Tag: bokeh

1st time shooting Lomo Berlin 400 Kino film …..

I love shooting B&W and when I saw lomography had release 2 new film stocks recently I couldn’t wait to try some and compare it to my all time favourite B&W film … ilford HP5.

The 1st roll I tried was the Berlin 400 Kino which I loaded into my Nikon F4s with the 50mm f1.4 and tried to shoot a varied selection of subjects.

I processed the roll in Rodinal  at 1+50 dilution for 13.30 mins.

I was very happy with how the scans came out, quite a chunky grain structure but I like grain and it did not distract from the image.

It is pretty contrasty with nice blacks but also held the highlights well.

I always find whatever film I process with Rodinal seems to get stronger grain and contrast so when I shoot the next roll I will develop in a different dev.

Overall I will happily use this film again … I won’t replace my HP5 but I really do recommend that you give it a go … I will push the next roll just to see what I get so watch this space.

Here is a varied selection from the roll …

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 🙂

I forgot that I shot this roll …..

A few weeks back I shot a roll of Kodak  5325 in my Pentax Program A which at 1st appeared to have sprung a strong light leak since previously using it but it turned out to be the actual roll of film which was at fault after speaking to the friend who gave me the roll to try.

He had very similar results.

See here for the post .. Kodak 5325

But before I found this out I loaded up a roll of Fuji C200 just to test the camera again and obviously the roll was fine this time.

I developed and scanned the images but didn’t get around to posting them until I came across them now … so here is a selection, I really like how the C200 renders the greens.

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 🙂

Trying ilford XP2 at different ISO ratings on one roll ….

This started off as a proper test as I had read in various places that you can shoot XP2 at different ISO ratings without changing the development times.

My plan was to load up my FE2 and over the space of a few days/weeks shoot the roll in different situations that required possible pushing/pulling and write down the setting to see what happens when I develop the roll eg.  does it work??

The experiment went pretty good initially but about 20 frames into the roll I managed to lose my little notepad with my settings on which essentially ballsed up the whole thing as I do not have the settings to correspond to the images.

What I can say is that I shot the roll between 200-3200 iso … the shots in the bright sunshine were at the end of the roll after I realised I had lost my notepad so I think they were all 200-400 while the shot of my son on his phone was definitely at 1600 iso.

All in all after a little tweaking in Lightroom every frame I shot was perfectly useable with the higher ISO shots exhibiting quite a bit of grain but I like grain so to me that was an added bonus.

Well here is a selection of 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 🙂

 

100mm focal length as a walkabout lens ……..

I have had my Canon FD 100mm f2.8 for ages but I have never really given it a proper runout, I have shot less than 20 frames with it in total so just to try and give my photography a different slant I decided to shoot a whole roll just at 100mm.

I mounted it on my Canon T90 and loaded up a roll of the lovely Lomo CN400 and went out for a walk.

Viewing the world at 100mm was a bit strange at 1st with a lot of backing up with the compositions but after a bit I started to get used to it.

I decided to get the roll developed and scanned by Filmdev  and when the scans arrived I was very happy with the results, Lomo CN400 colours especially in good light are gorgeous.

To be fair the lens isn’t the sharpest wide open at f2.8 but still looked great and focussed spot on most of the time.

It was fun just shooting at this focal length it definitely puts a different perspective on my usual look, I need to take this lens out a bit more whenever I use any of my Canon FD cameras.

I have an FD adapter for my Fuji X cameras so I may give it a go on one of them next.

Anyway here are the images …

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 🙂

 

 

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 🙂

Fuji Sensia 200 expired and scanning twice …..

I am really slacking with my photography this year … so far I have only managed to shoot 8 rolls and 3 of them were for the #fp4party.

I know that equates to 1 per week but this ratio is pretty poor for me and my blogging is also behind.

So this week I am hoping to get at least 2 posts done just to catch up …. here is the 1st … A roll of Fuji Sensia 200 that expired back in 2004 that I shot on a pretty dull afternoon using the Olympus OM2s, Zuiko 50mm f1.4 and developed using the Tetenal E6.

After development and subsequent scanning using the Epson v500 all the images had a slight magenta cast and due to a nasty curl quite a few frames didn’t appear very sharp.

So after deciding on which frames that I liked I rescanned them using the Plustek Opticfilm 8100 and Silverfast 8 software which gave far better results especially the sharpness due to the better film holder which keeps the film so much flatter.

I am not really sure if the magenta cast was due to my dev going off or just the film itself but it was very easy to remove in Lightroom.

Anyway here is a selection from the roll … there are a few shots containing Daffodil’s (National flower of Wales) which are blooming nice and early this year also my Obligatory end of roll Peg shot 🙂

 

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 🙂

#FP4Party 2019 .. all the posted images together

As ther new year begins so do the twitter Film Parties …. beginning with #FP4Party where as the title suggests you shoot some ilford FP4  during shoot week then develop in the 2nd week followed by … you guessed it post your images during the 3rd week.

For this challenge I used my Minolta SRT 101 with the Rokkor 55mm f1.7 which is a combination that I really enjoy using and one roll of FP4+ rated at 200 iso.

I was pleased to say that I had a really good hit rate with the roll with plenty of keepers which are here all together.

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 🙂

Last remains of Autumn on Kodak Elitechrome 100…..

I was lucky enough to be given a batch of expired slide film from a friend and fellow photographer a few weeks ago.

I have already tried some without any problems even though there was no guarantee on how the rolls had been previously stored.

Just as a precaution I bracketed this roll due to the overly bright sunshine that we managed in November.

I shot the roll with my Pentax Program A and Tokina SD 28-70 Macro

It was developed the roll in the Tetenal E6 kit and scanned on the Epson v500.

I was glad that I did bracket as the dynamic range was very small even by slide standards and the fact that it was expired.

I was happy with the results that were at the optimal exposure 🙂

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 🙂

Holiday snaps …..

We managed a few days away down West Wales in the cottage  2 weeks ago and as usual I couldn’t make up my mind what camera or film combination to take but as the weather forecast was for lovely bright days albeit pretty chilly I decided on some Fuji Reala in 120 and some Lomo Color Negative 400 in 35mm ….

I would have taken some of the new Kodak Ektachrome but my order didn’t arrive in time for me to take.

Eventually I decided on my Yashicamat 124G and Nikon F100 with both the 50mm f1.4 & 24-85VR and had the processing and scanning done by Filmdev who as usual did a brilliant job.

Anyway here are the images ….  first Lomo Color Negative 400

and now the 120 …. Fuji Reala

Apart from the egg shots & cottage image … the locations were Saundersfoot and Tenby.

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 🙂

 

It goes all the way to 1.1 …..

A twitter friend posted the other week that he was selling a recently purchased lens for a really good price that I could not refuse.

I have the Voigtlander 35mm Ultron f1.7 for my Leica M2 so the chance to add a 50mm to my bag was welcomed.

The 7 Artisans 50mm f1.1 is a pretty impressive piece of kit to be honest, it felt really well built and is pretty heavy to boot.

X-T1-7650

X-T1-7649

And when attached to the M2 it felt well balanced but it was noticeably heavy when carrying but was great to shoot.

I loaded a roll of Kodak Ektar and set out to test how well it performed.

The viewfinder on the M2 is lovely and bright normally but maybe it was in my head but it did seem brighter and the focusing patch was very easy to get focus quickly.

The lens barrel did creep into the finder but not into the 50mm framelines so it was not a problem.

Anyway here is a selection of images shot at various apertures … only the one of my son at the end was shot wide open at f1.1 as it was too bright when I was out and didn’t have an ND filter with me.

Leica M2 - 7 Artisans - Kodak Ektar002

Leica M2 - 7 Artisans - Kodak Ektar003

Leica M2 - 7 Artisans - Kodak Ektar005

Leica M2 - 7 Artisans - Kodak Ektar004

Leica M2 - 7 Artisans - Kodak Ektar007

Leica M2 - 7 Artisans - Kodak Ektar031

Leica M2 - 7 Artisans - Kodak Ektar009

Leica M2 - 7 Artisans - Kodak Ektar027

Leica M2 - 7 Artisans - Kodak Ektar029

Leica M2 - 7 Artisans - Kodak Ektar020

Leica M2 - 7 Artisans - Kodak Ektar034

Leica M2 - 7 Artisans - Kodak Ektar023

Leica M2 - 7 Artisans - Kodak Ektar032

Leica M2 - 7 Artisans - Kodak Ektar035

Overall I am extremely pleased with the lens, it is not as sharp as the Ultron wide open or even at f2.8 but how it renders the out of focus areas is lovely so its a keeper for me for sure.

Anyway thanks for looking ….

Click on an 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 🙂