Black and Whites from the Galapagos

I mentioned in an earlier post that I used some Scala, Agfa's black and white slide film, while in the Galapagos Islands. I shot one roll, at Darwin's Arch, pushed 1 stop to 400 ASA, then the second roll at Cousin's Rock pushed three stops to 1600 ASA. I was amazed at how well the pushing to 1600 ASA worked, the increase in contrast helps to offset the low light and visibility conditions and yields an amazing amount of detail throughout the image.

The frames I deemed worthy of scanning can be found at the end of an improbably long URL, here.

Hope they are of interest, comments as always welcome.

Hi Craig,

Very interested to see the shots using Scala! I especially liked the shot "Whaleshark. Black and White" the tones of the animal are really nice

Do you mind if I ask some real basic questions???

Were the shots all natural light?

what were the water conditions like, and how deep were you? ie how dark was it?

did you find that when you pushed the film (particularly to 1600 ASA) that shooting up tended to burn out the background (the sun seen through the surface)?

cheers

Lndr

I particularly like the black coral and the schools of fish, Craig. Scala is so impressive at 1600ASA.

At the Visions in the Sea conference a couple of weeks ago deep wreck photographer Leigh Bishop showed off his Scala 1600 shots of deep wrecks which were very impressive.

Definitely worth a look

Do you mind if I ask some real basic questions???

Absolutely not... sorry if your questions have been up for a while, I have been in Grand Cayman for the last 8 days.

Were the shots all natural light? 

what were the water conditions like, and how deep were you? 

ie how dark was it?

All the scala shots are natural light only. At Darwin's arch (the whale sharks) it was about 70 foot visibility and changeable light, but most of these shots were taken at around 30 feet depth, so I was able to use 1/60th and f5.6. With the 15mm nikonos lens that gives depth of field from 2 feet to infinity, so I just pointed and fired... really easy.

At Cousins the viz was more like 45-50 feet. The black coral was shot at ~80 feet, "Shooting macro life" was at 75 feet. The shots with divers in fish are all in the 30-40 fsw range.

did you find that when you pushed the film (particularly to 1600 ASA) that shooting up tended to burn out the background (the sun seen through the surface)?

Yes, and you can certainly see some sunball burnout in the whaleshark shots. I shot with a minimal amount of surface visible when using 1600 ASA to try and avoid this.