Scan or Digitise

Island Cafe

Last week I had a few days out shooting with the Canon eos500n and a Holga 120.  In the Canon I had a roll of Tmax 400 and the Holga was a combination of Rollei 400 and Ilford hp5+. I was looking to start a new project, trying to capture some the of the hidden places in London, places that people won’t necessarily know about or walk pass without a second glance.

I was think about doing this project all on 120 film but wasn’t sure how well the Holga was going to work as I had only recently picked it up, so was covering it shooting with the Canon.

I ended up shooting 3 rolls on the Holga and just one roll of Tmax with the Canon.  Not having any way to process the film at home, I needed to find somewhere to develop them.

I look at the local high street shops but I found snappy snaps to be to expensive and although Jessops could do develop only, on the 120 films for £5 it would take 2-3 weeks.

Looking online was a similar problem with prices ranging from £4 to over £10, eventually I picked out AG photographic in Birmingham who could develop the 120s and 35mm film for £3.99 each plus £3.50 return p&p, with freepost to send the films to them.

So on Tuesday I sent off one roll of 120 and the roll of 35mm, their turn round was pretty quick as I had my negs back by Friday.  

The roll of 35mm was fine but the 120 from the Holga was a bit hit and miss, out of the 12 images about half were underexposed as they were shot in low light but I guess this is half the fun of shooting with a Holga. The images are not that sharp either in fact they are very soft, so the Holga may not be the camera for this project, I will have to see that the other 2 rolls are like when they come back next week.

Scan or digitised

My digitisation set up

Up until recently I have been scanning my negatives on a cheap Epson flatbed scanner but the results have been mainly poor, fairly regularly I couldn’t get a sharp image and it would mean re-scanning with the film carrier set to a different height and to be honesty it was more trouble that it was worth.

A couple of weeks ago I bought a sigma 50mm macro lens for my digital Nikon, the lens is manual so gives me a lot of control when focusing in on the negs.  The current setup is a daylight balanced lightbox I had from Jessops, a Nikon d5100 and the Sigma lens. F8 seems to be the best aperture when working on the negs and I shoot to RAW so I can make any adjustments in darktable.

So far I have digitised the one roll of black & white 35mm and one of 120 and the results are 100% better than the scanned images, and it takes a lot less time, as you only need to move the lightbox and re-frame, I also end up with 16 megapixel digital negs.

Below is the same image, the first is done via the Macro lens and digital camera, the second via the Epson scanner. Both have had no post production done to them and although the scanned one looks correctly balanced it is blurred. The digitised one is flat but this is the same for most RAW files.

Digitised 

Scanned

Correctly balanced image

I'm still looking forward to when the pixl-latr final shipping as this will hopefully help to keep the negatives flat, as I noticed that the 120 Rollei film was very curly.

The only problem I have had, with digitisation using the camera is with colour negs, no matter what I do with the negs in darktable I always end up with a colour cast which I can never seem to remove. I will have to keep working on the colour negs but for the time being I will be shooting black and white.

Update

I have now had the other 2 rolls of hp5+ 120 film developed, and although I've had a better return with images exposed correctly, I still ended up with some underexposed.

Also I'm not sure I really like the square format, so I think I'll be sticking with 35mm for the foreseeable future.

Previous I talked about getting print made up and looking into print swaps.  This I've been luck to receive some prints this week from two Facebook groups, the first is Photography Print Swap hosted by Dustin Cogsdell, and my swap partner sent me a great street photography print and a wonderful booklet of his work.  The other group is the Negative positives Facebook group and from my swap partner I receive 3 prints shots from the Caribbean.

If anyone is interested in joining The Photography Print Swap Group, have a search on Facebook or contact me and I will add you to the group.

Print Swap Prints

Yodica Films

Yodica Films - Atlas

My latest journey out on the streets was down in Brighton for Brighton Pride and this time I was shooting with film but not any old film stock but one call Yodica.

I first heard of Yodica films on the Sunny 16 podcast and was intrigued by the concept of the film.

Yodica is part of the growing trend in pre-exposed film, this is film that has already been exposed to either a light source or some other way of exposing the film, I have see films with aliens and UFOs or light leaks exposed on to them.

Yodica have 7 different film types out already, all with a range of bright saturated colours, the ones that grabbed my attention were Atlas and Pegasus, both of these have a rainbow effect to them but with Atlas being more random, unfortunately when I went to buy a roll of each both Analogue Wonderland and The Photographers Galley were out of Pegasus so I bought 2 rolls of the Atlas.

The film cannister and plastic cannister are wrap with a representation of how the colours look and is rated at ISO400 but if you peel back the wrap, you can see the original film is Kodak 200.

I'm not an expert on double exposure or film in general but have been told that 400 for the first exposure and 400 for the second will equal 200. 

I shot both roll in my Canon eos500n and as the film wasn't DX coded set the camera manually to ISO400.

Brighton Pride was a good day out, with temperatures in the high 20s and very sunny.

I shot a roll and a half of the Atlas, and though and hoped I had some goood images.

I had to wait a week to use up the rest of the second roll and then get them processed, this was a bit of a palava as my new local Snappy Snaps wanted to charge almost £20. 

So I ended up waiting another week and getting them processed at Jessops for £11.

Once I got the negs back and looked at them I was surprised how they looked. Scanning them revealed that although the Yodica colours were there and coming through, my images looked muddy and underexposed in a lot of the shots, in fact they looked about 1 stop under. I ended up with a lot of processing in camera RAW to try and get the images half decent. 

The best result I could achieve from this frame 

The images that I managed to get to look OK, were pretty interesting but some that were shot I just couldn't get anything out of them and a lot seemed very hit and miss.

Another one that I struggled with

I'm reviewing all this about 4 days after doing the scanning and I think I may know what the problem could have been with the images looking so underexposed.

Mr Gold

That Vintage Look

Unlike digital there is no exif data,so this is only a theory, the film is rated iso200 but both the pre-exposed and my shots were shot at iso400 to balance out the double exposure.

Now when I shot on the street, I use aperture mode and normal set between f5.6 to f8 and let the camera go with a shutter speed, as I said it was hot and sunny and I think the maybe the shutter speeds were to high, I remember a couple of times seeing 1/1500 and 1/2000 of a second. It could be that at these high shutter speeds I was underexposing even more and that would explain why some frames look OK and others don't.

Like I said I'm not an expert so this is all conjecture on my part.

So what do I think of this film stock?

Well it is a bit gimmicky and I think some of the purists in analogue photography may look at it as a film for the Instagram generation, but that doesn't bother me I think it's a fun film. If I could nail down the second exposure's better, maybe shutter speeds in the 1/125 to 1/500 would work then I think I would use it more especially for events were the added colour adds to the image. Images like Mr Gold and That vintage look worked really well.

I'm not sure whether Yodica films will get to read this post but if they do and would be interested in sending a couple of rolls to let me test out my theory, that would be much appreciated.

If you fancy trying Yodica films it can be purchased from either Analogue Wonderland or if in London the Photographer's Gallery.

Photo24

I'm writing this on Monday 2nd July roughly 2 days after photo24, I'm still feeling the effects of being up for nearly 24 hours. I guess I did around 18 or the 24. My scanner is working away in the background, scanner the negatives from the roll of cinestill 800 I shot, over the 24 hours. 

 

I had some technical issues with my digital camera, which I'll go into, so I ended up relying more on my film camera and shot through the cinestill a lot quicker than I imagined.

I also used a roll of lomo 400 colour film, which I had to push 2 stop to 1600 as I was be now shooting in very low light.

The lomo film will probably have to be sent away because I don't think snappy snaps or Jessops can do pushed film, so I'll have to look into finding somewhere to send that away too.

The cinestill images look to be pretty good, I shot about half the roll on the steampunk people in banksy tunnel along with some of the graffiti down there and later in the evening photographing people spinning fire down on the Thames close to the Oxo tower. The lomo film has the tail end of the fire spinners but it maybe a couple of weeks before I see the results of the particular film.

Stempunk, Cinestill 800

Fire spinner Oxo Tower beach

The issue I had with my digital camera was that the batteries for it are not that powerful and so I usually carry 4 with me.  Which when all fully charge I probably get a couple of days shooting with, but for some reason 2 of the batteries didn't seem to charge, which I didn't find out until I was a few hours into photo24 so this only left me with 2 batteries which I more or less burnt through by 11 o clock in the evening.

Luckily enough I live close enough to London that I was able to get the last train home and manager to get the batteries charged over the next few hours. And I was able to to get back on into London for about 6 the next morning.

The heat was a major problem as it just seemed to be hot all the time, even in the late evening, I was glad I had decide to only take one digital camera and one film camera and the minimum amount of equipment I needed. There did seem to  be a lot of people carrying big heavy packs and a lot of equipment which did seem to weigh them down.

During the 24 hours there was an hourly challenge, each hour there was a theme set and the images were to be uploaded to the photo24 Facebook page, I did enter a few images in some of the categories as there was the chance to win £1500 worth of Fujifilm equipment. Unfortunately none of my images made the shortlist.  There are 2 more competitions with are best street scene and best london scene, I can enter up to 6 images in both but as yet I haven't decided if I have anything worth entering yet but again both of these have a chance of winning £1500 of Fujifilm equipment.

Legs

The event ended at a hotel on the Southbank with the announcement of the 24 hours challenge winner and all the people who finished got a t-shirt. 

The whole experience of photo24 was quite good, I got to meet some new people to shot along with and although I never stay with anyone in particular it was good bumping into other photographers and having a chat while out and about. I will definitely think about doing it again next year, if selected and now know how things work I'll probably do things a little differently.

So that's the end of my photo24 for this year, I know I said I would try to record some pieces while out but there was so much going on that I just didn't have time.

Keeping up to date

I really try to keep this blog up to date but life gets in the way.

Since the last post; I have managed to get a place on Photo24, so the end of June will see me tramping the streets of London.

Pop that spot

I made a trip to Dublin but didn't shoot a great deal, mainly because it was a family holiday and the weather wasn't that great.

I also had another try at 'Workshops', this time over on Google+.  There are a great many photographers on G+ and some have banded together to form what is called the The G+ mentorship program for photographers. The mentorship I was on was called finding your vision: street photography.

The way it works is that a community is set up and each week for a period of eight weeks, you are given assignments by the teacher who has experience of that particular genre. For each week you then post a selection of images and then receive feedback.

As we all know most people don't like to be critical of others images, so  feedback can be a bit skewed. I don't want to bash this like the other 'workshop' I did, as I did get something out of this one, and it was free and the people running it give up they time freely.

I just think I'm not cutout for doing workshops, I'm not even sure that street photographers need workshops, did Cartier-Besson, Winogrand, Erwitt, Friedlander, Leiter, Meyerowitz, Arbus, Levitt the list is endless, ever go on street photography workshops.

NOT a double exposure, reflections in a window

Also for a bit of fun I have joined in was a film challenge, its a double exposure challenge, there are about 14 people involved.  The idea is that you are paired up with another photographer and you both shoot on the same roll of film.  I have already shot my 36 exposures and have send the roll to my partner, I'm just waiting on him to shoot his and then get the roll developed.

Always on the lookout

I'm always on the lookout for new things to try or to get involved with photographically.

Last year; I saw an event called Photo24 but when I saw it, the date for registration had already passed. Yes; I could probably do it own my own but it's always better to do it with like minded people.

Photo24 has just announced the dates for this year, 29/30 June, with registration opening on the 12 March. The event is usually over subscribed and there is a ballot for entry.

While it is a 24 hour event, you don't have to do the whole 24 hours but being London there should be plenty of things to do in the wee hours especially riding the night tube.

Hopefully I can secure a place in the ballot.

On the lookout

Leegate. Welcome to Britain's worst shopping district

In 2010 Leegate was dubbed the worst shopping precinct in the U.K.

 In the intervening eight years, not much has changed.

 In 2016 the site was given a green light for re-development, with ASDA on board to build a supermarket and 229 new homes, a community centre, pub and a gym.

 Last Summer it was announced that the development agreement with ASDA had expired and ASDA, and they had taken the opportunity to withdraw from the scheme.

The owners of Leegate, St. Modwen did come up with alternative plans but it now seems that all plans have been put on hold until March 2019 as, the representative of St. Modwen has said that 'anything could happen'  and we all know what is happening in March 2019.

It looks like Leegate can hold on to it unwanted title for a bit longer.


This is my project shot over a few weekends in Leegate.

Olympus mju zoom

Olympus mju zoom 105

My collection of film cameras has grow again, this time with an Olympus mju zoom 105.  This one was 'found' in the back of a cupboard indoors.

The camera came out in 1995, which is probably when we bought it, and it did get a lot of use until we bought our first digital camera.

Its DX coded from 50-3200 which means I can easily shoot with a nice fast film and shutter speeds range from up to 1/500.

When I found it, it already had a roll of film in it and the counter showed 2 plus I could see that it was 24  exp 200 iso but apart from that I knew nothing else about the film.

I took the camera out yesterday to look toi finish up the roll and see about getting it developed, although the counter showed 2 is was totally wrong as I only managed 5 or 6 shots before it started to rewind.

To my surprise when opening the camera I found the the film inside was a roll of Colorama. As far as I remember, this was given as a free roll every time you had a film developed at the chemist.

So I have no idea how long that film has been in the camera and apart from the 5-6 shots I took yesterday, what else is on the roll.  Only time will tell if the film is any good or not.

As for the camera itself, all looks to be working fine and give my another oprion for shooting film.

Talking of film; I also picked up 3 rolls of Lomography 400 colour negative film for the next One Film outing in March.

400

One Film

Beer Porn

Yesterday I joined up with the One Film Facebook group.  The premise of one film is, to go out and shoot one roll of film on a given subject (yesterday's was Dusk) get the film developed at a 1 hour processing lab then pick your best three images to be judged with all the other participants. 

Yesterday started at 3pm at Charing Cross and was to end at 6pm and meet at Brewdog Soho for the judging.

There were roughly 20 people on this meet but unlike a photowalk, everybody goes their separate ways, some when to the Southbank, one even make their way out to Canary Wharf.

I decided to stay in the centre and went around the usual spots, Soho, Chinatown and the West End.

As this was a last minute decision for me to go, I didn't have a great deal of choice of that film I would use, so it was a 24 exposure ISO 200, poundland film.  As it would be dark for most of the shoot I took my Olympus XA3 mainly because this is the only camera I had that has a flash, not that it helps as I was reluctant to use it (I'm not a lover of flash).  The XA3 is full automatic so this meant a lot of slow shutter speeds as the light dropped and a lot of blurry images.

Horizontals and Verticals 

   

I ♥ London

Dinner for two

The real fun and social aspect comes once everybody meets up again in the Pub. It's the usual chat about where everybody has been and what they think they may have captured, its a nervous hour waiting to see what is going to come back from the lab.

Once all the films are in, everybody chooses their best three (mine are the three above) and David the organiser collects them and numbers each in a random order then lays them out for the judging to being.  The judging is via an app on the Facebook group and everybody gets to choose their favourite three, the one with the highest percentage of votes is the winner.

60+ images ready for judging. Red glow from the Beer Porn sign.

This was enjoyable event and definitely something I will attend again, though next time I will make sure I'm better prepared.