LC29 – tim dobbs photography

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

When Cinestill announced the release of XX Double-X I could not wait to get my hands on some to try.

I have shot Double-X film stock 5222 in 35mm that I picked up from Nik & Trick and really liked how it looked so when I realised that I could get to try it in 120 format I was pretty excited.

I bought some in both 35mm & 120 from the excellent Analogue Wonderland and waited for a suitable time an place to try it.

Last weekend we had a typical welsh August day with rain & wind and a pile of mist up on our wonderful Garw hills so I loaded up my Mamiya RB67/65mm lens and went out hoping to get some nice atmospheric misty images.

Sadly or happily depending on how you look at it by the time I got up the top of the valley the majority of the mist had dissipated but what that meant was I had more light to play with so rated the film at iso 200 and managed to stop down to f8/11 on most frames which once I had developed the roll really showed how sharp this film stock is.

After scanning and slight tweaks and dust spot removal in Lightroom the results were great .. lovely contrasty images with excellent detail and great tonal range ..

I developed it in ilford LC29 1+29 dilution for 8 mins and scanned on an Epson v500.

So here is the complete roll …

Comments most welcome .. click on an image to view larger