November, 2020

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A walk in the woods

Thursday, November 12th, 2020

I’ve borrowed a Contax T2 point and shoot camera from a kind friend of mine and have been taking it with me on a few walks recently to see if it lives up to its reputation. So far I can’t say it has. Below are some examples from a recent walk and you can see in three of them only the centre of the frame is in focus and the outer edge of the frame looks so distorted I wonder if there’s an alignment problem with the lens. Surely it can’t be down to a shallow depth of field. The strange thing is in the shot of the moss covered branch (second image) the blurry edges aren’t there so maybe it’s more to do with focussing at infinity? Maybe this is normal for this camera but no one has mentioned it in any reviews? Not sure.

[Tech info:] Contax T2, Eastman Double X film, developed in FPP D96 for 7mins 30secs. Pakon scans.

20201107_Bagley-Wood_Contax-T2_XX_D96_05_web

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Tags: 2020, 35mm, bagley wood, black&white, d96, double x, film, kodak, pakon

Oxford: Sunny 16 photowalk – part 1

Sunday, November 8th, 2020

The Sunny 16 photography podcast arranged a photowalk in Oxford back in February and I agreed to show the group of film photographers around my home town. After 9 months I’ve finally managed to develop my films from the day and here’s a selection from the first roll. Part of the delay was because I wanted to wait until I had enough rolls to develop at once before ordering special developer to bring the best out of this motion picture film – Eastman Double-X.

There are different developer options on the market but on this occasion I decided to give FPP D96 a try partly because one packet of powder mixes into 3.8 litres of stock solution which is great value. I’ve been using 1 litre of stock to develop my rolls with 70ml of replenishment from fresh stock per roll. After 8 rolls developed the results still look great.

[Tech info:] Leica M2, 40/1.4 Voigtlander Nokton, Eastman Double-X, developed in FPP D96 stock for 7min 30secs, Pakon scans.

20200208_Sunny16_Photowalk_M2_XX_D96_32_web

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Posted in film, Oxford, People | No Responses »
Tags: 2020, 35mm, 40mm, black&white, d96, double x, film, leica, m2, nokton, oxford, pakon, people, photowalk, voigtlander

Oxford: 10×8 x-ray film

Wednesday, November 4th, 2020

Here are some shots I made on 10×8 x-ray film recently. The shot from Catte Street with the Radcliffe Camera was actually made last summer but I only came across the film holder recently. That’s over 12 months that the latent image was sitting quietly on the film before it got developed. Speaking of developing, I used a bottle of developer that expired in 2014, it was sealed and the colour looked good so I thought I’d give it a try. If anything it seems to have tamed the contrast that is often found in x-ray films so I’m happy with that.

[Tech info:] Intrepid 10×8 camera, 300mm/f4.2 Plaubel Anticomar lens, Fuji Super HR-T x-ray film, developed in HC110 1+100 for 7 mins.
Radcliffe Camera image: 10×8 Tachihara, 210mm/f5.6 Nikon lens which just about covers 10×8. I applied some front rise on this shot.

20190718_Radcliffe_Camera_XRay_HC110B_01_web 20201018_Iffley_SHRT-XRay_HC110B_01_web