C41 – tim dobbs photography

More Lomography CN400 with the Mamiya C300 … the whole roll.

I have said before and I will say it again that Lomo CN400 is my favourite colour negative film stock that is currently still being made.

I love Fuji Reala 100 but as it is not made anymore and I have a limited stock of it in my freezer I have tried most of the current films to try and get a goto film that I can rely on and that gives me the look that I like when shooting in colour.

Both Lomo CN100 and CN800 are also lovely films but I prefer the 400 iso version as it gives me a good balance in most lighting conditions.

I dug out my Mamiya C330. the other day and as I hadn’t shot colour with it for a while I loaded the lomo 400 and went out for a little walk on a nice bright but slightly cloudy day.

I developed it using the Tetenal C41 kit and scanned it with an Epson v500 using the epson scan software .. removing the dust and tweaking the frames in Adobe Lightroom.

As usual the film didn’t disappoint and neither did the C330, the colours popped and were lovely and sharp.

So here is the whole roll .. I would recommend any other film photographers to give this film a try if they have not already done so you won’t be disappointed.

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

Kodak Vision 3 50D in the sunshine ….

I have quite a few rolls of Kodak Vision 3 50D along with a few other rolls of various motion picture stock in my fridge.

I had been waiting for some good light to try the 50D to see how it performed as I really liked the 250D when it was processed in both C41 & ECN2 chemistry.

I hadn’t shot my Pentax Program A for a while so I went out for a walk to see what I could get in the sun.

As I was pretty impatient I developed the roll in C41 as I don’t have any ECN2 chemistry yet.

The initial scans where pretty flat which isn’t a surprise but once I got them into Lightroom and just tweaked the Dehaze slider the images really popped.

The grain was pretty smooth which is to be expected with a film rated at 50 iso and it was pretty sharp as well.

Overall I really like the look of this film stock, it’s not as versatile as 250D or 500T but if you have good light it is definitely a film I want to shoot more of but next time I will develop in ECN2 chems.

Anyway here is a selection of shots from the roll …. comments 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 🙂

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 🙂

Testing some Kodak 5325 Commercial Internegative film …..

I was kindly given a roll of Kodak 5325 a while back from a fellow Twitter photographer which I had forgotten about until I came across it the other week and after a little bit of research on the interwebs I realised that I could process it myself as it was C41 so I went out on a lovely bright day with my Pentax Program A and gave it a try.

Kodak internegative is supposed to make color negative copies of slides for reproduction also I was led to believe that it may even be Tungsten balanced and an iso rating of 8-50 ish depending on lighting conditions.

I decided against any filters and shot half the roll at iso 25 and the rest at 50 just to see what came out.

The first thing that I noticed was a very strong “Light Leak” which I initially believed may have been my camera but after messaging my film donor he said that a few of the rolls that he tried came out similarly to mine so I breathed a sigh of relief that my trusty Pentax was fine ( I shot another roll of Fuji 200 to test the next day)

The images with the light leak were very pleasing I actually like the look and I don’t think they spoil the images.

There was quite a varied colour cast throughout the roll and some frames were a lot cooler than others which I thought was the different iso settings but that was not the case as they were mixed through the roll and I shot the 1st 10 images at 25 followed by 50 iso for the remainder.

I could have colour balanced all the images in Lightroom but decided to just leave them as they were.

If I get any more of this film I would definitely shoot it at 25 iso or less as all the original scans were slightly underexposed which was sorted in Lightroom.

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 🙂

Konica AutoReflex TC & Hexanon AR 50mm f1.7 = Big Smile …

A couple of weeks ago I picked up a bargain pair from West Yorkshire Cameras .. namely a very, very clean Konica AutoReflex TC with a Hexanon 50mm attached which was also in excellent nick for the princely sum of £29 british pounds.

I have always heard that most lenses with the Hexanon name were supposed to be pretty good so I was looking forward to shooting with the pair.

I loaded the camera with a roll of Agfa Vista 400 and went out for a little walkabout.

The camera is essentially either shutter priority or full manual … if you set the lens to AE you then change the shutter speed and the viewfinder shows you the chosen aperture or if in manual it shows you the recommended aperture for the shutter speed selected.

The day was drizzly and very overcast so I didn’t realise that the aperture displayed in the viewfinder didn’t seem to move above f1.7 for the 1st 5 or 6 frames.

When I noticed I pointed the lens at the sky and set the shutter to 1/60 sec and still the needle pointed to f1.7.

I immediately thought the meter was buggered so shot the rest of the roll in manual using the light meter on my phone.

After developing the roll to my surprise the 1st 6 frames were all exposed correctly and not over exposed like I was expecting.

So I am not really sure what is actually wrong as if I use it in AE mode I think the aperture displayed is wrong but the exposures are correct but if I try manual and use the recommended camera apertures then I imagine the exposures will be wrong.

To be honest I am not that bothered as I can shoot it in manual and just use my handheld light meter as the quality of the images the camera/lens produces are 1st class.

Anyway here are a selection of images from the 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 🙂

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 🙂

1st time shooting Kodak 5219 Vision 3 500T ( that’s a bit of a mouthful) …

For Christmas my better half bought me a load of film some of which was motion picture stock.

I have shot a few of the daylight balanced ones but never tried using the Tungsten balanced before.

After reading up on the interwebs about what filter I would need when shooting in daylight with this film I realised that I didn’t have and 85A or 85B filter … the closest I had was an 81B so I loaded up my F100 and stuck the 81B on the 50mm f1.4 and went out to give it a go.

The day was a little overcast so I decided to rate the roll at 400 just to see how it performed as I have read that it can be shot at quite a few iso’s so 400 was in the middle.

I shot a varied set of subjects but didn’t manage to shoot a portrait as I shot the roll before I knew it …

I developed the roll at home in C41 chemistry after removing the remjet and was very happy with how they looked.

I am impressed with the sharpness and the nice grain.

The colours were a little subdued and cool which I am not sure if that was because of my development or rather the fact that I used an 81B instead of an 85.

I have now bought an 85A & 85B to try next time … also I will either buy some ECN-2 chemistry or get it developed in a lab to see what this film stock looks like in the proper chemistry.

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 🙂

Shoot Saturday, Post off Monday … see scans Tuesday …. Gotta love @Filmdev

It was a lovely sunny day forecast last Saturday so I was up early and out with my Olympus OM2s loaded with a roll of expired Fuji Superia 100.

The last roll of C41 that I developed showed signs of going bad so instead of processing it myself as per usual I decided to send it off to Filmdev whom I have used on plenty of occasions before developing myself.

I have always been impressed with the service and quality I received from filmdev but this time I was over the moon because as the title of this blog post says … I shot on the weekend, popped into the post on Monday morning and when I got home from work on Tuesday afternoon I had a Paypal invoice followed by my link to download my scans.

I went for the large scans from the Noritsu HS-1800 scanner and they blew me away with the colour rendition and sharpness from the Superia.

All the images here are the scans that I received … just resized for web.

All I can say is Filmdev “Rocks” … If anyone reading this post have never tried them before then give them a go.

The prices are extremely good and along with the quality of the processing and scanning they are a must.

I have another 10 rolls of this batch of Superia 100 that I picked up from ebay so I am very happy that it works as good as the fresh rolls that I have in my fridge.

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 🙂

Lomography Color Negative 400 is becoming my most favorite colour film …

I recently did a post about my 1st time shooting Lomography Color Negative 400 film in 35mm and this is a sort of follow up or my 2nd roll if you like.

This time the light was pretty dull unlike the bright sunshine I enjoyed with the 1st roll but I was good as it allowed a comparison with similar subject matter.

It would be fair to say that the film performed just as good in poor light as it did in bright sunshine giving excellent sharpness even shooting at wide apertures using my Olympus OM2s & 50mm f1.4.

The colours are still pretty vibrant just a little more subtle which lends itself to maybe shooting portraits which I think will be my next subject with this film.

This film is excellent value costing around £4 a roll in the UK here is a link direct to the Lomography site but a quick Google search will bring up some even cheaper prices.

lomography-color-negative-400-iso-35mm-3-pack

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 🙂

I love shooting expired film ……

Last week I managed to source some of my favorite colour negative film Fuji Reala from ebay and along side of the Reala the vendor also had some Kodak Vericolor II which I also bought to give it a try.

I have previously shot a roll of Vericolor III that I had been given and really liked the muted tone that I gave so I was hoping that this gave similar results.

I decided to take the Mamiya C330 for a run out as I had been neglecting it over the Yashica Mat 124G recently, I used both the 80mm f2.8 and 65mm f3.5.

Here are the images, only 9 as the other 3 were bracketed shots …. It was an overcast day with glimpses of sunshine now and again.

I rated the roll at 80 iso with my Sekonic meter which was pretty much spot on.

If I shoot the next roll in brighter conditions I could probably rate the film at 100 or even box speed as it didn’t seem to have lost a lot of sensitivity even though the 2 boxes had expired back in 1994 🙂

Thanks for looking ….

Click on an image to view larger

All images 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 🙂