The city next to the river (part 4)

 This is the disastrous negative I mentioned in the previous entry. What it tells me is that I can't use that film holder anymore. That holder will have to be trashed, the way I have two other film holders that are not serving me well. I will save the dark slides, but get rid of the holders. I have an offer up on Ebay (Fleabay) for two more holder, Lisco II holders which look to be in decent condition. If the seller declines my offer, I will buy them from somewhere else. They will join the three holders I have that are adequate and don't have light leaks. More than five holders I don't need, because they are heavy and I can't carry that many anyway. I will get into the habit of going out with three holders (with six sheets of film), and take some film and a changing bag and change film out in the field. But I want to have some backup holders.

In this case, I was aiming for trying to get an image of Mt. Rubidoux from the foot of the path that leads up the hill, but that was a no-go. There were herds of people walking up to that section to try to walk up the hill, and many were not wearing masks. The path is somewhat narrow, and I do not want to be walking past people without masks in that Covid corridor, so instead, I took the bike path on the other side of the hill, but ventured out into the wooded area. I was trying for a view of the beautiful trees whose leave had changed color, and even though the color would not show up on black and white film, I still wanted to get their shapes, and also, I figured that the light leaves would contrast well with the dark sky, since I was planning on using an orange filter to darken said sky. I had to walk around, and I could not get a good composition that was not ruined by long shadows (the sun was getting low and would set in about two hours more, casting long shadows in the meantime). Also, I could not get any compositions with a view of the snowy mountains, so I just turned around and shot into the trees, finding one beautiful example which should have appeared on the left side but, of course, it was completely burned out by the light leak. No more. This is a failed shot, but I will throw it up here to attest to the problems I encounter as I learn how to take 8x10 images.