E6 – tim dobbs photography

Shooting expired Kodak EliteChrome 400 ….

Quite a while ago I was gifted a bag full of expired slide film from a photographer friend.

The bag contained plenty of film stocks that I had never shot before mainly Kodak Elitechrome 100/400 and Ektachrome 160 Tungsten.

I have shot the 100 iso previously and it was fine even though it all had a dubious history of storage.

I was expecting the 400 iso to be slightly more more grainy and I was unsure what iso to shoot it at, I only went 1 stop with the 100 and shot that at 50.

I decided to do the same with the 400 and shot it at 200 iso using my Nikon F100 and 50mm f1.4.

The problem was that when I developed it using the Tetenal E6 kit and then scanned it was that the whole roll was slightly underexposed but also blew out some of the highlights so I was glad that I didn’t push it any more as I managed to get some pretty decent images when processing in Lightroom.

Compared to the previous 100 iso this roll faired a little worse showing much more grain and not as sharp overall but I was happy with the slightly muted colours.

Here is a selection of images from the roll .. click 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 🙂

Shooting my Fuji GW690iii with wide format 35mm film like an Xpan ….

I have always fancied an Xpan but like most film cameras especially so called “top end” cameras they demand bonkers money.

So when I got my hands on my Fuji GW690iii I remembered a post over on Emulsive showing how to shoot 35mm film giving you panoramic images similar to an Xpan.

So recently I performed the modification which is totally reversible and went out to shoot a roll of Fuji Sensia 200 just to see if it worked.

My framing was a bit hit or miss and I decided to scan the frames to show the sprockets which was a little awkward on my Epson v500 but I managed it eventually.

Here is the link to the original article if you are interested, I didn’t think there was any point just repeating it on my blog as EM writes far better than I 🙂 … TEXPan ……

Well here are the images … Overall I was pretty happy with the results which look great when you first pull them out of the tank as big slides, I managed to get 13 usable frames from a 36 exposure roll but did have bit of a light leak which only showed up when using this mod and is fine when I reverted the camera back to 120 🙂

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 the New Kodak Ektachrome … all 36 frames

I have shot most of the available and discontinued slide films over the years and processed them in E6 and cross processed in C41 and it never fails to give you a great feeling holding up some slides to the light.

So obviously when Kodak announced that they were bringing back Ektachrome I couldn’t wait to get some to play with.

Once I bought a few rolls I decided to load the 1st roll into my Nikon F100 as it gives me pretty much spot on exposures when I shoot slide film.

As you can see from the 1st shot on the roll I began shooting on March 30th and I took about 4 months to complete the roll as I wanted to try it on a range of subjects and lighting conditions.

I had the film developed & scanned by AG Photographic as I didn’t want to mess up the developing and get unreliable results.

I have to say the film lived up to my expectations … colours and sharpness were great and even shooting into the sun worked, also portraits came out good too.

So here is the complete roll in the order that I shot them … comments welcomed.

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 🙂

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 🙂

Summer has gone ….Kodak Ektachrome 100GX

I have a backlog of rolls that I have shot over the last 2 months that I have developed & scanned but not posted.

This is a roll of Kodak Ektachrome 100GX that I shot when we still had a bit of sun here in Wales they are a mix of a day at the beach and the usual walks around my home in the Garw valley.

Obviously this film expired a few years back but if the new Ektachrome is half as nice as this I will be happy when I manage to get my hands on it.

The images were shot using my Nikon F100 and developed using the Tetenal E6 kit.

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 🙂

The Littlest Holga loves Slide film … part 4

For my 4th roll on my adventures with the Littlest Holga I decided on more slide film as we were going to the seaside and the weather was good.

The film in question was Lomography Color Slide X-pro 200 which I processed using the Tetenal E6 kit rather than X-proing it 🙂

Here are the images ..

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 🙂

Slide film in a Holga .. are you mad? …the Littlest Holga part 2

Week two with the Littlest Holga and it was a trip to the classic car show on the streets of Bridgend Town.

It was a lovely day so I decided to chance my arm am shoot a roll of Kodak Ektachrome 100VS which I was pleased to report worked pretty well.

So here are the images … all shot on the Sunny f11 aperture which may have been a little better if I had used the cloudy f8 setting just to brighten them up a bit but hey ho on to the next 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 🙂

Sunshine & Shade .. Provia 100F and my Yashicamat 124G ….

The weather here in South Wales has been pants over the last few weeks and I have some E6 chemistry sitting in my darkroom quickly going off as I have not had the light I need to shoot my recently acquired Fuji Provia 100F.

But last weekend we had some reasonable sunshine breaks so I loaded up my Yashicamat and went out to chase the sun.

But as it turned out there seemed to be more poor cloud cover than sunshine so as you can see from my 12 frames here how Provia changes its look depending on the conditions.

It goes from a cool, subtle palette to a vibrant glowing look when the sun shines.

I quite like both looks to be honest.

I was happy that my Tetenal E6 chemistry still had some legs on it and I was very happy with how the roll looked …. and managing to get 12 out of 12 keepers was a bonus.

While on my walk I met 3 gents who were quite taken with the Camera requesting a photo be taken which I duly obliged.

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 🙂

Expired Fuji Sensia 400 after the rain …

I only just realised while backing up my Lightroom catalogs that I had forgotten to post this blog which should have been posted before the Ektachrome 2 parter.

As I may have mentioned in my previous posts that I have some mixed E6 chemistry that I want to use up before it goes off so my last few rolls have been slide film. I have quite a few different slide stocks stored in my fridge and the day I shot this we had just had a huge downpour and I was not really sure whether or not the rain would come back so I loaded up some Sensia 400 rated at 320 iso into my Olympus OM10 for a change as I haven’t used this camera for years, I usually use either the OM2s or OM1n when I want to go down the Olympus route.

I paired it up with the lovely Zuiko 50mm f1.4 that I managed to pick up recently. Lucky for me the rain held off for a while and the sun peaked out to give a nice warm look to the Sensia.