April 2018 – tim dobbs photography

Shoot Saturday, Post off Monday … see scans Tuesday …. Gotta love @Filmdev

It was a lovely sunny day forecast last Saturday so I was up early and out with my Olympus OM2s loaded with a roll of expired Fuji Superia 100.

The last roll of C41 that I developed showed signs of going bad so instead of processing it myself as per usual I decided to send it off to Filmdev whom I have used on plenty of occasions before developing myself.

I have always been impressed with the service and quality I received from filmdev but this time I was over the moon because as the title of this blog post says … I shot on the weekend, popped into the post on Monday morning and when I got home from work on Tuesday afternoon I had a Paypal invoice followed by my link to download my scans.

I went for the large scans from the Noritsu HS-1800 scanner and they blew me away with the colour rendition and sharpness from the Superia.

All the images here are the scans that I received … just resized for web.

All I can say is Filmdev “Rocks” … If anyone reading this post have never tried them before then give them a go.

The prices are extremely good and along with the quality of the processing and scanning they are a must.

I have another 10 rolls of this batch of Superia 100 that I picked up from ebay so I am very happy that it works as good as the fresh rolls that I have in my fridge.

Anyway thanks for looking ….

Click on an image to view larger

All images on my blog are available as prints just drop me an email

I also have a film only blog over at usingfilm.wordpress.com if you want a peek 🙂

#Camerachallenge …. my keepers from the roll …

I recently took part in a twitter cheap camera/film challenge arranged by twitter friend Jason Avery whereby you have to purchase a camera for £2 or your local currency equivalent and load it with the cheapest film that you can find and post the results during the given week.

I was late to the challenge as I managed to pick up a camera for £2.99 but was hanging on just to see if I could find one cheaper which sadly I didn’t so I went with this combo.

The roll of Superia 100 was given to me so you could not get cheaper than that.

I managed to finish the roll during the week but by the time I developed it I only posted a couple as it was a bit late so here are the keepers from that roll.

The camera performed pretty well, it was totally automatic but you could either force or turn off the auto flash if to want but that was it for manual controls but it did have a button that let you focus at infinity (I think it focused from 13 meters to infinity) which I used for a couple of frames.

Well here are the images …

Anyway thanks for looking ….

Click on an image to view larger

All images on my blog are available as prints just drop me an email

I also have a film only blog over at usingfilm.wordpress.com if you want a peek 🙂

First 2 rolls with my Fuji GW690iii ….

I recently managed to get one of my dream cameras into my collection the awesome Fuji GW690iii.

I have been looking for ages at a bit of a step up from my 6×6 and 6×4.5 medium format cameras with the possible idea of eventually getting into large format further down the line.

A good twitter friend gave me a stunning deal where by we swapped … I gave him my Fuji X-T10 and in return I got the Fuji and also a Samyang 8mm f2.8 fish-eye for my X-T20 …… suffice to say I am so sure I have had the best end of the deal.

Apart from the battle scars to the built in hood the camera was in excellent condition and I was excited to get out and use it.

I shot the 2 rolls over 2 weekends … the 1st was at my local beach of Porthcawl and the 2nd was up in the forestry here in the garw valley.

The camera was a dream to use even though it is big compared to my Leica rangefinder it handles very well and as the body is made up of quite a bit of plastic (very solid plastic mind) the weight is not too bothersome.

I even manged to hand hold down to 1/30th on 2 of the forest shots.

Anyway here are all 15 images ….. ( I managed to leave the lens cap on for one frame in the Reala set …. idiot)

First Fuji Reala …

Second Kodak Ektar …

The size of 6×9 negs is something to behold … it’s a bit strange just seeing 8 frames when you get it out of the tank and the level of detail you get even when scanning on my getting old Epson v500 is lovely.

I am going to get my next roll lab processed and scanned just to hopefully see just how good this lovely camera is.

Anyway thanks for looking ….

Click on an image to view larger

All images on my blog are available as prints just drop me an email

I also have a film only blog over at usingfilm.wordpress.com if you want a peek 🙂

1st time shooting Rollei RPX 100 ….

Over the past year I have managed to pick up quite a few rolls of different film stocks that I have never shot before … Rollei RPX 100 being one of them.

Slowly but surely I am trying them and seeing what I like or don’t like with them and whether or not I would buy more.

I have a small selection of B&W developers that I use and after reading up on the web about which may be the best for this film stock and decided on Rodinal at a dilution of 1+25 which should give good sharpness and contrast from the images that I have seen especially as I pushed it to iso 200.

The day was pretty rubbish with grey clouds and sleet so I used the Leica M2 with the 7 Artisans 50mm f1.1 with the hope of trying to shoot a few images wide open.

I was very impressed with how the film performed giving tons of detail with excellent tonality and I will definitely be buying more of this stock that’s for sure.

I need to try the RPX 400 just to see if the extra grain you may get with a faster film will lessen how sharp the images may appear especially if pushed a bit.

Anyway thanks for looking ….

Click on an image to view larger

All images on my blog are available as prints just drop me an email

I also have a film only blog over at usingfilm.wordpress.com if you want a peek 🙂