Landscape – Page 16 – tim dobbs photography

Nikon F100 first test roll ……..

I have been looking on eBay for a while for Nikon F100 and the prices seem to vary greatly, I didn’t want to spend a fortune but on the other hand I also didn’t want to buy a well used example either.

I managed to bag this almost mint example for the bargain price of £70 which was a big surprise but I am not going to moan about it 🙂

I decided to try my Nikkor 24-85 vr lens with my 1st roll of HP5 which turned out to be an excellent choice as the images it produced were very sharp and lovely and contrasty.

I am very happy with the F100 it was lovely to shoot with and combined with this lens the images it produced were excellent, I love shooting my older manual focus Nikon/Canon/Olympus/Pentax slr’s but this was almost like shooting my D600 which I have never felt like before when shooting film.

I am going to shoot a roll of Ektar next and can only imagine how sharp the resultant negatives will be….. happy days… Film is definitely not dead 🙂

Expired Agfa HDC plus and my Nikon F4……..

Ages ago I was kindly given a bag full of film, all expired ranging from 2000 to 2009 and the friend who gave it to me didn’t know how it was stored as he himself was given it by 3rd party.

I have been using some of it to test any old 35mm camera I managed to pick up and to be honest it has all been ok but I have not shot it with a decent camera/lens combination and had it processed professionally so the other week I loaded up my Nikon F4 with some Agfa HDC plus 200 that expired back in 2002.I deliberately set my iso to 100 and also over-exposed quite a few shots hoping to get a bit of contrast and colour in the film as what I have found with the other rolls that I shot at box speed and camera exposure have all been a little flat.As with most Agfa colour films I have used before the images had a magenta tone to them which I don’t mind.

I was impressed with the contrast and sharpness too, it really made a difference shooting this film in the F4 with my nice 50mm f1.8. After our little walk I still had a few frames left and my better half had a go with the F4 while we relaxed outside our local pub shooting my happy face.All in all I am very happy with how the film performed, it really made a difference using it in a good camera and the processing was done by AG Photographic and not at home by me.

I have another 10 rolls of this as well as various other Agfa/Kodak mixture so now I know that the film works fine I will shoot these in my better cameras rather that just as test rolls in the many point & shoot/rangefinders I seem to pick up in charity shops “I have a GAS problem 🙂 “.Thanks for looking….comments most welcome 🙂

Please click on an image to view larger……

also check out my “Film Only” blog at Using Film

Zorki 4k re-visited …….

I have had my Zorki 4k and Jupiter 8 50mm f2 for ages but I have only put 2 rolls of film through it.

I don’t know why I have not used this camera more as it handles great and the results from the the 1st 2 rolls were also very pleasing.As with my first attempts, getting the framing correct is still a bit hit or miss especially if trying to frame pretty tight.So I have to leave plenty of space just to make sure I get the shot but thats not really a huge problem.HP5 shoots great with the Jupiter 8 giving quite smooth out of focus areas while still getting great contrast which is what I like about HP5.I am going to try to shoot this camera much more from now on and I have been looking on eBay for a nice lens hood as the lens is prone to quite a bit of flare. Thanks for looking

click on an image to view larger ……

Fuji X-Pro & my Canon FD 50mm f1.4 testing…….

Today’s weather is pretty poor so just for a change from shooting film I put my Canon FD 50mm on the X-Pro and popped out to see how it performed in the real world of a walk about test.I have used it before but only as a closeup, short DOF type test so shooting it on a walk and only manual focus was going to be a bit of a challenge.As the camera does not know what aperture the lens is at (well at least the exif does not say) I am not sure exactly what aperture I used for each shot was but apart from the container shot which I know was F8 all the others were between f1.4 to f4.0.I was a bit awkward shooting manual focus but the focus peaking on the X-Pro helped greatly but any fast street style shooting was out of question unless I used zone focusing.The results were very pleasing overall, I am not sure I totally like the Bokeh this lens produces with the X-Pro unlike what it produces when I use my Canon T90 but that aside the images came out fine.I have a shed load of FD mount lenses so I am going to try each one just to see which if any I prefer and will blog the results. All the images were shot Raw and processed using Adobe Lightroom 5

Thanks for looking

click on an image to view larger ……..

I also blog all my film stuff here if anyone cares to take a look 🙂

https://usingfilm.wordpress.com/

1st roll of Ilford PanF 50 ………

I have had a roll of ilford panf 50 in my fridge for a few months now and every time I go to get a roll of film I see it sitting there by itself and I never seem to give it a go that is until about 2 weeks ago.

It was quite a bright morning so I decided to load up the Canon T90 – 28mm f2.8 and headed up the mountain.

As I was climbing the clouds were building and by the time I reached the top and began walking across towards the Memorial flag here in the Garw valley the darker it got….. not very good when you have a 50 iso film in your camera.

Nevertheless I managed to keep shooting albeit mainly at f4 – 5.6 and pretty slow shutter speeds.I processed the film in ilford Ilfotec HC and hung up to dry wondering if I managed to get many shots without blurring.And out of 36 frames I managed to get quite a few very sharp almost grainless images, I did slightly bump up the contrast on these scans in Lightroom and apart from cloning out a few dust spots these were pretty much straight scans.I am not sure when I would ever use this film as I prefer the contrast and grain that I get with my Favourite film HP5+ but the results were pretty nice, I may print some of the negatives in the darkroom just to see what they are like.Thanks for looking ….

click on an image to view larger ……

Testing my Canon AF35M with Ilford FP4@200…….

I picked up this little point & shoot a while back now it was only a few quid off e-bay but have not had much chance to try it out.

As I have a couple of days off work I thought it was time to see if it was working or not.Before we braved the cold and frost I loaded up some ilford FP4 and rated it at iso 200, popped in a couple of AA batteries and shot a quicky of one of my camera shelves with the inbuilt flash.

We then went for a walk in the bright sunshine but freezing temperatures.After developing the negatives I was extremely pleased with what the camera produced, lovely and sharp with great contrast and only 2 shots actually missed focus and they were most probably my fault as I was slightly too close. This camera is slightly bigger than my fav Nikon L35AF which fits my pocket perfectly which was the only thing that I didn’t really like about this excellent little camera.

The picture quality well exceeded my expectations, I will put a roll of Ektar through it next and will post the results.

Thanks for looking……..

Mamiya C3 testing ………

I recently picked up a Mamiya C3 and 65mm lens with the hope of using it for a bit of Street shooting as it has a 65mm lens which is approx 40mm ish in 35 mm terms.

I shot a trial roll of expired Ilford Delta 3200 in poor light it must be said to see what I got and after scanning the negs I got 12 frames all out of focus mainly back focussed.

I put it down to wide apertures/slow shutter-speed and not a very bright viewfinder.

Next I tried my last roll of Delta 3200 but this time on a tripod in better light and to my horror they were all back focussed just like the 1st roll.

After a bit of advice I checked the lens were mounted flush and also removed the focus screen and noticed that it had 2 quite thick card shims propping up the front of the screen. So I removed one of them and the screen seemed to sit a little more flush to the body.

All these images were shot using this configuration on Ilford Delta 400 and even though they were not all totally spot on they were far better than the 1st 2 rolls.

I may remove the other shim and replace with a slightly thinner one and see if it works.

I love using this camera it is a lovely piece of kit and hopefully I can get some good images eventually 🙂

Mamiya 645 & some Fujichrome Velvia 100F …………

Slide film has been a bit of a hit or miss for me over the years, back in the pre digital days I tried and mostly failed with most of my attempts at shooting slides.

Most probably as the subject matter I seemed to shoot was not really suited to the medium and I never really found the appeal that others did.

Since getting into medium format I decided to give slide film another bash so bought a few packs of both Fujichrome Velvia 100f and Provia 100f.

I shot some Velvia a while back and cross processed it with some interesting results which can be seen on my other blog http://usingfilm.wordpress.com/2013/11/01/cross-processed-velvia-100/

But this time I had it processed E6 at AG photolab http://www.ag-photolab.co.uk/

I was quite pleased with the resultant scans even though my exposure was a bit over on most of the frames, I’m not sure if it was the Mamiya meter as it has been fine on negative film but I know that slide film is not very forgiving.

Nevertheless I am going to try another roll when the weather is right and this time meter with my Sekonic meter just to see.

Thanks for looking…. feel free to comment

Click on an image to view larger ……..

My 1st ever Photo workshop for my 50th Birthday…………….

I turned 50 years of age 2 weeks ago and part of my present from my wife was a Photography Workshop run by Nigel Forster of Creative Photography Wales.

It was a Brecon Beacons Heritage & Landscape course, As I have never been on a workshop before I didn’t really know what to expect but after meeting Nigel at his home I was put at ease from the off.We visited 4 locations during the day ……The Guardian at Six Bells, Blaenavon Ironworks, Big Pit and lastly we walked up to Llangattock Escarpment giving stunning views over the beautiful welsh landscape.The Workshop ran from 9:30 til 7:30 and was a great day at locations that I have never visited before.

All images were shot on my Nikon D600 with the 24-85mm and processed in Lightroom.

Some links related to this workshop

http://www.blaenau-gwent.gov.uk/leisure/14674.asp

http://www.countryfile.com/days-out/llangattock-escarpment-brecon-beacons

http://www.creativephotographywales.com/index.php

Thanks for looking…. click on an image to view larger

D600 and Capture One Pro …….

Since getting my D600 and also my Fuji X-Pro1 I have noticed a pronounced slowdown in the performance of Lightroom 5.

Also Lightroom does not get the best out of my Fuji Raw files which tend to be soft and flat unless I spend extra time processing them.

After reading a lot of advice on the web I thought I would give Capture One Pro a trial run just to see if there is any improvement.Straight away the speed increase was 10 fold, the import and rendering of previews were very impressive with my 24meg D600 raw files.

Also the default rendering that Capture One gives the images was very pleasing.

I opened the “Merlin Stone” Raw image at the top of this post in Camera Raw after seeing the Capture One version and was so impressed with the depth in the colours and the sharpness of the image.

I could not get Camera Raw to render anywhere near what I got from Capture One.I get emails from PhaseOne quite regularly with money off offers to purchase their software and as soon as I get the next one I will be investing in this, the learning curve is quite steep as I have used both Lightroom and Aperture for ages but PhaseOne has loads of tutorial videos on their Youtube channel so I have plenty of viewing to do 🙂

I am looking forward to seeing the difference I can achieve with my Fuji Raw files next if the D600 images are anything to go by I will be very pleased.

Thanks for looking

Click on an image to view larger……