From the garden

 Here is a photo I took with my Willtravel 8x10 camera on November 1st when I went to the garden at the university. I went to the Japanese Garden, a favorite of one and all but abandoned lately, as no activity is taking place on campus. This time, the campus security guards left me alone, last time I was here, they made sure to keep a security car parked a short distance away, watching me constantly like a hawk eying a stray mouse.

I went down there and tried to take a few photos. I only had four sheets so I would have to make them count, but I was excited, excited, excited about taking photos with this camera. I put in the tripod release plate but noticed it seemed not to screw in all the way. The camera looks solid, but I would discover a few minutes later when it dropped to the asphalt that it is brittle. It breaks into pieces easily, so it is not sturdy. It was my painful and costly discovery to see this.

The area I chose is somewhat shady, and I had taken this same photo before with my pinhole camera. That photo was a disaster, it was so blurry and so underexposed. This time I said to myself, let's do it right. I set up the shot on the tripod (which I didn't have to carry that far, so it wasn't really torture), and composed something on the ground glass. That lens is very hard to see through, it is an f8 lens and you can barely make anything out in the back, but I take an extra shirt and use that as my dark cloth or hood.

I remember, I made a mistake. I am using this annoying cable release where you have to fully depress the lock after every exposure or else it remains depressed so that, if you cock the shutter, it just automatically fires the camera. I made that mistake here again, and was afraid I would have appeared in the photo, since the lens is so wide angle, but no, I am not in the photo. Still, this image is terrible. 

For the life of me, I can't figure out what I did. Yes, the center is heavily overexposed, and I overdeveloped the negative by a few minutes thinking it would suit it because this is a dim location. I think I might have given it one second of exposure. The negative is thick as a brick, I had to lighten it the settings to be able to obtain a scan.

My inversion is terrible also, I couldn't find a way to do so successfully with the primitive photo software I have. But what is that line in the middle? Did I do that with development, or did I crease the negative when loading the film holder? What happened there? The image has potential, but it was not successfully realized here. Now, of course, I would think that the center was overexposed because of the sun, but as I remember, it was cloudy that day and I waited for the cloud cover to further gel so that it would all be in soft light with no hot spots. Also, I know, I know, with a lens like the one I have it will vignette, but still, this is unacceptable. 

In other circumstances I would be tempted to try yet again, this image is worth the try to get it right, but of course, as I wrote in a prior entry, I had an accident with this equipment and it fell to the asphalt where the camera shattered. I don't know if the lens is okay, I guess since I am not going out today (Saturday) to do anything because of the prediction of rain, it would be a good day to look at it again. I am ready to write this off as an expensive mistake, a $700 mistake. I should have bitten the bullet and bought an Intrepid.