Street – Page 3 – tim dobbs photography

Another roll of colour film for a change ……..

The weather here has been terrible over the last few weeks and getting out with the camera has been difficult.

I loaded my Nikon FM2n with some expired Kodak Colorplus 200 over 3 weeks ago and only managed to finish it yesterday.

The colours that this film produced were very pleasing when scanned and complimented the subject matter, nicely subdued.

I must say that the FM2n is by far my favorite camera to use especially with the 50mm 1.8 its a quality piece of kit.

I am looking to get a Nikkor 35mm f2.8 Ai which in combination with the FM2n would be my everyday film camera. Thanks for looking

Click on an image to view larger…….

Garw Carnival 2013 & Kodak Portra 400………..

I love my Nikon F4s but as I seem to have collected 50+ cameras over the last 12 months I don’t get to shoot with it very often.

This weekend I decided to load it up with some film and attempt to shoot with it but when I opened the back I realised I had a rewound roll of Kodak Portra 400 sitting in it.

As I have not developed any colour film for a while I was not sure if my C-41 chemistry was shot or not but I thought I would give it a try. (I didn’t even know what was on the film)

To my surprise when the film came out of the tank it was from last years Garw Carnival back in September if I remember correctly and the negs seemed to look ok albeit with a slight yellow cast but after scanning I liked the look so didn’t colour correct them.

Moral of this little story is make sure you remove completed film rolls from your camera and also make a note of what you actually shot on it 🙂

Thanks for looking

Click on an image to view Larger…….

Any comments greatly appreciated 🙂

Christmas Eve walk with a YashicaMat and some T-Max 400…….

A short and sweet blog post today.

I borrowed a YashicaMat from a photographer friend a few months back and it seemed to be over exposing all the time, most probably slow shutter speed problems.

To try to compensate for this I set my light meter to iso 800 and shot some kodak T-Max 400.

These are the results….it seemed to work 🙂

Thanks for looking ….

Valley Backstreets with my Fuji x10…………

I popped out yesterday with a newly acquired Pentax MV1 and some ilford FP4 looking to test it out and took along my trusty Fuji x10 as well.

The Pentax worked fine but as it has been a pretty busy weekend I am still to develop the roll of film yet so for a change I am posting some digital stuff 🙂

All of the shots were shot in Raw format and processed in Lightroom 5.

The light was pretty harsh as I went out at midday but it made the B&W conversion that much more gritty which suited the subject matter.

Short and sweet post this time, any comments are greatly appreciated 🙂

1st test of new Spur B&W developer……….

I was recently contacted by a German company http://spur-photo.com/ that makes B&W developer to see I I would like to try out their products and blog my results Good or bad.

Needless to say as I love shooting and developing my own film I jumped at the chance and the following images are the 1st results.

I shot some Ilford HP5+ rated at 640 iso and used the Spur NHC diluted 1+12 for 9 minutes @20˚

This developer from what I have seen and read gives nice contrasty sharp negatives and as you can see from the 1st results that is very true.

Even though both the sharpness & contrast is increased quite a bit the grain has not suffered as a consequence which is great when I come to print anything above 10 x 8.

Also both the shadow and highlight detail is very impressive.

I love the look of HP5 and after my 1st try of this Developer/film combination I am extremely happy with my results as they give me the type of images I love.

All the images below are straight scans with some dust removal but no other editing.

click on an image to view larger….

Canon 50mm f1.4 and Ilford XP2……..

I had 2 deliveries on Friday.

A Canon 50mm f1.4 FD from West Yorkshire Cameras which was such a bargain compared to the equivalent Nikon offering as I can use it on both my Film Canon SLR’s and also my Olympus EPL-1.

And another package was from Ilford customer services with a load of different Ilford films free of charge as they will be using 2 of my film images on their website in the near future to showcase HP5+.

Firstly I must say how over the moon I am with the lens, its twice the weight and build of my 50mm f1.8 which I was pleased with but the f1.4 is so damn sharp it hurts especially on the Olympus.

The DOF and Bokeh is lovely and on my Canon T90 the viewfinder is extremely bright and easy to focus.

I am so glad I bought this, I wasn’t sure if it would be this much better than the f1.8 version as it actually is.

I have never shot Ilford XP2 before so I wasn’t sure what to expect, sadly my C-41 chemistry is shot so the results were a bit mixed but I managed to get a few shots I was pleased with.

The negatives are very easy to scan and have a very smooth tone that suits the type of images I was shooting with shallow DOF but is also nice and contrasty when stopped down a bit.I also had some SFX200 and PanF 50 which I have not shot before either so I am looking forward to see what comes out.

Thanks for looking

Click on an image to view larger…………..

Elvis has left the building … and is going to Porthcawl ……….

Popped along to the annual Elvis Festival held in Porthcawl last weekend armed only with my trusty Nikon F90x and some ilford HP5+.

Even though we were down there quite early there were plenty of characters walking about all very willing to have their photographs taken.

I was a bit worried taking the shot above due to the Gold jacket and the very bright sunlight but the camera and film coped very well (no instant feed back from the back of the camera with film….lol).

It was good to see Porthcawl busy and vibrant especially after the pretty poor summer weather we have had this year.

All in all I shot just 48 frames all day where as I would have shot hundreds if I had took my DSLR so the editing process was so much easier.

Even though the day was full of colours I am glad that I shot B&W I don’t know what it is but it gave me more of the feel of the day without any distracting colour elements in the frame.

All comments very welcome ……. thanks for looking 🙂

Street Shooting with Film…………

Last weekend we popped down to Porthcawl for an hour or so with my F90x loaded with ilford HP5+ thinking I would capture some gloomy shots of dark clouds and wet holiday-makers but as soon as we parked up the sun came out and so did the people.

It’s a bit of a challenge to shoot candid street photos on film as you cannot just shoot loads and find the good one’s later you have to be very patient and when a shot shows it’s self make sure you get it right.

As the sun was pretty bright and most of the times I found myself shooting into it I was not really sure whether or not I got the shots even though I deliberately over exposed trying not to get silhouettes but the camera and film combo worked great.

It was quite a nice walk around the seafront and we popped into Coney Island on the way back to the car, I could have done with a roll of Colour Film then but they say its going to be a Sunny weekend so we may pop down again, its great to have the seaside right on your doorstep.

Nikon F90x and some cheap Kodak film………

My wife asked me last week what I would like for my up coming birthday and was not impressed when I asked for a Nikon D800…….lol.

Instead a much more realistic possibility was another film camera to add to my growing collection, I had been looking on eBay for a good, high spec Nikon autofocus camera and plumped for the F90x.

When it arrived it was in immaculate condition inside and out so I loaded up a cheapo roll of Kodak Colorplus 200 and popped into Bridgend where there was an Italian Market event to try it out.

The camera felt great in use, the autofocus was quick using both the 85mm and 50mm f1.8 it felt just like using my D300s without the LCD screen on the back.

Eager to see if the photographs matched my joy at using the camera I got home and processed the film.

I was very happy with the results, the focus was spot on and the Kodak film gave the photos a nice slight de-saturated look especially for the portraits.

I managed to pick up a few rolls of Fuji Superia 400 at a bargain price from Sainsbury’s and loaded up a roll just to see how the camera performed with a better film stock (see main photo of my wife at top) and I must admit the photo quality was great, I shot a load of portraits at f2 and loved the results.

I am going to be using this camera a lot in the future I fell in love with the handling and the picture quality all for a bargain price of £38, you have to love eBay 🙂

“Bridgend Mashup” digital version……..

As I said in my previous blog post I also shot some of the action type stuff digitally which was so much easier than trying to shoot full manual on my film camera…….

The band shots were also shot on film and I prefer the more gritty feel of the film shots over the cleaner/sharper digital ones.

As you can see in this post there are far more digital photographs than film but that is the thing I like about film it makes you choose your shots far more carefully.

There is no way I would go back to shooting film for everything but I will be taking a film camera be it an SLR or a compact like my Olympus Trip everywhere alongside my DSLR as I feel it really compliments the digital shots and I really enjoy shooting and processing film again.

Thanks for looking

click on an image for a larger version…….