The little Leica IIIf is adorable, tiny, and capable. Built in 1946, it’s showing its age a bit. Also, it’s kind of a pain to use, so I only drag it out occasionally. I notice there’s also a light leak.

This time I used a long-expired roll of Ilford XP2 Super.

I exercised the M6 by running a roll of Portra 400 through it, as it’s been dormant since I bought the MP.

This was self-processed in Cinestill C-41 chemistry using the JOBO. Scanned on the V750 and processed in Lightroom with the Negative Lab Pro plugin.

These were all shot with the Linhof Master Technika on HP5 Plus, developed in HC-110 for 5 min (Dilution B) and scanned on the V750.

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The Leica M3 is The One, when it comes to the Leica M line. I love it so. The higher-magnification viewfinder makes it easier to focus longer lenses, so I sometimes mount the Elmarit 90mm and it’s a fine combination. A few here are using the 90mm. The others are using the Summicron-M 50mm (v4). P

The roll of HP5 Plus was processed in HC-110 (Dilution B) and scanned with SilverFast on the V750.

I’ve standardized on Ilford HP5 Plus for black and white film and Kodak Portra 400 for color. This doesn’t mean I won’t try something different occasionally, but those are my go-to films.

I’m trying to use up the rolls of expired TMAX 100 that have been taking up room in my fridge for a few years. I pulled the Nikon F3 out of a drawer, loaded batteries in the motor drive, and shot a roll. As usual, it was mostly photos of Alice and I around the house.

The film was processed in HC-110 (Dilution B) for six minutes and scanned on the V750. The first couple were shot using the vaunted Nikkor 105mm f/2.5 AI-s lens, for what that’s worth. The others were taken with the Nikkor 28mm f2.8 AI-s.

I love the way the Zeiss lenses for Hasselblad render. The 80mm Planar has been my standard and favorite for years. I put a roll of Tri-X through it today, just for fun. Of course it was mostly shots of Alice, who poses patiently for me whenever I ask.

The gentleman who sold me the Linhof later sent me (at no charge!) a Grafmatic sheet film holder. The Grafmatic will hold up to 6 sheets of film at once and allows one to “rapidly” expose them. Here are some instructions.

I loaded four sheets and went out on the deck with Alice to practice. As you can see, it didn’t go all that well. Loading film into the septums was easy enough. And racking the guts of it in and out to “advance” to the next sheet is something I’ll get used to. My problem was that I never advanced past the last frame I shot and then opened the dark slide, exposing and completely wasting one sheet and fogging the next couple. Other than the frontmost sheet, which was totally ruined, this was the worst of them.

There are too many things that can go wrong when shooting large format (4×5) film.

I made four exposures of my friends Steve and Bryan this afternoon. Two of the four were ruined right off the bat: The first, because I’d left the shutter open when pulling the dark slide. The second because I didn’t expose it at all and processed as though I had.

Large format is hard.

There are so many opportunities to fail that making a successful image is really quite rewarding. Today wasn’t a rewarding day. Both of the photos that weren’t completely ruined were spoiled in other ways.