When The Tourists Are Away...

In past entries I've noted how, as a local, Niagara Falls doesn't have the sort of magnetic draw on my camera lenses that seem to hold sway with visitors to the area. For the past several years however it's been my intent to visit during the much more photographically interesting and visitor sparse height of winter. Past years have not been kind to my plans. Last year I let the unusual cold take away my photographic mojo which only returned when things warmed up, and the several years prior to that were too warm for there to be a real dead of winter.

It didn't occur to me at a time but coated and weighed down by ice this tree reminds me of a Shetland Pony.

Though not quite so frigid as last year, this January has been accompanied by some solidly winter weather, and with my mojo fully intact I finally set out to ensure another year wouldn't pass without getting a crack at the area around the Falls. It wasn't so much the Falls itself I was after, though they too take on added interest in the presence of great quantities of ice. The real draw was the heavy glaze of ice that covers almost everything in the surrounding area. The mist rising from the torrent below that in warmer months drenches countless unprepared tourists begins to freeze on the surface of anything that doesn't move as the temperatures drop, turning trees and other fixed objects into virtual ice sculptures.

I brought what has become my standard kit - Mamiya RB67 Pro S with all four lenses for it I own, 50mm, 65mm, 127mm and 250mm, three backs loaded with Fuji Acros for black and white, Kodak Portra 160 for colour and a roll of 35mm Ilford Delta 100 with my home made 120 adapter for panoramas, Manfrotto 055 tripod, light meter, and the usual sundries like filters, cable release etc. I also brought along the Minolta Hi-Matic 9 loaded with some Fuji Superia 400 I've kept in the freezer for about ten years. As I write this I have yet to finish off any of the colour rolls I was shooting that day so images from those are yet to come. Also, as the 35mm roll in the RB67 back had been a partial roll, I was unaware that there was only one frame left and since it has to be unloaded in the darkroom when finished I was unable to reload in the field. 

These windows are part of an odd looking rail-car, the purpose of which I can't guess. It's enclosed in its own little fenced off enclosure suggesting it has some sort of historical value. It has plenty of character and I'd love to explore it with a camera more but the fence itself gets in the way. I was able to see a bit more this day though by standing on a show bank.

If rainbows in b&w are not your thing I did get a colour version of this which you may see once I finish the roll.

As anyone familiar with the RB67 will realize this is quite a load, but my middle aged, desk job soft self can still manage a haul of a few KM over reasonable terrain when I've got it all loaded into the big photo backpack. That's pretty much what I set myself up to do when as usual I chose the free parking at the Dufferin Islands park and walked the rest of the way. I might have saved myself some effort had I realized that not only was this normally heavily maintained area neglected in the off-season, and that likewise they don't bother maintaining the tourist premium parking rates closer to the Falls when there are next to no tourists arriving. Though I could have avoided the slog, it's over now and I burned off all those extra calories.

If I had it to do over again, and with at a good month or more of winter yet to come I guess I do, I think I would have been better served if I had left the Mamiya at home in this case in favour of a Nikon used hand-held. Shooting tripod mounted is almost habitual for me but in this case I felt it held me back from exploring all the compositional options I found myself confronted with. I was glad of the Hi-Matic I brought with me, allowing me to be a little more free-wheeling though with one of the Mamiya backs loaded with Portra I found myself wishing I had loaded it with black and white film.

The one panoramic image I was able to get on 35mm film adapted to the RB67. As I had no idea how many shots were on the partial roll to begin with there was no way to know that there was only one exposure remaining and as it had to be removed in the darkroom I couldn't put in a fresh roll in the field.

Matters of shooting style aside however, this was one day that using a waist level finder, currently my only option with the RB67, put me at a disadvantage. This isn't always the case, and in fact there are times when using a waist level finder has been a revelation. For example landscape shots featuring a prominent foreground object often require shooting from an angle low enough to have an eye-level finder user crawling on their belly to frame up the shot. Even when the shot doesn't require such low angles, shooting with a camera held at chest level rather than the same height we are used to seeing the world from can subtly add interest to images through the slightly unfamiliar point of view. Putting my armchair psychologist hat on the lower eye level implied may even be suggestive of a child's point of view, triggering whatever emotional responses that might involve for a particular viewer. This waist-level point of view has been noted as an important component in Vivian Maier's style. Perhaps the child's perspective would also make sense in the work of the word's most (belatedly) famous TLR toting nanny. 

There's a flip side to this of course, as obtaining a perspective higher than waist-level requires a step ladder or some reasonable substitute. For example, in image at the top of the post I was aware that the top of the tree intersected with the top of the falls and that I could remedy this by raising the height of the camera but as I need to look down on the camera from above to see what was in the shot, doing so would have left me shooting blind. Like most medium format SLRs the RB67 has interchangeable viewfinders and I have considered getting an eye-level finder for situations like this. Of course to really benefit I'd have to bring along both finders and switch as needed, adding yet another item to an already heavy pack. Not as heavy as carrying a step-ladder with me mind you, so I may yet do this.

There are more images to come. The images here are from the first roll of Fuji Acros that went through the Mamiya as well as the aforementioned single panoramic image on 35mm film. In addition to the colour images still in camera there's a second roll of Acros with images from that day that's also waiting to be finished. As always I'll keep you posted.  

How I Learned to Hate Scanning Less

One of the unsung heroes in my photographic arsenal is my Epson Perfection V500 scanner. While not as hyped in the flatbed film scanning world as it's large format capable siblings in the V700/800 series, for medium format on down it's nearly as capable at a fraction of the cost. The slightly over $100 (Cdn) clearance price I picked it up for is quite possibly the best money I have ever spend on photographic equipment of any kind.

My praise of just about everything about this scanner ends however at the included negative carriers. They're flimsy yes, though considering they're meant to hold precious one of a kind original images one would hope they wouldn't need to endure anything approaching man-handling. (Speaking as a man I'm not sure if I resent that term.) More to the point however it is notoriously difficult to get negatives into them, a difficulty that seems to grow exponentially with the degree of film curl present in those negatives. Two strips of 35mm film can be placed in the 35mm holder so they are held relatively securely at one end, leaving the remainder of the strips entirely loose so they must be manipulated to stay aligned in their frames as the top part of the frame holder, an entirely separate piece, is clipped into place over them. The 120 holder has next to nothing to keep the negative strip in place until the the hinged top of the frame is closed, an operation which itself tends to push them out of place and efforts to hold it in place may result in the film buckling. Further, once closed I would often find the negative had shifted enough to require a small reposition leaving me to decide whether it was better to start the whole operation over again or trying to adjust it with the carrier clamped closed which always had me worried about scratching or otherwise damaging the negative (though I don't know that any actual harm ever resulted from this).

The stock 120 carrier for the Epson Perfection V500 (above)
along with the Lomography 120 DigtaLIZA (below.)

Enter the Lomography DigitaLIZA, an alternative negative/transparency carrier with a unique positioning and loading system that among other things is supposed to avoid most of the problems common to other carriers such as the ones I have experienced. It is also, apparently, exact enough to allow 35mm negatives to be held by the very edge of the film, allowing the sprocket hole area of the film to be part of the scan. The trick involves a metal plate that sits in the bottom of the frame bringing everything flush to the ledge the film sits on. After positioning the film an upper magnetic plate is positioned on top, clamping to the metal plate underneath, sandwiching the film flat and exactly in place. The hinged frame can now be closed without fear the film will shift in the process, at which time the upper plate can be pulled free, releasing the lower plate while the film remains perfectly in place.

If it's a bit convoluted to describe in words Lomography hosts a video showing the process which you can see here.

This much you could have learned from the Lomography site, so how does all of this translate into practice? After fighting with the Epson carriers one too many times I decided it was worth a go. Much of the fanfare surrounding the DigitaLIZA focuses on the 35mm version's ability to make include nearly the full width of the film during scanning including the sprocket holes.  Photographers who use adapters to shoot 35mm film in medium format cameras or other tricks to get an image across the whole width of the film have few other practical choices for getting this additional image width scanned. While I experiment with techniques like this myself, 120 film is by far the majority of what I shoot these days, and its the format I struggle with the most using the stock carriers, so it was the medium format version that I ordered. At the time of this writing the 120 DigitaLIZA goes for $45 (US) in the Lomography store, but with a bit of shopping around may be found for less through some resellers.

It arrived in attractively designed custom box that makes it tempting to carefully repackage the unit after every use rather than toss it in a drawer. If the box board thin Epson carrier struck me as a little flimsy before it seems even more so compared the the DigitaLIZA, especially when the metal bottom plate is attached. Despite the more rugged build the film is still sits in the holder at about the same distance from the scanner glass as is the case with the stock Epson carrier.

The DigitaLIZA's frame window is wide enough to accommodate three 6x6 negatives at once. If you shoot square format and cut film into strips of four you'll have to reposition the film once to scan the whole strip. Since I primarily shoot 6x7 negatives the window will allow only two negatives to be scanned, so a repositioning will again be required to scan a strip of three. By itself this is an improvement over the Epson carrier, which permits only two 6x6 negatives to be scanned at a time, only one at a time for larger 120 formats, and if you shoot panoramic formats larger than 6x12 you could be in trouble.

The bigger point however isn't how often negatives have to be repositioned, it's how easy they are to position in the first place. If all my negatives layed dead flat I probably wouldn't have too much to complain about with the Epson carrier but even a bit of curl is enough to make positioning the frame properly without risking damage or getting fingerprints all over the image into a struggle. To look at Lomography's video demo it would seem like loading the DigiaLIZA couldn't be simpler, but does the seemingly foolproof mechanism go this smoothly in actual use?

Well, for the most part yes, yes it does. When the negative strip is first placed in the carrier it sits in a recess deep enough to keep the edges of the film from going anywhere. This is in contrast the stock carrier's ledge which is much too shallow to keep the film from sliding around or buckling, something that tends to happen as the hinged frame is closed, The DigitaLIZA further largely avoids problems keeping the film held in place while the top part of the holder is closed down with the magnetic top plate that is put in place once the negative strip is aligned, holding it there until the hinged lid is closed at which plate it can be removed without risk of the film slipping out of place. I say largely avoids because with more severely curled film I find getting the top plate in place without the film moving can be a small challenge, though nothing compared to the struggle that would be needed to get the same images ready to scan with the stock carrier. This small difficulty aside the DigitaLIZA's loading mechanism aside it has worked for me as advertised.

Once loaded however the DigitaLIZA does have a downside compared to Epson's carriers for the V500 however - there is no provision to get it positioned correctly on the scanning bed. This might not be a concern at all with large format units that can scan the entire area of the scanning bed, but the V500 and similar flatbeds designed for smaller formats require the film to be lined up under the transparency scanning strip in the lid. The stock carriers are designed to align with this automatically. As a universal carrier, the DigitaLIZA has no such provision. Lining things up by eye would probably be good enough to get the entire negative into the scanning zone, but it almost certainly wouldn't be square to the edge. In cases like this it\s necessary to come up with some sort of alignment device. A simple cardboard strip of appropriate width would do the trick, though I found I could use the lower plate from the DigitaLIZA's magnetic positioning system does the job admirably and I suspect this would be the case for most scanners.

A comparison of scans from the Epson Perfection V500 using the stock 120
 negative carrier and the 120 version of the Lomography DigitaLIZA.

The only question that remained is whether there was any impact on the scan quality. Might the magnetic sandwich positioning system hold the film flatter leading to sharper scans? Might the film to scan bed distance differ from what is spec for my scanner making scans a little less sharp. I put this one to the test scanning by scanning the same image using both carriers and to my eye the results are functionally identical. If you'd rather judge for yourself I include the comparison images above for your own consideration. The insets show crops at full resolution from identical areas of each scan made at 3200 dpi. (Click to bring the image up at full resolution.)

The bottom line is that, at the cost of auto alignment provisions you may get with a flatbed film scanner's stock carriers, the DigitaLIZA addresses the shortcomings these carriers are often plagued with in regards to positioning and loading of negatives and transparencies. Not only is this task made easier While the 35mm's big selling feature, the ability scan the width of the film out to and including the sprocket holes, does not apply to the 120 version, this benefit alone may make the DigitaLIZA well worth the price in terms of saved time and diminished risk of damaging irreplaceable images as a result of buckling, scratching or throwing the whole mess at a wall in frustration.

A Follow Up Visit

I have a day job. The standard two days off a week that might or might not end up being the sort of days that inspire photography if indeed none of life's little obligations has me otherwise committed. If I'm not careful an entire season to pass with almost no new work to show. After letting last winter go by this way I'm hopeful the outing I wrote about in my previous entry Embracing the Elements marks the start of a more productive season this year, establishing a bit of momentum as it were. 

So it was a few days back that an unexpectedly heavy winter blast and accompanying highway closure gifted me with an unexpected day off I felt the opportunity accompanied by a bit of pressure to keep the ball rolling by taking photographic advantage of the situation. This was enhanced by the fact that by the time I had the driveway clear enough to go anywhere the morning light along with the peak of the freshly fallen snow look had both deteriorated into something less photogenic. It was turning into an unremarkable day with some not quite so virgin snow all around. Something could still come of that, you never know, but the slight sinking feeling in my gut told me the best part of this opportunity had already slipped away, taking some of that momentum with it.

Hoping things would get interesting later on when the sun started getting lower again I let the missus talk me into an early afternoon grocery run accompanied by my thirteen year old daughter who was also enjoying a bonus snow day. Still, nagged by the sense I was letting a free photo day get away from me, setting an unwanted precedence along the way, I was at least careful to bring the backpack containing my take-everywhere Iskra along for the ride. Good decision. While skies overhead were just plain bland, from the shopping centre which is much closer to the lake I could see conditions over the water were much more interesting, resembling those I had experienced a few days before when I had gone with the whole RB67 kit in tow. Though today I had only the Iskra and my captive passenger (who offered no words of protest, bless her) it seemed a return visit might be fruitful.

Part of my motivation was simple curiosity about how much things had changed out on the lake. On my first visit I was taken by surprise at how much had already frozen over after an unusually warm December. On this day the ice went out much further still so that an elevated vantage point was required just to see open water. The first thing that struck me was that the ice hills that seemed so massive only a couple days before now seemed rather flattened. This was a bit of a disappointment as on my previous visit it seemed they could easily be worked into some interesting compositions but I passed them up in favour of finding a vantage point that would allow me to include open water in the composition without undue risk of an unplanned polar bear swim. Shrunken as they now appeared the potential they seemed to have earlier was lost.

Knowing this return visit would have to be shorter (what with the attention span of teenagers these days and all) I stuck mostly to the promenade, seeing things from the same perspective I had seen them from a hundred times before, except that with the ice they were not the same things. The sky, while just as interesting, wasn't quite the same as it had been last time either, containing enough blue this time it seemed filters should effectively enhance the look whereas last time everything appeared too monochromatic for filters to matter. I carry contrast filters in my backpack too. I stuck on a nice orange one and left it there.

It was a bit off the cuff, playing with composition including sky and barren trees, sky and not quite so impressive as they were a few days ago ice hills, sky and tag along teens. Handheld shooting isn't my usual M.O. and though it didn't seem like I was likely to get any real keepers it was still feeling worth the effort of coming out. If nothing else I wanted to finally get a new roll of film through the Iskra. The one I was shooting was loaded months ago after I had improvised a few light seals to address a few leaks that had appeared and I was still unsure if the new seals were effective. As we headed back to the car I still had two frames left, which turned out to be perfect. Passing an old concrete structure I had photographed dozens of times before, a deteriorating room sized stand that had once served as a base for some sort of tower back in the amusement park days, I noticed the most unusual combination of sun behind a semi-translucent bank of cloud. The strange appearance was helped by the fact I was wearing my honey tinted polarizing sunglasses, an effect I hoped the orange contrast filter would help me match on film. A small voice inside was protesting, as it usually does, at yet another photo of that old cement thing, but from this vantage point and half buried in ice as it was the shot would be unique and the voice was once again over ruled and I used up my remaining two shots on the roll.

The result is at the top of the post. It was better than what I imagined my little return visit would result in, and I think I like it more than anything I got the first time out with the RB, its full retinue of lenses and pretty much the whole day to shoot. Of the two frames I got only the first really caught the effect I was after. By the time I shot the second that just right blend of cloud transparency and sun was already disappearing. Oh and the other good news - no sign of light leaks.

In the end any sense that I had let any opportunity slip or lost any momentum was gone. Prospects for the rest of the winter still seem pretty bright. It remains to be seen of course, but whatever the case, I'll keep you posted.

Embracing the Elements

I expect things to slow down this time of year but somehow between the holidays and getting hit with that flu that's been going around it's been a month an a half now, which I didn't expect. With both of these things winding down now that just leaves the cold to contend with. The cold is an obstacle that last year all but brought my photographic activities to a halt, but it's also an opportunity so I've vowed that this year I won't let winter stand in my way, at least not to the same degree.

Winter changes everything. At least it does where I live and for most of you living at roughly similar or higher latitudes I presume it does for you as well. The land takes on a new character. Favorite subjects you/ve photographed too many times in the past can take on a new look. Scenes that might not have looked like much amid the cluttered overgrowth of warmer seasons are transformed by the barren cold and a fresh coat of snow. Even the snow and ice itself can become the subject for photographs that exist at no other time and may never appear quite that way again.

 If you're fortunate enough to live near one of the Great Lakes, winter offers another opportunity that exists in only a few other places in the world. The Great Lakes, any of them really, are a bit like little fresh water oceans. The the lakes are vast enough to be photographed as seascapes, but being fresh water, when winters are cold enough vast quantities of ice accumulate along the shore forming temporary desolate landscapes that differ from year to year.

It must of course change quite a bit over the course of a winter, but having always lived a few minutes drive from the shore I've never really gotten the sense of how it might change on a week to week, even day to day basis. This year then I resolved to visit the shoreline throughout the winter to see how things change, and of course take advantage of whatever photographic opportunities such changes might present. Only a few days into a cold snap following a green and rainy Christmas I made my first jaunt out to the beach yesterday expecting to see little more than the first hints of a line of ice clinging to the shore. Apparently I had the whole thing figured wrong. When I arrived at my usual haunt, the stretch of shore strewn with the ruins of the old Erie Beach Amusement Park, the ice had already created a new landscape of low wind blown hills extending perhaps a hundred metres out from shore. I had been hoping for less really. I had imagined getting images that included ice and water but the new shoreline was 100 meters further on across ice I knew better than to attempt to cross however thick it might appear.

After wandering around for quite some time and making a few exposures I didn't imagine would amount to much I finally found that it was possible to follow the old concrete pier that, back in the heyday of the amusement park had received visitors arriving by boat from Buffalo NY. Here I was able to get my seascape compositions complete with ice in the foreground I had in mind. The greater than expected volume of ice at last seemed like a bit of a bonus as it gave an Antarctic feel to the scene.

I don't put much stock in long term forecasts so I'll take the winter as it comes, which is my default plan for most things anyway. In any case there is more to watch than just what happens along the Lake Erie shore. There's also the Niagara River including the Falls and all the surrounding things mist might freeze to. Then there's all the streams, creeks, woods and so on. It just takes the time and, when the temperature starts to drop, the will.