Friday, January 24, 2014

More Negs Selected Using The Fotovix

I went through another 4 film negative sheets last night using my Fotovix II-SX which is turning into quite a valuable tool for me. Fotovix were expensive units that are old tech and now sold cheap on eBay. With this machine I am able to view my 35mm and 120 film on a large LED monitor quickly and easily. I can also adjust exposure and zoom in and out, this allows me to choose whether I should make a quick RC work print of the neg or not. The work print might lead to a final finished archival fiber print.

Today I found a high percentage of possible printable negs (often variations of the same subject). Hopefully my good shots per roll of film is going up. My problem is not having enough negs worthy of printing, my problem is finding the time to print them all. This 90 day push, this 90 day test is my attempt to force myself to make the time needed. Finding the time is a matter of choice, we choose how to spend our time, the people who say they have no time for photography simply choose to spend their lives in different ways. We live by our choices, hopefully this 90 day choice will lead to a more disciplined darkroom regimen in the future. I need to dedicate more time and effort to my photography.

I am happy enough with this recent 35mm work to take 150 rolls of Tri-x next trip along with probably my whole 35mm camera kit (3 cameras 4 lens). This means I would be carrying extra weight next time around as I also plan on shooting 5x7 and maybe 300 sheets of film, I will probably have to cut the large format kit down to 1 lens, 1 meter, 1 of everything. Five weeks to shoot 150 rolls of Tri-x 35mm and 300 sheets of 5x7, am not sure that can be done.

Here are some links to the machine mentioned above:

FOTOVIX Blog

http://www.pnwvideo.com/Fotovix.html