyond the beach. I like the way that the light is falling down behind the trees with the geese in the foreground. I'm shooting a 151mm (and I also try a couple shots with a Carl Meyer 90mm. At 4x5, these are both wide angle. The geese are going to be tiny but at 4x5 I know there is room to crop.

As I'm setting up most people are ignoring me. But when I finally have the box up on legs people pause to look at this contraption. An older couple comes by to talk. "That's going to be a really great picture!" Me: "It's all up to me." How true that is. Ugh. Almost set up and a younger couple really into each other suddenly run into the crowd of geese and scatter it. I'm hoping one of the geese turns on them. When I was a child and went chasing a goose I was scolded and told that an adult Canada Goose can break your arm.

This is my favourite Canada Goose shot (shot with my first digital camera, a Fujifilm S7000):

Yes, that Goose is walking down the sidewalk. They own the place here in Canada.

Taking the shot and the long pedal back

Taking the actual shot on my 4x5 is anti-climactic. Unlike a 35mm or medium format there is no big sound, no kerlunch sound effect. You click the shutter release cable (or on that Carl Meyer, you cock and flick the trigger lever on the lens). And that's it. You committed the image to the film behind the lens. Then you put the dark slide back in and take the film holder out.

And then you have to pack everything back and teeter home on your bike -- you fat nearly-forty-year old photographer. That's me.

And disappointment...

When I get the sheets back from my pro-lab I don't look at them right away. I don't want the employees to see the disappointment at what they turn out to be. I leave that for home when I choose to scan them or not. Out of four sheets, only one of them is exposed at all reasonably. The backlighting from the horizon I can deal with: but all of them have this big problem. The shutter curtain on the focal plane shutter has come down. Some time when I rammed a film holder into it, the curtain has come part way down and shows up in every sheet.

But what to do. Except salvage it.

... and the renewal

The shot you see above is a 1/4 crop from the middle of the 4x5. See that's one of the things about 4x5. There is so much space to work with, you might just be able to get something out of it. That's right from the center of the 4x5. You don't see any of the focal plane curtain and the horizon, what is usable about it, is better in the center than it was in the edges.

There is a moire pattern from my bad scanner evident but I think it kind of works (only other film scanner people know what that is) in context of my book cover creation here.

A Governor General's Award needing a novel

This is the shot I was thinking of. Geese in foreground, trees in the background. Some better clouds would have helped. A grad filter certainly (where did my grad filter go in my move?).

A bit of Photoshopping took care of the tourists off to the side and I also moved a couple of the geese to balance out where they were. I have no problem using Photoshop to fix anything in film shots. Then some font work.

There is no A.C. Alabaster but if there is, maybe they might want to write a book for my cover? "Jericho Park". A Governor General's award winner. It has a ring to it, I think.