The snow had stopped, but the pictures didn’t. This time I loaded the camera up with Ilford HP5+ and went outside.
Hmmm, slight dark. Let’s try again.
That’s better. Probably the black pavement helped the camera’s meter.
This is where my battle with vignetting begins. Vignetting is where the corners are rounded off by the lens or an obstruction. Sometimes this is done intentionally. However this was not.
I recently added two lenses to my inventory, a 50mm f/1.7 lens and a 28mm f/2.8 lens. I thought the wider angle lens, the 28mm one, was causing this, but I had also bought a lens hood and cap for the lens that came with the camera.
That lens is a zoom lens ranging from 28mm to 85mm with a f/3.5 maximum aperture. I just wanted a cap for the lens, but I found a hood/cap combo cheaper than just the cap. So, I went a head and bought it.
Looking back at these pictures, you can see that the lens is zoomed in a little bit, resulting in less vignetting. I ended up shooting a whole test roll to figure out it was this lens hood all along.
Even with the wider angle, you can see much more detail in the trees, especially the texture of the trunks on some. It’s not just a dark mess like the last roll.
The grain is less pronounced, and there’s more resolving power. You can see more texture in the snow on the middle car and the leaves on the left.
I’m much happier with this set. The only thing I changed was the film. The better quality stock of the fresh Ilford HP5+ compared the to the (slightly) expired Arista.EDU 400 made a huge difference. Development time and method stayed the same: Rodinal 100:1 semi-stand for 1 hour. Both were shot at box speed.