Ages ago I bought quite a bit of expired film from MrCad which comprised of mainly Kodak Portra VC in 160 and 400 in both 35mm and 120 format.
I have used the 400 speed quite a bit and had great results so I decided to give the 160 a go in my Yashicamat 124g as it was a particularly sunny day a few weeks back.
I metered with the Yashicamat as I forgot my light meter and I rated the film at 100.
The film was developed and scanned by Filmdev.
The images were lovely and warm with good contrast … very similar to my previous blog post when I tried the new kodak Gold 200 but a bit sharper and almost no grain to speak of.
I have another 14 rolls of this so I am really happy that even though expired it works great.
Well 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 have been using my Yashicamat 124G quite a bit this year as it is such an easy medium format camera to use and gives great results but the last 3 rolls that I have shot I have noticed a bit of a problem.
After loading and winding on to frame one then making the first shot the camera will not wind on.
The only way I have since found to carry on shooting with the roll is to fire the shutter again.
When this happened with the first two rolls I ended up with a double exposure as I was unsure whether or not the camera had actually made an exposure … this roll features such an image.
Obviously after 2 rolls having this problem when it happened on the third occasion I placed my hand over the taking lens and fired the shutter which saved the first frame and allowed me to wind to the second frame.
The strange thing with this roll is not only was the first frame a double exposure it also overlapped as you can see in the second image, it has only done this once so I am at a loss to what is going on.
I have shot loads of rolls with this great camera over the years with no problems whatsoever so if anyone out there has any ideas please let me know please.
So here are a few of better images … it was a really overcast drab day (which is why I used Portra 800) which really did wonders with the greens.
Even though the film expired 8 years ago I still shot it at box speed and processed using the Tetenal C41 kit.
Click on an image to view larger ….
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I imagine that quite a few photographers have struggled during the pandemic to find motivation and opportunity to shoot.
So far this year I have managed 3 rolls which is pretty poor by my usual standard.
I was going through my film stash looking for something that may give me some motivation to get out and shoot.
I realised that I have quite a few rolls of Ektar and the day was quite bright so I loaded up my Mamiya and went out for a walk with my better half.
Even though it was a lovely day I struggled to really shoot anything that pleased me, there was one or two on the roll that were ok but overall this was a poor roll.
Somehow I only ended up with 13 frames, I did manage to accidentally fire off a frame while bending down but where the other one went is a mystery as I shot 15.
It must be old age as I missed focus on 3 frames and had a little camera shake both of which are unusual with the Mamiya, I can easily hand hold at 1/30th usually.
I developed the roll using the Tetenal C41 kit and scanned with the Epson v500
Well here is my 1st roll of 2021 in all its glory …
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I have shot motion picture stock quite a bit but have always developed it in C41 chemistry which is essentially cross processing as it is meant to be processed in ECN2.
I have sent 1 roll to a lab to be processed correctly and really loved the colours so when Analogue Wonderland announced that they were going to sell ECN2 chemistry I jumped at the chance to give it a try.
The kit was by a new company to me called QWD .. Quiet We’re Dreaming who I believe are an American company that are distributing the kits via Analogue Wonderland here in the UK.
The kit is all powder based (sorry no images as I mixed the chemistry and disposed of the bags before writing this blog post).
The supplied instructions are extremely easy to follow even if you are new to developing your own film.
Before you start the things that you need is 5 bottles that hold 1 litre of fluid for the chemistry and preferably a Sous Vide heater with which to keep the temperature stable.
For the Stop Bath part that is in the instructions I just used standard ilford Stop that I use for B&W developing and not the White Vinegar mix.
The best thing about this kit is that the only critical process is the actual developer which has to be at 41 degrees C while all the other processes can be done with a larger tolerance (see the card number 5) which makes the whole process so much easier.
I filled my container with hot water from the tap which ended up about 43 degrees C and I switched on the heater and put all the chemicals in jugs and placed into the water to heat up while I went and loaded the film into the Dev tank.
The temp then cools down to 41 Degrees and the Sous Vide maintains it for me.
By this time all the chems are about 25 degrees so I boil the kettle and pour it into another container and place the developer jug in it to get up to 41 degrees C.
By the time the developer has reached 41 degrees the other chems are about 34 degrees in the big container which is well within the tolerances so I take them out of the water and proceed to follow the instruction with the Pre Bath first then all the steps in the sequence on card 5.
While developing after each inversion cycle I put the tank back into the 41 degree C water to keep it at the same temperature for the 3 minutes.
I don’t bother with the other baths as the temperature is within the tolerance.
My rinsing is done with filtered water that I store in 1 litre bottles and are warmed up a bit in another plastic container.
I have hard water here so I don’t like rinsing with straight tap water so I use a standard Brita water filter jug to fill a few bottles ready for when I develop.
Once done which is pretty quick all things considered I take the film out of the dev tank and put it in the container with the Sous Vide (now switched off) and a few drops of Photo Flo and gently wipe all over the film with my fingers to remove all the traces of any Remjet that may still remain.
On my 1st roll there was a little bit of Remjet on a few frames which I missed so on the 2nd and 3rd rolls I spent a bit of time on this final step before hanging up to dry.
As I said earlier this whole process is very easy and the results that I got were very pleasing.
According to everything I have read you can get at least 16 rolls out of this and unlike C41 you don’t have to extend the times the more film that you develop either.
I shot Fuji Reala 500D, Kodak Vision 3 50D and Kodak Vision 3 250D and here is a few similar images that you can compare colourwise.
250DReala 500D50D250DReala 500D50D
As you can see the Fuji Reala is a bit cooler than both the Kodak stocks.
The 3 rolls were all shot on different days but the lighting was very similar being very overcast an a bit wet.
Obviously this is not a scientific test just me shooting the 3 daylight motion picture stocks that I have just as a test for myself so don’t take these images as a final definitive look as it depends on the lighting.
I have done other blog posts where I shot in good light and developed in C41 if you are interested to compare.
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
For the first time in a while we had a lovely sunny Saturday the other week so I wanted to shoot colour on one of my mountain hikes.
I considered shooting some slide as I have quite a few rolls of expired film in my fridge as well as a couple of rolls of new Kodak Ektachrome but as I was going through my film stash I came across a roll of Ektar that expired back in 2015.
I am pretty sure that I bought it new and it has been lost in my fridge since then.
I don’t really shoot Ektar that often, in fact I probably have only shot 5 or 6 rolls in the past so I decided to use that for a change.
I do like how Ektar looks when I have used it and also there are loads of gorgeous images on the internet so instead of developing it myself I sent it to the awesome filmdev to get the scans right rather than me having to mess around trying to get the “Ektar Look”.
I shot the roll with my Nikon FE2 and the Nikkor 50mm f1.8 pancake lens that looks and works great with the FE2.
So here is the whole roll including the 1st test shot while loading the film (not very good but as it’s the whole roll I left it in) also the last 2 frames were shot indoors just to finish the roll.
I tried to look for subjects that would lend themselves to the Ektar look namely punchy Reds & Greens.
At the time of writing this blog Analogue Wonderland are running a competition to shoot Ektar along with a super discount on purchasing 120 and 35mm Ektar if anyone wants to take a look (I am not affiliated to them I just love the service they supply) just click the link to visit the website for details.
Comments most welcome, click on an image to view larger
All images on my blog are available as prints just drop me an email
I have been working all the way through this pandemic lockdown which is a blessing as I think I would have gone nuts if I had to stay home so on the weekends I make the most of it by going on a long walk here in our lovely Garw Valley.
Most weekends if she isn’t working too I have been joined by my daughter who has been eager to explore the many different walks we have here in our vicinity.
I bought quite a few rolls of Portra 400VC from Mr Cad ages ago so I thought it was about time that I shot some of it so I loaded my trusty Mamiya 645 and went out on a hot Saturday morning to do a 8 mile trek around our valley.
After developing the roll I had some issues namely strange light leaks in different places and of different intensities so I immediately thought the camera was at fault even though I have never had a problem like this on any other rolls.
After posting on Twitter asking if anyone had any idea what it could be most people suggested the camera which would have been the obvious choice so I loaded up a roll of ilford SFX and shot that the following day under the same sunny conditions only to find they were all perfect … no leaks so on this occasion I think the problem was with the film itself.
I bought about 20 rolls and have shot 7 or 8 previously and all were fine except this one.
As most of the leaks occurred on the edges I managed to salvage quite a few frames with a little cropping which was pretty easy as it was a 6 x 4.5 frame.
See this original scan sample here
Anyway here are the final images … please click to view larger ….
All images on my blog are available as prints just drop me an email
About 6 months ago I picked up an SLR that I have wanted for ages a Pentax Super A.
I already have a few other Pentax’s including a Program A which is very similar but the Super has a top shutter speed of 1/2000 sec compared to 1/1000 which also shows on an LCD panel on the top.
To cut a long story short I somehow managed to lose that camera on a night out (Don’t ask) so I really wanted to get another one.
Super A’s are not that easy to get hold of especially in good condition but I managed to get one that was almost perfect but I needed to test it just to confirm I had a good one (as it was not cheap).
I had a few rolls of TMax P3200 that had just expired from Analogue Wonderland, I had already shot some before and were fine so I loaded up and went out for a local walk.
As you can see from a selection of images the camera worked great and I felt happy paying slightly over the odds for my 2nd copy.
All images on my blog are available as prints just drop me an email
I have quite a few rolls of Kodak Vision 3 50D along with a few other rolls of various motion picture stock in my fridge.
I had been waiting for some good light to try the 50D to see how it performed as I really liked the 250D when it was processed in both C41 & ECN2 chemistry.
I hadn’t shot my Pentax Program A for a while so I went out for a walk to see what I could get in the sun.
As I was pretty impatient I developed the roll in C41 as I don’t have any ECN2 chemistry yet.
The initial scans where pretty flat which isn’t a surprise but once I got them into Lightroom and just tweaked the Dehaze slider the images really popped.
The grain was pretty smooth which is to be expected with a film rated at 50 iso and it was pretty sharp as well.
Overall I really like the look of this film stock, it’s not as versatile as 250D or 500T but if you have good light it is definitely a film I want to shoot more of but next time I will develop in ECN2 chems.
Anyway here is a selection of shots from the roll …. comments welcome 🙂
Please click a photo to view larger
All images on my blog are available as prints just drop me an email
tim dobbs photography 