ilford hp5 – Page 3 – tim dobbs photography

Nikon F100 first test roll ……..

I have been looking on eBay for a while for Nikon F100 and the prices seem to vary greatly, I didn’t want to spend a fortune but on the other hand I also didn’t want to buy a well used example either.

I managed to bag this almost mint example for the bargain price of £70 which was a big surprise but I am not going to moan about it 🙂

I decided to try my Nikkor 24-85 vr lens with my 1st roll of HP5 which turned out to be an excellent choice as the images it produced were very sharp and lovely and contrasty.

I am very happy with the F100 it was lovely to shoot with and combined with this lens the images it produced were excellent, I love shooting my older manual focus Nikon/Canon/Olympus/Pentax slr’s but this was almost like shooting my D600 which I have never felt like before when shooting film.

I am going to shoot a roll of Ektar next and can only imagine how sharp the resultant negatives will be….. happy days… Film is definitely not dead 🙂

Zorki 4k re-visited …….

I have had my Zorki 4k and Jupiter 8 50mm f2 for ages but I have only put 2 rolls of film through it.

I don’t know why I have not used this camera more as it handles great and the results from the the 1st 2 rolls were also very pleasing.As with my first attempts, getting the framing correct is still a bit hit or miss especially if trying to frame pretty tight.So I have to leave plenty of space just to make sure I get the shot but thats not really a huge problem.HP5 shoots great with the Jupiter 8 giving quite smooth out of focus areas while still getting great contrast which is what I like about HP5.I am going to try to shoot this camera much more from now on and I have been looking on eBay for a nice lens hood as the lens is prone to quite a bit of flare. Thanks for looking

click on an image to view larger ……

Tamron 35-70mm f3.5 macro testing with my Olympus OM2n and some HP5……..

The other week I came across an Olympus OM10 in a local car boot sale. As I already have my original OM10 I didn’t really need another but it did have a nice looking Tamron 35-70mm zoom with it and a Manual adapter so I asked the seller if he would sell me them as I didn’t need the camera and he agreed to £10 which was a bargain and after paying he said I may as well take the camera for free as he has had no interest so double win.Today was the 1st time using it on my OM2n and it worked great, 35-70 is a very handy focal length spread and f3.5 throughout was also useful.It’s not the sharpest lens ever in fact its a little soft until you get to f8 but to be honest I really don’t mind as as a walk around lens its far more useful than being stuck with my 50mm. All in all for £10 I am well pleased and this lens will be permanently on my OM2n.

Thanks for looking………

Canon AV1…. My 1st roll………

A few weeks ago I managed to pick up 2 cameras from my local charity shop for the princely sum of £20 each.

They were a Pentax K1000 and a Canon AV1. I have a couple of other Canons A1, AE1 Program and a T90 along with quite a few FD mount lenses so I decided to test the AV1 first.I loaded up with some ilford HP5 and used my Canon 50mm f1.4 for all the shots going from f1.4 through to f11.

I must say I really liked using this camera much more than the AE1 as I shoot mainly aperture priority or manual this camera was more in line with how I shoot, to be honest I don’t really like using the AE1 much.

I popped along to a local derelict factory to see how things performed and the results were great, all the shots here are straight scans which brings me to another point.

I updated my iMac to the new OSX 10.9 Mavericks which seemed to go well except when I went to scan my negatives my Epson Scan software that I use with my v500 scanner said “Not Compatible” so I went to the epson site to update only to find that they have not yet updated their program for any of their scanners.

Luckily I have Windows 7 installed on my mac and scanned using that while I wait for Epson to pull their finger out and update the software (1 week later and still no update…Epson support are pretty poor indeed, a lot of people with scanners as doorstops I expect).

Anyway thanks for looking, comments most welcome 🙂

Click on an image to view larger…….

More film loveliness at my other blog….http://usingfilm.wordpress.com/

Testing Spur Acurol-N with ilford HP5+

A few weeks back and the subject of my last post here I was sent some developer to test out by Spur Photo http://spur-photo.com/.

This time I tried out their Acurol-N developer on some Ilford HP5+. The information I was given by the company was to rate the film at iso 200 and Dev for 12 minutes at a dilution of 1-50 which I proceeded to do.

From what I have read on the web this developer should yield sharper negatives with little effect on the grain so I shot some random stuff which hopefully would show the added sharpness.

I used my Olympus OM1n and 50mm f1.8mc which has given me pretty good clean images especially at f5.6-f11, nearly all the images here were at f8.

I have never shot HP5 at iso 200 before I have nearly always pushed it as I love the contrast and grain I get from it.

I must admit I really like the images that I got, they were very sharp indeed and the grain did not seem as pronounced as I usually get with HP5 especially in large areas of uniform colour like skies in fact it was really quite smooth in comparison.

As I now have a complete darkroom setup I am going to try a few prints from the negs to see what the softer grain looks like.

Both the developers that I have tried have definitely produced different negatives than what I get from my usual dev combinations in a good way and depending on what I am after in the final image I will keep using both.

Thank you again to Spur for giving me the opportunity to try out your products I highly recommend them to all B&W photographers out there 🙂

Another camera added to my collection……..

You can never have to many cameras, well thats what I believe anyway.

I picked up a lovely Kiev 4 this week from my favorite camera dealers West Yorkshire Cameras.

It came with a 135mm f4 and a Jupiter 8, 50mm f2 lens which surprisingly is reasonable sharp wide open, both the shots above were taken at F2 using ilford HP5.

The only problem I had when first using it was the arrangement of the rangefinder window as it is where my hand goes to fire the shutter instead of over the lens like other rangefinders I have tried.I popped out for a walk to give the camera a run out.

It has a selenium meter but after a quick glance at the manual to try to understand how it works I got a bit lost so I used my Zeiss Ikon Ikophot lightmeter instead.

The camera was a joy to use as long as I remembered not to put my finger over the rangefinder window, the focussing was very quick and easy due to the really bright viewfinder.

I tried most of the shots at f4 to f8 as it was rather bright and the shutter only went to 1/1000 sec.I was extremely impressed with the sharpness and contrast from the lens from f4 and up. And even at f2.8 the look I got was really nice, I am so pleased with this camera.

I love my Zorki 4k but this really puts that in the shade especially when trying to focus in low light.

I cannot use the 135mm yet as I need an external viewfinder but the 50mm is so good I am not in a rush to get one yet.Thanks for looking

Click on an image to view larger………

Rainy day and HP5…………..

Dark, dreary and wet day here in the valleys today and the forecast isn’t that good all weekend so how can I shoot my weekly roll of film?

I decided to try my Sigma 105mm f2.8 on my F4 using some Ilford HP5 @400 just to see how the autofocus coped with the really short DOF.

It seemed to manage pretty well, I only shot 2 or 3 shots on manual focus because it would not snap to the spot I wanted.

The viewfinder is so bright on the F4 it was very easy to shoot really close up.

I wandered around the house for about an hour trying to capture something remotely interesting that may benefit from the B&W film look.

My magazine arrived as I was shooting so as it was B&W photography it felt appropriate to shoot it along with my growing collection of Canon FD glass.

I love the look of HP5 anyway but I wasn’t expecting it to look so good for still life subjects.

As my guitar is black the tones HP5 produce are lovely, I processed the film using Ilfotec HC which gave really nice grain very complimentary to the subject matter.

I shot the last 3 frames with my 50mm f1.8 and managed to candidly capture my better half handheld 1/15 @f1.8

Thanks for looking

Click on an image to view larger………..

I have another blog just dedicated to my film photography if you are interested pop over and leave me a comment.

http://usingfilm.wordpress.com/

Pocket size Rangefinder……..

I bought this camera off eBay ages ago and was not sure if it was working properly as the battery test light didn’t work but as the shutter fired I assumed it was ok.

So a few weeks ago I loaded up a roll of Ilford HP5+ and rated it at 800 iso and popped out for a short walk to eventually test the little camera.

Its is essentially a point and shoot like the Trip 35 but with rangefinder focussing which was nice and bright and very easy to use, in fact after seeing the results I am looking forward to giving this camera a run out doing a bit of street shooting.

Here is a selection of the images, the exposures were very good and so was the focussing. The sharpness of the Zuiko 38mm f2.8 lens was also very impressive.

Thanks for looking…..

More film loveliness over on my other blog at

http://usingfilm.wordpress.com/

Zorki 4k & Ilford HP5+……..

A week or two ago my wife got me a Zorki 4k for christmas so before she wrapped it up I insisted on putting a roll of film through it just to make sure all was well.

We bought the camera from West Yorkshire Cameras who specialise in affordable film cameras, I must say that they are great lads and highly recommend that if you are interested in film photography to pay them a visit.

I have bought numerous things from them and their service is excellent.

http://wycameras.com/

I used some Ilford HP5+ and processed it in ilfotec DDX.

The viewfinder was reasonable bright considering its age and even though the weather was poor focussing was not really a problem but I did find that composing in the portrait format was hit and miss as I am used to an SLR.

I just took a load of random shots using the light-meter app on my iPhone to set the exposure and was pretty pleased with what came out.

The 50mm f2.0 Jupiter lens was pretty sharp when stopped down a little but still looked nice at f2.8 as you can see with the first shot of the barbed wire fence.

I am pleased that after shooting the first roll all seems well with the camera and I am looking forward to trying a bit of street photography with it.

Thanks for looking

click on an image to view larger……………..

Trying out Ilford HP5+ in some new developer……….

I few weeks ago I bought some new developer and last week I shot a roll of 120 Ilford Delta 400 and a roll of 35mm Ilford HP5+ with the intentions of seeing what the resulting negatives where like.

I posted the 120 Delta images last week and was extremely pleased with the results so this week I am posting some of the 35mm HP5 shots which I am also very pleased with.The Grain that I love with HP5 is still there in the negatives albeit a little more smooth to my eyes but the detail and sharpness is far more evident.

I diluted the developer 1+9 and processed it for 16 minutes as per the Massive Dev chart app and can definitely will be using this combination as my standard routine from now on.

Also as the developer is in liquid form I only have to mix what I need when I need it rather than mixing up a batch and storing.

I even took a shot of my wife’s hand while cooking @f1.8 which I rarely shoot at such a wide aperture on film but even then the detail was great.I would therefore thoroughly recommend this developer to anyone, I will shoot a roll of Tri-X and some T-Max next just to see how they fair.

Thanks for looking….. comments always welcomed 🙂

click on an image to view larger…………