Photography
The weather wasn’t horrible yesterday so I took my Speed Graphic with the DIY lens outside. I wanted to see what the lens would look like wide open at medium distance. And then I shot some close-ups of dead flowers too. Film is my last few sheets of Ilford Ortho Plus.
Normally I do my lith prints on Fomatone MG 131 paper. But lately I’ve been experimenting with different papers to see what looks I can get. Here’s some examples on Ilford Warmtone MGFB, Fomatone MG 131, and Agfa Brovira 310. I like the Ilford the best, but the Agfa is also nice.
Picked up a new lens from Surplus Shed for the Speed Graphic. It’s an achromatic, coated 145mm lens at roughly f3. It should have fewer aberrations than the opera glass lens though it’s hard to tell wide open like this.
I also bought some Ilford Ortho Plus, which looks great!
With a rubber washer and a little black tape, I made the opera glass lens f6.3. It’s not quite the f8 or f11 I was hoping for, but it’s a significant jump from f3. This really helped with the depth of field.
Spent some time today with the opera glass lens again. We had a vase of carnations around the house so I grabbed them to shoot. I also added a few liquor bottle to round out the still life.
Such crazy narrow depth of field and blur around the edges. I want to take this lens outside to see how it does landscapes.
I made a lens for my Graflex Speed Graphic out of a broken pair of opera glasses. It’s a simple, one element lens. My rough calculations make it to be 63mm and f3.2.
The first images came out nice. I will experiment more. I definitely want to stop it down to f8 or f11.
Shot on Fomapan 200. Developed in MC-TEA.
Ed Keer 