Winter Harvest

This image was taken just over a year ago, in February of 2017.  Winter arrived early in the fall of 2016 and many farmers were caught by surprise.  All over the province crops were left in the fields through the winter, unharvested.  This shot was of some snowed in canola swaths in a field up in Two Hills County.

At that time I had switched over some of my older lenses, that I had been using for some years on my Sinar F1.  I found this bulky monorail camera too heavy to carry around out in the field so I switched to lighter and more compact Ebony folding field cameras starting in 2012.  The Sinar uses a large lensboard about 5-1/2" square, while the Ebony requires a much smaller Linhof board.  I have an adapter to mount the Linhof boards onto the Sinar, but nothing that works in reverse.  Gradually I have been purchasing additional Linhof boards and switching over my 20+ large format lenses.  I have a Nikkor convertible telephoto lens.  It includes three interchangeable rear elements.  Depending on which rear element is used, the focal length is either 360mm, 500mm or 720mm.  The 720mm focal length will not work on the Ebony as the bellows are not long enough, and the extension of the camera is insufficient to properly focus the lens.  It works on the Sinar as I am able to add extension rails, extra standards and extra bellows to achieve adequate length to focus.  The 500mm is borderline for the Ebony, so in the past I refrained from using it and stuck to using my Fujinon-T 400mm.  But back in early 2017 I started using the 500mm Nikkor and found that it was workable for all but close focus distances.  Of course the 360mm focal length is not an issue.  I still have several Sinar F1's and will continue to use them.  I keep them for studio work as the movements are more precise and technical.  I also have the option of taking them out when I want to use the 720mm focal length.  I have several other lenses that I use primarily for 8x10, that can also be used with this camera in 4x5 format.  This includes a Fujinon-C 450mm, and a second Nikkor T-ED convertible set that, depending on the rear element, provides focal lengths of 600mm, 800mm or 1200mm.

I used the 500mm configuration for this shot to compress the near-far relationship and create a somewhat abstract perspective.  Just recently I made time to process this batch of film.  This image was shot on Kodak High Speed Infrared film, rated at 100 iso.  The Nikkor T-ED 500mm lens was used with a #25 Red Filter.  The film was processed in Kodak T-Max developer, diluted 1:6, for 6:45 minutes at 24C.