Snapshots with a 4×5 view camera?
Snapshots that require a light meter? a cable release? bulb mode?
Probably doesn’t meet the usual definition, but the process I underwent with the two sheets of expired FP4 that my dad loaded into a film holder many years ago (probably before the film expired, which it did in 2007 according to the label on the box) and that I shot over the long Thanksgiving weekend.
After the recent problems with my all-Capture-One workflow surfaced, I realized I’d need to go back to using Lightroom at least part time, if only for its library functions (and ability to see the iPhone and the native ORF support), so by the grace of God, I came across a workflow video from Quentin Stafford-Fraser. The relevant bits (to me) are as follows:
- import everything with Lightroom and get arranged in folders, named, keyworded, etc.
- import raw files in-place with Capture One, process negatives and develop raw files then export as 16bit tiffs
- import 16bit tiffs from Capture One into Lightroom and move to the folder with the raw files
Mr. Stafford-Fraser’s process is a bit more involved than I really want or need, but the basics sounded like a good enough plan; I just needed to shoot some film and try it out. It’s been slow going with the roll in the LC-A; the roll in the Espio was going quicker, but not in time to get them finished and developed and processed before going back to work after the long Thanksgiving/Buy Nothing weekend…
Alhamdulillah for pre-loaded film and a slightly-frustrated just shoot something attitude.
So I found some plants around—Alhamdulillah my darling, adorable wife has something of a green thumb—and they make quite the good subject for b/w, so I plopped the tripod on the ground, got things leveled up and framed up as best as I could, took a meter reading and shot.
Several hours later, I had two 4″ x 5″ sheets of FP4 Plus (expired) developed.
In retrospect, and for future reference, this film probably needs to be rated at 50 due to its age. Both shots came out at least one stop underexposed and I mostly left them that way when I sent the tiffs to Lightroom.
In Lightroom, this looked a bit muddy and dark, so I started playing around with the tiff and had some fun… I’d gotten pretty used to Capture One, and it was nice to play around in Lightroom some again.
I got all excited and felt sorta validated and excited, and it looked like this Lightroom–>Capture One–>Lightroom might have more uses than I thought.
But then I realized that I didn’t do a whole load of adjustments in Capture One, and since I just upgraded to the shiny new Capture One Pro 9, I decided to give it a whirl…
But that’ll have to wait for a bit later.
