Large Format Adventures 5

Full of Frets

May 6

Scanning the Negatives

Scanning 5x4 cut sheet film is simpler than for 120 roll film since you can just put the film on the glass of the flatbed scanner. The process worked reasonably smoothly – I'd learnt a lot from working on the medium format negatives a couple of months earlier.

There were some challenges with the drying cabinet and some negatives had problems with dust etc.

I was a bit concerned at first that the images seemed to be lacking contrast. Thinking about it though, at 86 and 150 second exposures there would be a lot of light and that could be fixed in post-production.

Given the size of the negative, the resulting TIFF files are large at around 110mb each. The RAW files from my Nikon are 49mb in comparison.

Post-Production

Once the negatives were safely scanned, they could be imported into Lightroom. With the studio light flooding the scene with light, the dehaze tool in LR did a good job of cleaning the image up. It needed almost no other processing than that.

I had investigated various photographers for the project and looked at toning of images. IT seemed that 'warming' the tone would be a good option. I opted to add some warm tones to the mid-tones using the colour grading options in LR. This seemed to work quite well.

The images are eventually cropped square. The original intention had been to retain the 5x4 format, but one of the key images didn't suit that and for consistency they were all cropped square.

Some vignetting was added to the top corners just to help direct the viewer's eye.

Printing, Mounting, and Framing

The images were printed on high quality inkjet paper. I used Fotospeed platinum glossy fibre art paper which is 300gsm. The images were printed on A3 paper with the image being around 225mm square.

I had matts made using a slightly off-white mountboard ('Jasmine').

To keep costs down, I opted for IKEA 40 x 50 cm frames. They're adequate, but they do present some issues. One is that they are made from compressed wood fibres, which are prone to shedding. This leads to the big issue: static. The glazing uses an acrylic sheet, which is protected by two sheets of thin plastic film which have to be removed. The act of removing the film creates a static charge on the acrylic sheet which immediately attracts any dust, fibres, hairs etc that are anywhere nearby.

It is very difficult to get it free from intruding bits and pieces. Google helped with some suggestions. These tricks did improve matters, but it was still a challenge. The first was to wipe the sheet first with a slightly damp cloth. The next was to then slowly roll the film off by wrapping it around a dowel – I used a rolling-pin. By slowly rolling the film off, less charge is induced on the acrylic. I used a carbon fibre brush, usually used for cleaning LP records, which should remove the static charge.

What I found was that it reduced but did not eliminate the static charge.

I would have to say that for critical use, e.g. for exhibitions, selling, or hanging in your home, this is not a satisfactory option, unless cost is critical. For critical use, you need either to use glass or antistatic acrylic. According to Google, the latter exists, but I've never come across it. The downside of having 'proper' frames made is the cost – likely to be around £75 upwards per frame.

Results

For a very first foray into the world of large format cameras, I'm very pleased with the results. Technically, everything seems to have gone as well as could be expected. My main criticisms would be around composition, which more experimentation would have improved.