BP 16.0 - Cadillac Hotel

Last week I processed a batch of 4" x 5" T-Max 400 taken during various Beer Parlour Project outings.  Most of the shots came from outings to Limerick, Cadillac and Fife Lake, Saskatchewan, as well as a few from Rimbey and Eckville.  I tossed in a couple for the recent trip out to the Edson area to fill up the batch.  Most of the film was rated at 1250iso.  I developed in Kodak T-Max Developer, 1:4.

I'm finding that many of my images are a little underexposed.  Mostly the issue is the poor lighting in many of the taverns, combined with slow lenses, and slow film.  I thought that rating my 400 iso film at 1250 rather than 1600 might help a little, and it did.  I think the incident meter that I have been using may not be the best choice and the next time out I will probably try a spot meter.

I'm also thinking about attempting some studio lighting.  I already drag around so much gear to these outings that I kind of loath to add more to the pile.  But it may prove necessary to get better results.  I have a couple of simple light stands with reflectors, and LED bulbs.  I may try positioning these some distance away from the subject, and aimed somewhat indirectly, to act mostly as fill light.  This will hopefully open up some of the shadows and allow slightly faster shutter speeds, and smaller apertures (for greater depth of field).  On most occasions my shutter speeds have been in the range of 1/4 to 1 full second.  Some of the drunks are just not able to hold still that long...!

Lighting was not an issue in the image below, as obviously we stepped outside.  This is Johanny, one of the waitresses at the Cadillac Tavern when Chris and I visited back in June, for BP 16.0.  I actually caught her as she cracked a nice smile in this one.  I think someone had just told a joke, as there was a bit of a crowd gathered to watch the portrait session.

Sadly, when Margarit and I made a return visit to Cadillac in September, the hotel was closed.  The Cadillac sign was taken off of the tavern door, and a real estate sign was nailed up on the wall.  I understand that it is listed on the market for $225,000.  Hopefully someone buys the place and makes a go of it.   I wonder what happened to Johanny and the other staff...?