After a period of less activity than usual in my analog photography, I am moving forward again.

Right now I am focusing on two different projects, one is close to completion (more on that in a future post), and the other is a work in progress. In northern Sweden, many major rivers are dammed. My latest project focuses on this topic with images from Sweden's most productive (2256 GWh/year) hydropower plant, Stornorrfors, on the Ume River. So far there are only a few images. At the moment I am waiting for a photo permit to access a location within the fenced area of the plant.

There is heavy snowfall today, and I am not out in the field. Instead, I am enjoying a nice cup of coffee and have just digitized some pictures from the project I mentioned.

I have not yet decided on a project name. It could be STRÖM - which is the Swedish word for both running water and electricity. Anyway, I thought it would be fun to show some of my digitization process, and I've tried to write something about it below.

Most of the time I develop my black and white films myself. I would (someday) like to develop my own color films, but at the moment I don't have that option. These exposures are from my recent field trip. I developed them with a trusty old Paterson tank. The standard configuration of a Paterson tank is up to medium format (120 films), but I have an aftermarket holder for 4x5 sheet film (mod54). Pretty fiddly to load, but everything has worked for me so far. The procedure is simple, first the developer, then a stop bath followed by a fix bath. When the film is no longer photosensitive, it is time for a stabilization bath and a thorough rinse. After rinsing and drying each negative, I place them on my light table. They must not be too thin because thin negatives lack information and cannot produce good images.

On the other hand, dark negatives are not good either. But they have an advantage over thin negatives: they still have all the information. A little harder to get, but it's still there.

When shooting with a large format camera, I always check the light with a spot meter to determine what time and aperture to use. I usually use a technique loosely based on the zone system that was partly formulated by Ansel Adams. He described it as a codification of the principles of sensitometry. The zones are represented by numbers from 0 to X in Roman numerals with different brightness values, 0 representing black, V medium gray and X pure white. The trick is to place your exposure within this range to have information simultaneously in the dark areas (the thin parts of the negative) and highlights. It's all about utilizing the dynamic range of the film. I won't go deeper into light metering and exposures, this post will be too long. So I'll save it for another time.

So now we have some negatives that are correctly exposed and developed. It's time to bring out the loupe at the light table to check if the sharpness is as expected. Once this is done, selected negatives can be scanned and digitized.