Nikon FE2 – tim dobbs photography

Shot my 1st roll of Kodak Ektar in ages … Here is the whole roll

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

Trying ilford XP2 at different ISO ratings on one roll ….

This started off as a proper test as I had read in various places that you can shoot XP2 at different ISO ratings without changing the development times.

My plan was to load up my FE2 and over the space of a few days/weeks shoot the roll in different situations that required possible pushing/pulling and write down the setting to see what happens when I develop the roll eg. does it work??

The experiment went pretty good initially but about 20 frames into the roll I managed to lose my little notepad with my settings on which essentially ballsed up the whole thing as I do not have the settings to correspond to the images.

What I can say is that I shot the roll between 200-3200 iso … the shots in the bright sunshine were at the end of the roll after I realised I had lost my notepad so I think they were all 200-400 while the shot of my son on his phone was definitely at 1600 iso.

All in all after a little tweaking in Lightroom every frame I shot was perfectly useable with the higher ISO shots exhibiting quite a bit of grain but I like grain so to me that was an added bonus.

Well here is a selection of 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 🙂

Lomo Color Neg 400 in the Sun ….

I had a roll of Lomo color neg 400 loaded in my Nikon FE2 for almost 3 weeks during the recent heatwave we experienced here in the UK. This was due to various reasons but mainly because of shooting other cameras like the Littlest Holga.

The FE2 was always in my bag so as you can see this roll features quite varied subject matter.

I really love this film stock and it is becoming one of my favorites especially as it is a stock that you can still buy and is a good price 🙂

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 🙂

Shooting Lomography Colour Negative 400 on a Sunny day …..

My favorite colour negative film stock is Fuji Reala but obviously they stopped producing it a few years back so I have been trying to buy up as much as I can get my hands on over the last 2 years.

One day there will be none left so I have been shooting various different stocks in a bid to find one that sort of gives me a similar look to Reala which isn’t easy.

The closest I have managed is with Lomography Colour Negative 400 when shot 1 stop over which does not match Reala totally but gives me a very pleasing look that is reminiscent in feel.

The best thing is that Lomo 400 is actually being made today and at a good price too so here are my favorites from the roll that I shot last weekend where the sun shone here in the South Wales valleys.

To be honest Lomo 400 works great at 400 in poor light but when it’s over exposed a stop in bright sunshine then for me it is at it’s best.

This roll was shot using my Nikon FE2 and 50mm f1.4 and developed and scanned by the wonderful Filmdev who do an excellent job .

Anyway here are the photos … comments welcomed 🙂

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 🙂

A day at the Seaside with some expired Kodak Ultra 400 …..

I am always looking on Ebay for any film bargains even though I have way more film than I actually need already and came across a few rolls of Kodak Ultra 400 that had expired back in 2005.

The seller said it had been cold stored and as I didn’t have any of this stock I took a punt.I loaded up my Nikon FE2 & 35mm f2.5 and we popped down to the beach at Porthcawl, the weather started quite bright but by the time I was half way through the roll the clouds darkened which gave me two different looks to the images.

Once I started scanning the roll I was taken aback with how the images looked, pretty normal colours while shooting in the partial sunshine but when it clouded over the images had quite a pronounced colour shift which for me were the better looking frames if I am honest. Overall I was very happy with how many keepers that I managed to get from this roll.