(800×633, 1280×1012, 3708×2932)

this is another hand-held 4×5 shot from the financial district in san francisco. that’s a window washer’s scaffolding in the corner of intersection of these huge buildings. you can see the transamerica pyramid, one of the city’s most recognized landmarks. this shot came out so clean on this neg scan i decided to post a large version of it.

over the years, the sensitivity of plates and film has changed. one thing that’s interesting about collodion work is that the emulsions were very slow, and very blue/uv sensitive. one way to effect would be to use a dark blue filter.

i picked up a tiffen 47 yesterday. it’s a dark blue filter with a exposure factor of about 3. it is typically in a set of three for color separation and tri-color printing. Most people have the #29, or dark red, in their black and white filter set. the third in the group is #61. (The numbers are wratten numbers.)

the polaroid above shows a self portrait i did this morning (who else would be up at 7am doing photo work!?) through the 47. if you want to see a comparison of the with and without, i made a javascript rollover page that will show you both.

overall, i really like what it does. it may be difficult to tell on a monitor, but i can definitely tell some differences using the polaroids.

the most noticeable difference is that with the filter, my skin tone is much darker and more textured. it appears a bit more contrasty. the texture and contrast both make the image appear clearer. it’s difficult to be too scientific about it.. after all, the with image is shot at f/5.6 where the without was at f/11-f/16. but i’ve seen enough to want to use this filter next time i do a portrait.