xtol
...now browsing by tag
Wednesday, January 28th, 2015
Here are some medium format shots I made during my recent lunch time session with Tori. I previously posted a couple of Fujiroid bleached neg shots here. The format for these shots was 6×9 which is one of my favourite medium format aspect ratios but I only have one camera that was designed to use that format and these shots reminded me that I don’t use it enough. You get 8 shots of 6×9 on a 120 size roll so it’s not a format for the trigger happy. For this shoot I decided to use fresh film stock for a change and while I can’t see a huge difference compared to some of my expired film shots I do think that the contrast was handled better on the contrasty back lit shots. We were a bit rushed in this session because I wanted to use medium format, 35mm and Fuji pack film all within 25mins which is not easy when you’ve got lots of people moving around during lunch time and you have to keep stopping to wait for a clear background but Tori was very patient despite the cold weather and we got everything done in time.
[Tech info:] Mamiya Universal, 100/2.8, Kodak Tri-X 400, processed in Kodak Xtol 1+1.
Posted in film, Oxford, Photo shoot, Portrait, students | No Responses »
Tags: 6x9, black&white, film, mamiya universal, oxford, people, students, tori, Tri-X, xtol
Thursday, January 15th, 2015
Spilt is a short film written and directed by Alvin Yu and I was asked if I’d like to do some portrait photography while they were filming in Oxford a couple of weeks ago. Due to timing conflicts I was only able to make it to set on their final day of filming after it had gotten dark outside so I made these portraits indoors with the available light (a bulb hanging from the ceiling in the hallway). The crew were setting up for a shot so I had to work quickly, one frame on each person, no re-takes and no second shot. What you see here is the entire roll of film, uncropped. Apologies to any crew members that I didn’t manage to include, hopefully I’ll get you on another project.
[Tech info:] Rolleiflex 2.8F, Zeiss Planar 80mm, Kodak Tri-X 400 rated at ISO 1600, processed in Kodak Xtol 1+1.
Posted in film, Oxford, People, Portrait, students | No Responses »
Tags: 6x6, backstage, black&white, film, filming, oxford, people, portraits, rolleiflex, spilt, students, Tri-X, xtol
Monday, January 5th, 2015
These shots are from a few days ago during a photo walk around town with a fellow film photographer friend of mine, Chris. Neither of us had anticipated the icy cold wind that had come in and after braving it up until the light started to fade we decided to head to the Natural History Museum which is not only one of my favourite places to photograph but it’s also guaranteed to be warm 🙂 I made a mistake with this roll because it came in a batch of mixed expired films and had no box. At a glance the roll looked like Fuji Neopan 100 Acros but it was actually Neopan 400. I wanted to test Acros pushed 1 stop in Xtol developer but because this was an ISO 400 film I ended up over-exposing it by 1 stop and then pushed it 1 stop in the developer. I’m amazed I got anything usable from the roll and it’s a credit to the latitude of film.
[Tech info:] Mamiya Universal, 100/2.8, Fuji Neopan 400 (expired), rated at ISO 200 and pushed 1 stop in Xtol 1+1 for 13 mins.
Posted in Oxford, People | No Responses »
Tags: 6x7, black&white, film, mamiya universal, natural history museum, oxford, xtol
Saturday, January 3rd, 2015
Happy New Year! Despite my best efforts I’m sorry to say I didn’t manage to post very much last month (December 2014) and although I’m not into new year resolutions I do plan to try to post more this year if only to share some of the mountain of images I made in 2014. It’s not going to be easy because I haven’t slowed down in making new images and don’t plan to any time soon so let’s see what this new year brings…
During a recent end of year tidy up I came across a box of Fomapan 100 5×4 sheets that I had forgotten I had. I thought it would be wise to test some of them before using them on any important shots so I decided to do some still life photography of one of my wife’s orchids which I’ve been meaning to photograph for a while. The light was very flat and less than ideal but I went ahead because Fomapan can tend to be on the contrasty side and you can’t get much contrasty than white petals on a black background. The film seems to be okay and for my next shots I’ll try to do some with a wider contrast range.
[Tech info:] Wista field 5×4, Schneider 150mm and 180mm lenses. Fomapan 100 processed in Xtol 1+1 for 8 mins.
Posted in film, Oxford, Still life | No Responses »
Tags: 5x4, black&white, film, fomapan, orchids, oxford, wista, xtol
Friday, May 30th, 2014
Some shots from a quick session I had with Iona a couple of weeks ago. I first shot with Iona during a promo shoot for the Christchurch Ball but as there was a specific theme for that shoot and quite a few other people involved so I didn’t have much time to shoot much film. The two Polaroids I shot of Iona were overexposed due to a sticky shutter in the lens so I was pleased that we were able to find time for this shoot. These shots are all from the same roll of 10 frames. I also shot a roll of slide film which I hope to develop later in the summer once I’ve built up a batch of rolls to develop at the same time.
[Tech info:] Pentax 6×7, 105/2.4, Kodak Tri-X [expired], processed in Kodak Xtol (stock).
Posted in film, Oxford, Portrait, students | No Responses »
Tags: 6x7, black&white, film, oxford, pentax, portraits, students, Tri-X, xtol
Tuesday, February 18th, 2014
The Oxford vs Cambridge Varsity competition takes place in Oxford every two years (the venue alternates between the two cities every year). In 2012 I photographed some powerlifting but I found out a bit late and most of the other events had already taken place so this year I’ve been doing some research to try to photograph as many events as possible.
Oxford won the Jitsu competition this year which took place in the dojo at the Iffley Road sports centre. I went along to photograph some of the training the day before the competition and then the next day which was the competition proper. The b&w shots below are from the training session and the colour shots are from the competition. The action was fast paced so I didn’t mange to shoot many frames but of the handful that I did shoot these are the ones I like best.
[Tech info:] B&w shots – Rolleiflex 2.8f, 80mm Zeiss Planar lens, Kodak Tri-X 400 (expired), processed in Kodak XTOL 1+1.
Colour shots: Nikon FM2, 50/1.4D, Agfa Vista 200 film, dev & scan at ASDA in Swindon. Many thanks to Simon for such great service.
Posted in film, Oxford, Sport | No Responses »
Tags: agfa, film, fm2, oxford, rolleiflex, Tri-X, vista, xtol
Monday, February 17th, 2014
These shots were all made during the filming of the fourth and final episode of series 2 of Endeavour. This episode has the least amount of scenes that were shot in Oxford but I’m still excited to see it. Most of the scenes on this particular day were inside a house in North Oxford and even though I didn’t manage to do much photography I enjoyed chatting with the neighbours who came out to see what was going on.
[Tech info]: Rolleiflex 2.8F, 80mm Zeiss Planar lens, Kodak Tri-X 400 (expired), processed in Kodak XTOL 1+1.
Posted in film, Oxford, Portrait, Street portraits | 2 Responses »
Tags: 6x6, black&white, endeavour, film, oxford, rolleiflex, Tri-X, xtol
Monday, October 14th, 2013
Here are a set of shots made on 5×4 large format film with Lauren. The middle two are from my first shoot with Lauren in some of the dullest and flat overcast light I have ever dared to photograph someone in, the others are from my second shoot (see the Fujiroids I posted a few days ago). I hope there will be more collaborations to come.
The maximum amount of 5×4 sheets I can process at once is six so that’s why I like to shoot them in batches of six. I love how all of these have turned out which is why I can’t choose between them so I decided to post them all. One of my favourite film/developer combo’s for quite a while has been Ilford HP5 developed in Kodak HC110 but recently I’ve been testing out Kodak Xtol and I have to say it’s hard to go wrong with it. I found the secret to mixing Xtol successfully is to use hot water which helps the fine powder dissolve.
[Tech info:] Graflex Speed Graphic, Schneider 180/4.5 (top & bottom), Pentac 8inch/2.9 (middle), Ilford HP5 processed in Kodak Xtol stock for 8.5mins.
Posted in film, Oxford, People, Photo shoot, Portrait, students | 4 Responses »
Tags: 5x4, black&white, film, graflex, HP5, oxford, pentac, people, portraits, students, xtol
Sunday, October 13th, 2013
Some shots from a woodland walk on an autumnal Sunday afternoon. It was great fun discovering some amazing little mushrooms. We came across some that looked straight from a fairytale, red with white dots. I didn’t photograph them because they were in deep shadow that wouldn’t have worked well in black & white. For these mushroom shots I tested out some Rollei close-up lenses. There doesn’t seem to be any loss in sharpness.
[Tech info:] Rolleiflex Automat 75mm/f3.5 Tessar, loaded with expired Kodak Tri-X, processed in Kodak Xtol 1+1 for 8mins.
Posted in film | 2 Responses »
Tags: 6x6, black&white, film, mushroom, rolleiflex, Tri-X, woods, xtol
Saturday, October 12th, 2013
Last Saturday was some sort of worldwide photo walk day where groups of photographers around the world met up in groups to walk around and do photography together. I wasn’t part of this but I stumbled across a group in Oxford city centre – the two organisers are the guys in the horse costumes. I don’t often go into town on the weekend so it was nice for me to see a totally different vibe on the streets compared to my lunch hour photo walks during the week – more shoppers and less working people out and about. I ended up bumping into some friends which was nice so we had a good chin-wag and catch up.
[Tech info:] 1950’s Rolleiflex Automat, 75mm/f3.5 Tessar lens, loaded with expired Kodak Tri-X, processed in Kodak Xtol 1+1 for 8 mins. I used a yellow filter on some of these shots because the sky was cloudy/overcast so I wanted to add a little contrast.
Posted in film, Oxford, People, Portrait, Street portraits | No Responses »
Tags: 6x6, automat, black&white, film, oxford, people, portraits, rolleiflex, tlr, Tri-X, xtol
Tuesday, October 8th, 2013
Some test shots I made of Lauren last week. I wanted to test out my Rolleiflex Automat to see how it preforms as a portrait camera because I’ve read various comments about the 75mm lens not being anywhere near as good as an 80mm lens. Unfortunately I didn’t have another Rolleiflex with an 80mm lens with me to do a direct comparison, that will have to wait for another day. I also took t his opportunity to test out my Rolleinar 1 close-up lens to get in a little closer (I think the top left shot is with that). The sky was heavily overcast and the light level was so dark and flat that I’m honestly amazed that these look as good as they do especially as the film expired almost 10 years ago. Lauren was very easy to work with and I hope this is the first of more collaborations. I also shot a couple of sheets of large format 5×4 film but those will have to follow at a later time.
[Tech info:] Rolleiflex Automat 3.5 (circa 1950’s), 75mm Carl Zeiss Jena Tessar lens, loaded with expired Kodak Tri-X, processed in Kodak Xtol 1+1 for 8 mins.
Posted in film, Oxford, People, Photo shoot, Portrait, students | 2 Responses »
Tags: 6x6, automat, black&white, film, oxford, people, portraits, rolleiflex, students, Tri-X, xtol
Tuesday, October 1st, 2013
Sometimes I don’t get around to processing some of my film until weeks or months after shooting it and sometimes I don’t label what’s on my film so I have no idea what’s on it until I hang it up to dry after processing it. That’s what happened with these shots that are from a lunch time photo shoot I had with Imogen just over 3 months ago! It’s the little surprises like this that make using film so fun. I really like the contrast in these shots which I think is from a film/developer combo that I haven’t explored much before (TMAX and Xtol). I’ll do some more testing with this.
[Tech info:] Nikon FM2, 50mm/1.4D loaded with Kodak TMAX 400 (expired), processed in Kodak Xtol 1+1 for 9:15.
Posted in film, Oxford, People, Photo shoot, students | 3 Responses »
Tags: 35mm, black&white, film, fm2, imogen, oxford, portraits, students, tmax, xtol
