Tag Archives: Ian Andvaag

Ian Andvaag D25 submission

by Ian Andvaag

I’m a bit short on time, so my comments on my submission are a bit sparse, my apologies. My first two submissions this round are from Narrow Hills Provincial Park. I wish Fallen Pine was a half stop darker. What’s your technique for metering? I have a Pentax Spotmeter V, but I don’t think I had very good technique as many of my slides were overexposed when I used it. I mostly use a Gossen Luna Pro F nowadays, but I would like to up my game and learn how to spot meter properly. If any of you have tips or resources, I’d be glad if you’d share them with me.

Jade Lake Ridge. Tl120-1, RDP III

 

Fallen Pine, TL-120-1, RDP III

Next is Cattle Gate, from Grasslands National Park. There is an exposure mismatch that I can detect in the sky, not sure why this is as this was on my TL-120. Maybe the batteries where getting low? Has anyone else experienced this? I don’t think I’ve noticed it on other shots I’ve taken since.

Cattle Gate, TL-120-1, RDP III

Finally, a photo from the Saskatoon Exhibition. I don’t think this is as good as Bob and Timo’s slides of the fair, but I did enjoy going and taking some nighttime photos of the rides a few years ago. I wish I could control the lens flare a bit better, but I guess it comes with the territory when you shoot directly into bright lights.

Mach 3 & Water Race, TL-120-1, RVP 100

Scrutinizing Sharpness (Ian Andvaag A33)

by Ian Andvaag
For this loop, I wanted to get some feedback on sharpness. I’ve been working through some of Mike Davis’ spreadsheets and trying to determine if I’m leaving a meaningful amount of sharpness on the table by using a TL-120 or Sputnik. As I understand it, Mike’s contention is that it is not possible to get critically sharp slides with appreciable depth using standard 60-65 mm stereo base and normal FL lenses. I’m rather surprised by this contention after having seen many fantastic slides taken with TL-120s and Sputniks, but I know it’s easy for one’s eyes to be fooled, and I would guess that 95% sharpness looks close to 100% sharpness. I will say that I was particularly struck by David Lee’s Yosemite Fall slide that was included by John Thurston this loop, which seems impossibly sharp, and was not taken with a standard stereo base. I believe the proper way to investigate sharpness would be to shoot some scenes with resolution test charts at various distances and then to side by side A/B comparisons with the resulting slides in a viewer. I wish I could ask Don for advice, I know he occasionally did tests like this 🙁

 

With all this in mind, I picked out several slides which I personally believe to be quite sharp, and I would appreciate any feedback from others about any perceived lack of sharpness. Cloud Inversion should probably be considered as the “base case”. I believe the nears were around 50′ and I focused around that point, shooting at f/16 I believe. I believe this should secure more sharpness than the eye is capable of detecting in a standard viewer. I don’t really know anything about a cloud inversion, maybe this should better be called thick fog that settled into the valley.  Anyway, it was rather unexpected and interesting to see when I woke up to photograph at sunrise. There is a bit of retinal rivalry in the clouds and shadows as this is a chacha with a tripod and it takes some time to set up the tripod and adjust the framing. Apparently quite a few dinosaur fossils have been found in these badlands.

Cloud Inversion

 

I perceive Gem Lake Reflection to have a high degree of sharpness, however I don’t think it is objectively sharper than any of my other standard TL-120 slides. I believe the perceived sharpness is largely due to the adjacency effects caused by the high acutance first developer, along with the fairly visible grain.

Gem Lake Reflection

 

Bryce Hoodoo, yes this is a Sputnik shot, and there probably is some falloff in sharpness towards the corners, but I’m not sure I can detect it! Maybe the pine needles at the far right are a bit soft. This is a pretty “easy” shot to secure sharpness as the deviation is quite low, (the nears are rather far away) but I would be surprised if I changed the aperture off the default f/22 hyperfocal setting. I do think the rock and ground appear sharper than the objects in the far distance, but I’m suspecting that this is more due to the haze and lack of high spatial frequency information in the distance rather than the Sputnik having overly relaxed hyperfocal markings, although it could be both!

Bryce Hoodoo

 

Camping Breakfast was shot at f/22 using the standard hyperfocal markings on the TL-120 and I used the entire range (the near distance was 3 meters). I might be able to detect the smallest lack of sharpness in the specular highlight on the blue water bottle, but I’m not sure. I think the exposure was 1/8 of a second, so the people are probably not perfectly sharp. Yes it was posed!

Camping Breakfast

 

In my opinion, Cloud Inversion does seem ever so slightly sharper than the others, but I’m not entirely convinced it is because of the more conservative DOF tolerance, but rather that the size of the plants at this distance provides a fairly high frequency subject and the low angle of the sun provides fairly high contrast, while non-hyper shots typically have inherently less high frequency detail.

 

So what do you think? Do you use the standard hyperfocal settings on your lenses? Or do you stop down one extra stop? Or some other technique? Ok, enough nerd talk. Sorry to ruin a perfectly good post with all this talk of sharpness! I certainly don’t think it’s the most important aspect of a successful MF3D shot, but it is fun to discuss.

Ian Andvaag’s D24 submission

by Ian Andvaag

For this round, I set aside fifteen or so slides and asked a few people to suggest which four I should submit. There wasn’t perfect agreement, but I think these four came out on top.

I was inspired by Paul Gillis’ D22 submission “Drill, Grind & Dry” to try some more still life in MF3D, as I think it has been somewhat underrepresented in the folio. This view of the breakfast table at Easter was taken from a pretty unconventional perspective, but I wanted to limit the far point so I wouldn’t record too much on-film deviation. I had hoped to mount the image with the orange juice protruding through the window, but I was thwarted by the fruit bowl being closer to the camera. Oh well, the window isn’t so important in MF3D anyway.

Easter Breakfast

In 2018, some friends and I went on a road trip to Utah — it’s about the closest place that you can get decently warm weather in April. We did a lot of hiking, and I wanted to keep weight down so I brought my Sputnik rather than my TL120. I also didn’t bring a light meter, so this one turned out a bit darker than I’d hoped.

Staircase Escalante, UT

My last two submissions this round are from one of Saskatchewan’s National Parks, called Prince Albert National Park. It is better known as Waskesiu, which is the name of the lake where the town-site and cabins are located.  This slide was taken on a 7 km trail quite near to the town-site.

Fisher Trail Waskesiu

Our campground at Waskesiu had several bright yellow lady’s slippers in bloom. The weather was punishingly hot, and so we spent a fair bit more time in our campsite rather than hiking. I challenged myself to shoot a full roll on the lady’s slippers. A question to all the close-up aficionados — how do you get enough depth of field to get everything sharp in medium format? I believe that I am well under MAOFD with this slide, but I can’t get everything sharp at f/22 unless I use a conventional depth range of 3-4 meters to infinity. Should I try to shoot with the camera pointed straight down to limit the distance of the background? When indoors, a wall can be used to limit the depth, but often I find it challenging to come up with a pleasing composition outdoors which has a limited depth range.

Lady’s Slippers

Ian Andvaag A32 submission

by Ian Andvaag

Boreal Floor. Velvia 100, TL120.

From the Esker. Provia 100F, TL120 cha-cha

Two of my contributions to this loop, Boreal Floor and From the Esker were taken at Narrow Hills Provincial Park in northern Saskatchewan. The latter was taken from an esker (ridge of earth pushed up by the last glacier) that runs along the park. It provides a nice vantage point looking over the boreal forest and numerous small lakes. Here I attempted a hyper stereo with my TL-120 by covering one lens and moving the tripod about a metre between exposures. There was a significant amount of smoke from wildfires in the area when I last visited the park, so unfortunately the sky was washed out and featureless in all of my slides.

 

 

Crested Wheat Corral. Superpan 200, reversal processed in D67. TL-120 with Hoya R72 filters.

Web. Provia 100F, TL120.

The other two images were taken at Grasslands National Park very near the Saskatchewan-Montana border. Crested Wheat Corral is in the west block of the park where the remains of several small ranches can be found. The area is very arid, and ranchers tried tilling the soil to improve the pasture, but this turned out to be a poor practice. They introduced Crested Wheatgrass (native to Russia) to the disturbed soil with limited success, but it did prevent further erosion. Large portions of the park still contains undisturbed virgin prairie, which is probably one of the most disturbed landscape types on the globe due to its agricultural usefulness. It’s somewhat off-topic for MF3D, but I made a surprisingly successful silver gelatin print from this slide by making an internegative. I think that this approach yields much better results than a direct reversal print.

Web was taken in the East block of the park in the early morning sunlight. I’ve been trying to branch out a bit and experiment with limited depth of field shots, in particular close-ups. I’m not sure if I’ve found much success. I think the image could have been improved by stopping down another stop to get a faster shutter speed, as I was not able to freeze the web’s motion in the gentle breeze, despite waiting several minutes for the wind to die down.

 

Ian Andvaag’s D23 submission

by Ian Andvaag

Jade Lake (Narrow Hills Provincial Park, SK)

The last round I submitted a couple images I took at Narrow Hills Provincial Park, but not at this location. This is a lovely location in the North West section of the park with seven small (but very deep) lakes with very clear water. They are called the Gem Lakes, so-named for their rich blue and green colours. A network of trails runs around the lakes with several camping locations. I pitched my tent at the Diamond Lake site for two nights, which gave me a full day from dawn to dusk to photograph the area. The trails only total a length of about 6 km, so I did about 3 loops around the lakes throughout the day. This is a high spot overlooking Jade Lake. The spruce tree in the foreground is perhaps a bit gratuitous or cliche, but I thought it looked pretty and gave a good impression of what it is like to look down at the lake from the trail. The film is Delta 100, home-developed in D-67 reversal.

Meewasin Trail – Fall (Saskatoon, SK)

Meewasin Trail – Winter (Saskatoon, SK)

This is a section of trail quite near to my apartment in Saskatoon. It’s not the most remarkable location, but due to its proximity, I do get the opportunity to photograph it a lot (although I haven’t been recently). It’s the location I go to when there is some interesting light from a clearing storm or when there is hoarfrost in the winter before it gets blown off in the wind. The power plant and waste water treatment plant discharge into the river about 15 km upriver, so this section never completely freezes over. I thought the two images contrast each other nicely, although perhaps it’s a bit too repetitive since they are both taken from nearly the same perspective.

Tundra Swan (Wascana Waterfowl Park, Regina, SK)

In my hometown of Regina, there is a bird sanctuary beside the creek. There are some “display ponds”, but the grounds are really not that attractive. Although the birds are not captive, they are not easily frightened since they are used to being fed. In the shade it was rather dim using ISO 100 film, and I really was at the limit of what I could manage in terms of exposure. Handheld Tl120, not sure of the exposure settings, perhaps 1/60 and f/8. The shutter speed wasn’t enough to freeze the swan. There wasn’t enough DOF to cover the background or the foreground, but it wasn’t particularly interesting, so I just cropped it out. Next time I’ll hopefully have a flash with me, or maybe I’ll consider pushing Provia. I enjoy viewing these type of “action shots”, but I find them very challenging to take!

Ian Andvaag d22 submission

by Ian Andvaag

My first two images were taken in the East Block of Grasslands National Park in my home province of Saskatchewan, just North of the US border. It’s one of my favourite parks to visit. Since there are almost no trees (just a few cottonwoods down by the river), you can see a really long way. Consequently, you’re likely to see a lot of wildlife if you visit the park: pronghorn antelope, white-tailed deer, prairie dogs, badgers, ferruginous hawks and all manner of songbirds. Perhaps the most interesting is the burrowing owl, which makes its home in abandoned prairie dog tunnels. There’s also a herd of bison that they reintroduced to the park as a range land management strategy: the bison graze heavily on certain species of grasses, helping to keep a well-balanced prairie.

d22-1: Great Plains

d22-2: Badland Butte

There are no well-defined trails, so you are free to roam around how you like. There are not many visitors to the park, so you can really appreciate the surroundings and get lost in your own thoughts. Even though you can see quite far, there’s little worry about someone walking into the scene you’re photographing. A lot of people, particularly from rural areas of the province find it strange to “go camping in a pasture”, but it’s really a wonderful place to unplug from fast-paced life and just walk around and think about things. The (mostly) native vegetation and abundance of wildlife is also considerably different to a cultivated pasture. It’s hard to imagine that the entire lower half of this province was filled with native grasslands like these, before 90% of it was cultivated.

There was a pretty big storm the one day I went hiking, and as the lightning was getting closer, I realized how little cover there really was around me on the bald prairie. I rushed down to the bottom of a hill and crouched down to make myself small. There were some tremendously loud and bright lightning strikes nearby which were pretty scary. I felt pretty powerless. The Great Plains image was taken about half an hour later, after the storm had started to move on.

For Badland Butte, I wish I would have had a stereo rig that allowed me to increase the stereo base. I tried some cha-chas with the TL-120, but the angle of the shadows actually changed appreciably in between the exposures, leading to some somewhat unpleasant retinal rivalry. I’m fixing up a couple of Agfa Isolettes; hopefully I’ll have them ready to go for this summer. I’d love to hear anybody’s suggestions for a good slide bar. I found out that Jasper Engineering no longer makes their slide bars.

d22-3: Wild Sarsaparilla in Lingonberry

d22-4: Chokecherries

The last two images were taken in Narrow Hills Provincial Park, this time further North, but still in my home province of Saskatchewan. I really liked the subsurface scattering in the red Sarsaparilla leaves, and the background texture of small green Lingonberry leaves made for a nice detail shot. The Chokecherries image is from the top of an esker left when the glacier retreated. A trail runs along the top of the esker which overlooks several small lakes below. The lakes pictured here are called the Grace Lakes. I visited during the end of summer, so it got pretty cool at night.

Hope you enjoy! Thanks for all your submissions, I really had a great time viewing all the wonderful slides this time around!

Ian Andvaag

Grand-Staircase Escalante

by Ian Andvaag

In April 2018 I went on a road trip to Utah with a few friends. We stayed in the campground in the town of Escalante and went on day hikes to Lower Calf Creek Falls, Escalante River and the Dry Fork Slot Canyons.

Grand Staircase-Escalante – RDP III – Sputnik (Location)

The Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument was (until recently) the largest National Monument in the contiguous US and comprises enumerable canyons, including some famous ones such as Bryce and Zion. On our first full day, we decided to visit the slot canyons nearby after speaking with the campground owner. I took this slide at the top of the Dry Fork trail which leads down to the slot canyons.

Slot Canyons – RDP III – Sputnik (Location)

This was taken at the mouth of Peek-a-boo slot canyon. It’s quite high up and it was a bit tricky to get up with my tripod and Sputnik. There wasn’t too much stereo photography that could be done within the slot canyons since the narrow corridor would cause window violations. It’s a really neat place, and I recommend going if you get the chance. The road to get there is like a washboard though, so don’t take a nice new vehicle. Peek-a-boo was the shortest and easiest of the slot canyons here. We also went down Spooky canyon, which was extremely narrow at several points — I couldn’t get through with the backpack. It was also very dark in some places and the sky couldn’t be seen at all. Apparently the third canyon, Brimstone, is even narrower and has pools of water you have to wade through! We ran out of time to attempt it.

Heroic Hikers – RVP 100 – Sputnik (Location)

On our drive back home, we stopped at Bryce canyon and hiked the Fairyland trail. It’s a very beautiful hike. These are my hikineg friends: Gabe, Derek, and Elliot.

Sinking Ship – RVP 100 – Sputnik (Location)

All along the hike, I was wishing I had some sort of twin camera rig, or a bit more time to do some cha-chas. It’s sometimes hard to balance photography with other activities, like hiking with others. I do a lot of walking, so I’m able to take photos and keep up quite well, but it still takes a fair bit of time to stop, set up and level my tripod, meter the scene and take the shot. When we arrived back at our vehicle at Fairyland point, I decided I really ought to take a hyper — cha-cha style. Unfortunately I didn’t have a lens cap or Mike Davis’ spreadsheet, but I found a railing to slide my camera on and I covered one lens with my hand. My apologies for the slightly excessive on-film deviation and corresponding window violation. Otherwise, I’m quite pleased with how it came out. I wish I had taken more hypers, but we had to get going. I hope to come back some day and really take my time shooting. The tilted landmass in the distance is called Boat Mesa or the Sinking Ship.

Thanks all for sharing your wonderful images. It’s such a pleasure to participate in the folio.

Ian Andvaag
Saskatoon, SK

Ian Andvaag d21 submission

by Ian Andvaag

Beechy Sand Castle

Hyper Hills

The first two images I have submitted were taken last summer at a unique location here in Saskatchewan called the Beechy Sand Castle and Sunken Hill. There are a couple of quarter sections of ranch land near the inlet of Lake Diefenbaker on the south Saskatchewan river that are home to some interesting land formations. It’s on private land, but the owner is gracious enough to allow visitors to come and hike around the area. Legend has it that an underground gas pocket collapsed,  causing the land to give way.  One day, the rancher went to check his cattle, and the tracks left by his truck a few days prior led right into the crater of the Sunken Hill!

The location is only accessible during dry conditions, since you have to drive through a field to get there. It was very hot the day I went and also quite smoky from forest fires out west in British Columbia. After walking around a bit and seeing the lay of the land, I knew I wanted to try out some hypers, but I had neither a laser rangefinder, nor Mike Davis’ stereobase calculator. I tried some anyway, but as you can see by my slipshod cutting to expand a panoramic mount, I didn’t get it quite right. Most of the hypers I took had very distracting retinal rivalry in the water, but this one didn’t seem quite as off-putting for whatever reason. This summer I have a goal to get a working system for hypers using two Agfa Isolettes.

Smell the Roses

Frosting

The other two slides are from my city, Saskatoon, on one of the few days of the year that we get hoarfrost. It’s always so beautiful and it’s one of my favourite things to photograph in MF3D. I titled the one slide “Smell the Roses”, because the frost can make even a pile of overgrown weeds in an industrial district look pretty, and it seems like many people don’t stop to take notice.

Now that I’ve got a workable B&W reversal process, I’m more motivated to shoot black and white. Hope you enjoy!

Ian Andvaag A30 submission

by Ian Andvaag
Encroaching Dunes and Storm Brewing were taken during the four separate times I visited Douglas Provincial Park this summer. It is a nice ~4km walk out to the dunes, through scrubby aspen parkland full of scraggly junipers and cacti eking out an existence off the dry, nutrient deficient soil. Unfortunately our provincial government has thoroughly defunded our provincial parks, so the nature centre at the trail head has been permanently closed and has fallen into disrepair. So, I don’t know much about this unique ecozone. At least the trail markers remain mostly in tact, so it is still easy to find the dunes, although the trails are not used very frequently. During my visits I only ever encountered maybe 3 groups of people.
The first time I went I discovered rather dramatically at the end of my 5 hour hike that my TL-120 had not been working properly. It was getting dark and I decided to do a couple of longer exposures. I set up the camera to 1 sec and took the shot … the shutter did clicked open and shut without any delay. Uh-oh. I had always thought that the camera had a mechanical shutter, so even if the battery was dead, it would still operate normally, except for the light meter. Earlier in the day I had been shooting at around 1/60, and didn’t notice that the shutter wasn’t staying open long enough. I think I developed 5 super underexposed rolls from that excursion. Lesson learned, I’ve now carefully reread John Thurston’s excellent page on battery options, and I always carry spares now, and I change the batteries periodically.
Canola Fields and Milkhouse were taken near the farmyard where my Dad grew up. I should have been there about 1 week earlier to get optimal colour in the canola flowers. I wish I would have had an opportunity to photograph the field in the early morning or late afternoon warm light, but it was cloudy. I think Milkhouse is a bit weaker than the other slides in my submission, but I really like the colours, so I decided to include it.
I’m really enjoying shooting with the TL-120, but I still take out my Sputnik in adverse weather conditions and when it is inconvenient to lug around the heavy TL-120. Sometime in the future I’d really like to try some hypers after seeing some amazing slides from the folios. I still struggle with exposure a bit, I’d say only about 80% of my shots come out properly exposed (provided my camera has functional batteries!) Was the TL-120’s internal light meter calibrated for colour negative film, because it seems to overexpose most scenes by a bit. I use my Gossen Luna Pro F primarily. Perhaps I should consider getting a spot meter.
I really enjoyed the folio again, thanks all for your lovely images!

Claybank, Saskatchewan

by Ian Andvaag

Thank you so much for welcoming me into your group. I am struck by the great variety present in the folio. There are cha-chas, long night exposures, extreme hyper stereos, multiple exposures, homemade cameras, handheld shots, flash and more. All these different methodologies are used with a vast array of subjects. There is so much to explore with MF3D, and I can’t believe my luck that I’ve stumbled upon it when slide film is still available and this small but dedicated user group exists to support one another in our craft.

Thanks, I’m very grateful!

Claybank, Saskatchewan is home to North America’s best preserved brick making site. The Claybank Brick Plant was operational from 1914 to 1989 and made bricks for many building projects, including the Château Frontenac in Quebec City. The national historic site is open for tours during the summer, but you are able to visit the clay hills any time.

Shortly after receiving my Sputnik, I tried to think of locations near me which would provide good stereo photographic opportunities (a somewhat challenging task on the bald Canadian Prairies!) Claybank occurred to me as a unique place to photograph with its derelict brick-making plant and its eroded hills. I hoped that using black and white film would communicate a kind of neglected feeling about this old place.

All images taken in the Spring of 2016 on PanF+ except for Kilns which was Delta 100.

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