Tag: bokeh

Ilford HP5 at The Bridgend Mashup……….

It was “The Bridgend Mashup” event last week featuring various Street activities like Skateboarding, Bikes, Street art and music amongst other entertaining things.

My son Ben and I popped down for a couple of hours and as well as my trusty DSLR I took my Nikon FM2n and a 50mm 1.8 shooting some Ilford HP5 Plus 400 for the first time.

I was extremely pleased with the results the film gave me, it performed excellently in the sometimes harsh sunlight and then overcast skies.

I didn’t attempt to shoot any of the high-speed action stuff on film due to the full manual controls I have on the FM2n I left that to my D7000 the results of which I will post in my next blog.

I will certainly be using HP5 again as the level of detail I managed to capture from highlight to shadow was great and considering I processed it myself I was doubly happy  🙂

Click on an image to view larger……….

2nd Roll of Tri-X at the Classic Car Show………

Well this shot was after the Classic Car Show but I put it first to show the difference between my 85mm and my 50mm.

I had a few frames left when I got home eager to process it and see what I captured I decided to try my Nikon 85mm 1.8 just as a comparison  so I dragged my son Ben kicking and screaming out the garden to take a few shots to finish the film.

I love using the 50mm on my FM2n but I must admit the look I get when shooting portraits with the 85mm is so much better.

The rest of the shots were from the car show except for the line of trees, I shot both digital and film on the day and even though the digital shots were good when it came to the people shots I preferred the film.

click on a photo to view larger………

My first roll of Kodak Tri-X 400 and home developing fun……..

Last week I decided as I was shooting more and more film I would have to have a go at developing my own negatives. This is something I have not done since school.

When studying for my ‘O’ level Art my teacher Mr Halley who was a keen photographer set up a darkroom and some of us who were interested in photography got to waste our Friday afternoons developing and printing our own stuff which is where I got gripped with the photography bug over 30 years ago.

With a mixture of memory/facebook friends and youtube I ventured into my makeshift darkroom /bathroom 🙂  and thought I had made a total mess of my film.

First it all unwound and dropped to the floor, then I managed to cut the leader at an angle so it would not wind on to the spool, eventually I emerged from the bathroom thinking the worst but I was so pleased after opening up the processing tank when I saw images instead of clear or black film.

It is such a thrill to process my own film it brings back so many memories, I love processing my digital shots too, but there is something about the look/feel and smell of Film.

These shots are far from perfect but as it is all my own work I love them…….

Thanks for looking…….comments are very welcome  🙂

Click on photo to view larger……….

Not the usual Shots……..

We have visited the Lightboat in Cardiff bay on many occasions and it has featured in many of my photographs in and around the bay so this time I decided to have a different outlook and just shoot details and abstracts instead of the normal everyday photos.

The lightship Helwick LV14 was built and commissioned by Trinity House in 1953. It was brought to Cardiff Bay in 1993 and restored to create a floating Christian Centre.

A link to the wesite is here  http://www.lightship2000.co.uk/ it’s well worth a visit if you are in the Bay, they do a very good pot of Tea and their Welshcakes are good too!

All the shots were taken with my D300s and Sigma 30mm f1.4

Click on images to see much larger……….

Who thought that a Film Scanner could be so addictive?………

As a few of my followers of my blog know I have started getting back into shooting film again.

It’s a very enjoyable experience but is not a cheap pastime so I decided to take the film scanning part of the cost out by purchasing my own film scanner, an Epson Perfection V330 Photo to be precise.

link : http://www.epson.co.uk/Store/Scanners/Epson-Perfection-V330-Photo

Not only can I scan in my newly shot negatives but I had loads of old stuff dying to see the light of day and enter the digital world.

I have noticed that it is far easier to scan the new negs than it is the old ones, even though I thought I had taken care of them every little imperfection really stands out when scanned at 3200 dpi or approx 12 megapixel which is plenty for what I want to use them for.

I have uploaded some of my first scans, a mixture of old ( my daughter Amy on her 3rd Birthday 14 years ago) and some taken last weekend.

I am really impressed with the scanner it is pretty quick and the quality is first class, I scanned the neg of my son that I took a few weeks ago to compare it to the original scan I had when getting the film processed and I must say it was like chalk and cheese this little scanner took the prize.

comments very welcome……..

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……………

A Black & White Day……..

There is something about Black & White photographs that draw the viewer into the shot, I don’t really know what it is but I find that if I look at my own pictures in both Black & White and colour most often than not the B&W version seems to have more about it.

Maybe its because I am not distracted by so many colourful elements that it gives me more time to really look at the composition and lighting and my mind and eyes are not competing with each other so find what the photograph is all about.

Here is a selection of fairly ordinary shots from a few of my local walks that seemed to have much more about them in B&W if I had not gone back and looked through my Aperture library for this exercise they may have never seen the light of day here on my blog.

Comments are very welcome………..

Got a new Toy……….

I managed to get a Sigma 30mm f1.4 today and boy do I love this lens already.

I already have the Nikon 35mm f1.8 which is a great little lens but this one is something else, just as a little test I went out for a walk and shot everything wide open  which was a challenge because of the bright sunlight

but the shots were great, the focus was spot on and the bokeh was lush. All the above shots were shot Raw with the Nikon D7000 @ f1.4 no post processing just exported to jpeg from Aperture.

Comments welcomed

click on each individual image to view larger……….