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My Boots branded 100 year old Thornton Pickard camera has a new addition – a mechanical shutter. This allows me to shoot at speeds under 1 second. With these faster speeds I can use 200 ISO sheet film instead of the much slower photo paper. To measure the speed of this shutter, I fixed it in front of my digital fuji XT20. I set the Fuji on a 5 second exposure on f8 (as wide as the old camera goes). This gave me time after pressing the Fuji shutter to then trigger the old shutter. I then viewed the histogram of the image taken – which was of course, at the speed of the old shutter. I then moved the old shutter out of the way and took a few images on the Fuji adjusting the shutter speed until I found a speed that gave me a similar histogram to that obtained with the old shutter. This turned out to be a useful 1/30s. The speed of the old shutter can be changed – but it is a bit of a fiddle. #camera #film #Photography #ThorntonPickard

In order to access shutter speeds of less than 1s I need a mechanical shutter. I found one on eBay for a bargain price – and it is in good mechanical working order. The challenge was to attach it to the camera as the rubber seal has gone solid. I first rigged a plastic adapter to put the shutter on the front of the lens. This did work OK, but isn’t very elegant. Next, I looked at putting the shutter between the lens and the camera body. I didn’t want to make too many cuts, or changes to the camera or shutter so fabricated a frame to hold the shutter onto which the lens could be mounted. I only needed to make 3 small screw holes into the lens mounting plate. This has worked well, so will now stain the frame to finish it off. Next step (in the next blog) is to measure/adjust the shutter so I know what speed it is running at. #camera #film #Photography #ThorntonPickard

Today was bringing together my photography and my relief printing. Starting with a B&W photo with a lot of contrast – An old oak door in Ludlow, Shropshire: (See blog of 7th Jan 2019 for further developments) #aluminium #coppersulfate #Etching

I now have some 7″x5″ sheet film for the antique Thornton Pickard (Boots) bellows camera. Unfortunately the film/plate holders are slightly less than 7″x5″ so in complete darkness, using masking tape stuck to the bed of the guillotine as guides, I trimmed down the film to fit. What you see here is my third day’s experiments – Day one produced under-exposed images, day two over-exposed and today – just right (mostly).  Setting up the still life by the kitchen window, I took light readings off each piece of fruit and the black paper backgroud – yielding recommended exposure times ranging from 4 to 30s at F32. As the 30s was for the black background I went for a 20s exposure and was very happy with the result. I used the same settings for my portrait shot. Contact prints were made, experimenting with exposure here too. I am exposing using a flashgun held 45cm above the paper. The flashgun has a controllable intensity. – level 4 seems optimum – but doesn’t give quite the contrast I hoped for – I have ordered some filters on ebay to make the flashgun light more magenta as I have read this increases contrast – we’ll find out when they arrive. Optimum exposure for the film and print Under-exposed print (flash setting 3) Over-exposed print (flash setting 5) One problem was the film/plate holders are old and fragile and some wood splintered off – the pieces that make them light-tight. So I had to make (using some mahogany veneer) replacement pieces. The other problem I have encountered with these film holders is that the metal plates that sit in the middle separating the two pieces of film have springy pieces in the middle and these scratch the film and they don’t fit too well either. I am replacing these with stiff black paper and we’ll see how they perform. My Day two efforts were outside – around Glastonbury – Godney. The light was too bright and I had to deal with exposure times of only half a second with this ISO 200 film even on F64. It wasn’t possible to accurately judge taking off and replacing the lens cap in these circumstances – though I did try. I have sourced on Ebay a shutter mechanism that will fit on the front of the lens allowing me to make theses shorter exposure times. Something to play with over Christmas 🙂 #darkroom #thornton #Vintage #camera #Photography #wet #halfplate #halfplate #pickard #film

I like trying photograpy in new situations and Wednesday evening saw us at a friend’s party with live band and the request to take some pictures. Space was tight and the light was low – and often just red. My compact, mirrorless XT20 worked great here. Even when an ISO of 12800 was needed to freeze the movement of the band members.  Black and white conversion in Silver FX Pro2 helped create the dramatic look I was after. #musician #Rocknroll

Having the chemicals and photo paper to hand, I thought I’d try a coffee-tin pinhole camera. I drilled a 2mm hole into the tin and sanded the inside of the tin to remove the burr. I had read a perfect hole is needed for the best images. I lined the inside of the tin with black paper and cut some photo paper to fit inside. On-line at Exposure Times for Pinhole Photography – rahji.comwww.rahji.com/wordpress/2007/05/12/pinhole-exposure-times/ I found that my camera has an f stop of 35. Using my iPhone’s Lux app to measure the exposure on the basis that the photo paper is ISO6 I got an exposure time of 10 seconds. My results have encouraged me to explore this further. #pinhole

Time to get some exercise – The tide was up at 9am in nearby Clevedon and at this time of year we get good flocks of waders overwintering. Today, no large flocks – the weather is very mild at the moment, but a small flock of the usual redshank roosting on the rocks above the level of the tide, and later a group of 5 goosander drifted by. Sitting up on Wain’s hill and just watching the tide rapidly recede, The clouds parted and a shaft of sunlight illuminated the river mouth – nice! #clevedon

The iphone Lux app reading indicated F2.8 Iso 6 for 15s. In fact 2.25 mins was needed. This needs investigation. Interesting that since the paper negative is not sensitive to red light that the oranges in the RH image showed up as so dark. Still some work to do on focussing – though with such  wide aperture the depth of field is going to be very shallow. #Stilllife

The fist weekend in December – in Yorkshire – in the rain – with Fujiholics on an enjoyable workshop – expertly organised by Matt Hart and Matt Walkely. Really good choices for locations and, having committed to the workshop, I had to see what I could achieve in adverse weather conditions. The umbrella was a great asset! With such muted colours monochrome renditions work best – concentrating the view on the textures and shapes and tonal range. Location 1. Scale Haw Force. (BD23 5DS) Location 2. The Strid. (BD23 6EX) Location 3. Posforth Gill Force. (BD23 6EX) Location 1. Cray Waterfalls. (BD23 5JB) Location 2. Buckden (BD23 5JU) Location 3. Kilnsey Crag (BD23 5PS) Location 4. Kettlewell (BD23 5QZ) This slideshow requires JavaScript.

I was on a mission to find and photograph the snicket (alley) photographed in 1937 by Bill Brandt (follow link to see original)- wonderfully atmospheric yet so simple. Location on Google Maps Here is my effort taken with my Fuji mirrorless XT20. Followed by the image I managed to get on the circa1908 Thornton Pickard camera – problems with the paper negative snagging when I moved the slide in and out limited success here.

Extending the bellows of the Boots (Thornton-Pickard) camera – I can get in closer to the object (Euphorbia plant). Using a highish f stop I can keep the depth of field great enough. In this case I love the negative image best. (Positives made by contact printing). Boots half plate camera

The next step in the experiments with the #antiquecamera was to try a contact positive print. First step the paper negative. Now I have established that I can trust the readings from the Lux App (iphone) – with ISO 6. I wanted at least a 4 s exposure as it minimises vibration effects from removing the lens cap. This gave an F stop of 32. To make the positive successully (Under red light) I wetted the papers before putting the negative face to face with the print paper. The negative was on top of the paper. I then illuminated the papers from 2 feet above with a flash from a flash-gun. Some experiments with different flash intensity was needed. – And success 🙂 #antique #darkroom #halfplate