Smaller pinhole and more discipline with Tri-X in the Oshkosh Populist.

Earlier this summer, I started to use up some old rolls of Tri-X by experimenting with them in the panoramic Oshkosh Populist.  It did not go well.  I learned that you can't overexpose Tri-X the way you can color film.  

So in order to make it easier to physically make the short exposures,  I made the camera about a stop slower by replacing the .27mm (f130) pinhole with a .2mm (f175). I also made a point to actually measure exposures and practiced trying to do sub-second exposures by holding a piece of black card over my sliding shutter, opening the shutter and then removing and replacing the card, which I can do much faster without shaking the camera.

It worked fairly well.  I think I got better results.

It wasn't my intention, but I ended up doing more skyscapes than landscapes.

I intended to point the camera slightly down to get this line of little sailboats, but the sky looks pretty good.

Turning around, there was kind of a storm building over Menomonie Park.

When we were over on the west side of the state, we climbed to the top of the hill on Sarah's family farm.

And my favorite is this shot across Millers Bay.

One thing that really has struck me, and it may be just my innaccurate exposures, but Tri-X really seems to have a lot less latitude than the color film I've been scanning lately. Most of the time I can pull some detail out of shadow areas by using the Dodge tool on the Shadows setting in Photoshop, but with these I seem to just make a grey smudge.  On the Facebook post about that earlier blog post, someone made the comment that this increased dynamic range of color film was because it was designed to be used by unskilled amateurs, like that was a bad thing.

I still have about four rolls left, so I'm going to give it another go.  I've got a lot to learn.  I think I'll wait until I get a dark cloudy day so I can get exposures in the multiple second range which I can perform with a little more accuracy.

All with the Oshkosh Populist. .2mm pinhole 35mm from 24 x 72mm frame.  Tri-X developed in Microphen 1:3.