Tim Parkin - Landscape Photographer

On the Tuesday we drive up past Uig to Duntulm castle to check out the views. Unfortunately the weather was, again, pretty dire and although there were one or two blasts of light through the clouds, there wasn’t enough to warm things up and there was very little wave action. The ground around the rocks was fairly barren (no thrift out) and the Castle itself had that typical worn look that most popular attractions acquire at the hands (and feet) of many travellers. We should have walked over to the far side but by this time a bitter wind had arisen and we retreated back to ‘Fawlty Towers’ (The Duntulm Hotel) for a quick dinner. We drove back down past Uig to the Fairy glen where we were hounded by outrageously intelligent guard sheep. Despite being followed by our ovine friend, I did manage to find an interesting location but the weather kept causing problems (wind, rain, blanket grey clouds). We should have walked around a little more but it’s pyscologically difficult to shake off the disspointment of being in a great location with dreary light. I took a couple of large format shots to see how much Velvia could rescue the situation but I have a feeling even this fabulous film can’t recover this much.

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.

Following on from the previous thinking about reducing the scanning bill (and increasing the volume of pictures I’m happy to take), developing was next on the line to see if I can do it ‘in house’. This is partly motivated by money and partly motivated by my desire to ‘do everything’ if possible. There is also a little bit of “I don’t trust the UK mail system not to screw up when I send my best shot yet out”, which is likely to happen if I’m sending out to develop and then possibly to push and then to scan.

So, developing yourself when your wife has already said you can’t have a dark room sounds like a challenge. Fortunately it’s one that had been solved many moons ago. And moon is quite appropriate word considering that the main company who deals with developing supplied the equipment to process the moon landing photographs (my god, imagine being the techy asked to process those!). Jobo have a range of processing options, of which I used to use the simple drum processing for B&W when I was a kid.

However, with lots of film processing labs shutting down, some equipment is going cheap. I was originally looking at the Jobo CPP processing bath and had researched it and seen prices of about 500-700 pounds for a full kit second hand. However, discussing this with Baxter raised the possibility of getting one of the fully automated units which are now changing hands for £300-£400. The photograph above shows a Jobo ATL 2300 which is a fully automated processing unit that would fit comfortably in our garage (it’s only 22″ deep – thanks for the measurement Baxter).

This would mean that processing would come down to 50p per sheet (and no surcharge for pushing). Lets say I take 30 pictures per month and that half of these I take a spare to possibly push. Thats 45×12 = ~500 shots per year. If I want to have a basic scan of half of these and a proper scan of 20 of them this would end up costing 250*£2 + 50*£2.50 = £625 (processing and pushing a few) plus 250*£6 = (£1500) plus 20*12 = £240 for a total of £2365 not including postage. So we could say £1900.

If I do my own scanning and developing, this would be 300*0.5 = £150. This seems to be a no brainer to me.. It would also mean I could now take a LOT more pictures and hence would learn a lot faster too..

Even if I say I only take 10 pictures a month and always take a spare (if I only take this many I want to get them right). This is 1202 + 602.50 = £400 for processing (plus 80 for postage over the year maybe). And if I develop myself I get 180*0.5 = £90. Saving £400 per year on developing..

If I wanted these scanned it would cost 1206 and maybe 1012 = £840… phenomenally expensive.. So even at a conservative estimate I’ll be spending £1500 per year on film, developing and materials instead of £90 if I get the developer and scanner (with an up front cost of approx £1500).

So the next step is to try to find a good second hand ATL 2400 and the money up front to purchase.