This is one of the underexposed frames of Shanghai GP3 that I mentioned a few days ago – the least underexposed of the three and it’s been recovered for the most part in post-processing. The other two shots were also made within the trees of the plantation, so I suspect it was caused by poor metering on my part. The next wrst exposed shot has also recovered enough that I might post it too, but it’s noticably more contrasty than this one. The worst of the bunch is mostly “soot and whitewash” unfortunately.
The small hamlet of West Handley have decorated their phonebox and streetlamp for Christmas as usual. Santa seems to be re-purposed for various tasks as required, having had the face of previous UK prime minister, Theresa May in protest of Brexit on one occasion, and as an anti-fracking protestor on another. There are a number of other Christmas trees and festive decorations along the road that runs past the small group of houses that make up the settlement, and I expect it looks quite nice in the evening, although relatively low key in comparison with some of the extravaganzas of illumination that I’ve seen esewhere.
I’m still getting to grips with the rangefinder patch of the GW690 and have missed focus on Santa in the second shot. More practice needed!
Another shot from the “getting to know you” phase with my GW690. There will be a few rolls of me getting used to the camera, I think. I developed another roll today – this one some Shanghai GP3 I shot yeterday and a few frames are quite underexposed. I think all but one can be rescued (based on my scans so far), but I’m not sure what went awry. I suspect my metering is to blame though as it was only on a few woodland shots where the exposure issues occured. I sometimes think I should bite the bullet on a proper spot meter to avoid these problems, but those things are not cheap! Anyway, some of the GP3 shots will be up here soon.
This shot from my first roll of B&W through the camera isn’t too bad I don’t think – it’s pretty contrasty, but the scene was a mixture of shadowed areas punctuated by bright highlights, so it’s to be expected.
I shot my first real roll through my recently acquired GW690 last week. When I say “real” roll, it’s actually the second one – the first was a roll of Velvia that the previous owner had left in the camera when they sold it. It had seven unused frames which, in my eagerness to try out the camera, and the somewhat temperemental relationship I have with that particular film, meant that I was mostly unhappy with the results. The compositions were not especially interesting, the exposures were not good – I blew the highlights significantly in most of the shots – and my scans were disappointing in their colour reproduction. As a result I’ve not uploaded a sigle frame from the roll.
For this second attempt I used something I knew I should have more success with – at least in the exposure and scanning apects, if not the composition of the images (although, in this, I hope I still managed to get something nice). The results are much better than the first set, although still not quite perfect and, given the relative expense of using the camera – just eight shots per roll! – I need to up my game, slow down, and pay full attention to what I’m doing. Also, at this satge, I still have that “exciting new camera” feeling, so I’m probably not doing the best I can. Most of the shots are nice though, but a couple are slightly soft due to camera shake (I think I maybe need to do some weight training before using this handheld 🙂 ), and a couple of slightly dull compositions.
The photo posted today is one of the frames I liked. The curve of the road is nice and the light is good. It also shows the very nice results that the lens on the GW690 can produce.
Continuing my nightime Cinestill 800T shots, here’s an image of a local Starbuck’s branch. The cafe was closing and the staff inside looked like they were performing whatever end of day admin tasks go on in such an establishment. One person is sat to the left of the entrance apparently looking at paperwork, while there’s the blur of another person doing jobs behind the counter.
It’s another photo where I felt somewhat awkward making it as there was a car parked close by with some people sat inside. They didn’t say anything or even show any sign of noticing me, but I had an internal sense of them wondering what on earth I was doing. Maybe I need to just get on with doing stuff and ignore what my internal psychology is wittering on about…
Today’s photo is another of those that I really like without really being able to say why – although I think it’s probably the swipe of the red tail-lights across the scene on a jaunty diagonal. The red contrasts nicely with the overall blue tint that the photo has.
I think there’s some sort of law that says you must make a photograph of a petrol station* at night when you shoot some Cinestill 800T. Anyway, here’s mine out of the way. I don’t think it’s the best example by a very long chalk, but I can cross it off the list**. Bonus points for the fog.
A photo from my first ever roll of Cinestill 800T. I rarely shoot at night, this outing being only the second time I’ve done so (not counting at nightime events using flash). I took my GX7 digital camera in order to meter the shots, setting the ISO to 800 and the aperture to the one I wanted to use on the Bronica. This gave me the approximate shutter speed I needed to use. It was only later that I realised – due to not being able to read the shutter speed dial properly in the dark, that I’d overexposed by a full stop. Thankfully it seems that Cinestill 800T has really good latitude, so all the images pretty much turned out ok.
My family and I refer to the street where this house (and several others similarly decorated with large numbers of lights) as “Christmas Street”. At this time of year you will see people walking down there just to get a look at the lights. It used to be quite unique in the amount of decorations the residents would put on their homes, but in recent years more and more households are going to ever more extravagant lengths to light their houses.
In other news, I’m now on leave for the festive period, so I’m hoping to relax, enjoy Christmas, and (hopefully) make lots of photographs. And my Emulsive Secret Santa gift arrived today, so extra bonus! 🙂
The last frame from the roll of Colorplus that had been left in the DL-270 – literally so in two cases (I don’t think I’ll be posting any of the others AND it was the last frame on the roll, hence why it’s cropped to a slightly stunted ratio).
I tested the capability of the lens on the camera quite strongly by deliberately making a number of shots straight towards the sun, albeit trying to obscure its disk behind scenery – in this case the counterweight that helps balance the cable-pulled waterski structures. It passed all tests in this regard.
Fuji DL-270 Zoom Super & Kodak Colorplus. Grain2Pixel conversion.
