wasting time and light …
During this year’s #filmfeb I professed that my projects for the year were to shoot more 4×5 and revisit some old negatives. Shooting 4×5 in a lockdown is a bit of a challenge, but it seems to be the ideal time for digging into old negatives. I shall start by going some 30 years back.
One of the side effects of growing up in Berlin during the cold war, was being there when the whole affair ended. Continue reading “Remember, remember the 9th of November ….”
I finally finished my test roll of Ilford Ortho Plus 80. Doing this handheld in November in the north of England is not the best idea I ever had.
Even though, I got some results, developed in Continue reading “Paint it Black: Ortho Plus 80 – the rest of the roll”
The good people at Ilford Photo have not only introduced their Ortho-Plus 80 emulsion in 35mm and 120 formats, they also made it available to the market. This alone is a vast improvement over some competitors.
I eventually got my hands on some rolls, but wasn’t too sure what developer to use. It is always useful Continue reading “Ilford Ortho-plus 80 in Kodak HC110”
On my most recent visit to Berlin I decided to do something I had so far avoided: take some shots of the usual Tourist motives. I had done this elsewhere of course, but never in Berlin. The obvious starting point for such a mission is the Brandenburg Gate, where I got the standard shot towards the end of the golden hour. The film was 120 format Kodak Portra 160 in a Zenza Bronica SQ-Ai, I brought a 50mm and a 150mm lens.
From this first location, Continue reading “Berlin and its Holocaust Memorials”
As analogue photography regains popularity, a frequent question in photography forums is, which cheap, good quality analogue camera to pick when trying out film. Until recently, this would not have been an issue: almost all analogue gear was cheap, but prices have been rising for a while. In spite of this: late SLR models from the 1990s and beyond are often overlooked.
Where the main motivation is the look and feel of old or purely mechanical gear, this makes sense. But those who mainly want to try film as a medium and get the most bang for their buck should look at late analogue SLRs. They are likely to look like digital cameras but offer everything a film camera can, from full manual control to point and shoot automation. Continue reading “Resuscitating an analogue Canon EOS300”
The Zenza Bronica SQ series SLRs are capable, relatively young medium format SLRs which still trade at reasonable prices and are capable of delivering high quality results. Unfortunately, they are not problem free.
The SQ-Ai series -the youngest of the lot- has a reputation for poor battery contacts. Instead Continue reading “Bronica SQ-Ai Battery Problem – sometimes it is really simple”
The East German ORWO products have long appealed to more old fashioned photographers. I shot ORWO black and white films occasionally, when they were still being made and used their photo paper regularly. ORWO paper was actually made of paper, or cardboard, at a point when most modern photo papers were made of some form of plastic or at least resin coated. To those photographers with a bit of a Luddite streak the traditional paper just looked nicer. Continue reading “ORWO Expired?”
They say that shooting film slows you down, because you can’t chimp and have to wait for the roll to be developed. Some tell of the excitement of picking up a film after waiting for a week. I’m normally not that patient and develop myself when I find time. Most of the time, unless chaos takes over and Continue reading “I Forgot Some Film in a Drawer – 28 Years Later, I Saw What’s on it”
As most will know by now, Tetenal in its present form is due to close on the 1 April 2019. Apparently, a group of 40 employees is trying to rescue at least part of the company as newtetenal.
According to this German source, the initiative has some support from the administrators: Continue reading “New Tetenal?”
Once upon a time, during the first #ShittyCameraChallenge I took part in, I used that beat up but functional Agfa Silette. This time round, the shutter gave in when testing different speeds, leaving me with bulb mode and no reliable timed exposure. Anyway, I decided to use it one more time, but now was confined to long exposures. With this constraint, I did not go so far as using a shitty film as well and decided to shoot Fuji Acros 100 pulled one stop to ISO 50. With this low speed and favouring small apertures, I expected to be constantly tripod bound with multi second exposure times.
It turned out Continue reading “Bulb only …”