This was a very quickly grabbed shot while I was out with my wife. She doesn’t mind me taking pictures while we’re out, but I never spend the same amount of time setting up a picture or waiting for the right moment as I might do if I were out alone. Anyway, the light was nice on these two brightly painted takeaway restaurants and I had my Canon Z135 in my pocket, so I made a picture while I had the chance.
I need to start my planned diet in the next week, so takeaways are more likely to be the subject of my photography than my custom for a while.
Canon Sure Shot Z135 & Kodak Gold. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted using Negative Lab Pro.
It’s this time of year that I post my retrospective of the last twelve months, showing my favourite picture from each. I have the post written and almost ready to publish, but with one small obstacle – December.
While I’ve taken some pictures in December, I’ve only just developed them and not published any online yet. To compound matters, I also shot a few rolls with the Fujica GW690 today and I suspect my favourite December picture may be amongst those. So, what I think I need to do is upload my favourite December picture so far tomorrow, and then use that. And then maybe sneakily update the post at a later date. 🙂
So, hopefully, my end-of-year post should arrive tomorrow.
I picked up a few rolls of expired Velvia 50 slide film recently for a decent price. Some of it is only a few years past date and had been fridge stored, so hopefully that will be good. The other rolls are about 15 years expired but, on past experience, should also hopefully be ok. Included with the Velvia were three bonus rolls of 120 format Ektachrome 64 – these are considerably older, with an expiry date of 1987. I’m not expecting them to give anything close to accurate colour reproduction, but they might still produce something worthwhile. Having three rolls of it means I at least get a few chances to nail the settings.
The pictures shared here today are the remainder of the Kodak Ultramax pictures from my Leeds trip back in October. I thought I’d get them out of the way as I’m still running a backlog of several rolls of film yet unpublished!
Canon Sure Shot Z135 & Kodak Ultramax. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted using Negative Lab Pro.
A quick post for Christmas Eve (and not a very festive one).
There are a lot of these sweetcorn vendors in Leeds. I’m not a particularly well-travelled person, but I’ve been to quite a few places in the UK and overseas, and Leeds is the only place I’ve seen these sweetcorn stands.
Canon Sure Shot Z135 & Kodak Ultramax. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted using Negative Lab Pro.
The roll of Kodak Ultramax from which these photos (and those of recent and coming days) have been taken was the first I’ve ever shot of this particular film stock. I’ve been quite surprised at the strong, vivid colour in the pictures. I’m not sure if this is just how the film looks, or if my Negative Lab Pro settings have enhanced the saturation in some way (I’ve not purposely boosted the saturation).
The reds, in particular, really jump out at me, especially in these two pictures of the street-food vendor, Falafel Guys, and the traditional red British phone boxes. There’s even a hint, daresay it, of Kodachrome in those reds and blues.
Some of the effect comes, I think, from the vignetting that the Z135 has a tendency to add to pictures, but that’s not all of it. Whatever the case, I have another three rolls of Ultramax waiting to be shot. I’ll not hesitate to use it again.
Canon Sure Shot Z135 & Kodak Ultramax. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted using Negative Lab Pro.
Normally this would remain a surprise for Christmas day, but this year when I opened the package, instead of a wrapped pressie being contained inside, the gifts were there in plain sight (along with a note apologising for the packaging 🙂 ), so I know exactly what my Santa has gifted to me.
This year I received a couple of rolls of film, one a short roll of unknown 400asa colour film in 135 format, the other a roll of Fomapan 400 in 120 format. Also tucked away in the box though was a camera, an Ilford Sporti. At first glance I thought that this was going to be a 35mm camera, but I was pleased to discover that it’s actually a zone-focus, fixed shutter medium format camera. It’s quite a basic camera in terms of features – more Holga than Hasselblad, but it feels solid (it was made in Germany) and, if it’s akin to a Holga in terms of it’s use then that’s no bad thing as I really enjoy the sort of simplicity which that brings sometimes.
I’ll provide more thoughts (and, who knows, maybe even a review) when I get chance to put it to good use.
Another picture for the Leeds set today. Who can resist a VW camper, eh?
Canon Sure Shot Z135 & Kodak Ultramax. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted using Negative Lab Pro.
Another couple of pictures from Leeds, linked by the theme of brightly coloured buildings. Or, in the case of both, brightly coloured reflections or coverings.
The orangey red tones in the windows of the first building are actually reflections of the bright orange netting covering the second, so they’re linked by proximity too (and, I think, they are consecutive frames on the roll of film).
It was my first day of Christmas leave today, and I spent it doing some Christmas shopping (I think I’m all done now), and then a trip to the cinema to watch Godzilla Minus One, which was really good. Considering it was made on a relative shoestring budget of, IIRC, $12 million, it looks outstandingly good. I found out when I got home that there’s a special black-and-white version being released in Japan which has been carefully put together (rather than just being de-saturated) which also looks awesome. You can see the trailer for that here.
Tomorrow, depending on the weather, I’ll either be wrapping presents and maybe developing a roll of film, or possibly heading out to make more photos somewhere. I also need to visit my dad, so maybe that as well.
Canon Sure Shot Z135 & Kodak Ultramax. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted using Negative Lab Pro.
Both of the images in today’s post were taken from the David Oluwale Bridge in the centre of Leeds. The first looks eastwards and downstream, the second westwards with Bridgewater Place dominating the skyline (I wrote more about that here).
Today was my last day of work before Christmas, and I now have a week-and-a-half of (I hope) leisure time, which is nice. I just need to put work stuff out of my mind – there’s a lot of stuff waiting my attention in the New Year – but I can hopefully manage to do that just fine.
Despite my breaking up for Christmas today, the morning started off with some sad news when I discovered that one of the people on an online forum I frequent has passed away. He died a couple of weeks ago, but the folks on the forum have only just found out. I met him in person earlier this year when we had a big forum get-together and he was a nice guy, outgoing and fun, so while I didn’t really know him well, or even share a lot of comments on the forum, it’s a bit of a shock to think of him being gone.
It made me wonder about how many people will just disappear from their online lives without notice when they die. Online connections are not always replicated offline and so there’s probably not a route to communicate someone’s passing to all the places they might frequent. Maybe we should think, before it’s too late, about leaving word for our loved ones to inform our digital connections when we depart this mortal coil.
Canon Sure Shot Z135 & Kodak Ultramax. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted using Negative Lab Pro.
The pictures coming over the next week or so are a continuation of the pictures I made on a day trip to Leeds back in October. I’ve already posted a bunch of images from this trip, starting with this post from 27 November, but those were black and white photographs shot with my Olympus OM-1N on Ilford FP4+. The set that I’m going to post are all taken with my Canon Sure Shot Z135 compact and, in a first for me, shot on Kodak Ultramax. I’ll let you know my thoughts on the film and my results as I post more images.
The view from my seat as I waited for my train to depart for Leeds.
Canon Sure Shot Z135 & Kodak Ultramax. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted using Negative Lab Pro.
Steel City Snapper photography 