Back in to the Woods

Oct 18

After several weeks exploring locations close to the local waterways for my ongoing project “Water life“ I decided to go to the woodland at Vijlen (Vijlenerbos). The weather forecast was promising; no wind and overcast. Perfect conditions for woodland photography.

The colours of autumn are still not present in the Vijlenerbos so I did focus on visiting some known places to try and shoot black and white 4×5 images on Fomapan film.

Using Large format in a forest has its own challenges. The lack of depth of field forces one to use small F-stops (F22 and more). This results in shooting images at very low shutter speeds. No wind is absolutely key to capture images without moving vegetation. In the early morning I was lucky so I got the change to take some images without movement. But close to midday the wind made it impossible to take any more images.

In this short post I have eclosed some of these 4x5 images. I used Fomapan film (100 and 200). Due to the reciprocity characteristics of this film I had to use shutter speeds of 10 seconds and 30 seconds at an F-stop of 22. I used the Fujinon 90mm F8 and Nikor 150mm F5.6 lens. Because of the low light conditions it was also really difficult to focus with the 90mm lens. Next visit I have planned to use Ilford HP5 plus film at an ISO rating of 1600. This way it is possible to get some faster and more realistic shutter speeds.