Rainy day play with some gifted gear – Playing with Medium and Large Format

Twice in the last few years I’ve been fortunate to haveva friend gift me some wonderful gear.

A former co-worker, mentor and dear friend in his 80’s gave me his Horseman 980, a MF technical camera along with three lenses. When I first got the camera I took it to a nature preserve nearby and wrote about it here.

Some two or three years ago a Director of Photography at a large magazine publishing house was retiring. I was fortunate to work as a freelance shooter in their food studios and we hit it off. As he was cleaning out his 40+ years of accumulated gear he came across his 4X5 Horseman LX Optical Bench rail camera. He bought it new to shoot food in the studio in 1993. It became a closet treasure when the publisher moved to digital around 2007. Because he knew of my interest in film he asked if I wanted it. Of course I didn’t hesitate to grab it. He included a viewfinder hood and four beautiful Schneider Kreutznach lenses, 20 new film holders, a 6X7 back, a sinar boost light meter, a large heavy Manfrotto tripod and every other accessory you can think of right down to the manual and receipt.

That I ended up with a MF and an LF Horseman setup was just coincidence but felt right. When I got the 4X5 (5X4?) was just put on a shelf in my ‘gear shack’, AKA my basement.

This week I found myself with a few days off and too much rain to work in the yard so yesterday I dug out the 4X5 and thought I’d play with it. After setting it up and remembering how to operate the beast I had to answer the question “what to shoot?”

I ended up grabbing this fossil. It’s an ammonite I found when I was about 10 years old in a creek aptly named Fossil Creek in Fort Worth Texas. I was hiking in the creek with my best friend and my older brother and his friend. I’ve never weighed it but it’s solid and quite heavy, about a foot across. I was very excited by my find but it wore me out carrying it half the day to get it home. I declined my brother’s offerto help since I knew it would include his ownership of the fossil. I’ve kept it as a nice display piece on a stand.

I had some T-Max 100 already loaded in holders and shot it a box speed. Lighting was a simple LED light through some tracing paper with a black cloth for background. After I shot a couple frames with the 4X5 (one of which is featured at the top of the post), I decided to dig out the MF Horseman 980 and shoot with it too. I even had a roll of Ilford Delta 100 ready to load.

This morning I used my Vintage Visual AGO to develop each. Both versions were developed in Ilfotech DDx. After the film dried I used my Fuji GFXs II with the GF 110mm and a Viltrox extension tube to ‘scan’ the negatives and then converted them with Negative Lab Pro in Lightroom where I did a few final tweaks.

I’m not sure if one is better than the other. Both looked pretty good. Though it may just be my edit I do lean towards the 4X5 and T-Max. However, I don’t think my methodology was refined enough to really know if one was superior.

Mostly I just wanted to play and enjoy listening to some new music I recently picked up and play with gear on a rainy day.

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