Nature – Page 4 – tim dobbs photography

Diana F Pinhole shooting on Lomo Color Negative 400…

This year it is my intention to shoot more so called LoFi images.

I enjoyed my time shooting with the Littlest Holga and since modifying my own Holga so now I can actually get some usable images (see blog post from a few weeks back) I love the look and feel the plastic cameras can achieve.

So over Christmas I loaded up my Diana F with some Lomography Color Negative 400 and shot the roll in Pinhole mode.

The light was pretty consistent as I was checking with my light meter which gave me an approximate shutter time of 10 seconds after looking up cloudy days and Diana pinhole on the trusty internet.

After development and scanning I was pleased that the exposures were pretty spot on.

The only problem was that I shot the roll at the 16 frame setting without the frame mask so all the images pretty much touched or overlapped a bit which gave an interesting look but I scanned each one individually and cropped slightly.

Anyway here are the images any comments most welcomed.

Here is what the actual frames originally looked like.

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 🙂

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 🙂

HP5 shines when shot in 6×9 …..

I have probably said loads of times on this blog that ilford HP5 is by far my favourite B&W film stock.

I love the contrast and grain especially when pushed to 1600 iso and beyond.

I mainly shoot it in 35mm with the odd roll in 120 now and again so when I got my Fuji GW690iii I was eager to see how it looks in 6×9 format.

I shot it at box speed and developed it in ilfotecHC at 1+31 dilution and I was not disappointed with the results.

Here are all 8 frames …. click on an image to see 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 🙂

6×9, Fuji Reala & sunshine equals happiness …..

A short little blog post today.

As my C41 chemistry has gone off I have been sending my films off to the wonderful Filmdev to process and scan.

If I didn’t shoot so many rolls I would gladly give all my film to them as they are such an awesome lab but it would get really expensive so I will treat myself once or twice a month and carry on sending certain rolls to them as the results are brilliant.

Anyway this is a roll of my favourite Fuji Reala shot in the Fuji GW690iii the other weekend while out up the mountain in glorious sunshine.

I love how reala renders greens especially in good light and all these frames have an abundance of green to savour … 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 🙂

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 🙂

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 🙂

Sunshine & Shade .. Provia 100F and my Yashicamat 124G ….

The weather here in South Wales has been pants over the last few weeks and I have some E6 chemistry sitting in my darkroom quickly going off as I have not had the light I need to shoot my recently acquired Fuji Provia 100F.

But last weekend we had some reasonable sunshine breaks so I loaded up my Yashicamat and went out to chase the sun.

But as it turned out there seemed to be more poor cloud cover than sunshine so as you can see from my 12 frames here how Provia changes its look depending on the conditions.

It goes from a cool, subtle palette to a vibrant glowing look when the sun shines.

I quite like both looks to be honest.

I was happy that my Tetenal E6 chemistry still had some legs on it and I was very happy with how the roll looked …. and managing to get 12 out of 12 keepers was a bonus.

While on my walk I met 3 gents who were quite taken with the Camera requesting a photo be taken which I duly obliged.

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 🙂

Autumn turns to winter on Fuji Reala 500D …

I have had a roll of Fuji Reala 500D sitting in my fridge for ages waiting patiently for me to try and the other week I decided to give it a go just to see how the colours compare with the last few rolls of different films where I have tried shooting the autumn colours here in the South Wales valleys. As usual here in Wales the weather is always a lottery and this roll features lovely autumn sunshine followed by thunderous conditions and heavy rain.

To be fair the light didn’t really make much difference to how this film looked, it had quite a muted palette which really complimented how the images actually were as it was just about winter really.

I was tempted to tweak the colours in Lightroom after my initial scans thinking that they were too bland but after my dust removal and slight exposure tweaks I realised that I really liked the subtle look.

I must admit that I really love this film so much so I bought a load last week and will be shooting it quite regularly in the future as it is a pretty versatile colour stock especially being iso 500 with not a lot of grain either.

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 🙂

Autumn colours with Kodak Ektachrome E100VS … part 2

Following on from my last post the day after shooting Ektachrome in 120 I loaded up my F100 with the 35mm version and headed out to see how it compared.

As with the 1st roll I set the meter to iso 80 but used a bit of exposure compensation on a few shots not to have muddy shadows.The first thing that was apparent was how much more Red the images were compared to the 120, both films were obviously expired the 120 was 2012 and this roll was 2009.

I am not sure how this roll was stored before I received it (it was a gift from a twitter photographer friend) but the previous roll had been fridge stored from new. That said I don’t think it harmed the look of the images in fact I quite like the overall Red feel.

There was a very slightly more pronounced grain compared to the 120 but if I had not shot/processed the roll the day before to have an instant comparison I don’t think I would have really noticed. The sharpness was pretty much identical even when I was shooting at f2.8 (it was too bright to get wide open at f1.4) Overall I was very happy with both rolls and I am really looking forward to getting my hands on the new re-issued version as soon as it comes out.