Bridgend – tim dobbs photography

3 Months to finish a roll …

To say that this year has not been very productive photography wise would be an understatement.

My photography mojo has really waned and I don’t really know why.

This roll of Lomo CN400 has been in my trusty Minolta X700 for over 3 months before I managed to shoot the last frame and get it developed.

I really couldn’t remember what I had shot and was worried that I may have even shot the same things more than once.

I take a camera with me nearly everywhere that I go and I was probably shooting at least 1 roll of film every week but I have been struggling to even take the camera out of my bag sometimes.

I love photography and I want to get out of this rut so if anyone reading this has any ideas please let me know.

Anyway here is the roll, nothing special but Lomo CN400 never fails to look good along with the development/scanning by Filmdev.

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

Also still have a handful of zines over on my etsy store as well as some hand made film canister keychains … https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/timdobbsphoto

More Kentmere 400@800 with the Nikon FM2n & Flektogon 35mm …

I have not blogged for ages for various reasons, mainly because I have not shot a lot of film recently so I am trying to motivate myself.

Sticking with Kentmere 400@800 theme which I really like the look of I loaded my FM2n and for a change I have an old Carl Zeiss Jena Flektogon 35mm f2.4 which is an M42 screw mount lens that I have a Nikon adapter for and it works great.

It took well over a week to shoot the whole roll so the subject matter is pretty varied ….

I developed the roll in Rodinal this time which gave a far grittier look than I had with the last roll.

So here are the best of the roll as I had a few duplicates …

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

Also still have a handful of zines over on my etsy store as well as some hand made film canister keychains … https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/timdobbsphoto

Eventually finished a roll in the OM1 & tried Cinestill C41 kit ….

I loaded my trusty Olympus OM1 with some Lomo CN400 way back at the beginning of June and even though I took it with me most of the time I only managed to finish it last week.

As luck would have it I had bought the Cinestill 2 bath C41 kit to try so this was the first roll in it.

The whole process was pretty easy compared to the usual Tetenal multi bath kit that I have used previously and the results were fine.

It has been ages since I last developed colour negatives and I forgot what a pain it is to spot out and colour correct as I have been sending my C41 stuff to Filmdev lab.

It will be interesting to see how long the chemistry lasts as I shoot far more B&W than colour.

It says that it should develop 24 rolls which makes it very good value for money.

Any way here are the images .. all a bit random as it was shot over weeks rather than days.

Click on an image to view larger … Ignore the grumpy old man in image 2 .. I do smile most of the time honest ha ha!

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

Also still have a handful of zines over on my etsy store as well as some hand made film canister keychains … https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/timdobbsphoto

Kodak Vision 3 50D on a sunny day ….

Ages ago I bought some hand rolled Kodak 50D from a twitter friend and as I was also given a new kit of ECN-2 chemicals also from a different twitter friend I dug a roll out of the fridge and loaded my Nikon F100 with both the 50mm f1.4 and 24-85 VR and shot the roll over one whole week.

I really like using 250D as I find it a bit more versatile that 50D due to the poor weather we seem to get more often or not here in Wales but the week just gone has been great so using 50 iso has been pretty easy for a change.

Developing using the QWD ECN-2 kit is a breeze but I find that scanning Vision 3 films quite a pain compared to C-41 as my Epson software seems to find strange colour casts on about 50% of the frames so my scanning times are probably doubled.

That said I do like how Vision 3 films look and 50D has pretty fine grain compared to both 250D and 500T which makes sense due to the lower ISO.

Well here is the whole roll warts and all … comments most welcome

You can find my previous blog about using the QWD ECN-2 kit here if you are interested …

New QWD ECN2 developer kit for Motion picture film .. Mini review .. My first 3 rolls …

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

Also still have a handful of zines over on my etsy store as well as some hand made film canister keychains … https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/timdobbsphoto

1st time shooting Lomochrome Metropolis 35mm … the whole roll

I love trying new films whether they are new emulsions or just a film that I have never shot before.

Lomochrome Metropolis is an actual new emulsion developed by Lomography that according to the write up on their site can be exposed between 100 and 400 iso without any change in development.

Link … Lomo Metropolis

As it was £13 per roll and I only bought one to try I decided on the middle ground and went with 200 iso.

As some of the shots involved the sky I did use some exposure compensation .. the camera of choice was the Minolta X700 with the 50mm F1.7.

The roll was developed and scanned by FilmDev just to get accurate colours so that I can judge if I like the desaturated look that I have seen.

I shot the roll over a week so the beginning of the roll was a bit of street and the rest was a mountain walk here in the South Wales valleys.

At first sight I loved how this film looks, yes it did have a desaturated look which worked well on the street images but when you went out into the countryside it still had that look but the greens seemed to pop probably because the rest of the colours were subtle.

The film was pretty sharp and contrasty, the grain was there to be seen but at 200 iso it was very pleasant maybe at 400 it would be a bit more pronounced.

I am a bit gutted that this film is so expensive as I would be shooting it quite a bit if it were £10 or less a roll that being said I will be buying more but using it now and again depending on what I am shooting.

Well here is the complete roll … click to see an image larger

Comments most welcome

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 🙂

Eventually trying my 1st roll of Silberra Ultima 200 …….

It must be a year or two back that I supported a Indiegogo campaign for Silberra where I received 2 rolls of film … Pan 200 & Ultima 200.

You can see my Pan 200 results here .. Silberra Pan 200 …

So here is the 2nd roll Ultima 200 … I shot it using my Nikon F100 and processed it using Rodinal at 1+25 dilution for 8 minutes.

The film was a a bugger to load onto the reel in the darkroom and was also a pain to scan due to how very thin it was .. that said once scanned I was pretty happy with how it looked.

The contrast and sharpness was nice, not bad tonal range either and to my eye the grain didn’t seen as pronounced as the Pan 200 I had shot before.

I doubt I will be shooting any more as it doesn’t really bring anything new to what I shoot that HP5 or plenty of other stocks that I regularly use, also I won’t miss the loading/scanning problems.

So here are a selection of images ….

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 🙂

Forgotten roll of Lomo CN400 from the summer ….

I have been getting really behind with my blogging … I have loads of rolls that I have shot over the last few months that I have scanned but have only edited one or two frames that I have then posted to social media but not done anything with the rest.

This roll is a case in point … last August there was an event in Bridgend town centre with stalls, street entertainers and live music.

The weather was pretty good and I took my Olympus OM2s which was already loaded with my favorite colour negative film stock Lomography CN400 which I had shot 2 frames already from a trip to Cardiff.

I only shot about half of the roll during the event as I somehow found myself in the pub so I finished the rest the following day which is why there is a strange juxtaposition of images here 🙂

The Lomo film worked great as usual I love the colours it produces especially if you slightly over expose it 1/2 to 1 stop but process as normal.

Here is a selection from the roll

Click any 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 🙂

Lomography Color Negative 400 at the car show ….

A couple of weeks ago there was a small classic car show here in Bridgend town centre and as we were blessed with a bit of sunshine I loaded the Nikon F100 with my favourite colour film stock .. Lomography Color Neg 400 along with the Nikkor 50mm f1.4 and went down with the intention of getting closeup and detail shots as well as the normal car shot.

This film always gives it’s best when shot in good light and didn’t disappoint this time with lovely popping colours along with excellent detail.

I had the roll developed and scanned by Filmdev which as usual gave great results.

If you have never tried this film before then get your hands on some and give it a go I am sure you will be happy.

Anyway here is a selection of images ….. well to be honest it is almost the whole roll 🙂

Please click a photo 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 🙂

February 2019 #FP4Party .. All my images together …..

This is the 2nd #FP4Party of the year and this time I managed to shoot 2 rolls of FP4 with 2 different cameras.

I tried out my recent purchase the “Lomography Fisheye 35mm” as well as my trusty Mamiya 645.

I was very happy to find out that 3 of my images were shortlisted this month ….

These are the 3 along with all of the others …

The best of the rest …

One’s that didn’t make the cut ….

Please click a photo 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 🙂

Bargain compact point & shoot of the year … Pentax Espio 140M & ilford XP2

A year or so ago I took part in a Camera challenge on twitter where you had to buy a cheap camera and shoot a roll of film and post the results.

I blogged the post here

Camera-challenge blog

That was the 1st and last time that I shot the camera but I was looking for a small compact camera to keep in my bag just to shoot as and when I came across anything vaguely of interest so I went through my collection and decided to revisit this little camera but this time load it with a decent roll of film.

So I loaded it with some ilford XP2 and used it over the last two and a half months, finishing it off on christmas day.

Obviously this roll has quite a varied subject matter that tested this camera … Landscape, Street, Macro and flash and once I developed the roll and saw the scans I was so impressed with how the camera performed … the exposures was spot on and the sharpness of the lens was superb, the only downside was the fairly slow aperture especially if you use the zoom but to be fair it didn’t hinder me at all.

The most useful feature for me is a spot focus mode and a Landscape mode which lets you focus at infinity both modes worked like a dream.

There are a few different flash modes, a Panorama mode which just crops the frame I think (not tried that yet) and a remote control to fire the camera.

All in all this is a right little powerhouse of a compact camera that works well in every situation I threw at it and also handles an looks good too.

I picked this up for less than a fiver and if you look on eBay you can still get it at a bargain price.

Anyway here are the images …. comments most welcome