Graduation day, end of September. I was channeling some Diane Arbus with my C330f and fill-flash on a sunny day – a combo I haven’t tried before. The flash was a small Rollei model without any power setting. I think it worked quite well overall. The low perspective is from using a waist level finder – not an obvious choice with a wide-angle lens when photographing people but it helped to include some architecture in the background.
Here are some medium format film shots that I made last weekend during one of the rehearsal’s for Chicago that is on in a few days at the Keble O’Reilly theatre. This film expired in 2007 and generally high-speed film doesn’t age well so I’m very pleased with how these turned out considering the light level was incredibly low and not very contrasty. I was partly using this occasion as a test for a bright (Beattie) viewing screen that I recently installed into my Mamiya C330f camera and I’m happy to report that it’s a lot brighter and easier to focus with than the stock screen.
[Tech info:] Mamiya C330f, 80/2.8 lens loaded with Ilford Delta 3200 (expired 2007), rated at ISO 1250, processed in Rodinal 1+25 for 10mins.
A friend of mine (Ewan) from school has made his first feature length movie and during a visit to see him in Brighton I was treated to a private screening at a local cinema. In order to raise some funding to complete the film Ewan started a Kickstarter project to which I contributed and as a result I was listed in the thank you’s at the end of the movie. It was very cool to see my name up on a cinema screen! I travelled down on one evening and left to come home pretty much 24 hours later. The weather was mostly overcast with some rain so I didn’t manage to do a whole lot of photography but I did do a little. We had some late afternoon sun which was nice but by that time we were heading back home for dinner so I didn’t manage to photograph the sunset. The shots below are all from the same roll of film.
Here’s the IMDB page for Ewan’s movie Nightmare Hunters
[Tech info:] Mamiya C330f, 80mm/2.8 loaded withKodak Portra 400VC (expired), developed & scanned by Ag photolab
On my way to the Keble ball earlier this summer I cycled through Radcliffe Square and came across a group of students waiting to go into the Brasenose college ball so I stopped to make some portraits. The combination of gorgeous summers evening light and the splashes of colour from the various dresses that were being worn made for some great pictures. I don’t know any of these students (apart from Amber with the headphones) so if you recognise any please pass on the link to my blog so that they can see these. The couple in the last picture were sitting patiently watching the fashion show so after everyone had gone I thought it would be nice to include them in this set.
[Tech info:] Mamiya C330f, 80/2.8 lens, loaded with expired Kodak Portra 400 VC. Developed and scanned by Ag Photo lab.
At long last I have the shots I made on colour film at the Balliol 750th Commemoration Ball and I couldn’t be more pleased that I decided to send these out to a lab to have developed and scanned. This set of images is every frame from two rolls of film. I find it very exciting to send off rolls of film in the post and then patiently wait for them to return which is something that you only get with film. Despite these films being past their expiry date the colours have turned out beautifully – thank you Ag photo lab in Birmingham for doing such a great job. I bought a good sized batch of this film from a fashion photographer that used to use a lot of it but as his clients request digital photography now he had no need for it.
[Tech info:] Mamiya C330f, 80/2.8 lens, loaded with Kodak Portra VC, developed and scanned by Ag Photo lab.
Here are some of my images from the Balliol 750th Commemoration Ball that I made on medium format film. Once the sun had gone down I decided to switch to using only black & white film because I like how classic it looks – with lots of different coloured lights in the evening it can be quite distracting. The live acts in the second grid were King Charles (who were amazing) and Mark Ronson DJing. It was the first time I had photographed a live band with a twin lens reflex camera and although a bit of a challenge it was really good fun. With only 12 frames on a roll you really have to pick your moments carefully.
[Tech info:] Mamiya C330f, 80/2.8 lens, loaded with Kodak Tri-X 400 rated at ISO1600. Processed in Kodak HC110 1+31.
Last week Balliol College held their 750th Commemoration Ball here in Oxford and I was there to photograph the event. The weather was a perfect summers evening with gorgeous light and as a photographer I couldn’t have asked for more. I believe there were somewhere around 1,200 guests in attendance so I kept busy the whole night. While there was still daylight I used colour film and after it got dark I switched to black & white. The colour images will be a while as I try to decide on whether to develop them myself or to send them out to a lab. I have a pile of colour films I need to develop which has been steadily growing over the past 5 months. I’m waiting to order the chemicals necessary to develop them because the 5L kit is good for 100 – 120 rolls and once you start to mix the chemistry it has a shortish shelf life.
So, here we have a little preview of some of my black & white shots from the evening. The 2012 Balliol Ball last year was the very first Oxford University ball I’ve ever attended and some of the images I made on film that night are my favourites from all of the ball’s I’ve attended so far. It was nice to see some familiar faces at this ball from last year and also to meet some visitors of this blog. Lots more film images still to come but I’ll be drip feeding them because I have so many to post.
[Tech info:] Mamiya C330f, 80/2.8 lens, loaded with Kodak Tri-X 400 rated at ISO1600. Processed in Kodak HC110 1+31.
Here are the rest of the shots from the first roll of film that I developed from the 2013 Keble ball. I forgot to label which ISO speed I had exposed this roll at on the night so when it came to developing the roll I had to make a guess and unfortunately I was wrong so this roll is underdeveloped. It’s amazing that there are any images on the roll at all. Less on to self, must label rolls when you take them out of the camera!
[Tech info:] Mamiya C330f, 80/2.8 lens, loaded with Kodak Tri-X 400 film, processed in Kodak HC110 1+31 for 7:30.
A friend of mine visited Oxford for a few days so we met up for a photo walk around town. Gerard asked if he could borrow one of my medium format film cameras to use on the walk so I decided to let him try out a Mamiya C330f twin lens reflex (TLR). Needless to say we attracted some attention and we even overheard someone referring to the TLR as a 3D camera!
I shot a roll of film through my SL66 and below is every single frame from the roll, all 12 of them. A few of the portraits of Gerard were made with an old 127mm Graflex lens from my Speed Graphic 5×4 camera with me free-lensing.
[Tech info:] Rolleiflex SL66, 80mm Zeiss lens, Kodak Tri-X film processed in Kodak HC110 (B).
Here’s another set of images I made in Barcelona last week. Before I went I was really looking forward to shooting some street portraits but I found the language barrier to be a hurdle although I was able to overcome it sometimes with hand signals. Other times I had no problems because people spoke english but overall I didn’t feel the right energy on the street to approach people. The vibe I was feeling was people seem more guarded than I’m used to Oxford or London. My theory is that people are so used to being approached by others on the street trying to sell them things or asking for money etc that they automatically ignore anyone approaching them. It’s a shame because I saw so many people I wanted to photograph but alas it was not to be.
[Tech info:] Mamiya C330f loaded with Kodak Tri-X film, processed in Rodinal (1:50) for 13:30.
Last week I made a short trip to Barcelona. I was previously there in 2010 almost exactly two years ago to the day. On that trip I only took a digital camera and brought back so many shots I still haven’t managed to find the time (or the will) to go through them all for processing. On this trip I decided to only take film cameras. Needless to say I didn’t bring back anywhere near the same amount of shots. Here’s the first batch of images.
[Tech info:] Mamiya C330f loaded with Kodak Tri-X, processed in Rodinal (1:50) for 13:3o.
Some photo shoots can start off with with trying to plan every last detail, others have the room to breath and experiment to see what happens. This photo shoot falls in the latter. Helen sent me an image for inspiration and from there I decided I would only use black & white film and I took along four different cameras to experiment with (3 medium format and a 35mm). On the day Helen brought various outfits but I think it was a coincidence that we only ended up using black and white clothing. The images have a feeling of going from light to dark which was perfect as we raced against the fading sun. This is a story of a girl who’s man ‘did her wrong’. It was a fun shoot and I hope to do more of these.
[Tech info:] I used the following cameras, Pentax 67 with 105/f2.4 lens, Mamiya C330f with 80/f2.8 lens and a Mamiya M645 1000S with 80/f1.9 lens. Film used was Kodak Tri-X and Fuji Acros 100. All of these shots were processed in Rodinal 1:50 (Acros for 10:00, the Tri-X for 13:30).
