Wales – Page 14 – tim dobbs photography

Expired Film Day …….

Last week, well March 15th to be precise was Expired film day where photographers were encouraged to shoot a roll of expired film, the older the better and post up and possibly win some prizes.

http://schneidan.com/expired-film-day/

My chosen film was a roll of Fuji NPS160 that expired back in 1999 and I shot it with my trusty Mamiya 645 and 80mm f2.8.

I rushed home from work hoping to catch the last rays of sun down Porthcawl Beach which we managed to do.I wasn’t sure how the colours were going to look like as NPS is more a portrait film with muted colours. With it being expired I shot it at iso 50 and told Film Dev that I pushed the film and if the could hopefully get something in the scanning for me.When I downloaded the scans I was very happy with the results, the colours were just what I was after and captured the mood of the early evening at the beach.I still have another 5 rolls of this film in my fridge and can’t wait to shoot some more weather allowing 🙂

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 …..

Snow comes to the Garw Valley ……

2 weeks ago we had a nice sprinkling of snow here in South Wales, not enough to bring everything to a standstill but something to add to the beauty of the Garw Valley.

I am in the middle of a 52 roll project where we shoot a roll of film every week for 1 year and post to a blog http://52rolls.net/ I shoot at least 1 every week most weeks anyway so I will try to split my images between the 2 blogs.

I shot the Mamiya 645 with the 80mm f2.8 on Fuji Superia 400 that I over exposed by 1 stop and it was processed and scanned by http://www.filmdev.co.uk/ who provide an excellent personal service at an affordable price … I can’t imagine processing and scanning C-41 ever again.

I can’t recommend them more highly, give them a ring and ask for David just to find out what they are all about.

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 …..

Garw Valley Railway with an F100 & some HP5 @ 3200…..

The weather this weekend here in the South Wales valleys has been awful, Dark & very wet.

A walk up the mountain was out of the question but as luck would have it the Garw Valley Railway had an open day so knowing from past visits the light inside the shed was very low I loaded the Nikon F100 with some HP5 and pushed it to iso 3200 and used the AF-s 50mm f1.4.

Even shooting at 3200 I was having to open up the lens to f2.8 or wider to get a reasonable shutter speed so the sharpness I managed to get was pretty impressive.I have pushed HP5 before and I knew that the contrast/grain it produces would suit the type of subjects I was shooting.

The only disadvantage to pushing this much was losing the highlights but it didn’t spoil any of the shots really.I processed the film in Ilford ilfotec HC 1+15 dilution for 11 minutes agitating twice every minute which managed to keep the grain well in check while giving excellent sharpness.

HP5 is such an excellent film stock its so versatile in in my personal opinion looks better when pushed than box speed but I love deep blacks and contrasty/grainy images so it suits me.

I had 3 frames left when I got home and fired them off in the house wide open just as a test and to finish the roll so I could see the results.

The combination of the F100 and the af-s 50mm f1.4 is great the focus is spot on and the lens is so sharp. Thanks for looking

Click on an image to view larger …..

You can also find me at https://usingfilm.wordpress.com/ which is all film only loveliness …

Shooting some Ilford HP5+ that expired back in 1995…….

A few weeks ago my very, very kind cousin gave me a huge bundle of film all of which had expired over various dates.

One of the oldest was a roll of HP5+ that expired back in 1995, as none of the film had been either fridge/freezer stored for quite a while I was expecting pretty hit or miss results but I love the unexpected.I loaded up my Mamiya 645 and popped out to see what I would get.

I exposed as if it was 200 iso and processed accordingly using ilfotec HC 1+47 dilution for 8 minutes and the negatives came out fine at 1st sight.But on close inspection the sharpness and contrast were just fine but the grain in the lighter areas was pretty soft and mushy, not that I minded it was fine and towards the end of the roll the circles of the paper backing were evident in 2 of the frames.As you can see in this crop…Nevertheless I was really impressed with the film, I love grain and contrast and this roll had not really lost either, I could have most probably developed a little longer and got it even more contrasty.I love HP5, its my goto film most of the time and even if it expired 20 years ago its still great in my book…… thank goodness that Ilford are still flying the flag for film.Thanks for looking

Click on an image to view larger…….

You can also find more film goodness over at my “Film Only” blog at:

https://usingfilm.wordpress.com/

Wales……A Grandslam Weekend.

A really special weekend here in Wales as we had one more game to win in order to secure the Grandslam in the RBS 6 Nations Championship.

France the world Cup finalists came to Cardiff trying to spoil the day but the welsh team did us all proud and won the championship and Grandslam to boot.

I arrived in Cardiff early as last week when we entertained the Italian side the trains from Bridgend were jammed packed and I was determined to get there a bit earlier to capture some of the atmosphere in the streets with my trusty little Olympus E-PL1.

The French supporters were very entertaining and were extremely willing to pose for some photographs, it was a pleasure to roam the streets camera in hand capturing the flavour of the day.

The Olympus performed very well even though I could not get the nice shallow DOF I can with my SLR and 30mm f1.4 I was happy with the shots it gave me.

click on a photo to see a larger version……….