Street – tim dobbs photography

1st time shooting Lomochrome Metropolis 35mm … the whole roll

I love trying new films whether they are new emulsions or just a film that I have never shot before.

Lomochrome Metropolis is an actual new emulsion developed by Lomography that according to the write up on their site can be exposed between 100 and 400 iso without any change in development.

Link … Lomo Metropolis

As it was £13 per roll and I only bought one to try I decided on the middle ground and went with 200 iso.

As some of the shots involved the sky I did use some exposure compensation .. the camera of choice was the Minolta X700 with the 50mm F1.7.

The roll was developed and scanned by FilmDev just to get accurate colours so that I can judge if I like the desaturated look that I have seen.

I shot the roll over a week so the beginning of the roll was a bit of street and the rest was a mountain walk here in the South Wales valleys.

At first sight I loved how this film looks, yes it did have a desaturated look which worked well on the street images but when you went out into the countryside it still had that look but the greens seemed to pop probably because the rest of the colours were subtle.

The film was pretty sharp and contrasty, the grain was there to be seen but at 200 iso it was very pleasant maybe at 400 it would be a bit more pronounced.

I am a bit gutted that this film is so expensive as I would be shooting it quite a bit if it were £10 or less a roll that being said I will be buying more but using it now and again depending on what I am shooting.

Well here is the complete roll … click to see an image larger

Comments most welcome

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 🙂

Expired film day 2020 …… ilford XP1 … the whole roll

Back in March this year just before all this Covid 19 lockdown stuff I entered the Expired film day competition like I have done on previous years.

The whole point is to get out and shoot as much old expired film over a 3 day weekend then submit 3 of you best images with the chance to win some lovely film prizes.

I was luck to win a prize last year so I was very surprised to win again this year considering the really high standard of the other entries.

I have loads of expired film but I came across some old ilford XP1 on eBay so I was excited to give it a go and with fingers crossed manage to capture something worthwhile.

Somehow I messed up and shot 1st frame on my Mamiya 645 while getting it out of my bag with the lens cap on so only ended up with 14 final images.

I rated the roll at 100 iso and it was developed/Scanned by filmdev

I asked them to push it one stop in development as well if poss and explained what I was trying to do with the images.

Here is a link to the Expired film day website … Click here

And here is the image that I was lucky to have selected for a prize … Click here

So here is the complete roll ….

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 🙂

Eventually trying my 1st roll of Silberra Ultima 200 …….

It must be a year or two back that I supported a Indiegogo campaign for Silberra where I received 2 rolls of film … Pan 200 & Ultima 200.

You can see my Pan 200 results here .. Silberra Pan 200 …

So here is the 2nd roll Ultima 200 … I shot it using my Nikon F100 and processed it using Rodinal at 1+25 dilution for 8 minutes.

The film was a a bugger to load onto the reel in the darkroom and was also a pain to scan due to how very thin it was .. that said once scanned I was pretty happy with how it looked.

The contrast and sharpness was nice, not bad tonal range either and to my eye the grain didn’t seen as pronounced as the Pan 200 I had shot before.

I doubt I will be shooting any more as it doesn’t really bring anything new to what I shoot that HP5 or plenty of other stocks that I regularly use, also I won’t miss the loading/scanning problems.

So here are a selection of images ….

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 🙂

Forgotten roll of Lomo CN400 from the summer ….

I have been getting really behind with my blogging … I have loads of rolls that I have shot over the last few months that I have scanned but have only edited one or two frames that I have then posted to social media but not done anything with the rest.

This roll is a case in point … last August there was an event in Bridgend town centre with stalls, street entertainers and live music.

The weather was pretty good and I took my Olympus OM2s which was already loaded with my favorite colour negative film stock Lomography CN400 which I had shot 2 frames already from a trip to Cardiff.

I only shot about half of the roll during the event as I somehow found myself in the pub so I finished the rest the following day which is why there is a strange juxtaposition of images here 🙂

The Lomo film worked great as usual I love the colours it produces especially if you slightly over expose it 1/2 to 1 stop but process as normal.

Here is a selection from the roll

Click any 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 🙂

February 2019 #FP4Party .. All my images together …..

This is the 2nd #FP4Party of the year and this time I managed to shoot 2 rolls of FP4 with 2 different cameras.

I tried out my recent purchase the “Lomography Fisheye 35mm” as well as my trusty Mamiya 645.

I was very happy to find out that 3 of my images were shortlisted this month ….

These are the 3 along with all of the others …

The best of the rest …

One’s that didn’t make the cut ….

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 🙂

Bargain compact point & shoot of the year … Pentax Espio 140M & ilford XP2

A year or so ago I took part in a Camera challenge on twitter where you had to buy a cheap camera and shoot a roll of film and post the results.

I blogged the post here

Camera-challenge blog

That was the 1st and last time that I shot the camera but I was looking for a small compact camera to keep in my bag just to shoot as and when I came across anything vaguely of interest so I went through my collection and decided to revisit this little camera but this time load it with a decent roll of film.

So I loaded it with some ilford XP2 and used it over the last two and a half months, finishing it off on christmas day.

Obviously this roll has quite a varied subject matter that tested this camera … Landscape, Street, Macro and flash and once I developed the roll and saw the scans I was so impressed with how the camera performed … the exposures was spot on and the sharpness of the lens was superb, the only downside was the fairly slow aperture especially if you use the zoom but to be fair it didn’t hinder me at all.

The most useful feature for me is a spot focus mode and a Landscape mode which lets you focus at infinity both modes worked like a dream.

There are a few different flash modes, a Panorama mode which just crops the frame I think (not tried that yet) and a remote control to fire the camera.

All in all this is a right little powerhouse of a compact camera that works well in every situation I threw at it and also handles an looks good too.

I picked this up for less than a fiver and if you look on eBay you can still get it at a bargain price.

Anyway 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 🙂

Christmas Eve Walk with the Bronica SQ-ai and some ilford HP5+ ….

I don’t seem to have shot much recently which is not like me … I blame the early dark nights and rubbish weather.

Anyway I was moving a few of my camera bags around and came across a camera that I have not shot at all this year … my Bronica SQ-ai.

I have 2 lenses for it, the PS40mm f4 and PS80mm f2.8 I had the 40mm attached so I loaded it with a roll of ilford HP5+ and as the weather was pretty grim I rated the film at 800 iso to give me a bit of a chance hand holding the beast with a reasonable aperture/shutter setting.

I quickly burned through the roll and really enjoyed shooting with it, I don’t know why I don’t use it more as it felt great.

I have the metered prism finder also but I didn’t use it on this occasion and stuck with the waist level finder which didn’t slow me down at all.

As per usual HP5 looks lovely when pushed, plenty of detail and the shadow/highlight areas looked just fine.

I processed the roll using ilfotecHC 1+15 dilution for 6 minutes.

Anyway here are 11 images as I managed to lose the 1st frame while getting it out of my bag …. “I MUST PUT ON THE SHUTTER LOCK”

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 🙂

Slide film in a Holga .. are you mad? …the Littlest Holga part 2

Week two with the Littlest Holga and it was a trip to the classic car show on the streets of Bridgend Town.

It was a lovely day so I decided to chance my arm am shoot a roll of Kodak Ektachrome 100VS which I was pleased to report worked pretty well.

So here are the images … all shot on the Sunny f11 aperture which may have been a little better if I had used the cloudy f8 setting just to brighten them up a bit but hey ho on to the next roll …

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 🙂