grunge – tim dobbs photography

Taking the Leica M2 for a walk in the fog …….

I waited years to eventually get to own a Leica and when I did I seemed to use it every week but during the last year my poor M2 stayed in one of my bags while I tried and tested loads of new cameras that I have been adding to my ever growing collection.

The other weekend the weather was it’s usual pants this time of year but I do like shooting B&W then conditions are bad so I was going to shoot my newly acquired Mamiya RB67 with some Foma that I received for Christmas but whilst sorting out which bag I was going to put my stuff in ( the RB67 is a monster) I came across my lovely M2 and immediately changed my mind and went back to the fridge and got a roll of Agfa APX400 which I wanted to try and loaded up the little Leica.

The camera was a joy to use and I quickly sped through the roll wishing that I had brought along another.

The M2 and my Voigtlander Ultron 35mm f1.7 are a perfect match.

I developed the roll using Eco Film developer from Bellini Foto 1+1 dilution for 12 minutes which gave me really punchy negs that scanned really well.

Considering the weather I loved how the images came out with plenty of contrast and sharp.

I need to get back to using the M2 on a more regular basis as this camera makes me happy every time it’s in my hands.

Here is a selection of images from the roll, I shot 2 frames of most of the compositions at different apertures so I have not posted any of the duplicates.

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 F2/400 ….. What’s it like then?

I had seen this film advertised for a while but never seemed to be able to get my hands on any as it was always sold out.

Lucky for me a few months back I got a roll sent to me by a fellow twitter photographer along with various other eclectic film stocks.

I was pretty excited to try it out and loaded my Olympus OM1n as I had not shot it for ages and managed to get quite an array of images over a 2 week period … Grey day/Sunny day, Night time and some close ups too.

I had the roll developed and scanned by Filmdev

The images were really punchy with quite a bit more grain than I was used to with Lomo CN400 which is my current goto colour negative stock.

Even though the grain was present I was really happy with how they looked, the colours were lovely and had an almost X-Pro/vivid look where the reds and greens popped and pretty sharp too.

I think the images in really good light or night time scenes with lights worked the best for me, in fact if I can get hold of some more I would definitely go night shooting.

Here is a 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 🙂

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 🙂

March 2019 #FP4Party .. All my images together …..

I only shot one roll for the last #FP4Party last month and here are all my images together …. Shot using my Nikon F100 and the Sigma 105mm f2.8

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 🙂

Diana F Pinhole shooting on Lomo Color Negative 400…

This year it is my intention to shoot more so called LoFi images.

I enjoyed my time shooting with the Littlest Holga and since modifying my own Holga so now I can actually get some usable images (see blog post from a few weeks back) I love the look and feel the plastic cameras can achieve.

So over Christmas I loaded up my Diana F with some Lomography Color Negative 400 and shot the roll in Pinhole mode.

The light was pretty consistent as I was checking with my light meter which gave me an approximate shutter time of 10 seconds after looking up cloudy days and Diana pinhole on the trusty internet.

After development and scanning I was pleased that the exposures were pretty spot on.

The only problem was that I shot the roll at the 16 frame setting without the frame mask so all the images pretty much touched or overlapped a bit which gave an interesting look but I scanned each one individually and cropped slightly.

Anyway here are the images any comments most welcomed.

Here is what the actual frames originally looked like.

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 🙂

My Crappy Holga re-visited with some Foam/Card and Tape on ilford HP5 …..

Since my lovely experience shooting the Littlest Holga for over a month a while back and producing a zine which was well received by my film photography peers I wanted to start shooting more Lomo style images alongside my other photography.

I already have a Diana F+ (which may feature in my 1st blog of 2019) … a Lomo Actionsampler and a Holga 120GN.

Since owning my Holga I have shot numerous rolls of B&W/C41 and Slide with very little to show in the way of usable images.

I always thought it was possibly my incompetence with the camera but after using another holga and getting loads of images that I was extremely pleased with I came to the conclusion that it was something not right with my copy.

The main problems were horizontal film scratches, huge light leaks that obliterated large areas of the image and ultra soft focus or even totally blurry images.

I realised that my Holga didn’t come with any film masks as I bought it 2nd hand from eBay so my 1st mod was to make my own mask which I guessed the size of by measuring the mask in my Diana and attached it to the inside using black tape.

I then replaced the foam on the take up side as it was perished and I did notice that I was previously getting fat rolls.

And lastly I attached similar foam pieces on the back door in the hope of keeping the film flatter and hopefully getting a bit better focus on the frames.

I loaded up a roll of my Favourite film ilford HP5+ which as the weather was really dull, overcast and drizzle I took a meter reading with my Sekonic meter and decided to rated the film at 800 iso and developed it in Rodinal at 1+25 dilution for 8 minutes with the intention of getting the best sharpness from the film.

Once scanning the film I was so pleased to find the images were such a vast improvement over any previous images that I have ever got from this camera and I was justified for playing around with the insides.

Ok … these are not a patch on what I get with a camera like my Fuji GW690iii but that is not what it is all about … these images are exactly what I want from my Holga and I am looking forward to shooting it on a more regular basis in the new year along with my other Lomo style cameras (I have already purchased a Lomo Fisheye).

Anyway here are some 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 🙂

Christmas Eve Walk with the Bronica SQ-ai and some ilford HP5+ ….

I don’t seem to have shot much recently which is not like me … I blame the early dark nights and rubbish weather.

Anyway I was moving a few of my camera bags around and came across a camera that I have not shot at all this year … my Bronica SQ-ai.

I have 2 lenses for it, the PS40mm f4 and PS80mm f2.8 I had the 40mm attached so I loaded it with a roll of ilford HP5+ and as the weather was pretty grim I rated the film at 800 iso to give me a bit of a chance hand holding the beast with a reasonable aperture/shutter setting.

I quickly burned through the roll and really enjoyed shooting with it, I don’t know why I don’t use it more as it felt great.

I have the metered prism finder also but I didn’t use it on this occasion and stuck with the waist level finder which didn’t slow me down at all.

As per usual HP5 looks lovely when pushed, plenty of detail and the shadow/highlight areas looked just fine.

I processed the roll using ilfotecHC 1+15 dilution for 6 minutes.

Anyway here are 11 images as I managed to lose the 1st frame while getting it out of my bag …. “I MUST PUT ON THE SHUTTER LOCK”

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 🙂

Out in the wind & rain … the Littlest Holga part 3

Following the heatwave that we have been experiencing over the last few weeks the usual summer weather hit last week bringing wind and rain so It was time to get out with the Littlest Holga and some lovely ilford HP5 to shoot the gloom only as a Holga can.

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 🙂

Garw Valley Railway with an F100 & some HP5 @ 3200…..

The weather this weekend here in the South Wales valleys has been awful, Dark & very wet.

A walk up the mountain was out of the question but as luck would have it the Garw Valley Railway had an open day so knowing from past visits the light inside the shed was very low I loaded the Nikon F100 with some HP5 and pushed it to iso 3200 and used the AF-s 50mm f1.4.

Even shooting at 3200 I was having to open up the lens to f2.8 or wider to get a reasonable shutter speed so the sharpness I managed to get was pretty impressive.I have pushed HP5 before and I knew that the contrast/grain it produces would suit the type of subjects I was shooting.

The only disadvantage to pushing this much was losing the highlights but it didn’t spoil any of the shots really.I processed the film in Ilford ilfotec HC 1+15 dilution for 11 minutes agitating twice every minute which managed to keep the grain well in check while giving excellent sharpness.

HP5 is such an excellent film stock its so versatile in in my personal opinion looks better when pushed than box speed but I love deep blacks and contrasty/grainy images so it suits me.

I had 3 frames left when I got home and fired them off in the house wide open just as a test and to finish the roll so I could see the results.

The combination of the F100 and the af-s 50mm f1.4 is great the focus is spot on and the lens is so sharp. Thanks for looking

Click on an image to view larger …..

You can also find me at https://usingfilm.wordpress.com/ which is all film only loveliness …