Maligne River

Having finished up all the 4" x 5" black and white sheet film that required processing on the Jobo, I moved on to color.  On March 16th I mixed up a Unicolor Rapid E-6 kit and set about processing the 18 sheets of color transparency film that I had been accumulating.  The processing regimen is fairly simple and straightforward.  It all starts with a 1 minute prewash, followed by the first developer for 7 minutes.  Then there is a water wash, after which the color developer is run for 5 minutes.  Yet another water wash and then the Bleach/Fix is run for seven minutes.  The film is then rinsed and washed and that's it.  The process temperature is quite high, at 38C, so this is what makes the Jobo Processor ideal.

This image was taken last year during the Monochrome Guild Fall Photo Weekend.  This was a weekend in November spent out in Jasper, with several of my colleagues from the Monochrome Guild.

This shot of the Maligne River is a classic example of when color photographs are a little more effective than the black and white shots that I usually take.  Taken late in the afternoon, the valley was in shade, and the colors very muted.  There was very little contrast in the lighting, and with the exception of the bright sky, there was only about four stops variation between the brightest snow and the deepest shadows.  The black and white version of this shot looks rather drab and boring.  The color shot is quite a bit better as there is a very cool mood that is imparted as a result of the evening winter light.

I shot this on November 12th 2023 at about 2:45 in the afternoon.  I used my Ebony view camera and a long 240mm lens.  A blue/yellow color polarizer enhanced the color tone already present in the scene.  This is a sheet of Kodak Ektachrome E100G.  The exposure was F32.0 and a shutter speed of 1 second, which created a nice blur in the water.  The film held up reasonably well considering it hit its best before date in December of 2006.  I also included a scan of one of the sheets of black and white film that I exposed moments before this color one.  That black and white shot was on Kodak T-Max 100 film.  I used a six stop neutral density so that a long 30 second exposure would accentuate the motion in the water.  The film was developed in 510 Pyro.  But none of that really salvaged the image and the result is still rather bland.