Sunday Tea & Vitamin C
Fuji Neopan Acros 100 on Gevaert Gevabox (Flipped Lens)
At CGSF, we weren’t just busy preparing some tasty soup for colorful film adventures, we’re also brewing some Tea in Vitamin C to develop our black & whites in! Thanks to Paul Gadd of The Print Room KL who’d kindly allowed us to use his space & darkroom to demonstrate how to make your own film soup & develop your BWs in tea, we’ve finally managed to achieve this feat which has been eluding us since we first featured this technique courtesy of the lovely Firda Beka of Many Cameras.com!
Yes, I know the results aren’t that great, the photos look almost like a badly xeroxed version but this set was from one of my experimental phase. I’ve yet to discover the exact developing times & agitation scheme for the Neopan Acros 100 & Kodak TMAX but I’ll be sure to post here once I get that figured out.
So, the first set was taken with my vintage Gevaert Gevabox with flipped lens, which explains the crazy flared out effect & lack of focus.
The recipe: (to make 1000ml of stock solution)
5 bags of black tea (I used Lipton) in 600ml freshly boiled water
10 tsp of washing soda
5g of crushed Vitamin C- Let the tea steep for 30 mins and squeeze every drop out, you should get about 500ml of tea
- Dissolve the washing soda & vitamin C in about 400ml of water and add the two solution together and mix them well,
- The solution should stay usable for about 24 hours
- First minute continuous agitation, then 3 agitations every minute for 30 minutes
- Stop bath, fix & rinse normally.
Kodak T-MAX 400 on Gevaert Gevabox (Flipped Lens)
For this set I used the same recipe but with 8 bags instead of 5 (6 bags of japanese green tea & 2 bags of black tea) to avoid the excessive fogging & staining by the black tea which could hamper your scanning (and printing if you plan to do it traditionally with an enlarger!)
I also cut down the developing time to 15 minutes, with continuous agitation during the first minute and 3 agitations every 30 seconds (that’s an almost continuous agitation scheme!). I found that the negatives are much less foggy but I guess it could still be fine tuned.
This recipe works really well with the cheapo Shanghai GP3 100 though, and I’ll be posting the results from that set in my next post so stay tuned for that.
Oh, and say hi to my lovely Gevaert Gevabox!
-delusiana
What the Leica taught me
Fuji Acros 100 on Leica M6, Voigtlander Nokton 35mm f1.4
I’ve always had trouble focusing in photography, having 6 different cameras loaded with film at once and not being able to finish any one of them. Last year I came across an article online encouraging people to shoot with a single camera (a Leica), single lens, and single type of BW film for one entire 365 day year. I kept coming back to the article over and over and finally went looking for a Leica online, found one and purchased it on a whim. I didn’t have money to burn, and I didn’t feel completely comfortable dropping over $1,000 on a camera and lens.
I committed to a Leica M6, Voigtlander Nokton 35mm 1.4, and Fuji Acros 100 shot at 200 and developing in Diafine. The article encourages you to shoot 4-6 rolls per week, but I have come nowhere near that many. In fact over the 4 months I’ve been doing this I’ve only shot 15 rolls. The one thing I love about it so far is that each picture has a purpose; I have not been forcing myself to shoot. When I develop, every single picture on each roll is something I’m excited to see. It’s taken me back to when I had only one camera and it might take me a month to finish a single roll, but each picture was a very unique moment that caught my eye. Part of the process is also recording all of your exposure information, it slows you down and makes you want each photograph. It’s amazing to go back months later and know exactly how you shot every photo.
Leica has a bit of magic in everyone’s mind, but it’s just a tool. Just about everything stated in the article that inspired me is true. It won’t do anything you don’t tell it to, it shows your pictures as they really are without any additional effects that add or detract, it’s nice and sharp but so are many other slr cameras. Nothing extra to get distracted by; shutter speed, wind/rewind, self timer, and shutter. It’s a beautiful and very humbling experience!
Read up and be inspired for yourself:
http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2009/05/a-leica-year.html
http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2009/05/why-it-has-to-be-a-leica.html
-Charlie Wray
edit: FYI, I bought my Ensign Ful-Vue from Charlie on Etsy, and in the package he’d kindly given me a print taken with his M6 and I was immediately in awe and forced him to submit a write-up on his experiences with a Leica. Thanks a lot Charlie! Makes me wanna go and start saving up for one now (though it may take years…*sigh*)
Keep up with Charlie on his tumblr http://goodluckcharles.tumblr.com!!
-delusiana
Develop your B&Ws in Tea!
Fuji Neopan Acros 100 on Great Wall DF
Agfa APX 100
We’re honored to feature Firda Beka of Many Cameras on CGSF and she had also kindly agreed to share her tea developer concoction, which she termed 4-Tea-C.
Now, I’ve always loved B&Ws developed in caffenol but tea?? I’m intrigued! Let’s hear what Firda has to say,
== 4-Tea-C Developer Recipe ==
Ingredients (to make 500ml):
- 2 tea bags of each orange pekoe tea, pure green tea, pure peppermint tea, and pomegranate green tea (8 tea bags in total)
- 2 teaspoons of washing soda
- 1000mg vitamin c
- water
Instructions:
- Put 300ml of water in a saucepan, threw in all the tea bags, bring to boil.
- Once boiling, turn off the stove and let steep for 30 minutes.
- Transfer to a measuring cup to see how much tea solution you got. I got 200ml after squeezing every drop from the tea bags.
- Drop the vitamin c into the tea mixture. In retrospect, dropping it into the washing soda solution would probably be a better idea since mixing it with the tea mixture creates a lot of froth.
- Mix washing soda with water to create 300ml solution or adjust according to the amount of tea solution you got in order to have a total of 500ml.
- Mix the tea-c and washing soda solutions together.
I didn’t check the exact temperature but I’m pretty sure it was room temperature, i.e. 20 degrees. I know. Very scientific indeed. As for developing time, I did a 2 hour semi-stand development, only agitated 3 times during the 2 hours. You don’t want to agitate too many times when doing semi-stand development because the film could easily become over-developed.
Isn’t this just great?? I can’t wait to start developing my B&Ws now. Thanks so much Firda!
Firda also has a tumblr photoblog at http://www.manycameras.com (she has over 200 of them!) and definitely check out her Flickr stream for more analogue goodness.
-delusiana
Featured Photographer: Nadine Ladanse
Well, I don’t know about you but I feel that the above photos are superb! When I saw Nadine’s B&W shots I was instantly moved, there’s just so much drama conveyed that you otherwise won’t get in full color. I’ve always loved her unique eye for photography so thank you for letting me feature you this time girl.
Here’s what she has to say:
Me and the model, Syaheedah had planned this for quite a while but it’s just that we haven’t the time to do it earlier. What she had in mind were head shots in reference to the veteran ladies; Elena Lowensohn, Audrey Hepburn and Grace Kelly to name a few. Our constraint was definitely the related props ie: she standing against the jukebox etc. We narrowed it down to having suitcase next to her (which belongs to me), her smoking on cigarettes and of course that scarf on her head.
The B&W was actually not the first priority of the shoot since I wanted to capture her current hair color that suited so well with her blue top and of course her red lips that enhanced her look altogether using the Ferrania Solaris 400. Then she suggested using B&W to finish off the rest of the shooting, which would be the Fujifilm Neopan Acros 100,and voila. Haha yeah, apparently B&W was just a secondary roll during the shoot.
Well, for what it’s worth I think the B&Ws turned out amazing. So, if you’d like to see Syaheedah in full colored glory (with the wonderful Solaris 400), head on to Nadine’s flickr stream and let her know how much you love her photos!
-delusiana
Fujifilm Acros Neopan 100ISO
Agfa Isoly
More shots from the wildlife park photowalk. The Neopan Acros never fails to deliver, and at 100ISO, the shots turned out nice and contrasty. Although they flunked miserably in all my indoor shots, bah.
-delusiana
Neopan Acros 100
Diana Multi-Pinhole Camera
(approx. 20 minutes under very low light inside an abandoned tin dredge)
(approx. 2 minutes under extreme sunlight)
(approx. 60 minutes on a very dark balcony lightly illuminated by a street lamp)
My second attempt at pinhole photography and I think it will not be my last ;) I decided to not do anything fancy like I did on my first roll, where colored gels and multi-pinholes were used. That first attempt was quite an accident, as you can see here. The beauty of pinhole photography is having your image in sharp focus from the point closest to your camera to the furthest which is not possible with lenses. Basically what you see with your own eyes is what you ultimately get…IF you get your exposure times right, that is.
Oh, and if you haven’t submitted your photo to the Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day website, it’s about time you did!! Head over to the official website for more information on how you can be part of this project.
-eleanorrigby236
Fujifilm Acros Neopan 400
Here are some pictures of a few of my cameras which are underused. As much as I love owning a lot of different cameras, at times I wish I had fewer. Sometimes it gets very hard to decide which camera to shoot with when you have four or more different cameras (and your iPhone) on you when you go out for a walkabout. Your mind is then no longer focused on getting “the shot”, but is more concerned on trying to get “the shot” on all the cameras because one is wide, and the other is near, or one is loaded with slide film, and the other B&W, etc etc, that you miss out on seeing and thinking about what you really want to shoot. Sometimes you just have to choose one and concentrate on capturing the best you can with what you have, because I feel that those are the times when I look at my roll and see more shots I like than those I feel were rushed captures.
Still, that has not stopped me from browsing eBay day in and out looking for my next prize! ;)
-eleanorrigby236
Nikon FE2, Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 (with +4 close-up lens)
Fujifilm Acros Neopan 100
This film is awesome! All taken with the Diana F+ with the 16x16 film mask. Multiple exposures are fun but if you’re not careful, you may end up overexposing the film. The Splitzer is a handy tool to test this technique. But you can always go D.I.Y and create your own splitzer.
And again, Diana is extremely prone to shakes so unless you have super steady hands, a tripod is your best friend.
-delusiana
Diana F+, 38mm Super Wide Angle Lens, 16x16 120mm Back
