52@52 Week 2
Week 2 of my 52 week photography project. This week, I took my Calumet CC-401 4×5 view camera out to Fort Hancock on Sandy Hook, loaded with New55 instant film from the New55 Project. It’s an attempt to recreate the magic of Polaroid Type 55 film, where you got a print and a negative in large format. I backed them on Kickstarter, but I’m still waiting for my reward. They’re having financial challenges, so they’re selling some of the early film they make and shipping some of it to Kickstarter backers. So I got a pack of it.
I decided this week to try to shoot the aging buildings of Officer’ Row at Fort Hancock. Many of these beautiful blonde brick buildings, which once housed Coast Guard officers billeted on the hook, are in advancing states of disrepair. The roofs over the porches are typically held up from falling down completely by 2×6es, and the porches themselves are mostly rotted through. The railings seem to disappear more year after year. It’s a real pity; the buildings are gorgeous. The American Littoral Society uses one of the ones that has been maintained, and I’ve been inside. It would be good to see them preserved and put to good use before they deteriorate irretrievably.
The camera here was, as I said, a Calumet CC-401 View Camera. The lens is a Schneider-Kreuznach Symmar-S 210mm lens in a Copal shutter. I shot the New55 film at ISO 100; they rate it between 100 and 200, but I thought an earlier shot I did at 160 was a little off in its exposure. The film was processed in a Polaroid 545i holder/processor and left to develop for the prescribed four minutes; the negative was then fixed in Photographer’s Formulary TD-4 fixer and washed for ten minutes, then scanned in an Epson 4990 scanner.
The print is pretty high contrast. It has an interesting look.
The negative seems to have a lot more information than the print.
Posted at 9:03 PM