Monocacy Creek, 2025
Posted: Wed Sep 17, 2025 9:26 am
'Morning, all -
Took the B&J to Monocacy Hill yesterday for some shooting. Yes - it was time for the every-few-years shots of the local waterfall. Still recovering from last year's surgeries, and something close and familiar is better than nothing at all. A scout a couple years back cut in a new connector trail from a closer parking lot to the creek trail as an Eagle scout project (helluva project, too - he did a great job); this makes it MUCH easier.
Anyway, shot four sheets. Happy enough with three. All fairly long exposures for Arista out in the woods - ~4:15 after reciprocity.
Beautiful day out in the woods for early fall in PA. Camera is working nicely, if a bit on the heavy-ish side. Comes with the old tailboards. The trail is smooth, easy to negotiate, and beautiful this time of year. Have lived here 25 years; thee are still trails there we haven't hit. My wife joined me after her meeting, which was nice. And she sherpa'd on the way back to the truck, which is great.
The camera may be my favorite LF one of all time. Wonderful to use. The ground glass (which I made...) is too coarse for my liking. When I ground it, I could only find my 120 grit lapidary grit; have found my 400 since then. Bought two 5x7 pieces of glass, serendipitously, so will be doing that soon. Also going to add a Fresnel to it. Notably, though, my 150/5.6 Nikkor-W (which is what was used in the first two images above) covered fine. Both were stopped way down, but for landscape and macro, this lens should work just fine. About to pull the trigger on a 5" lens for this, which should be all I need as a kit for a long time. Used some of my new-to-me old wood holders, too - some wax and new tape and they worked great.
Have more local trips, and some not so local, in the works. Very happy with getting back into LF!
Have a great week, everyone.
Scott
Took the B&J to Monocacy Hill yesterday for some shooting. Yes - it was time for the every-few-years shots of the local waterfall. Still recovering from last year's surgeries, and something close and familiar is better than nothing at all. A scout a couple years back cut in a new connector trail from a closer parking lot to the creek trail as an Eagle scout project (helluva project, too - he did a great job); this makes it MUCH easier.
Anyway, shot four sheets. Happy enough with three. All fairly long exposures for Arista out in the woods - ~4:15 after reciprocity.
Beautiful day out in the woods for early fall in PA. Camera is working nicely, if a bit on the heavy-ish side. Comes with the old tailboards. The trail is smooth, easy to negotiate, and beautiful this time of year. Have lived here 25 years; thee are still trails there we haven't hit. My wife joined me after her meeting, which was nice. And she sherpa'd on the way back to the truck, which is great.
The camera may be my favorite LF one of all time. Wonderful to use. The ground glass (which I made...) is too coarse for my liking. When I ground it, I could only find my 120 grit lapidary grit; have found my 400 since then. Bought two 5x7 pieces of glass, serendipitously, so will be doing that soon. Also going to add a Fresnel to it. Notably, though, my 150/5.6 Nikkor-W (which is what was used in the first two images above) covered fine. Both were stopped way down, but for landscape and macro, this lens should work just fine. About to pull the trigger on a 5" lens for this, which should be all I need as a kit for a long time. Used some of my new-to-me old wood holders, too - some wax and new tape and they worked great.
Have more local trips, and some not so local, in the works. Very happy with getting back into LF!
Have a great week, everyone.
Scott