Tag: slide film

Film photography · Medium Format · Photography

Faceless man

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But not from Bravos…

I’m very impressed with the way the Fuji Provia has captured this scene. While there might be a slight loss of shadow detail between the leaves, the colours and tones in this are pretty impressive to my eye. So far I’ve been very pleased with the results I’ve had from Provia, especially given they’ve all been based on readings from my little Sekonic L-208 analog meter. It’s an accurate, but somewhat basic meter, so coupled with the meterless Zeiss Mess-Ikonta and it’s completely manual (and click-free) shutter-speed and aperture dials, there’s almost certainly some drift from the true settings taking place, but the film handles it with aplomb.

FILM - Faceless

Zeiss Mess-Ikonta 524/16 & Fujifilm Provia 100.

Taken on 26 August 2019

Film photography · Medium Format · Photography

Renishaw Hall

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Yesterday I showed a small section of Renishaw Hall, little more than a tease, really. Today you’re getting the whole shebang. I know, I know! Calm yourselves! 🙂

Anyway, this is the southern aspect of the house from the Italianate gardens. The portion I showed yesterday can be seen at the middle-right of today’s image. It’s a bit of a traditional shot of the place, but the light was nice – again, not a cloud in the sky, but it doesn’t suffer for it (and clouds might have obscured the water from the fountain). That said, I’ve cropped it to a 6×7 format to remove some of the blue sky from the upper part of the photograph and I think it works better like this.

FILM - Renishaw Hall Italianate garden

Zeiss Mess-Ikonta 524/16 & Fujifilm Provia 100.

Taken on 26 August 2019

Film photography · Medium Format · Photography

The corner of Renishaw Hall

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Renishaw Hall sits within its grounds a few miles from where I live. It was built in 1625 and has been the seat of the Sitwell family since. The gardens are open to visitors and, although pretty close by, this was the very first time I’ve visited the place. It made for a pleasant few hours and the grounds of the house are lovely and quite extensive, including formal gardens, woodland, parkland and a couple of lakes.

Although it was a bright (and hot!) sunny day when I visited, I got a number of images I liked, and I think it will be well worth another visit when the autumn colour arrives. I don’t tend to favour clear blue skies for photography, but sometimes it works and I think this is a case where it does.

This photo is of the south easterly corner of the house rearing up from behind a large hedge.

FILM - A splash of red

Zeiss Mess-Ikonta 524/16 & Fujifilm Provia 100.

Taken on 26 August 2019

Film photography · Medium Format · Photography

Octopus

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Yesterday I made a comment about providing an explanation for cropping my 6×6 photo to a 6×7 ratio. The reason for this was a series of highly noticeable light leaks across the whole set of images, and I think I know the reason why this occurred…

After shooting the roll of Provia, I wound the fill all the way onto the take-up spool as I normally do. Then, however, rather than removing the film and sealing it ready for processing, I instead left it inside the camera. My reason for this was that it was a bright, sunny day and, as I wasn’t planning on shooting any more medium format during the day, I’d leave it in the camera rather than risk it in the daylight. Oh, the irony.

What I think then happened is, as I enjoyed the rest of my day out, the film in the camera – no longer held under tension – was able to loosen itself slightly on the spool. Then, when I got home and removed it, I immediately noticed that the rolled film was protuding over the flanges on the spool slightly. I quickly wrapped it in some tinfoil but, alas, the damage was already done – as evidenced by the light leaks on the top and bottom of most of the frames.

Thankfully, with a little bit of cropping (turning most of the roll into 6×7 or 6×4.5 ratio images, or reducing the area of the 1×1 frame) I’ve been able to rescue most of the photos, including today’s shot of an old Octopus fairground ride.

I’ve not seen one of these rides in a long time (although, to be fair, I don’t tend to visit travelling funfairs all that often anymore now that my kids are older). My last real memory of this particular ride (literally this same model) was back in the early 80s when myself and a friend went on it. It made me feel a little dizzy and I was glad when it was time to get off. Unfortunately, the operator miscounted the riders when letting people off and new people on, and we ended up getting a free ride. Sometimes free stuff really isn’t worth it!

FILM - Octopus

 

And here’s an example of the light leak (admittedly this is the worst one of the roll):

FILM - b--gered

Zeiss Mess-Ikonta 524/16 & Fuji Provia 100F.

Taken on 17 August 2019

35mm · Film photography · Photography

Hazy days of summer

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The photo in today’s post looks a little hazy. However, rather than some sort of photography mishap, this is actually because the air was full of smoke from dozens of steam engines that were building up power.

I’m still not sure about the quality of my Ektachrome scans. Some are really nice (today’s shot isn’t bad), but some are disappointing in how they’ve turned out, either as a result of my photography, or how I’ve been able to scan and process them (Plustek 8100, Silverfast, and Lightroom). The odd thing is that some look lovely and some look really odd, with somewhat garish (but not correct) colours and overly muddy shadows.

It’ll be interesting to see how the roll of Velvia 50 looks when I get around to shooting that.

Anyone else tried the new Ektachrome yet and, if so, how have you found it?

FILM - Steam Rally 2019 Ektachrome scans-4

Nikon F80, Nikkor 28-80mm f/3.5-5.6 D & Kodak Ektachrome.

Taken on 30 June 2019

35mm · Film photography · Photography

Maintenance

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This chap was performing some maintenance or repairs on the tyre of this engine. I’m not sure what the tyre is actually made of – I know that they can have solid rubber tyres, but this one looked to be laminated in some way and some of it peeled off in a layer as I observed. Perhaps that’s just the way rubber tyres of this sort are constructed, or perhaps it was made of some other material?

FILM - Repairs

Nikon F80, Nikkor 28-80mm f/3.5-5.6 D & Kodak Ektachrome.

Taken on 30 June 2019

35mm · Film photography · Photography

Steam rally 2019

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After a hiatus (on my part) last year, I visited the Sheffield Steam Rally again this weekend. The weather was warm and sunny – in fact very warm on the Saturday, hence my choice of visiting on Sunday instead. I like nice weather, but not too much ot it all at once. 🙂

I decided to shoot the roll of Ektachrome that I bought myself just after Christmas and which I’ve been saving for a suitable occasion. The steam rally, I decided, would be suitable enough, otherwise I’d risk the film never being matched with a good enough subject and sitting in the fridge forever.

I was quite excited to shoot with it, and it was only the third roll of positive film that I’ve bought, so I loaded it into my Nikon F80 (figuring that that would have the most reliable metering of my film cameras) and set off – with a roll of HP5+ as trusty back-up.

As soon as I entered the showgrounds, I started taking pictures, but it was only when I got to about frame ten that a sudden horrible thought dawned on me… I wasn’t focusing the camera!

You see, most of my photography over the past couple of months or so has been with compact cameras (where a half-press of the shutter triggers the auto-focus), or manual focus SLRs, where it’s very obvious when something is out of focus. However, I’d made a rookie mistake of forgetting that I’d set my F80 for back-button focusing, and was instead just half-pressing the shutter to focus and then taking the shot. The reason I didn’t notice my error more quickly is that I was shooting at f/8 and the viewfinder looked to be pretty much in focus anyway – I just wasn’t checking for it snapping to sharpness when pressing the button.

As soon as I realised my mistake, I resorted to doing things properly, but I had sour thoughts about the almost-third-of-a-roll of expensive Ektachrome that I’d probably wasted. I did think about re-taking some of my initial shots, but then decided I’d take the risk that they might be ok and photograph other things instead.

I got my slides back today and, thankfully, all bar a couple of those first shots have come out focused sharply enough to be used, so I was relieved about that. I haven’t scanned the full roll (or even started on my HP5+ shots) yet, but here is one of the pictures that I have. The Ektachrome has produced beautifully saturated colours in the sunshine ( the colours on some of the more shady frames need tweaking though – especially the reds) and, in fact, I’ve actually reduced the saturation a little on this photo.

FILM - Traction

Nikon F80, Nikkor 28-80mm f/3.5-5.6 D & Kodak Ektachrome.

Taken on 30 June 2019

35mm · Film photography · Photography

A couple of churches

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My slide re-scanning has continued again today. Here’s a double-helping of churches from the roll (there’re a couple more on the roll too, but they’ve either not been post-processed yet, or I’ve already posted them here when I did the original flatbed scans).

The first is St. Michael’s and All Angels church at Brodsworth (this was taken from the grounds of Brodsworth Hall – there’s a gate into the churchyard, but I don’t think it’s accessible for visitors to the hall).

 

FILM - St. Michaels and All Angels church

The second is St. Mary’s church at Boston Spa and is another phot I took after visiting the camera fair.

FILM - St. Mary's Church, Boston Spa

Nikon F70, Nikkor 28-80mm f/3.5 – 5.6 AF-D & Agfa CT Precisa.

Taken on 15 October 2017