Nature – Page 5 – tim dobbs photography

Autumn colours with Kodak Ektachrome E100VS … part 1

For a change usually when I get a nice long weekend off be it summer or winter I always seem to pick the days with rubbish weather but luckily for me last weekend I got a good one.

As I still have my Tetenal E6 kit mixed from the end of the summer I decided to shoot some slide film before the chemistry went off.

As I had not shot Ektachrome for ages and with Kodak hopefully bringing back the emulsion shortly I decided to shoot 2 rolls over 2 days in both 120 and 35mm ( which will be in part 2).I went out mid Sunday morning with the Yashicamat 124G hoping to catch some nice light on the autumn leaves/trees.The light did not disappoint and maybe for the 1st time ever I managed to get 12 keepers from a roll of 120.

I set the meter at 80 iso and tried to meter for the shadows hoping not to blow the highlights too much. When shooting in bright sunlight the colours really pop really enhancing the autumn colours I can’t wait to get my hands on the “New” Ektachrome when it eventually appears.

Anyway thanks for looking ….

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All images 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 Lomography Colour Negative 400 35mm….

I love trying new/old film stocks, usually its some old expired stuff I find on eBay but for a change I picked up a 3 roll box of Lomography Colour Negative 400 35mm last week and was interested in seeing what the film was like compared to some of my favorite films like Portra 400 vc or Fuji Reala.Luckily for me it was a nice bright day which after viewing the scan really showed the best side of this film.

I decided to use a camera that I have not shot for an absolute age … my Canon AE1 program with the 50mm f1.4 which was such fun to use again. The sharpness of the film was quite impressive as so were the colours.

There seemed to be a slight green cast to most of the shots which did not detract from the image in fact I really liked the look. The brighter the light the more saturation I seemed to get which was great.

I am not sure what I was expecting from this film but its fair to say I love it.

I have since bought another pack but this time in 120 format so I can’t wait to give that a try …. so watch this space.

Thanks for looking ….

Click on an image to view larger

All images 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 🙂

Carl Zeiss Flektogon 35mm f2.4 on my Nikon FM2n …..

I was very lucky a few months back to be gifted a bunch of old camera stuff from a friend, most of which sadly was pretty far gone but mounted to an old Praktica that had died was this beauty … Carl Zeiss Jena Flektogon 35mm f2.4

Funny thing was I was reading a random blog post only days before extolling the virtues of this particular lens.

I have a couple of M42 mount cameras so mounted it on my working Praktica MTL 5B and shot a roll of expired Kodak Colorplus just to test the performance.

See link here .. carl-zeiss-jena-flektogon-35mm-f2-4

I was very pleased with how the lens performed so I decided to get an M42 adapter for Nikon F mount so that I could use it with some of my older Nikon Slr’s.

I made sure that I got one with the glass element that let the camera focus to infinity and mounted it on my FM2n loaded with some ilford XP2 and went out to test it.

I found that if I switched the lens to manual diaphragm mode then the FM2n metered correctly for me.

Here are some sample images mostly shot wide open at 2.4 through 5.6 with the bench landscape at f11.

The viewfinder dimmed quite a bit the more that I stopped down making it quite hard to focus but if you switch back to auto diaphragm mode to focus if you are using f8+ then back to manual to meter then all is good. All in all I am very pleased with this little lens and it has the added benefit of being able to close focus down to 19cm.

Considering I got this for nothing is a bonus but I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend this as a purchase as you will not be disappointed

Thanks for looking ….

Click on an image to view larger

All images 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 🙂

All my #SummerFilmParty entries in one place ….

I have been taking part in a Twitter competition #SummerFilmParty where the photographers have to use certain types of film during shoot week then over the following 2 weeks develop and then post the results.

Today was the last posting day so I decided to also post all my entries her together.

I used 2 cameras … Nikon F90 with a 50mm f1.4 & Sigma 105mm f2.8 with some Kodak Ektar.

and Yashica Mat 124G with Fuji Reala 100 both rolls developed and scanned at home.

Here they are in no particular order … Obviously the Square images are from the Yashica Mat 🙂 As usual it was fun to be a part of …. here is the link to Emulsive where you can see the info about this and future competitions .. Summer Film Party also here is the Twitter link @summerfilmparty

Thanks for looking ….

Click on an image to view larger

All images 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 🙂

Going Lomo with my Olympus XA1 ……

As it was a Bank holiday weekend here in the UK the weather forecast was for heavy rain as you would expect here in the South Wales Valleys.

I decided to travel light on my walk and dug out my Olympus XA1 and loaded it with some expired Fuji Superia 400.

It was quite nice to be able to just point and shoot for a change, the only settings on the XA1 are the ISO … either 100 or 400 and thats all you have to set and you are free to jus hopefully just compose an image.The only other thing to take into consideration is the close focus which is a measly 1.5 metres so everything must be further than arms length away.The light was pretty poor so I was not really expecting much from the roll but every now and again the sun popped through and I managed to shoot most of my frames in reasonable light.

I was pleased how the colours looked considering the age of the film which I got in a mixed bag of stuff from a friend who had no idea how it had been previously stored before he got it.When the sun raised its head a little the greens really popped and I was happy with how the little XA1 performed … so much so I am going to treat it next time with a nice fresh roll of film to see how much better the images will be.

Thanks for looking ….

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

Garw Valley Mountain Walk with some Velvia 50 ….

After some friendly banter with a fellow twitter photographer about how slide film should not be cross processed and that it was almost a sin I decided to shoot a roll of Velvia 50 as the Gods intended and get it processed and scanned by AG Photographic and here are the results. They were shot using my Nikon F100 and Nikkor 24-85 VR … they are untouched scans that I got back from AG and I am pretty happy with the results, I still love to Xpro E6 but I have just bought a Tetenal E6 kit and have started processing my own so I am now almost a convert … ha ha I am pleased that the exposures were pretty spot on which I don’t worry about when I know that I am going to xpro the roll … I did notice the difference in colour when shooting with the sun behind me compared to in front, I could have warmed them up a bit in Lightroom but I thought I would just post as is….

Thanks for looking ….

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

April’s Tmax-Party entries in one place ….

This months @TMAX_party entries were shot using my lovely new Leica M2 with a Jupiter 8 50mm f2 on Tmax 400.

They were shot in 2 locations 1st at Porthcawl beach and finished off at home in the Garw Valley. To be honest Tmax is not my favorite film but I have to admit that the tones that it gives when using this camera/lens combination are lovely, its hard to tell looking here but when I look at the full res scans they are very pleasing. I will be visiting the darkroom with a couple of the beach shots to see how they print.

Thanks for looking ….

Click on an image to view larger

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

Testing my Minolta SRT 101 with some Delta 400@800 ….

Just before christmas a friend messaged me to say he had been given a couple of old camera’s and if I was interested I could have them, well I can never say no to free stuff so I said to pop them around.

To my surprise the the 2 camera’s were in excellent condition the 1st was a Ricoh Singlex TLS SLR with a Rikenon 50mm f2.8 which I have yet to put a roll of film through.

The next was a Minolta SRT 101 with a MC Rokkor-PF 55mm f1.7 both were in almost perfect condition.The weather for the last 2 weeks has been very changeable so I decided to push a roll of ilford Delta 400 to 800 to give me a bit more to play with if the light was poor.

I shot this roll over a 2 week period but to be fair the light was pretty consistent every time I shot so the images look like they may have been shot all on the same day.To be honest I was quite pleased with the images even though they didn’t seem totally sharp overall but I put that down to pushing the film and mostly due to my focussing I think.

The camera didn’t have a split prism which I am used to so I may have been slightly out especially shooting at f4 and wider.I have looked at various examples of this camera on eBay from time to time but never got around to picking one up so getting this almost perfect sample for free makes me feel very lucky …Cheers Steve 😉

Thanks for looking ….

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

1st roll of Kodak Portra 400VC in 35mm format …

A few weeks back I managed to get hold of quite a bit of expired Kodak film from MrCad here in the UK, most of it was in 120 format but I did also get a few rolls of Portra 400vc in 35mm to try.I was a pretty nice day last weekend so I thought I would give a roll a go in the Nikon F100.

When I shot some of the 120 when I got it the sun was blazing here and the images really popped, I loved the colours so I was hoping for the same with the 35mm and to be fair the images that had really good light really shone.
I am so pleased that I bought loads of this film, after just shooting 3 rolls I am hooked.

All I need now is some sunny weather to do it justice, even though I was pleased with most of the images its the one’s in the best light that showed the best of the film. Roll on the summer I say 🙂

Thanks for looking ….

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

Eventually tested my Zuiko 75-150mm f4.0 ……

A few months ago I picked up a mint Zuiko 75-150mm f4 from Ebay for next to nothing, I didn’t think I would probably use it a lot as the Zuiko 35mm f2.8 is my goto lens whenever I shoot my OM1 or OM2s but for the price I had to get it.

I was going through one of my camera drawers and noticed the lens sitting there all alone in its case so I thought it was about time I gave it a test.

I loaded the OM2s with some Fuji Superia 400 and went out for a little walk to see how it performed.

It is quite a compact lens with its own pull out lens hood which as I was shooting in quite bright sunshine worked well and I didn’t get any lens flare.Out of all the frames I shot I only missed focus on one and the sharpness and contrast were good and the Bokeh was quite pleasing in a few of the frame too.