ilford hp5 – tim dobbs photography

Last post of 2021 …… Shooting my favorite B&W film stock ilford HP5@800

This year I have only shot 54 rolls of film, probably my lowest quantity since getting back into film photography years ago.

I don’t have a definitive reason for this maybe just how things are in the world at the moment has obviously curtailed my photo opportunities.

At least half of the rolls remained in the cameras for at least a week whereas I nearly always managed to shoot and develop usually the same day unless I intended to send certain rolls to a lab.

So my early New Years resolution is to shoot much more.

Anyway the weather here in Wales for the last 2 weeks has been bloody awful with the only opportunity to shoot would be indoors or out in the God awful rain.

I don’t really mind shooting in the rain when it is accompanied with some mist as I can get out up here and get some atmospheric images.

I have quite a few cameras as you may have noticed if you follow this blog so when I decided to brave the elements last week I dug out my trusty Olympus OM1 with the 50mm f1.4 and loaded it with some ilford HP5 that I rated at 800 with the hope that I could get some frames above f4.

To be honest there was only a few times I got to f5.6/8 most of the images were f4 and below but all the same I was very happy with what I got.

Shooting the OM1 is great it’s such a brilliant camera with the benefit of not needing batteries other than for the light meter I think any film photography should have one in their collection.

I processed the roll in ilfotech LC29 1+19 dilution for 9.30 mins and scanned with my Epson v600

As I have mentioned before I prefer the look of HP5 when pushed to 800/1600 or even 3200 than actual box speed, the increased contrast and grain gives me the sort of look I imagine when taking the shot and works great in the conditions I had here.

Also I managed to stitch together a 7 frame pano which is the featured image at the top.

So here is what I got .. I have shot very similar compositions and scenes before on this blog on various other film stocks so take a look back through my archive if you want to compare.

Click on an image to view larger in a lightbox…..

All images on my blog are available as prints just drop me an email

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

20 minute walk with some ilford HP5 and my Yashicamat 124G …..

I have had my iMac for about 6 months and it has been great for everything especially photo editing in Adobe Lightroom in 4k but since the Big Sur update it has been running like a snail in treacle with all the Adobe products.

I used to edit using a PC which was starting to slow down a bit which is why I upgraded to a new 6 core, 4k iMac so in a fit of extreme recklessness I went and bought a new PC 2 weeks ago (gave my PC to my son so I don’t feel that guilty) and I wanted to test it out so loaded my Yashicamat with some trusty HP5 and went out to bang off 12 frames just to test my workflow from scanning to editing.

Considering I shot the roll in only 10 minutes I was pleased to get 12 keepers albeit very similar shots.

The PC performed brilliantly without a hitch very fast and smooth and a little easier on the eye as my PC monitor is a 28inch 4k compared with my iMac 21.5inch 4k.

Apple has since given an update to Big Sur which still has done nothing to speed up Adobe stuff so I feel a complete wipe and clean install coming over Christmas.

Anyway here are the 12 frames sorry there is not a lot of variety other than slightly different framing and apertures.

As per usual HP5 looked lovely and the Yashicamat gave excellent sharp images.

Click and 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

Let’s get wet .. a nice walk with some HP5@800 in the rain ….

Last weekend the weather was dire here but I was determined to shoot something so it was either still life in the house or brave the wind/rain and trek up the mountain.

For a change my better half was up for a walk (she later regretted it, soaked to the skin) for out it was.

I loaded up my Nikon F100 and my Yashicamat 124G with my favorite B&W film ilford HP5 which as it was pretty dark even at mid-day I rated at iso 800 with the hope I would get some nice contrasty landscape shots.

To be fair the wind and rain was horrendous but I did manage to finish the roll in my F100 but didn’t even take the Yashicamat out of the bag.

After a bit when we had dried out I developed the roll in ID11 stock solution for 10.30 mins and scanned with my Epson v500.

As expected the negs were lovely and punchy but still held detail in the shadows which is why I really love pushing HP5 maybe not to everyone’s taste as there is plenty of grain but it’s what I like.

So here is a selection from the roll, for a change I didn’t post the whole roll as I did shoot multiple shots of certain frames so it seemed pointless .

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

Ricoh Singlex TLS …. with some ilford HP5@800 ….

Over the last few months I have been going through my camera collection and deciding on which cameras that I will probably use on more than one occasion and selling or gifting the ones that I have only used the once.

Enter the Ricoh Singlex TLS … I picked this up well over a year ago in a job lot of other cameras and I had not got around to using it so it was time to try it out and if I enjoyed the experience and it worked fine I may keep it.

To be honest the shooting experience was ok, not the most enjoyable but the camera was a bit cumbersome to use but after developing & scanning the images were great so I was happy to pass this camera on to someone else who may enjoy the experience more than I.

It went up on eBay and sold pretty quickly which surprised me and is now in some other #believeinfilm shooter.

Anyway here is a selection of the images shot on HP5+ at 800 iso.

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 🙂

Valley walk with my Olympus MJU 105 and some more ilford HP5 ….

Short little blog this time featuring my little Oly mju 105 all weather point and shoot and a roll of ilford HP5 that I shot a few weeks back.

I have a few different models of mju but I find that the 105 seems to give me the best results.

The day was pretty misty and quite dark at times but the mju and the HP5 coped well.

Anyway here are the images :

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 🙂

Fuji GW690iii & two rolls of ilford HP5@ at 800…

Two weeks ago we had a bit of a storm here in South Wales called “Callum” and I decided to brave the wind/rain and crappy light with the Fuji GW690iii and a few rolls of my fav B&W film HP5+ which I rated at iso 800 just to get some decent DOF in the images.

To be fair the weather was not all that bad by the time I got up to the top of the valley and I managed to get decent speeds with apertures of f8 to f11 on most shots.

The GW690 gives bonkers negatives with heaps of detail and the HP5 gave lovely grain at 800 with plenty of contrast without losing either the shadows or highlights.

Here are the 12 best images from the 2 rolls, the last image was shot on the Monday after the storm as I didn’t finish the 2nd 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 🙂

Last roll with The Littlest Holga … Castles

Here is my last roll shot with the Littlest Holga … it was a gloomy day so I decided on some dependable ilford HP5 and popped out to my local castle “Coity Castle” where I managed to finish the roll before the heavens opened.

I has been great fun using the Holga … it seemed to release me from over thinking every shot and gave me the freedom just to experiment and have fun without worrying about the outcome.

Overall I was very happy with every roll and have even shared a few prints world wide

Well here are the images ….

I am thinking of producing a zine featuring all 5 rolls that I shot while I had the Littlest Holga … I am thinking square format and perfect bound so if anyone is interested let me know please.

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.