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Mizpah

Jim Galli

Member
MizPah1s.jpg

mizpah hotel​

I realize if you must explain your photograph, it automatically fails. Fair enough.

What you're seeing is a reflection in the window of the Belvada Hotel in Downtown Tonopah NV of the Mizpah Hotel across the street. But it's only a partial reflection. If you look closely you will see the ceiling in the grand room of the Belvada and the windows on the far side of the room. I love the complexity of all the double imagery in a single exposure. If I hung it in a gallery some time it would be titled only. One to one in real time you would have enough information to figure out what I've done. I guess I don't have confidence in a 120kb .jpg.

Deardorff 11X14 Camera, 16 1/2" Wollensak Velostigmat lens. 7 seconds at f45 1/2

Part of the critique can be to tell me to shut up next time and just post it to stand or fall on it's own.
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
I'm impressed enough with just the title but that's not enough. The great prints of the German Photographer, August Sander would be appreciated wth no explanations but with background information on the social changes n Germany, the full depth of his work can be best appreciated.

So here, even more information is of value! I'd like folk to know that the Mitzpah Hotel is quite a landmark!

"The Mizpah Hotel is a historic hotel in Tonopah, Nevada. The five-story Mizpah was the tallest building in Nevada until 1929.[2] It was named after the Mizpah Mine[3] and was the social hub of Tonopah. The hotel was pre-dated by the Mizpah Saloon, which opened in 1901, and was the first permanent structure in Tonopah." Wikipedia
 

Ken Tanaka

pro member
I like this Jim. I am very enthusiastic for the natural collage and layering that windows can provide. In a perfect world I would have tried to capture more of the interior, perhaps shooting after the harsh sun had set and when the interior was lit to create less of a pure mirror shot.

It's interesting to see what a crazy long exposure you used on this enormous camera . Why such a tiny aperture and long exposure? It looks like you had plenty of light.
 

Jim Galli

Member
I'm impressed enough with just the title but that's not enough. The great prints of the German Photographer, August Sander would be appreciated wth no explanations but with background information on the social changes n Germany, the full depth of his work can be best appreciated.

So here, even more information is of value! I'd like folk to know that the Mitzpah Hotel is quite a landmark!

"The Mizpah Hotel is a historic hotel in Tonopah, Nevada. The five-story Mizpah was the tallest building in Nevada until 1929.[2] It was named after the Mizpah Mine[3] and was the social hub of Tonopah. The hotel was pre-dated by the Mizpah Saloon, which opened in 1901, and was the first permanent structure in Tonopah." Wikipedia

Thanks Asher.

I like this Jim. I am very enthusiastic for the natural collage and layering that windows can provide. In a perfect world I would have tried to capture more of the interior, perhaps shooting after the harsh sun had set and when the interior was lit to create less of a pure mirror shot.

It's interesting to see what a crazy long exposure you used on this enormous camera . Why such a tiny aperture and long exposure? It looks like you had plenty of light.

Ken, the tiny aperture was required because I was just a few feet away from the window moulding and I was trying to hold a bit of everything from perhaps 8 feet to infinity with a 420mm lens. Thanks for the comments.
 

Ruben Alfu

New member
Hi Jim,

I like the way the perspective of the buildings match, it makes them blend together nicely. The play of lights, tones, and lines fading in and out is aleatory and coordinated at the same time. The light pole and the mountains are disconnected from this purely architectural composition, but they add context and deepens the perspective of the scene.
 

John Angulat

pro member
Hi Jim,
I had no idea of the subtle reflections until I viewed the image at home (suffice it to say my monitor at work leaves a lot to be desired).
I missed all the reflections in the sky!
Wonderful capture! Nicely done!
 

Valentin Arfire

New member
hi Jim

I am impressed by the technique you've put in the picture. At small stops I get blurrs but then again I have never used a large format camera :) for me 45 sounds rather like an exposure time. This picture is extremely sharp - a little unreal

Now regarding the image I think the down window frame brings little information and detail but carries a lot of trouble due to its light while the streetlight is cut; another thing would be the building I would expect to be vertical and eventually reversed to be able to read the hotels mark (I suppose it's not reversed in the real life).

And on the reflexion, without thinking it too much I believe in the real life the eye has to adapt when having objects at different distances. Lately I begun to believe that with a few noticeable exceptions, the far objects are blurred, so sacrificing something to "exploit" the realism can include, for instance, sacrificing the room reflexion in the large window.

Of course I don't have your experience and posibilities but here is what I would have tryed: a bracketed exposure in time and focus and maybe helping the interior with a flash. And I suppose the result would be far less than what you've showd us here :)
thanks for sharing
 

Jim Galli

Member
hi Jim

I am impressed by the technique you've put in the picture. At small stops I get blurrs but then again I have never used a large format camera :) for me 45 sounds rather like an exposure time. This picture is extremely sharp - a little unreal

Now regarding the image I think the down window frame brings little information and detail but carries a lot of trouble due to its light while the streetlight is cut; another thing would be the building I would expect to be vertical and eventually reversed to be able to read the hotels mark (I suppose it's not reversed in the real life).

And on the reflexion, without thinking it too much I believe in the real life the eye has to adapt when having objects at different distances. Lately I begun to believe that with a few noticeable exceptions, the far objects are blurred, so sacrificing something to "exploit" the realism can include, for instance, sacrificing the room reflexion in the large window.

Of course I don't have your experience and posibilities but here is what I would have tryed: a bracketed exposure in time and focus and maybe helping the interior with a flash. And I suppose the result would be far less than what you've showd us here :)
thanks for sharing

Thanks Valentin! It's interesting to think about limitations and excellencies of different capture systems. Here we have a gigantic sensor area, 11X14 inches, so the very real losses from diffraction at f45 1/2 are eaten up by sheer brute force of the capture area. F45 with a D200 would be a disaster on one square inch of sensor. But with 154 inches square any loss is swallowed up by sheer mass.

So, at $8 or $9 per sheet of film, bracketing is out :~')) The 420mm lens is equivalent to about a 28mm lens on the D200. Actually a wide - ish normal. But the inherent depth of field challenges with a very long 420mm lens that works at f4.5 remain. This is of course a veiled blessing as the glorious Bokeh and extreme shallow depth that you see on my web pages are what these giants do best, and I might add, they have no peer in the digital world for that look. But when we cross-over into the ultra sharp world where modern digital cameras hold sway, things get trickier.

An interesting exercise would be to put a contact print made with the 11X14 inch negative on old school black and white wet darkroom fiber paper next to one made with the D200 (or whatever the best hot rod is at the moment) and printed with an Epson on high quality fiber paper next to each other in a gallery and stare for a long while at what we've lost..........or gained. Both are beautiful, but also different.

For those interested, I have in my freezer theoretically enough of the old school media to keep doing things the old ways at least for my life time.

Thanks again for the thoughtful and helpful critique.
 

Mike Shimwell

New member
Jim

What a cracking picture. Thank you for sharing with us.

I think that your and Valentin's exchange is interesting - we have gained and lost much in the transition to digital and the range of techniques available to digital photographers can quickly become very complex, albeit allowing amazing results to be achieved. As you intimate - when I look at a good print of a favourite picture shot using digital I easily think why bother with film, and then I look at a film image and reverse the thought! Both are able to make beautiful pictures.

There is one thought though that strikes me - exposure and focus bracketing/blending, stitching etc are all powerful techniques to over come the limitations of single frame capture (I still don't like the word!), but actually you (one!) can do an awful lot without resorting to these approaches and will learn a lot about what makes a picture tick by photographing simply.

This can likely be film or digital, but film opens the possiblity of bigger than 35mm sensors to mortals as well as the supremely wealthy, and as you say there are no really big digital sensors.

Mike
 
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