Night Photography

By sandy | Published: 16/11/2009

Although the weather is turning much colder now here in the UK, I really want to get out and do some more night photography. I’ve not done any serious night stuff for a while now and keep seeing shots while I’m driving or at other inconvenient times. I try to make a mental note of the location with the intent of going back with camera and tripod, but you know how it is, it doesn’t always happen. So I’ve decided I’m definitely going out this week.

prospect road

I prefer cool, slightly misty Autumn nights for shooting. This is because it gets darker earlier, giving me longer to work and the misty air separates the tones as they recede into the distance (known as aerial perspective). This gives a better sense of depth and drama to a scene and suppresses the bright highlights of distant lights.

churchyard

Autumn also brings a colour change and the orange brown leaves reflect the street lighting better. This year I have missed the best of the Autumn colours as we have had some really windy weather, which has stripped many of the trees bare.

Coming back to night photography after shooting other subjects and styles for a while, I was thinking about approaching it in a different way this time. Previously I had shot mainly on 35mm and medium format. Now I think I would like to shoot on 10×8 using a 300mm 5.6 lens. This would be used at it’s widest aperture to give a very shallow area of focus which I think will accentuate the theatricality of the lighting, making each shot look like a stage set. I’ll post some images when I’ve done them.

copleys bakery

If you are thinking of doing any night photography and the lights where you intend to shoot are the common sodium type, then you might find chart 1 useful. These are the starting point exposures for Ilford HP5 under ordinary sodium lighting (orange lights).

The much brighter high pressure sodium lamps which are seen along motorways and in many city centres are paler in colour and twice as bright.

Use chart number 2 for exposures with such lighting.

As can be seen from the charts, the exposures increase dramatically as you use smaller and smaller apertures, this is down to reciprocity failure. This is a problem with exposures longer than one second, where extra exposure has to be added.

For anyone interested in taking night photography further, I wrote a book on the subject which has now sold out, but you should be able to find used copies on Amazon.

Chart 1

Sodium lighting

Chart 2

HPS lighting

star trails

old railway station

night mist

Posted in 35mm, Medium Format, Night Photography, landscape | Tagged , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Lith Printing

By sandy | Published: 08/11/2009

I had a visit from a friend the other day while I was doing some contact printing. He was asking me how a real Lith print looked, as he had only ever seen them in books. I told him that there wasn’t much to Lith printing, it’s pretty straightforward if you are just playing around with it, the difficulty comes in trying to get repeatable results. His question made me remember how much I used to enjoy that particular type of printing, so I decided a demonstration would be the easiest way to let him see just what it was capable of.

I wasn’t that bothered about doing contact sheets that night, so I mixed up some old Kodalith dev which I’ve had for over twenty years (it seems to last forever) and chose a suitable neg. I couldn’t find any proper Lith paper, but remembered that old Kentmere Kentona worked well and Ilford Warmtone FB could be used too. The Kentona gives a very pink result which is very typical of Lith prints, but I’m not crazy about it. The Ilford warmtone produces a Lith type image, but isn’t ideal, it’s not really supposed to be a ‘lithable’ paper, the split isn’t as pronounced as with some other papers and you don’t get any pink tones. The image goes speckled in a nice way though and takes on a khaki sort of colour which I find attractive for certain images. The effect is often so ‘grainy’ though, that it can’t be used for large format negs unless you particularly want them to look like they were shot on Delta 3200 on a half frame camera.

One important point though, the RC version definitely doesn’t work, -you have to use the FB.

Here are a couple of examples, the first is on Ilford Warmtone and the second is Kentmere Kentona, both from a 5×4 negative;

Ilford WT FB

Kentmere kentona

Once we had a few prints I began to experiment with a few other papers. I tried Ilford Gallerie and Kentmere Fineprint VC FG Warmtone, which has a lovely quality when processed normally, -I think it has the look of a pencil drawing with the right image, it doesn’t have a deep black, but a deep pencil grey on a cream base. I was surprised to find that it worked really well as a Lith paper, out of the four non Lith papers I tried it was easily the best.

Here is an example;

Dummy

The Technique;

As the Kodalith developer is no longer available, I ran some tests with the Fotospeed variety to check my dilutions and times. There was no appreciable difference at the strength I was using it, though this differed from the recommendations that came with the kit.

My own preference is to mix 50ml of A and 50ml of B into 900ml of water at 20?C.

To establish an exposure time;

Method A

Expose four pieces of paper (I cut a sheet of 10×8 into four equal 5×4 test pieces) to a range of times, one after another – 1 minute, 2 minutes, 3 minutes and four minutes under the same part of the negative and write the times on the back.

Start the clock. Drop them all in the developer together and keep them moving, but don’t be too vigourous with the agitation.

Look for the faint image, -usually around two minutes.

Somewhere between three and a half and six minutes, depending on paper type, the black will begin to appear in the deepest shadow areas. You need to keep a close eye on it at this stage, as the black areas will get darker and creep up the tonal range. When you have the shadow tone you desire, remove the test and drop it in the stop bath. Do the same for each of the other test pieces. make a note of the times you removed the tests -this is known as the snatch point.

Examine the tests after they have been in the fix (Ilford Warmtone has a milky coating which is removed in the fix, making it difficult to accurately judge a proper black).

You will notice that the most contrasty one is the one with the shortest exposure and the longest development time (think of uprating film, -underexposure and overdevelopment mean more contrast). The one with the greatest exposure and shortest time will have the lowest contrast and may look rather ‘muddy’. One of the tests should have the tonality and contrast which is to your liking and this is your indicated time for the main print.

Method B

Mix up a tray of Ilford Multigrade developer in a second tray next to the Lith developer. Do a normal test strip in the usual way, eg; 5 second increments.

Develop this in the Multigrade developer and choose the exposure which gives you the first appearance of black in those areas which were clear on the negative.

Multiply this exposure by 10.

Give the print this extended time and develop in the Lith developer. The mids and highs should appear around two minutes and the snatch point will be between three and a half minutes and six minutes. If the developer is fresh and at 20?C, it won’t take too long, but as the solution ages, dev times can become really long. I did one the other night after printing for a few hours and it took half an hour!

Warmtone FB papers vary in their response to Lith developer and the 10x rule is only a guide, I know it works for the Kentmere papers mentioned above, and for Ilford Gallerie, but the Warmtone FB needs only about 5x extra exposure.

Whichever paper you decide to use, remember that the exposure can vary tremendously and still ‘work’ depending on the effect you are after. Overexposure lessens contrast and underexposure increases it, -but you may have very long dev times. Because of the excessive exposure needed compared to conventional printing, dense, overexposed or overprocessed negatives are to be avoided. Choose negs which are normal to thin.

Here are three prints, the first is Ilford Warmtone FB in Multigrade developer, the second is the same paper in Lith developer and the third is Ilford Gallerie in tired old Lith developer.

Folly 1

Folly 2

Folly 3

Consistency.

There are so many variables in Lith printing that it is very difficult to get two that look exactly alike. If you expose two or three pieces of paper and put them through one after the other you will have pretty similar prints, but if you were to do three prints over an hour they would each be different.

The developer oxidises quite quickly compared to other developers and the temperature can drop (a problem in the winter months in the UK). Lith developer is sensitive to temperature changes, so a heating device under the tray is a better method of control.

When the developer has oxidised it creates ‘pepper fogging’ which looks like exaggerated film grain.

Here you can see the difference between the left side which is the Kentmerel FB warmtone paper in old dev, displaying pepper fogging and the right side which is a dedicated lith paper in fresh chemicals;

Comparison

I really enjoyed getting back into Lith printing and intend to do more. I’m going to shoot some winter landscapes with this printing method in mind.

Posted in Darkroom, Experimental, Lith Printing | 2 Comments

Digital is good/Digital is bad.

By sandy | Published: 30/10/2009

Nearly five years ago I was kindly given a Canon G3 on semi permanent loan. I had never used digital before and my first impressions were how advanced the technology had become and how easy it was to take pictures which were perfectly exposed and automatically colour balanced.
I particularly enjoyed the freedom it gave me to shoot anything and everything that caught my eye, as cost was no longer a consideration.
It also focussed very close and had a screen that could be angled in many directions, providing the possibility of shooting from unusual positions. All in all, I was seduced, and began using it more and more.
I knew that I had abandoned my friends, the film cameras, but convinced myself that the digital images I was taking were just for reference, and that I was still a ’silver-man’.
The truth of the matter was that I did not touch my film cameras for one whole year and during this time I became lazy. I was shooting hand held and not bothering about distracting, small details because I knew I could rely on Photoshop to tidy up after.
The pictures I produced were nothing special, but I was kidding myself that I was still a real photographer and contemplating the purchase of more and more gear to get the best out of the new technology.
The turning point came when I was trying to photograph a vase of flowers on the kitchen table, I could see too much of the background, even with the lens open to its maximum of f2. -This was because of the small chip size.
I remembered my faithful and trusty Mamiya RB67 which was languishing in my other bag and went to fetch it. The camera was heavy, the metal was cold and as I held it and looked through the viewfinder I was in ecstasy!
Looking into the LARGE viewfinder, seeing the crisp focus and the sudden fall-off in sharpness was like being given the chance to travel back in time! I was suddenly transported back to how I used to take pictures.

freesias

From that moment on, I realised that film cameras had a magic that modern cameras had somehow lost. Going back to rich, deep, fibre based prints was also a very satisfying experience.

I had invested in a good ink-jet printer and quality ‘fine art’ papers, but although the tonal range was there and the prints were sharp, the finished prints had no value, I felt that they were disposable because they could be repeated effortlessly.

Since then quite a lot has changed, digital has come on so much that no professional can afford to be without it. Commercially it does make perfect sense; no more worry about exposure, or the film getting damaged at the lab. No more ruined shots because of slight overexposure or unforeseen colour casts (transparency film).
You don’t have to send off your originals to clients and you don’t have to be tied to one film speed at a time.
There are lots of other reasons why digital has become so useful in commercial photography, but I don’t need to list each one here, suffice to say; I understand why professionals use it.
Amateurs on the other hand, have adopted digital for entirely different reasons. The main one in my opinion is laziness, the second reason is because of the (mainly male) obsession with gadgets and new toys.
The third reason is because it appears to increase ability – everyone looks like a brilliant photographer.
The wholesale acceptance of digital by the amateur end of the market has meant that film has become the poor relation in creative photography and all photographic magazines except for a very small few are just equipment catalogues peppered with poor quality pictures.

Why is it that the easier photography becomes, -the poorer the results? Photographers these days seem to be very pleased with second rate images, I’m constantly getting twitter messages which say ‘awesome shot by ….’ and when I click on it, the image is a pile of shit.

Untitled-19

In the five years since I first picked up a digital camera I have shot a lot of digital frames (although not a large amount by many peoples standards) and have lost quite a few of those due to broken laptops (3) and hard drives (1).

I don’t care.
The pictures were not for clients, they were just digi shots; throwaway and forgettable.
I still shoot a bit of digital, mainly for illustration purposes such as magazine articles or ebay, but I never print any of them. I gave up printing digital images ages ago because they never felt special, as soon as they came out of the printer I lost interest in them.
Does anyone remember the magic of watching an image come up in the developer? -Is it the same magic when a print edges slowly out of the printer?
I rest my case.lead animals 1

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments

Street Photography

By sandy | Published: 25/10/2009

Just over a week ago I found myself in the northern UK town of Bolton. I was there for two days with my university students who were doing a street photography project based on the ‘Worktown’ pictures of Humphrey Spender.
Spender was part of a group of people who were involved in a mass observation project which began in 1937. This was a large scale project which investigated the habits and customs of?ordinary people. They observed how people?worked, played, interacted and behaved. Their lives were scrutinised, noted, and photographed and this has become a rich archive.

There is a website which explains the project here; ?http://spender.boltonmuseums.org.uk/

We were given a talk on Spender and shown his original negatives and some of his prints.?The students were then instructed to spend the rest of the day walking round Bolton looking for images which were inspired by his work.

I decided to shoot a few frames for the fun of it, as I haven’t done any street photography for many years. We (my colleague Rene Lumley and I) sent the groups off in various directions and went exploring ourselves.

After two full days and four groups of students we returned home and I set about processing my six 35mm films as soon as I could. I had a feeling that I had a few strong images and I was keen to see the results. The contact sheets had many ‘almost’ images, where people had looked away at the crucial moment, or a car had entered the frame as the shutter was fired, but I did get some I was really pleased with.

car park

chipscar park 2
walking
eat first

Posted in 35mm, Lecturing, Street photography | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Not enough hours

By sandy | Published: 24/10/2009

Since starting back at university (I am head of traditional, analogue photography at UCLAN in the UK), l I have begun in earnest to apply myself to various projects which have been nagging at the back of my mind. The reason for my renewed self motivated drive is because I have been guilty in the past of letting too much time pass before I get things done. The trouble is, I always have about five or more projects on the go at any one time, the current list (and this doesn’t include commissioned jobs I have to do) is;

1. Getting the last four years of negatives filed in the order they were shot.

2. Printing up two 10×8 copies of every shot I have ever taken which I consider worth archiving. (Going back thirty years!!!)

3. Make more videos of my fellow photographers / printers here in the UK (four in the can so far).

4. Finish shooting all the objects I have collected in my studio for still life.

5. Make a big Blurb book of all my best family portraits (my family that is), for my wife’s birthday.

6. Make a 20×16 lightbox for exposing Gum prints and Cyanotypes.

7. Get out more and do landscapes and night shots.

8. Promote myself better and contribute to online forums etc

9. Get out on my bike more regularly.

10. Write this blog more often

11. Get an early night now and again.

As you can see, self motivation is not the only problem. Somebody keeps stealing all the hours out of the day before I’ve used them properly!

It’s a good job I don’t have a television, as I’d never get anything done.

One other job which tends to lag behind is keeping up with the images for this blog. Personally I don’t like the look of scanned, inverted negatives done in photoshop, I prefer to print the image in the darkroom and scan from the print. This way I can get the tonality exactly where I want it.

I am aware that photoshop has millions of ways of altering every parameter of the image, but the look of the middle tones never seems right to me.

Consequently, I need to be in the darkroom more to keep on top of the printing for this as well as the personal stuff I love doing. here is a scan of a recent print, appropriately called; ‘Never got round to it’.

never got round to it

Posted in General | 1 Comment

Flexible film

By sandy | Published: 19/10/2009

Different photographers have different expectations from a film. They may buy a particular brand because they have seen that someone they admire has used it. Some are looking for good latitude, others for speed, acutance or fine grain. Others may be expecting contrasty, gritty results.

Buying a film and exposing/developing at the manufacturers recommended settings will usually produce negatives that are a compromise between all of these expectations. Producing the results you really want depends on an understanding of what happens when film is treated differently.
One of the first ways that new photographers try to get different results is by uprating. They read somewhere that a 400 ISO film can be exposed at a higher speed such as 1600, and stewed in the dev to bring up the image.
This does indeed work, but occasionally at the expense of quality (not always a concern for some). Uprating can produce quite acceptable results with dilute/static processing (see the section at the end of this article) and I have rated Ilford HP5 at 1600 ISO and got results almost as good as when rated at 400.

But if the developer is one which is vigourous, the grain can be exaggerated and contrast can increase to a point where printing becomes difficult and burning in highlights is impossible. This is not always a bad thing, if you look at the work of Bill Brandt you see what can be done creatively with a film which is mistreated in this way.
Going the opposite way, if a film is downrated a couple of stops and the development time is reduced, a finer grain and a longer tonal range is produced. This can look absolutely stunning with larger negatives, especially when photographing subjects with a lot of subtle highlights such as clouds or a wedding dress.

The importance of agitation
When I did lots of different ratings and development times in the early years of my career, I also found that agitation could alter the look of a negative.
Normal agitation is usually taken to be three inversions of a tank every minute and increasing the number of inversions/agitations will increase contrast. BUT, taken to an extreme, with continuous agitation, contrast actually drops!
I think it is because the developer is not allowed to sit on the surface and work properly when constantly in motion, -but I’m not a scientist, I’m a photographer, so I may be wide of the mark there.
Whatever the reason, there is a marked drop in contrast with continuous agitation as I have just mentioned, and when coupled with downrating produces a negative which has amazing latitude for highlights or overexposure. This means that a reading can be taken from the shadows to ensure detail, and the highlights will never be blown out.
Here is a composite image of four frames of the same film, The film was Ilford HP5 and the developer was Ilford ID11 stock solution at 20?C with continuous agitation for four minutes.

All four frames.

These frames are; top left 100, top right 50, lower left 25 and lower right 12 ISO. As you can see, any of these frames could be printed. From this you can understand how flexible the negatives could be (to quote my late friend Barry Thornton), and therefore how well they could compress a high contrast scene.

On the other hand, if you are looking for contrast, then I suggest you overdevelop Ilford Delta 100. This film is really good for this technique as it doesn’t like to be overdone. It is a lovely film if processed properly, but easily becomes a bit too dense in the highlights if overdeveloped.

I did some tests and found that by rating it at 800 ISO and doubling its development time in Ilford Ilfotec DD-X to 24 minutes, I got quite a high contrast negative. I was using this combination earlier this year to shoot snow scenes. This produced very graphic, contrasty, bold images.

Here are two frames from the test film; 400 and 800 ISO;

Uprated Delta 100Dilute/static development (also known as stand development, though there are many different methods of this).

Mix up a 1 – 3 solution of Ilford ID11. That is, one part of stock solution (normal strength) mixed with three parts of water.
Get the temperature to 20?C
Pour into the tank and agitate ten times.
Start the clock.
Give three inversions every 30 seconds up to ten minutes.
When ten minutes have passed, put the tank down and do not move it at all for 50 minutes. Try to keep the temperature fairly constant.
When that time has elapsed, agitate the tank three times and repeat this agitation each minute.
After ten minutes pour the developer away and use a normal stop bath (Not too strong, weaker is better).
Fix as normal, wash and dry.

With this development method, Ilford HP5 can be rated at 1600 ISO and can produce very good results.

Here is a scan from a 10×8 print made on a Grade 2 paper from one such negative. On the print you can see detail in the dark corners and the sunlit highlights.

Train carriage

Posted in Experimental, processing | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

Consistent negative quality

By sandy | Published: 15/10/2009

One of the most important areas of photography is the processing of negatives. The quality of your images is dependent on how much care and attention you take with your developer, dilution, times, temperature and agitation. Following much of the literature which has been published on the matter though, could give you too many things to fuss over and possibly inconsistent results in some cases.

Each established darkroom worker has their own way of doing things which they have adapted over time and which they have found to work for them and I am going to share mine with you.?I can offer a few tips and hints collected from over thirty years of processing. If you have a well tried and tested method, then you don’t need to change a thing, but if you are having some inconsistencies then it might be worth seeing if anything I have in my routine may help.

Beginners often have negatives which are very dense and contrasty, often mistakenly believing that to ‘give a little bit extra time in the dev, ‘just to make sure’ is a good thing. It is not.

Overdevelopment causes the most heavily exposed areas of the film to develop to a black, meaning that no light can pass through at the printing stage. This causes prints to have a very high contrast, ensuring that burning in of skies or white clothing becomes almost impossible. Negatives need to have their development curtailed when the densest areas are dark grey, so that any tone, texture or detail there can be easily printed through. Slight underdevelopment is actually preferable (correct is best).

The other problem beginners have is pale, empty negatives. Thin negatives are more often than not caused by underexposure. Cameras with automatic exposure or users who don’t understand where to point a light meter, often get underexposed negatives as a result of too much sky being included in the frame. Shooting towards the light or pointing up at a building will cause the light meter to misread. The meter recommends a faster shutter speed or a smaller aperture because of the brightness of the sky, but this prevents enough light from reaching the film in the non sky areas, leaving them dark, or black.

A simple and accurate way to meter in many situations is to read from the grass. The camera will give a very accurate light reading from grass, as long as it is receiving the same light as the intended subject.

Another method which takes a little longer, but gives really nice results is to use a spotmeter. With this, the reading is taken from a very dark tone in the scene (not completely black) and then adjusted up two stops. If the meter says the reading is 125 at f8, the correct reading is 125 at f16. This sounds a little more complicated than it actually is -but it soon becomes second nature.

Once the light level has been established, the image can be composed and exposed, regardless of what the light meter in the camera now indicates.?Once the film has been properly exposed, the important part can begin, -the processing.

The following is my own personal method which has been adapted as I have gone along. It produces consistent results if I stick to the important points.

I have all three of my solutions mixed up, with the developer at slightly more than the necessary quantity. During agitation the developer can often froth up quite a bit and cause underdevelopment along one edge of the film. I get the developer to 20.5?C because in the UK a darkroom is often colder than 20? As the dev goes into the tank it drops to 20? and is at the working temperature.

Agitation is ten times at the start, then three times each minute, with a twisting action to get the developer flowing along the length of the film as well as up and down through the spiral. This gives much more even development.

I don’t bother getting the stop bath (which must be mixed weak, -never strong) to the correct temperature, it will work perfectly well through a wide range. Some believe that having too much of a temperature difference between dev and stop will cause reticulation, but it is actually the strength of the stop bath which causes it (the sudden change from alkaline to strong acid contracts the emulsion), not the temperature, this is why I always mix it weak.

Similarly, I don’t worry about the temperature of the fix. Temperature does affect how quickly or slowly the fixing action takes place, but there is a simple way round this; As soon as the fix goes into the tank, start the timer. Agitate the tank vigorously for a minute and then remove the lid. Check the film to see if it is still milky, if so, put it back in and continue ?agitation, checking occasionally. When the milky look has gone from the film, check how much time has elapsed. Double this time and you will have a properly fixed film every time.

The wash sequence is as normal, washing for ten minutes, changing the water a few times, using hypo eliminator and final wash for ten minutes. The films are hung to dry overnight in the darkroom where they will not be disturbed.

There are many other ways to process films, but this is the sequence I have settled on for roll and 35mm films.

Untitled.

Posted in 35mm, Darkroom, Medium Format, Uncategorized, processing | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Seeing

By sandy | Published: 01/10/2009

Looking around on the web I see many, many photographers who are producing sharp, well exposed shots and many of them are very competent photographers.
Often though, there is something missing; Too many of the shots are just BORING.
Making an image which is sharp and well exposed is the easy part, making an image which affects people, which has that certain ’something’ is another matter.

ice tray

Kitchen table and sunlightSo how do you develop (I know it’s a pun) a way of seeing?

Well, that depends on a few things; Where you are, what there is to photograph there and what you are interested in. Are you new to it and enthusiastic, or set in your ways?

Seeing is an important part of it, although not the full story -but I’ll come back to that in a minute…
What are you looking for? perhaps you have been looking in the wrong place?

The most common mistake is to concentrate too much on ‘what it is’ -the subject matter, the thing or person in front of the lens.
That may seem like a perverse statement, but let me expand on that.

The single most important element in Photography is Shape, not the subject matter. It doesn’t matter what it is, as long as the shape looks good. If you get too fixated on the subject you lose sight of that. The second most important element in photography is Light. As I sit writing this I can see some interesting light on the curtains and I know it would make a decent shot. Curtains are not an interesting subject in themselves, but the way the light plays across them just now makes them so.
The third most important element is Tone, how the tonal range is distributed over the frame.
Photography (and this applies to monochrome mainly) is about shapes and tones within a delineated area, whether that be a square, a rectangle or even a circle. If you pay attention to that, you can photograph anything.
Go and look at some really good photography now and see it in the terms I have described, you will begin to see things very differently.
There is one other thing that I need to mention; To be able to see the good stuff you need to be able to spot the bad stuff! You need to cultivate a highly developed sense of the naff, the corny and tasteless, the boring and cliched. If you can spot it quickly you can avoid photographing it.

I said that seeing is important, but not the whole story, the missing part is presentation. I could show you my best shot, but if it was on poor quality paper and badly mounted in a crap frame it wouldn’t merit a second glance. Conversely, I could show you a simple image as a beautiful platinum print, mounted and framed professionally and it would be far more desirable.
It doesn’t have to be platinum, it could be a print on a good quality Fibre Based paper or an art paper ink-jet. It does however need to be presented as an object of beauty, so don’t use poor quality materials. One of my pet hates is seeing a low quality RC print with glaring whites in a cream coloured mount -Yuck!

noodles

There are plenty of good papers out there, both darkroom and digital, though what is great for one type of image, might look wrong for another. choose your paper to suit the picture.

Think about how the space around the image helps to present it. Narrow borders make you look at the centre of the image, very wide borders make you look at the edge of the image. If you get the proportion right, the full area is taken in by the eye.
Make sure your quality control is high, don’t make do with unfinished prints, make sure your borders are properly square not wonky and don’t think that people won’t notice dust marks on your pictures, – they will. Your laziness will be noticed by others and their impression of you will go down.

condensation

Posted in General, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Follow up from ‘Low Fi Photography’

By sandy | Published: 29/09/2009

An earlier post which I uploaded from my phone whilst on holiday, referred to an obscure Chinese panoramic 120 camera which I had been using.

I have since processed the films from this camera and I was rather disappointed at the quality. Some were just OK, and others were really poor. The camera suffers from a lot of shake on some shots as the lens sweeps across, I can’t see any way round this, so I don’t think I’ll be using it for quite a while. I may make a camera sometime which exposes this format, but with a fixed lens.

I tried to upload a couple of the images, but kept getting only part of the full panorama, so I have taken them down for now. I may upload them again if I can get over this problem.

Posted in Medium Format, Uncategorized, cameras, landscape | Leave a comment

Changing formats.

By sandy | Published: 21/09/2009

Earlier this year I was shooting a lot of 10×8 and was convinced that I’d never pick up a 35mm camera ever again. By August I was fully in love with the 35mm format once more! Now, in September I am shooting 5×4, seeing pictures everywhere and producing images that I am really happy with.
I can’t explain this aspect of me, I have to follow these urges and make the work that inspires me at that moment.
There are distractions; Usually a gift or a find in a junk shop, an old or unusual camera which I have to explore. Some turn out to be quite good, most are left on the shelf after two films, but occasionally there are special examples, cameras which have a life of their own and which possess a special magic.
I am trying to cut down on these distractions though, I don’t hunt out old cameras as much as I used to, mainly because I have so many that are hardly ever used and I don’t think I should clutter up my studio any more. I’ve made a kind of resolution to clear out a lot of the stuff that I don’t need -For instance, the other week I was looking for something and found four 35mm cameras that I had forgotten even buying!
So for the moment it is 5×4 and who knows what it will be in a few weeks?

Posted in 35mm, General, Large format, cameras, landscape | Tagged , , | 2 Comments