Tri-X @ Moors Valley

Last weekend I had a couple of days away, I took my “new to me” Leica M4-P loaded with a roll of Kodak’s Tri-X. I didn’t finish the roll, so rather than just snap away, I waited until my next day out to finish the roll on images I wanted to make. Thursday was my day off this week, and for a change it happened to be a nice sunny day, so I took a walk around Moors Valley Country Park. A local spot that’s just a 10 minute drive away, has free parking and the walk is all paved, so if it has been a bit wet, it’s a good choice. It threads it’s way through a sports park, a bit of farmland, some countryside, nature reserve, and a river that comes up to the path at points, and flows into a large lake that has a walk around it. It’s a nice varied walk.

I’m enjoying using the M4 with the Zeiss 35mm f2 lens. It seems a good balanced combo, and produces good results. This is my third roll of Tri-X and I’m liking the contrast. This roll I developed in Ilfosol 3 at 1+9 20 degrees. I’ve done little to the scans other than resize. If I were to make a print I may reduce the contrast a little, and do a level of noise reduction, but for online use, I’m happy as they are.

The M4-P has no meter, so I took along my Sekonik L308s meter, and did what I often do. That is, take an incident reading in the sun, another in the shade, then just adjust between the two as I walk about, depending on the light on the subject. So the image above was just the “sun” f stop, while the image below was partly shady so I opened up a stop. The light didnt change much so I never too a reading that day!

Using that method I got what I would call a good “even set of negs” that if I ever did a one light contact sheet, should print pretty well. Not that I ever actually do that! I do scan them, and Tri-X seems to lie nice and flat in the scanner which is a nice bonus!

Above shows the lake with a fisherwoman in the foreground, just around the bend in the path, and visible on the left of the image above is a small platform which is perfect to making an image of the dragonfly, the logo of the park. Often a bird of some type or another is sat on top, not this day, I clicked the shutter and of course, promptly one landed in place!