tree – tim dobbs photography

My #FP4Party 2020 images all together .. plus those that didn’t make the cut ….

I suspect that most of the people who choose to view my blog probably know what #FP4Party 2020 is all about but for those who don’t … well … it’s a twitter thing where like minded film photographers participate in a sort of competition (no prizes just for fun) where we shoot some ilford FP4 during shoot week then the following week process and scan the film and then post the images over the next week.

I have taken part in this on previous occasions and enjoy the whole process.

As the posting week is over I am now blogging all the images shot over the said week all together here on my blog.

I didn’t enter all of these in the Party so if you have been following me on twitter then there are some new ones here.

I shot 2 rolls … 1 – 35mm in my Pentax Super A and 1 – 120 in my Fuji GW690iii

So here they are ….

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 🙂

I forgot I shot this roll … My 1st roll of Tri-X for years

I have been trying to tidy up my lightroom catalog of my film scans.

I seem to have at least 15 rolls of film that I have shot over the last year that I have not blogged yet.

Most of the rolls I remember but this one completely slipped my mind which is strange as it was a roll of Kodak Tri-X I shot with my Leica M2 which is a film I have not bothered with for years as I never seemed to get very good results with.

To be honest this roll didn’t really blow me away either, I am not sure what I don’t like as it has plenty of contrast and is sharp which is what I like in my B&W … maybe it’s the grain which makes me feel Meh!.

My favourite image was the one where I managed to slip and fall over ( Tree’s)

I doubt if I will be rushing to shoot it again for a while unless I try pushing it just to see if that gives me something that I will like.

Here is the best of an ordinary bunch ….

Please 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 🙂

My 1st roll of the New Kodak Ektachrome … all 36 frames

I have shot most of the available and discontinued slide films over the years and processed them in E6 and cross processed in C41 and it never fails to give you a great feeling holding up some slides to the light.

So obviously when Kodak announced that they were bringing back Ektachrome I couldn’t wait to get some to play with.

Once I bought a few rolls I decided to load the 1st roll into my Nikon F100 as it gives me pretty much spot on exposures when I shoot slide film.

As you can see from the 1st shot on the roll I began shooting on March 30th and I took about 4 months to complete the roll as I wanted to try it on a range of subjects and lighting conditions.

I had the film developed & scanned by AG Photographic as I didn’t want to mess up the developing and get unreliable results.

I have to say the film lived up to my expectations … colours and sharpness were great and even shooting into the sun worked, also portraits came out good too.

So here is the complete roll in the order that I shot them … comments welcomed.

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 🙂

Disaster or Happy accident? … 1st time shooting Rollei CR200

Last week I partook in a film swap with a twitter friend who had never shot my favorite colour negative film” Fuji Reala ” so I sent him some in return for some of his film one of which was a roll of Rollei CR200 colour reversal film in 120 format.

I have never shot this film before so I was intrigued to find out how it looked so I loaded up my Fuji GW690iii and visited my favourite tree and shot away.

View this post on Instagram

Didn't manage to get any FP4 today so out shooting some Rollei CR200 for the 1st time in the Fuji GW690iii @emulsivefilm #beniceshootfilm #believeinfilm #Wales #saynotoxpro #landscapephotography

A post shared by Tim Dobbs (@timdobbsphoto) on Mar 10, 2019 at 9:39am PDT

I returned home and processed the film as normal in the Tetenal E6 kit and when they emerged out of the tank they seemed ok at 1st glance when I hung them to dry.

The only difference in my procedure was that I left it to dry overnight so when I went to scan it I was really confused as the colours were totally wrong, I immediately thought that I had my scanner settings wrong but after a few attempts with different settings nothing changed much or got even worse.

I dug out my lightbox and had a look at the film which instead of having the usual black rebate/frame it was purple.

I double checked the box that it was actually a reversal film incase I had got it wrong and obviously it was.

So to cut a long story short I have absolutely no idea what went wrong here … it does appear a bit like Solarization but no light got to the film while I was developing so I can only assume that the roll of film has had a very varied storage life.

So here are the images …. any comments welcomed …

After my initial shock and disappointment I actually really like the look and would love to be able to replicate it 🙂

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 🙂

February 2019 #FP4Party .. All my images together …..

This is the 2nd #FP4Party of the year and this time I managed to shoot 2 rolls of FP4 with 2 different cameras.

I tried out my recent purchase the “Lomography Fisheye 35mm” as well as my trusty Mamiya 645.

I was very happy to find out that 3 of my images were shortlisted this month ….

These are the 3 along with all of the others …

The best of the rest …

One’s that didn’t make the cut ….

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 🙂

#FP4Party 2019 .. all the posted images together

As ther new year begins so do the twitter Film Parties …. beginning with #FP4Party where as the title suggests you shoot some ilford FP4 during shoot week then develop in the 2nd week followed by … you guessed it post your images during the 3rd week.

For this challenge I used my Minolta SRT 101 with the Rokkor 55mm f1.7 which is a combination that I really enjoy using and one roll of FP4+ rated at 200 iso.

I was pleased to say that I had a really good hit rate with the roll with plenty of keepers which are here all together.

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 🙂

Diana F Pinhole shooting on Lomo Color Negative 400…

This year it is my intention to shoot more so called LoFi images.

I enjoyed my time shooting with the Littlest Holga and since modifying my own Holga so now I can actually get some usable images (see blog post from a few weeks back) I love the look and feel the plastic cameras can achieve.

So over Christmas I loaded up my Diana F with some Lomography Color Negative 400 and shot the roll in Pinhole mode.

The light was pretty consistent as I was checking with my light meter which gave me an approximate shutter time of 10 seconds after looking up cloudy days and Diana pinhole on the trusty internet.

After development and scanning I was pleased that the exposures were pretty spot on.

The only problem was that I shot the roll at the 16 frame setting without the frame mask so all the images pretty much touched or overlapped a bit which gave an interesting look but I scanned each one individually and cropped slightly.

Anyway here are the images any comments most welcomed.

Here is what the actual frames originally looked like.

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 🙂

Snow day …… part two

Following on …

As I said in the previous blog post we managed to get another downpour of snow in the space of 3 weeks so this time I decided on some colour film namely Kodak Portra 400VC expired using my Nikon F100 and both the 50mm f1.4 and my old Nikkor 35-70 which isn’t the sharpest but its versatile.

Anyway here are the images ….

I have shot a couple of rolls of this film previously and it was great but I don’t know if it was the cold weather along with slightly exhausted c41 chemistry but half of the frames seemed to have a colour cast which I didn’t bother correcting as I liked the look 🙂

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 🙂

Snow day …… part one

In the past couple of weeks we have had a few days of quite heavy snow … the images here are from our 1st encounter with the “Beast from the East”.

The camera/film combination were Mamiya 645 & Fuji Acros 100 and Yashicamat 124G on expired ilford FP4+

The subject matter for both sets of images are mostly the same so that you can make some sort of comparison of the 2 different films.

Firstly the Mamiya 645/Acros :

Next a few from the Yashicamat/FP4+

Both films worked well exposure wise with all the snow with the Acros probably coming out on top sharpness wise but considering the FP4+ was long expired it also looked pretty good.

After this snowfall cleared up we experienced another un-seasonal snow storm last weekend which will follow in the next blog post … this time with colour negative stock.

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 🙂