I’m still writing my camera review piece, honest! I’ve actually started it today and now have a few hundred words down on paper (well, a text file…). Finger’s crossed it’ll be here soon.
So in the meantime I’ll keep posting other stuff which, today, means a couple of photos of some flowers I bought my wife for our anniversary. When they were past their best and starting to wilt, I nabbed them before they got thrown out and took a few photos with my macro lens. As I didn’t want to mess around with a tripod and the rest of it, I pushed a roll of HP5+ to 1600asa so I could shoot handheld. While it’s not the first time I’ve pushed HP5+ a couple of stops, it is the first time I’ve developed the results myself. As usual, the Ilfotec DD-X has delivered results I’m more than happy with.
I wasn’t sure about the left side of this one at first, but now I don’t mind it so much.
As I still haven’t written my camera review post yet (although I do have a cheesy title for it!) I thought I’d dip into the archives and pull out a photo that never got published before. This one was taken last May when I travelled to New York City with my wife and our two youngest boys.
I’ve been looking back through these pictures – taken when the Covid-19 pandemic would have likely seemed an impossibility to most people but, yet, a year later and look how the world changed! – because I’m taking part in a zine swap with some folks from a forum I’m a member of. I’ve never made a zine before and time was ticking on, so I decided to choose a bunch of street-shots for my first publication. I have everything set up and now just need to finalise a few bits beore clicking the button to get them printed. I’m probably going to end up with far more than I need for the zine swap, so might have some to swap with others too.
While zoomed-in, spotting the photo for dust before uploading it, it was fun to notice a guy stood atop the scaffolding at the lower left of the shot. Photos are so often full of little details such as this. Unspotted at the time of making the picture, and even overlooked on initial viewing, but there waiting to be found when you spend the time.
I have a camera review planned for the blog sometime soon, I’d hoped to have written it before now but – even though I’m off work this week – I’ve not gotten around to it yet. The thing with having a week off is that I have a lot of stuff I’ve planned to do while I have the chance. Probably too much stuff.
While some of it I’ve achieved (including cleaning and shooting the camera I plan to review) , others – including some mundane, but desireable things like just watching some movies and reading some of my big pile of photobooks – have yet to be done. And I really want to do some of those mundane but relaxing things before work comes beckoning again. I might get chance to write the review tomorrow. Or I might not.
In the meantime, there might be a series of short posts while I figure out what I’m doing with my time. So, today, here’s a picture of a dog outside a cafe…
Parked a short distance from the Starsky & Hutch Gran Torino that I posted a picture of yesterday, was this Simca 1000 Rallye.
I don’t know a lot about cars and don’t have a great deal of interest in them beyond their ability to get me from A to B (and their suitability for photographing), so Simca isn’t a marque that I’d really heard of before (although the later Talbot brand was familiar). They were a French company founded in 1934, manufacturing cars for the next several decades. From the late 1950s Chrysler started to acquire a stake in the business to form part of their Chrysler Europe organisation until it collapsed in 1977. Peugot picked up what remained but the Simca brand faded from use.
A chap on a forum commented on this photo, saying he had learned to drive in a Simca 1000 – although not the souped up Rallye model seen here. He was surprised to see this one in such condition as they were apparently not vey well constructed in terms of bodywork. As the Honest John car review website states: “These cars suffer from widespread rust but are bulletproof in the engine and gearbox department.“.
Whatever the lifespan of the bodywork, it makes for a nice photographic subject
I did consider sliding across the bonnet (or should I say “hood”?) when I saw this Ford Gran Torino in full Starsky & Hutch colour-scheme, but I’d have either ended up sprawled unceremoniously across the front, or on my backside on the floor. I’d have been risking a potential beating too I think! 😀
I took a colour version of this too, maybe that will appear when I get the roll developed and scanned…
Today was my annual trip to the seaside town of Mablethorpe. I wasn’t sure I’d get there this year what with the pandemic, but managed to sneak in a visit before the Covid cases rise to the extent we can’t travel again (although I hope that doesn’t happen!).
I don’t want to say much about it today because I only got home about half-an-hour ago; I’m very tired from the walking and driving; and I want a shower! Assuming no disasters, there will be photos from the trip in upcoming blogs.
Anyway, here’s a random image of a statue, a sign pointing to a church (I didn’t photograph this one!), some houses, and a bloke looking at me and probably wondering what I’m doing…
Is he looking at me, or just in my general direction?
I don’t have a lot to say about this other than it caught my eye. Possibly because of the way it was lit, but most probably because of the big tangle of cables.
Continuing with an irregular theme of churches that I photograph without ever using them for anything else…
This is The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a Mormon church not too far from Chesterfield town centre and I usually pass it if when visit the town. It’s a modern building, but looks great when it catches some nice light.
Across the road from the Mormon church is Christ Church, a building I didn’t even realise was of religious use until I stopped to photograph it when I saw how it looked in the morning sun. According to Google the main building is a parish centre rather than a church, although the entrance at the south side of the building is clearly labelled as Christ Church, so perhaps it’s multi-purpose?.
A photograph of a woodland road today, taken on one of the rolls of Fomapan 100 that I’ve been having problems with. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts (such as this one) I’ve been having issues with white speckles of debris when using this film. I ruled out my development process and chemicals – both worked fine when developing other film stocks. I also tried omitting a chemical stop-bath, replacing it with water, and also adding a pre-wash of the film before developing. Nothing seemed to work and the speckles still stubbornly appeared when I developed each roll of Fomapan 100.
Then, a month or so back, I came across a post on the Photrio forum which seemed to detail someone having the same problem. It turned out that other people suffering the same difficulties all had film form the same production batch. One person in a linked post had contacted Foma themselves and been advised that the cause was a harder than usual anti-halation layer on that run of film and that a specific development process might help. I tried the process myself, but still ended up with the smae spots on the negatives, albeit possibly slightly less pronounced than before.
I decided to contact Foma myself and they replied with some similar instructions, although this time I noticed an additional stage that involved a wash of the developed film in an ethanol / water mixture before the final wetting agent stage. I’ve not tried this process as yet and, I suspect, probably won’t – mostly because ethanol seems quite hard to come by, at least at a price that isn’t prohibitively high. It would likely be cheaper to buy some fresh, unproblematic film, than attempt the ethanol rinse process.
I’m grateful for Foma’s response though, plus they sent me a few rolls of film as a goodwill gesture – two rolls of Fomapan 400, plus a roll of Retropan 320. I’ve never shot Retropan 320 before, so I’m quite looking forward to giving that one a go.
Should anyone else be suffering a similar issue when developing Fomapan 100, the instructions provided to me by Foma are as follows:
In case of your already exposed & processed negatives we recommend to you the following procedure to remove the residues of remaining anti-halo layer:
1) Prepare working solution in minimum with 40% of ethanol (optimally 70%). 2) Put carefully the films into spiral´s developing tank or a spiral with the film into similar transparent container with enough ethanol solution, with emulsion layer inside of the cylinder tank/container. 3) Keep the negatives in this solution approximately 45 minutes and make moderate movement each 4-5 minutes. 4) Wash sheets of the negatives in running water from tap for 2-3 minutes. 5) Make standard drying including wetting agent (FOTONAL).
If you may decide to use also other films from the same emulsion number, we advise you to follow this procedure of processing:
1) Exposed films put inside of the spiral´s developing tank. 2) Pour distilled water or water without minerals into this developing tank and keep the films in this solution for 20-30 minutes. Occasional inversion is convenient. This solution, ca. 600 ml, is possible to use in maximum for 2 rolls. 3) Immediately after pouring the water out you can fill the tank by developing working solution keeping standard conditions of developing, best using more alkaline developer, e.g. FOMADON R09. 4) After developing we recommend to stop process just by water bath, best running filtered water, in minimum for the time of 30 seconds in water´s temperature 12-18° C. Using acidic stop bath like FOMACITRO and others is not convenient in this case, because there are needed alkaline baths to help with dissolving the hardened anti-halo layer. 5) Standard fixing. 6) Wash the strips of the negatives in running water for 20-30 minutes (according to higher or lower temperature). 7) Use ethanol solution and other steps (1-5) as described in previous paragraph.
There’s a set of power-lines tucked away in here if you look for them…
