street – tim dobbs photography

1st time shooting Lomochrome Metropolis 35mm … the whole roll

I love trying new films whether they are new emulsions or just a film that I have never shot before.

Lomochrome Metropolis is an actual new emulsion developed by Lomography that according to the write up on their site can be exposed between 100 and 400 iso without any change in development.

Link … Lomo Metropolis

As it was £13 per roll and I only bought one to try I decided on the middle ground and went with 200 iso.

As some of the shots involved the sky I did use some exposure compensation .. the camera of choice was the Minolta X700 with the 50mm F1.7.

The roll was developed and scanned by FilmDev just to get accurate colours so that I can judge if I like the desaturated look that I have seen.

I shot the roll over a week so the beginning of the roll was a bit of street and the rest was a mountain walk here in the South Wales valleys.

At first sight I loved how this film looks, yes it did have a desaturated look which worked well on the street images but when you went out into the countryside it still had that look but the greens seemed to pop probably because the rest of the colours were subtle.

The film was pretty sharp and contrasty, the grain was there to be seen but at 200 iso it was very pleasant maybe at 400 it would be a bit more pronounced.

I am a bit gutted that this film is so expensive as I would be shooting it quite a bit if it were £10 or less a roll that being said I will be buying more but using it now and again depending on what I am shooting.

Well here is the complete roll … click to see an image larger

Comments most welcome

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 🙂

Forgotten roll of Lomo CN400 from the summer ….

I have been getting really behind with my blogging … I have loads of rolls that I have shot over the last few months that I have scanned but have only edited one or two frames that I have then posted to social media but not done anything with the rest.

This roll is a case in point … last August there was an event in Bridgend town centre with stalls, street entertainers and live music.

The weather was pretty good and I took my Olympus OM2s which was already loaded with my favorite colour negative film stock Lomography CN400 which I had shot 2 frames already from a trip to Cardiff.

I only shot about half of the roll during the event as I somehow found myself in the pub so I finished the rest the following day which is why there is a strange juxtaposition of images here 🙂

The Lomo film worked great as usual I love the colours it produces especially if you slightly over expose it 1/2 to 1 stop but process as normal.

Here is a selection from the roll

Click any 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 🙂

Lomography F2/400 ….. What’s it like then?

I had seen this film advertised for a while but never seemed to be able to get my hands on any as it was always sold out.

Lucky for me a few months back I got a roll sent to me by a fellow twitter photographer along with various other eclectic film stocks.

I was pretty excited to try it out and loaded my Olympus OM1n as I had not shot it for ages and managed to get quite an array of images over a 2 week period … Grey day/Sunny day, Night time and some close ups too.

I had the roll developed and scanned by Filmdev

The images were really punchy with quite a bit more grain than I was used to with Lomo CN400 which is my current goto colour negative stock.

Even though the grain was present I was really happy with how they looked, the colours were lovely and had an almost X-Pro/vivid look where the reds and greens popped and pretty sharp too.

I think the images in really good light or night time scenes with lights worked the best for me, in fact if I can get hold of some more I would definitely go night shooting.

Here is a selection from the roll ….

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 🙂

Minolta X700 & Some JCH Streetpan 400….

Over the last few months I have been adding to my Minolta SLR collection and one of the cameras I have been looking for since I began was an X700 that was in good condition as well as a reasonable price and I eventually found one.

It appeared in excellent condition so I loaded it with some JCH Streetpan 400 and popped out to give it a test.

I shot the whole roll using aperture priority using the Minolta MD 50mm f1.7 and developed in Rodinal 1+25 dilution for 10 1/2 minutes.

As you would expect the images were lovely and contrasty/sharp and the camera exposures were pretty much spot on.

The camera was lovely to shoot with handling great and is probably going to be one of the Minolta SLR’s that I will shoot regularly.

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 🙂

Bargain compact point & shoot of the year … Pentax Espio 140M & ilford XP2

A year or so ago I took part in a Camera challenge on twitter where you had to buy a cheap camera and shoot a roll of film and post the results.

I blogged the post here

Camera-challenge blog

That was the 1st and last time that I shot the camera but I was looking for a small compact camera to keep in my bag just to shoot as and when I came across anything vaguely of interest so I went through my collection and decided to revisit this little camera but this time load it with a decent roll of film.

So I loaded it with some ilford XP2 and used it over the last two and a half months, finishing it off on christmas day.

Obviously this roll has quite a varied subject matter that tested this camera … Landscape, Street, Macro and flash and once I developed the roll and saw the scans I was so impressed with how the camera performed … the exposures was spot on and the sharpness of the lens was superb, the only downside was the fairly slow aperture especially if you use the zoom but to be fair it didn’t hinder me at all.

The most useful feature for me is a spot focus mode and a Landscape mode which lets you focus at infinity both modes worked like a dream.

There are a few different flash modes, a Panorama mode which just crops the frame I think (not tried that yet) and a remote control to fire the camera.

All in all this is a right little powerhouse of a compact camera that works well in every situation I threw at it and also handles an looks good too.

I picked this up for less than a fiver and if you look on eBay you can still get it at a bargain price.

Anyway here are the 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 🙂

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 🙂

November’s #DeltaDefJam Party photos all together …

As I have in the previous #DeltaDefJam Party months I have gathered together all my entries and posted them here.

I only managed one roll for this final party so here they are …..

Apart from the night shots where I used the Nikkor 50mm f1.4 all others were taken with the Nikon F100, Sigma 105mm f2.8 and ilford Delta 100 & developed in ilfotec HC

Anyway thanks for looking ….

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 Month with my Leica …

I have been thinking about and then putting off buying a Leica M for an absolute age.

I don’t really know what the actual reason for putting it off was to be fair … everytime I saw one I liked and put it into my online basket something stopped me pressing the checkout button.

Well last month I bit the bullet and got hold of an M2 which was made the same year of my birth which made it that little bit extra special.

I got it without a lens from Red Dot Cameras but purchased an adapter for my Jupiter 8 50mm f2 as a stop gap until I decide which lens I am going to get.

Here follows 4 galleries featuring a selection of images shot on 4 different film stock all processed and scanned by myself.

The Jupiter 8 really impressed me with the colour rendering and sharpness/bokeh … God only knows how excited I will be when I get around to upgrading this little beauty.

Click on an image to view larger ……..

Kodak Ektar

2. Ilford XP2

3. Agfa Vista 200

4. Kodak Tmax 400

Overall my 1st month with my 1st Leica has not disappointed in the least … this little camera oozes class and charisma it is such a pleasure to use.

I now know why photographers heap praise on the Leica M even a 50+ year old model works like a dream and it has to be said .. this is the best camera I have ever shot with … I don’t mean in techy imagey sort of way but as something that makes you feel happy everytime that you use it

God I even like just looking at it … ha haThanks for looking ….

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

Olympus Pen D ….1st time shooting Half-Frame ………

I have always fancied shooting a half-frame camera after seeing a lot of interesting image compositions on various webpages.

I was looking forward to trying to find subjects that could be paired together to make a different image than just single frames.

It was not really all that easy to do as I found out but I did manage to get a few keepers out of 72 frames, I also found out that hand holding the little Pen D at 1/30th second was not very successful in quite a few of the frames.

That said it was a very enjoyable experience with the camera and the zone focus didn’t prove to be a problem either with all the images being in focus except for the camera shake ones.

There does appear to be a slight light leak which showed up in a few frames so I will have to sort that before shooting more film.

I was really impressed with the sharpness of the images considering the small size of the negative, obviously they will be limited to the enlargement size but for up to 7 x 5 (maybe 10 x 7) they are great.

Once we get a brighter day I hope to shoot a roll of colour film just to experiment with trying to pair up colours as well as subjects.

Thanks for looking.

Click on an image to view larger…..

You can also find my film only stuff over at https://usingfilm.wordpress.com/ if you want to see more film loveliness …..

Aberystwyth in the August rain with the Nikon L35af……

I had the day off on Friday to take Amy back to Aberystwyth to help her move out from her year 2 accommodation into the new house she is sharing with her friends.

Typical British weather in August it poured with rain for the 2 hour drive but after parking up the rain stopped for a while giving me the opportunity to shoot a roll of ilford HP5 that I rated at 800 iso due to the crappy light.I have shot HP5 at 800 quite a bit and I really like the contrast and grain I get much more than when shooting box speed.

The Nikon L35af is a lovely camera to use and the lens is very sharp the only thing I don’t like is the close focus which seems to be a little hit and miss and a few of the frames were out of focus but as a street camera its great.As the weather was holding off a bit we walked up to the “Philip Jones Griffiths” exhibition at the National Library of Wales which was one of the best photography exhibitions I have visited.

Not only seeing the prints but all of the photographers cameras, paperwork, bookshelves reconstructed with all their contents and the various documentaries running in the booths.

I cannot recommend more highly that this exhibition is really worth the drive and long walk up to the Library it was a privilege to get to view it.If anyone is looking for a small point and shoot film camera that takes well exposed and sharp images then the Nikon L35af is a cracker, I picked mine up for £15 off e-bay which in my eyes was a bargain.

Thanks for looking…

Click on an image to view larger

I also have a film only blog over at https://usingfilm.wordpress.com/ if anyone is interested 🙂