The Oceana airshow was quite fun and kind of challenging. It was my first full practical field test for large format photography, and my first real airshow photography experience as well. Doing it all on film was actually the easy part — my exposure was pretty good because I have experience with the Super Hornets that fly around my city, and the issues I did have couldn't really have been fixed that easily if I went digital. The Contax RTS III performed admirably. The biggest issue I had was sharp focus. Although I knew I'd be best off with a film like TMAX 400, I wanted to save money and get the most film possible (five rolls of 35mm in the end), so I got my old reliable, Fomapan 100. I'm pretty experienced with Foma 100, and didn't want to try 400, since I heard detail wasn't outstanding and it's not even actually 400 speed. Next time I will be less precious with my cash. 100-speed was fast enough to shoot, but to stop the 300mm down enough I needed more, especially because to see detail on aircraft you traditionally compensate +1 to +2 stops. This meant the depth of field wasn't deep enough and pictures of nearer aircraft especially were far too soft. The Tamron 300mm not having a real infinity stop helped me, since I did use the microprism to grab some targets, but it wasn't enough for many of them. I did have one roll of 400-speed, though: a roll of Superia 400 I developed as black-and-white in the Yashica FX-70. I'd accidentally rerolled it in the canister and snapped it months prior, so I just put the bare spool into the Yashica and sealed up the door. I brought it to the airshow on a whim, and with the 80-200mm Vario-Sonnar it actually performed very well, giving me some of my favorite shots from the show (and a restaurant near the show the day before). These are some — right click & open in new tab to view in full detail.
The Seneca required a lot of effort to use. Metering was always approximate, since I didn't do very systematic testing for the speed of the X-ray and I was developing by inspection anyway. It's very fragile, and sits terribly on the cheap ball-head tripod I've been using since I started photography. Avoiding light leaks was a challenge (that I failed), and hot edges still burned through my negatives. My second holder, a wood Graflex-type, lost one side of its bottom seal during the show, so it could only hold one sheet at a time, complicating things. Loading holders in the field with the darkbag was difficult, but I just sat on the ground or on my aluminum camera case and locked in. The camera did get a lot of attention, both from interested laymen and people with film or digital cameras — a few Minolta SLRs, one Nikon SP rangefinder, etc. Overall people seem to like the imperfections because they make the images look "old", but honestly I just wish they looked good. I know they can. As a note, these are iPhone pictures of prints on Arista RC VC semi-matte paper, so corner softness and what appears to be color fringing are from the scan and not on the print.
The rest can be found here.
The Seneca required a lot of effort to use. Metering was always approximate, since I didn't do very systematic testing for the speed of the X-ray and I was developing by inspection anyway. It's very fragile, and sits terribly on the cheap ball-head tripod I've been using since I started photography. Avoiding light leaks was a challenge (that I failed), and hot edges still burned through my negatives. My second holder, a wood Graflex-type, lost one side of its bottom seal during the show, so it could only hold one sheet at a time, complicating things. Loading holders in the field with the darkbag was difficult, but I just sat on the ground or on my aluminum camera case and locked in. The camera did get a lot of attention, both from interested laymen and people with film or digital cameras — a few Minolta SLRs, one Nikon SP rangefinder, etc. Overall people seem to like the imperfections because they make the images look "old", but honestly I just wish they looked good. I know they can. As a note, these are iPhone pictures of prints on Arista RC VC semi-matte paper, so corner softness and what appears to be color fringing are from the scan and not on the print.
The rest can be found here.