Category: photoshop

Salvaged images from badly stored/expired ilford Delta 400 …

I have quite a large stock of expired film acquired from friends/fellow photographers and eBay and I usually know the storage details of nearly all of it but sometimes I get hold of some rolls that have no information on how it spent it’s life.

Last week the cloud formations up here in the South Wales valleys was pretty nice so I went out with my Mamiya 645 and 45mm f2.8 lens with a roll of ilford Delta 400 with the intention of getting some pretty detailed images of the landscape up here.

The film expired in 2004 so I rated it at 200 iso  and proceeded to shoot the roll.

To be honest I have only had trouble with expired ilford film when it has been much older that this and even then it was still usable so when I opened up the development tank and was greeted with some pretty murky negatives I was pretty disappointed.

Once I began scanning it became evident that the whole roll was under exposed quite a bit and the grain was very pronounced unlike how Delta usually looks.

I also suspected that my fix was on its last legs which didn’t help matters (new batched already mixed for next time).

The Epson scan software struggled to find the edges of some frames which meant I had to scan each frame individually.

Once in Adobe Lightroom I have spent the last week back and fore between Lightroom & Photoshop trying to get the best out of the scans and I managed to salvage 9 frames which I am happy to post.

Anyway …. lesson for today … Know how your film has been stored before taking any important shots.

Also buy more fresh Delta 400  because if I managed to get these images with a crappy old roll imagine what they would look like on fresh film and maybe with my Fuji Gw690ii 6×9.

Here are the images … comments most welcome

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 🙂

Learning to use my Film Scanner………

Over the last few months I have really got hooked on shooting film again even more so since getting a film scanner and developing at home too.

The scanner an Epson v330 Photo performs great or so I thought with the Epson software that came bundled with it.

I have been scanning at nearly all of the default settings then opening the scan in Aperture or Photoshop and tweaking slightly and removing dust and hairs.

The resultant photos have been fine but the other day I shot a few rolls of expired film and when scanning them noticed that nearly half of each roll were over-exposed (or so I thought) which I attempted to get back using Camera Raw and I was pretty happy not realising that the problem was with the scanning software.

After reading up on the internet I found that the auto exposure that the scanner software was using was blowing out the highlights, I re-scanned a neg that was blown out and used the histogram in the program to correct the exposure before scanning.

I have included here 2 photos like a before and after to show the difference, I am going to go back through my negs and re-scan them as the difference in quality is great.

Thanks for looking… Please click on photos for the comparison

Mum & Dad………..

As it was my son Ben’s birthday at the beginning of the week we called down my Mum & Dad’s on the weekend for them to see him. My Mum has had an awful 6 months after falling down and having a hip replacement she the got Pneumonia and it was touch and go wether she would make it, but she is a fighter and luckily she is still here with us. I realised that I don’t have any photographs of my parents except  old snapshots so after a bit of kicking and screaming they relented and let me take a few portraits……..

As I am getting back into film I shot off a roll before taking a load with my D300s, These were then converted to B&W using Aperture. I am still waiting to get my films/prints back so I don’t know what they are like yet but I am pleased with what I shot Digitally and will print these out over the weekend. While we were there my Mum asked if I could restore and colorise an old wedding Photo she recently came across, I didn’t know quite how difficult it would be but I am very pleased with the final Photo………all comments welcomed……………

Snow comes to the Valley…………

The weather forecast was for snow to arrive here in South Wales around 10am on Saturday and they were not wrong, it snowed until late afternoon when sadly it turned to rain but as it was still extremely cold overnight most of the remaining snow has turned to ice.

Because it was snowing while we went out for a walk I didn’t really want to take my DSLR so used my trusty Olympus E-PL1 and as it is always in my pocket my iPhone4 using Hipstamatic.

The iPhone shots used the combination of the James M lens with Ina’s 1969 film.

While the Olympus was set to Pinhole mode and the emulsion frame effect was added in Photoshop.

iPhone……

Comments greatly accepted…………..

 

Am I Becoming a Camera Whore…….?

This weekend I have added another camera to my collection and have come to the conclusion that I am becoming a camera whore……. lol

The Nikon FM2n that I got my hands on is a dream camera, when I was in school I looked at the Nikons and longed to own one but never managed to get one.

I have a few film cameras now and do use them but not as much as I should but this FM2n is definitely going to change that.

I have just put my first roll of film through her and it was such a good feeling ( manual only was very liberating) and really slowed my photography down to a snails pace.

I cannot see myself shooting any sports with this camera even though it goes to 1/4000 sec but having to manage the aperture and shutter speed is not as easy as the Aperture priority I have been used to for the las 30 years or so.

Here are some shots of my lovely cameras messed about with in Photoshop    🙂

Grunging up everyday objects……..

I have been using my iPhone and various photo apps mainly ‘instagram’ a lot lately and really enjoy the unpredictability of the results I am getting but I prefer to have a bit of control over my photography.

So as a bit of a challenge I have been grunging up some of my shots with loads of layers and textures, vignettes etc and feel just as good being in control of the end results and obviously the quality and resolution is far better to be able to print.

Usually I am a sucker for sharp, precise photographs but the iphone/instagram feel is a real passion at the moment so I hope you enjoy and any feedback will be greatly recieved

Thanks for looking  🙂