clouds – tim dobbs photography

First time shooting Kentmere 400 ..the whole roll ….

I have been meaning to try Kentmere film for absolutely ages.

I have read blogs and reviews where people have sung it’s praises comparing it to my beloved ilford HP5 at a bargain price.

I have had some 100 iso in the fridge for ages but recently I picked up some of the 400 so for the first roll I decided to rate it at box speed just to get a feel of the film.

My goto camera for testing 35mm is my Nikon F100 which meters very consistently so I can sort of compare film stocks, well at least to my eye anyway.

I processed it in ilfotecHC 1+15 dilution for 4 minutes 30 seconds as per massive dev app times and scanned with my old Epson v500.

The results were great I was very happy with how the film performed.

There was plenty of detail with pretty nice grain and the tonal range was very pleasing.

Considering it only costs £3.80 per roll from the most excellent Analogue Wonderland (link here : kentmere-400-film-35mm-b-w-iso-400)

Its extremely good value especially if it pushes well like I nearly always do with HP5.

I will try my next roll at 1600 to see it it holds up …

So here are all the frames … 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 🙂

My 1st roll of Fuji Industrial 100 …..

There are not too many 35mm film stocks that I have not had experience of shooting but Fuji Industrial 100 has escaped me until now.

Normally from what I have read on the web only available in Japan but a few online uk vendors have been stocking it at reasonable prices.

As described by Analogue Wonderland …

“Fujifilm Industrial 100 is a gorgeous colour negative film with exceptional sharpness, natural skin tones, and faithful colour reproduction.”

I didn’t shoot any portraits so I cannot vouch for the natural skin tones but the colours were gorgeous and the sharpness is excellent.

The images were shot on my Pentax Program A & 50mm f1.7.

I had the film developed and scanned by Filmdev who as per usual did a wonderful job.

Here is a selection of 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 🙂

1st time shooting Lomography Potsdam Kino 100 ….

It’s great that in the last few months there has been a few new film stocks hitting the market which can only be good for us film shooters.

Potsdam Kino is a B&W cine film along the lines of the Berlin Kino film that was launched previously by Lomography.

It is 100 iso film with a supposedly wide exposure latitude according to reports on the interwebs so I loaded up my Mamiya C330 on an overcast yet quite bright day and went out to see how it performed.

I developed it in ID11 1+1 dilution for 7 minutes.

The negatives looked great out of the tank .. nice and punchy looking contrast and pretty sharp at first glance.

Once scanned and into lightroom a was pleased to say very little editing was required as the scans yielded excellent shadow and highlight detail and apart from slightly bringing down the highlights and pushing the shadows a bit they looked great, contrasty and sharp.

I have some in 35mm format which I am looking forward to trying just to see if I get the same results as sometimes I find it a bit harder to pull out detail in the shadow areas when using 35mm compared to 120.

So if you like punchy/contrasty/sharp images with minimum grain then give this film a go and you won’t be disappointed.

Anyway here is the whole roll … 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 🙂

Salvaged images from badly stored/expired ilford Delta 400 …

I have quite a large stock of expired film acquired from friends/fellow photographers and eBay and I usually know the storage details of nearly all of it but sometimes I get hold of some rolls that have no information on how it spent it’s life.

Last week the cloud formations up here in the South Wales valleys was pretty nice so I went out with my Mamiya 645 and 45mm f2.8 lens with a roll of ilford Delta 400 with the intention of getting some pretty detailed images of the landscape up here.

The film expired in 2004 so I rated it at 200 iso and proceeded to shoot the roll.

To be honest I have only had trouble with expired ilford film when it has been much older that this and even then it was still usable so when I opened up the development tank and was greeted with some pretty murky negatives I was pretty disappointed.

Once I began scanning it became evident that the whole roll was under exposed quite a bit and the grain was very pronounced unlike how Delta usually looks.

I also suspected that my fix was on its last legs which didn’t help matters (new batched already mixed for next time).

The Epson scan software struggled to find the edges of some frames which meant I had to scan each frame individually.

Once in Adobe Lightroom I have spent the last week back and fore between Lightroom & Photoshop trying to get the best out of the scans and I managed to salvage 9 frames which I am happy to post.

Anyway …. lesson for today … Know how your film has been stored before taking any important shots.

Also buy more fresh Delta 400 because if I managed to get these images with a crappy old roll imagine what they would look like on fresh film and maybe with my Fuji Gw690ii 6×9.

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 🙂

Disaster or Happy accident? … 1st time shooting Rollei CR200

Last week I partook in a film swap with a twitter friend who had never shot my favorite colour negative film” Fuji Reala ” so I sent him some in return for some of his film one of which was a roll of Rollei CR200 colour reversal film in 120 format.

I have never shot this film before so I was intrigued to find out how it looked so I loaded up my Fuji GW690iii and visited my favourite tree and shot away.

View this post on Instagram

Didn't manage to get any FP4 today so out shooting some Rollei CR200 for the 1st time in the Fuji GW690iii @emulsivefilm #beniceshootfilm #believeinfilm #Wales #saynotoxpro #landscapephotography

A post shared by Tim Dobbs (@timdobbsphoto) on Mar 10, 2019 at 9:39am PDT

I returned home and processed the film as normal in the Tetenal E6 kit and when they emerged out of the tank they seemed ok at 1st glance when I hung them to dry.

The only difference in my procedure was that I left it to dry overnight so when I went to scan it I was really confused as the colours were totally wrong, I immediately thought that I had my scanner settings wrong but after a few attempts with different settings nothing changed much or got even worse.

I dug out my lightbox and had a look at the film which instead of having the usual black rebate/frame it was purple.

I double checked the box that it was actually a reversal film incase I had got it wrong and obviously it was.

So to cut a long story short I have absolutely no idea what went wrong here … it does appear a bit like Solarization but no light got to the film while I was developing so I can only assume that the roll of film has had a very varied storage life.

So here are the images …. any comments welcomed …

After my initial shock and disappointment I actually really like the look and would love to be able to replicate it 🙂

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 🙂

Summer Velvia 50 colours ….

Last week I did my good deed of the month by giving away a camera to a twitter photographer friend who was happy to pay the postage but also gave me a lovely surprise by also sending me a little Lomo camera along with a selection of films one of which was some Fuji Velvia RVP50 which I have not had a great deal of experience with. I have shot plenty of Fuji Velvia RVP100 in both 35mm and 120 with lovely results but the RVP50 was quite a new experience.

I loaded up the Nikon F100 as I find the metering to be the most accurate and rated the film at 25 iso as it had expired back in 2006 and processed it using the Tetenal E6 kit. When opening the developing drum the colours were popping even before holding up to the light and once I got the scans into Lightroom I began to understand why photographers rave about this iconic film stock. The day that I shot the film was bright and sunny which obviously aided the look of the images with the Reds and greens almost aglow.

Obviously I will have to add a few rolls of this to my film fridge very soon and I will look forward to loading it up the next time we get any sun here in the South Wales Valleys.

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 🙂

A Month with my Leica …

I have been thinking about and then putting off buying a Leica M for an absolute age.

I don’t really know what the actual reason for putting it off was to be fair … everytime I saw one I liked and put it into my online basket something stopped me pressing the checkout button.

Well last month I bit the bullet and got hold of an M2 which was made the same year of my birth which made it that little bit extra special.

I got it without a lens from Red Dot Cameras but purchased an adapter for my Jupiter 8 50mm f2 as a stop gap until I decide which lens I am going to get.

Here follows 4 galleries featuring a selection of images shot on 4 different film stock all processed and scanned by myself.

The Jupiter 8 really impressed me with the colour rendering and sharpness/bokeh … God only knows how excited I will be when I get around to upgrading this little beauty.

Click on an image to view larger ……..

Kodak Ektar

2. Ilford XP2

3. Agfa Vista 200

4. Kodak Tmax 400

Overall my 1st month with my 1st Leica has not disappointed in the least … this little camera oozes class and charisma it is such a pleasure to use.

I now know why photographers heap praise on the Leica M even a 50+ year old model works like a dream and it has to be said .. this is the best camera I have ever shot with … I don’t mean in techy imagey sort of way but as something that makes you feel happy everytime that you use it

God I even like just looking at it … ha haThanks for looking ….

I also have a film only blog over at usingfilm.wordpress.com if you want a peek 🙂

Garw Valley Mountain Walk with some Velvia 50 ….

After some friendly banter with a fellow twitter photographer about how slide film should not be cross processed and that it was almost a sin I decided to shoot a roll of Velvia 50 as the Gods intended and get it processed and scanned by AG Photographic and here are the results. They were shot using my Nikon F100 and Nikkor 24-85 VR … they are untouched scans that I got back from AG and I am pretty happy with the results, I still love to Xpro E6 but I have just bought a Tetenal E6 kit and have started processing my own so I am now almost a convert … ha ha I am pleased that the exposures were pretty spot on which I don’t worry about when I know that I am going to xpro the roll … I did notice the difference in colour when shooting with the sun behind me compared to in front, I could have warmed them up a bit in Lightroom but I thought I would just post as is….