During a recent visit of Henry and Wendy in SF, I invited them to have their portraits done in large format.  Setup of the day was my 91-year-old Kodak 2D 8×10 camera with Fujinon A 240mm f9 lens and Kodak Ektascan x-ray film.  The strobes, I used two light sources, one direct light above the camera and a reflective light from the left of the subject.   The dark background is a big piece of black cloth that is about 2.5 feet behind the subject.

Here is a collage of photo of me in action, courtesy of Henry and Wendy.

The film is developed with Kodak D76 1+1 for 10-12 minutes at 19C with rollers and scanned with Epson Perfection V700.  Scanning this time I was faced with a lot of Newton ring issues.   I have an AN glass but that only prevented newton rings from one side of the light.  I have to scan the negatives with emulsion down on the scanner glass, then I put the AN glass on top of the negative.  This way I was able to get rid of most of the newton rings.  I guess I probably need another piece of AN glass and hopefully this issue will go away.

The first photo is that of Henry.  It was shot at f11, 1/30 sec and turned out quite nicely.

Wendy here featured in the second photo, also shot at f11, 1/30sec.  I have asked her to look into the left (her right) reflective light.

The final shot is of them together, shot at f16 1/4 sec.  I had cranked up the strobes to be the highest level.  The init negative is dark and about a click off.  I need to double up on the flash to get more light next time.  I have focused on Wendy’s eyes and even at f16, the depth of field is so narrow that Henry’s eyes were very slightly off focus.  I need to add more light sources and try at f22 or even f32 next time for group portraits.

Overall another fun shoot that yield some fantastic portraits.