Bridgend – Page 2 – tim dobbs photography

Valley walk with my Olympus MJU 105 and some more ilford HP5 ….

Short little blog this time featuring my little Oly mju 105 all weather point and shoot and a roll of ilford HP5 that I shot a few weeks back.

I have a few different models of mju but I find that the 105 seems to give me the best results.

The day was pretty misty and quite dark at times but the mju and the HP5 coped well.

Anyway here are the images :

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 🙂

Lomo Color Neg 400 in the Sun ….

I had a roll of Lomo color neg 400 loaded in my Nikon FE2 for almost 3 weeks during the recent heatwave we experienced here in the UK. This was due to various reasons but mainly because of shooting other cameras like the Littlest Holga.

The FE2 was always in my bag so as you can see this roll features quite varied subject matter.

I really love this film stock and it is becoming one of my favorites especially as it is a stock that you can still buy and is a good price 🙂

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 🙂

Last roll with The Littlest Holga … Castles

Here is my last roll shot with the Littlest Holga … it was a gloomy day so I decided on some dependable ilford HP5 and popped out to my local castle “Coity Castle” where I managed to finish the roll before the heavens opened.

I has been great fun using the Holga … it seemed to release me from over thinking every shot and gave me the freedom just to experiment and have fun without worrying about the outcome.

Overall I was very happy with every roll and have even shared a few prints world wide

Well here are the images ….

I am thinking of producing a zine featuring all 5 rolls that I shot while I had the Littlest Holga … I am thinking square format and perfect bound so if anyone is interested let me know please.

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 🙂

The “Littlest Holga” comes to visit part 1 …

On Twitter for quite a while there has been a sort of shared project going on arranged by a fellow twitter photographer Sandeep @givemeabiscuit where a Holga 120 camera along with a box of accessories like filters/special effects lens stuff has been passed around various photographers worldwide who get to keep the kit for a couple of weeks and then share the resultant images on twitter.

Last week it became my turn to have an adventure with the “Littlest Holga” … it has its own twitter account by the way 😉

I already have a pretty beat up Holga which I have never managed to get very many images that I was happy with so this chance to play with another model which has yielded excellent results by other photographers was quite exciting.

This is the results from my 1st roll which was some ilford FP4+, I tried using a Red filter on the lens to give the contrast a bit of a boost as the day I shot the roll was very bright and sunny.

I am not sure if it made a big difference but I was happy with the roll which gave me 11 images out of 12 that I am happy to share.

So here are the images and I will blog every roll that I shoot good or bad in the next few weeks … next roll will be some Kodak Ektachrome E100VS so fingers crossed for that one 🙂

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 🙂

“Kevin Sinnott” .. Reflecting on a life in painting exhibition

On Sunday 3rd December I was invited to the opening of reknown Artist and friend Kevin Sinnott’s 70th birthday exhibition Reflecting on a life in painting.

It was held at his gallery “Studio 18” here in Pontycymer where it featured his most famous painting “Running away with the hairdresser” which was kindly loaned back to him by the National Museum of Wales for the length of this exhibition.

The exhibition runs until January 21st 2018 and is well worth a visit.

Here is a little selection of the afternoon …

Here is a link to my blog post featuring Kevin at work in his studio

London, New York, Pontycymmer … Artist at work .. Kevin Sinnott

Also some other links

Martin Tinney Gallery
http://www.artwales.com/artists-detail-mtg-en.php?artistID=49
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Wales online link
http://www.walesonline.co.uk/whats-on/kevin-sinnotts-new-paintings-go-4891977
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Studio 18 link
http://studio18.wales/
———————————————————————————————
Youtube video link

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

Some of my Fav’s from the #FP4Party on Twitter …..

Since September I have been a participant in the #FP4Party over on Twitter/Emulsive.org …. http://emulsive.org/articles/introducing-fp4party where we all shoot some Ilford FP4 over a week then edit and post during the next 2 weeks followed by a vote at the end of the month to pick a winning favourite.I have not really shot a lot of FP4 mainly thinking that it isn’t as versatile as my Favourite film HP5 but since this Party began I must say I am really loving the look I get with FP4 and also how easy it is to print in the darkroom too.I have posted a few of these over on twitter as entries to the challenge but I thought it would be good to post them all together here on my blog too.

img020-edit — This was my shortlisted entry ….

I was lucky this month to actually get one image picked to enter the final vote which was great as the standard is pretty high and getting better every time as more and more people are joining upIt’s great to be part of this film community, I love seeing what others are shooting which helps me to improve my own photography.

Check out emulsive.org … @FP4Party on twitter for more details I am not sure what I will be doing for this month’s Party I may try pushing it or even do a bit of flash photography as an experiment, what ever I do it will be fun anyway 🙂

Even my son joined in last month … ps I am the scruffy one on the left 😉

Thanks for looking ……

click an image to view larger……..

Thanks for looking … I also have a “Film Only” blog over at usingfilm.wordpress.com if you want to take a look

Bridgend Show with my Fuji X-Pro & 35mm f1.4………

Popped along to the Bridgend Show on Sunday with just the X-Pro 1 and 35mm f1.4 with the intention to shoot as much as I could as near wide open as I could but it was rather bright and sunny so managed f2.0 -f4.0 and the camera and lens performed superbly.

All images shot Raw and processed in Adobe Lightroom 5 using the Adobe Fuji camera profiles, quite pleased with the colours but still not as sharp as with Capture One Pro but getting there.

Click on an image to view larger …….

Thanks for looking 🙂

A bit of Street Shooting for a change ………

A short and sweet blog post today.

Popped into Bridgend on Sunday to get a few things and took the D600 for a change with the idea of shooting some street stuff.There was a few people milling around and I tried some shooting from the hip as well as straight shooting with varying success.

I shot all of these at f8 in Aperture priority with the focus set manually at approx 10-12 ft.I only shot about 30 frames in total and was very pleased that I managed to get this many keepers, not that they are pushing any boundaries in street photography but still they seemed to work, especially when converted to Black & White. Thanks for looking …….

please check out my other blog dedicated to my Film Photography at

http://usingfilm.wordpress.com/

and also my Flickr stream if you are interested 🙂

http://www.flickr.com/photos/timdobbsphotography/

1st test of new Spur B&W developer……….

I was recently contacted by a German company http://spur-photo.com/ that makes B&W developer to see I I would like to try out their products and blog my results Good or bad.

Needless to say as I love shooting and developing my own film I jumped at the chance and the following images are the 1st results.

I shot some Ilford HP5+ rated at 640 iso and used the Spur NHC diluted 1+12 for 9 minutes @20˚

This developer from what I have seen and read gives nice contrasty sharp negatives and as you can see from the 1st results that is very true.

Even though both the sharpness & contrast is increased quite a bit the grain has not suffered as a consequence which is great when I come to print anything above 10 x 8.

Also both the shadow and highlight detail is very impressive.

I love the look of HP5 and after my 1st try of this Developer/film combination I am extremely happy with my results as they give me the type of images I love.

All the images below are straight scans with some dust removal but no other editing.

click on an image to view larger….

Ilford SFX200 and Black Skies in the Garw Valley………….

I have had a roll of Ilford SFX200 in the fridge for months and decided to give it a try yesterday.

The skies here in the Garw Valley were lovely and blue with large white clouds moving about and a rich green landscape which from most of the infrared shots I have seen was going to be quite dramatic.

Sadly I don’t own a infrared filter as recommended (Hoya R72) so I made up a sort of replacement using my HOYA/COKIN filter kit and a piece of Red Gel filter from my flash filter set.I was not to sure how to go about getting the correct exposure, wether to just let the camera do it as I didn’t know if they would be under-exposed or over-exposed so I took a mixture bracketing as I went.

I also shot some without the filter just to see the difference and boy what a difference 🙂This is without……..and this is with the filter…………

After scanning in the negatives most of the frames were under-exposed but not by much the Canon T90 coped pretty well and nearly all the images came up well using Lightroom 5.The dramatic skies are what really pleased me, I love contrasty images thats why I use Ilford HP5 as my goto film most often but SFX200 really pops its such a pity it’s so damn expensive almost double the price of HP5.I will be buying some more nevertheless and also a Hoya R72 filter too as the results were just my cup of tea.click on an image to view larger……..

Thanks for looking