Field Work - Ash Cave, Hocking Hills - Large Format Friday

Hey there and welcome to Large Format Friday. I'm your host Matt Mirosh. If this is the first time you're stopping by the channel here's a playlist of our entire second season of LFF and if you haven't subscribed yet each and every Friday we're going to be here and we're going to be talking about something large format and when the weather's nice like this we're going to be shooting as well. Today we're here at Ash Cave which is probably one of the easiest trails to to use at Hocking Hills. It's also one of the trails here in Hocking Hills that's actually wheelchair accessible so if you fear you know long walking distances lots of vertical hiking Ash Cave is really a really easy one to check out and still some beautiful beautiful scenes like we've got this morning. The snow just started coming down and let's head up the trail and see what we see. You know I had a day very similar to this one about four years back and as soon as I parked a little bit of snow started but by the time I got to the large opening that is the Ash Cave the snow had completely blanketed the ground. If that happens today we're going to have a good one on our hands. Now we're almost there the cave opening oh yeah you can hear some water too and just like that we're here. This is such a relaxing trail if you've never been down to the Hocking Hills this is one of the places that you should at very least visit. So many nice things to see and if you do come here early you might be the only one here and that's one of the really really neat things about this gorgeous gorgeous landscape we have. Now if you're you know in the American West and you've got all this beautiful topography you kind of know what this feels like but here in Ohio this is about the biggest that we get. First things first let's set up a warm-up shot. I'm going to start the warm-off with a wide shot. Last time I did this shot wide I went for a vertical because I was getting a little bit more snow on the tree. This time around the snow is a little gentler. Today's a bit of a grab bag for film. I'm using the remainder of an old box of T-Max 100 that's about 10 years expired and a couple of sheets of HP5 that I found pre-loaded in some holders. We're going to meter out first assuming the T-Max 100 because it has a little bit better reciprocity failure characteristics. Basically those longer exposures aren't going to impact it as much as the HP5 so even if the T-Max is a little bit slower over the course of two, eight, ten seconds exposures the T-Max is going to fare a little bit better. Some shadows, some highlights, some highlights. So I took some measurements darkest shadow under some of these rocks here and some of the brightest highlight obviously the haze in the sky. I'm not going to worry too much about where that highlight falls because that's not something I control in exposure. I'm going to control that in development but I do know where I want my f-stop to be. I want my f-stop to be at a really nice clean f45. That's going to make sure I did some front rise on the lens and that's going to help me get all the image circle out of this lens as well as get just everything tack sharp and focused. All right for our warm-up shot we're at two minutes of exposure time. Ready? One thing that's nice about exploring these shorter hikes is we just have more time to look around and experience this light as it comes in. I'm definitely seeing differently from any other times I've been here because I'm not rushed. I've got all morning to get this done and I can start really just analyzing things looking for shape and form and leaving lines like the things we're supposed to do in photography. So I've set up a wide shot here from this really really tall inch deep in shadow tree. That's probably going to be my darkest shadow detail for the shot and then of course my highlights are going to fall you know that's going to be pretty much blown in the sky and then try to retain those highlights on the snow. So this time around we've got a minute and a half on the clock. Oh yeah now the light's starting to even out a bit. This is great. All right shadows under the rocks again. Highlight on some snow. Mid-tones on the trees. Highlights on the trees. And no surprise our exposure is lesser than it has been because the light's come up a bit more. So now you've got 45 seconds of exposure. You know another thing that's worth considering when you're at a location that you've been to before it's important to come at different times at a location you've been to before and also to just try new things. What's the worst that could happen? You're already here you might as well shoot the picture. We've changed out our lens for something longer. I really like this vantage point. Surprisingly I've been here probably a dozen times in the last few years and I've not tried this vantage point. So trying different positions of the camera, different angles, and different fields of view. These are all going to help that creative eye that you're exercising. Another big one. 30 seconds. All right we've got one more shot somewhat similar to the last one but we're not doing a portrait instead this time we're doing a landscape orientation and I've got 16 seconds. I know it seems weird but that tree that's fallen has given me kind of a neat little opportunity. That stump has some really cool textures to it. The shadows are being really opened up by just this overcast hazy light coming in and you know it's worth a shot. I'm going to throw it into portrait orientation and we're going to get a close-up of it. I'm going to use my long lens to get just a bit closer. Oh wow I almost don't need the dark cloth it's so much brighter back there. Now this one I assume is going to be a much more flat scene because we're aiming right at some diffused snow and there's very very few kind of closed shadows. All right so my spread I've got about four stops of range between f16 and f45 that places and this is for iso 80 four seconds which is giving me about so getting my shadows yeah if we go f32 that's at somewhere between four and eight seconds so we'll call that six seconds which will be 10 with our t-max. You know one thing that I haven't mentioned in these last few fieldwork episodes is how I'm handling development for these. So the way I approach my metering and exposure is via the zone system. If you haven't checked it out episode I think it's 12 of LFF covers metering and just a very basic version of the zone system in finding those deepest shadow values that you want detail in those brightest highlight values the shadows inform where your exposure is. So I find what my shadow value is I place it by plotting on my spot meter where that point is and then I make an exposure to have those shadows fall right there. My highlight measurement is going to tell me where I need to develop my film but I am it's not like I'm doing all this in camera so there's exposure there's development and then there's also going to be the scanning side of things so you have plenty of chances along the way to help things out as long as you do the dance and and take your time. So I've got not my super wide but my pretty wide lens on my 250 millimeter and I'm using a little trick right now because I'm kind of out of rise on my tripod and I want to see a little bit more of this rock leading in and kind of framing up the larger part of the cave really just to give a sense of scale to things and you can see I'm tilting the tripod back and all I'm doing now is I'm applying some rear tilt and then I'm going to match that rear tilt with equal amounts front tilt this isn't doing anything really more than than just kind of raising up my perspective just a little bit and this will help me retain image circle in doing so got a 16 second exposure. Another tip if you do start playing around with really crazy movements if you got a sec just re-zero everything it takes a few seconds but it can help you avoid some really critical mistakes in future compositions. Well let's head to the other side of the falls here see if we can find some more cool compositions maybe even get to get some of that light illuminating the cave. Oh yeah yeah there's some nice light around here oh man all right let's set one up right yeah right around here 30 seconds on the clock. You know this is one of the points on the hike where I've run out of film I still got two shots let's go see what we can find. So I'm going to try something a little non-standard here as I was coming through just these small openings between the branches I just really like the feeling I got as the snow is just starting to accumulate on sides of the tree and on the rocks it gives me some interesting texture and kind of helps you your eye move along the path so I'm going to lower the perspective of the camera and I'm just kind of try to get a wide field of view that gives me that same kind of wonderment as I'm coming through I see a little bit of snow coming down and I see this dark but texture in the back with the cave. All right second to last shot we got 16 seconds I'll keep this covered because of all that snow. Well this is a bit of a change of scenery. Hey did you know digital cameras have these lithium-ion batteries that when they get really cold they start draining at mega fast rates. At about the same time all three of my batteries as well as my mic system just went kaput. I guess it was colder than I thought it was it didn't feel so bad to me but it was probably because I was hiking with all that extra stuff. Anyway my last shot of the day I was just coming back down the trail there was some cool trees growing up out of this uh this uneven portion of the rock and it gave this nice slant feeling and I just wanted to correct those lines and get a wide perspective I thought it came out pretty cool. Now we're back here now and I wanted to give a quick thank you again to everybody who tuned into large format live on Sunday it was a great time at our highest we almost reached 100 live viewers which was awesome we had lots of good interaction there were some new subscribers and there was even some folks that were there to support the channel just with comments as well as financially and one thing that I'm starting to include in my videos now at the very bottom you'll see a little paypal.me link this is a way that if you want to directly support production of large format Fridays that is a way that you can do that don't feel obligated at all all I ask is if you like the video hit that like button and hit subscribe and if you hit the little bell notification you'll know when I'm posting any content Q&A polls live or new videos so check that out also if you're into the tech stuff any pictures that are my favorites from these shoots that I upload to Flickr yes Flickr it's a thing but I get high-res uploads there I'll upload those to my Flickr page and I'll link those in the description as well so you'll see a Flickr link and a PayPal link and all of my videos going forward where I feature work and that's so you can check out the details and support the channel if you like thanks again for stopping by oh and if you have any questions you can always feel free to shoot me an email largeformatquestions at gmail.com now thanks for stopping by and we'll catch you next week for more LFF