Violets

While hunting around the house one morning for something photogenic, I remembered this patch of violets that grows in the shady side of the house. The dew drops were perfect so I ran inside to grab a camera. I decided to use my 355 G-Claron because I haven't used it much since purchasing it last year, and because it's specifically designed for 1:1 copy work, making it ideal for macros. The bellows extension was about 700mm, requiring an extra rail for the Toyo. Luckily, my Toyo 45G has the long bellows so could handle it with no issues. The film I used is a pack of Tri-X 320 that expired in 2001. I usually rate this around EI 80 and it generally gives acceptable results. Because of the shade, small aperture (f/45) and the long bellows extension, I calculated an exposure of 8 seconds. Although, looking at the negative after developing, it seems a bit overexposed (and very low contrast) so my math may have been off.

I took 3 shots. 1 vertical, and 2 horizontal. I chose the last shot to print. I used Fomatone Classic together with its paired developer, Fomatol PW. I love this combo, but it's slow. The paper is much less sensitive than Fomabrom, requiring 2-3x longer exposure times from the enlarger. The developer is also very slow; I had the print in the developer for 6-7 minutes. It took a while to figure out what contrast filter to use, but I ended up settling on grade 4. The final print was toned in selenium 1+19 for 6 minutes.