Posts tagged bNw

Up, Up In The Air

Kodak T-Max 400 on Holgamod 120N

Just going through my old scans and found this set of pictures discarded in the ‘No Good’ pile. They are from a crazy trip across the globe on work last year where I was spending 40% of my time in transit or flying across a whole continent, and not enough time shooting on land. Most of the pictures shot on film from my window seat came out super blown-out, as the sun was just too strong up there. I was hoping to be able to capture something good, something better as the shots I randomly snapped on my iPhone turned out lovely. All 5 pictures above were taken in different parts of the world, in the air upon lift off from Kuala Lumpur, over Japan, over California, over Russia, and finally in Mexico. Pretty cool when I see it from that perspective ;)

Next time, I hope for more time on land! Yes, on land where the action really is!

-eleanorrigby236

What is Holga film??

Holga B&W 400 film on Nikon FG-20

Holga has film now too? Apparently yes. This 400ISO film works terribly well under low light, just as advertised. It produces creamy smooth grain that brings a sexiness only possible on film to your pictures!! The darks are super black and the highlights are not too overblown, adding a lot of mood to your final shot. For US$3, this is one film you’d definitely want to give a try. Some may cry a little when they find out it only has 24 exposures, but 24 is more than enough for me for a specific shoot in one location. 36 sometimes seem a drag to finish.

After shooting this film in both low light and in daylight, I have to say the best results come from images shot indoors or under a lot of brush with minimal light. The daylight shots still look good if you have a nice dark background. The more blacks you have on this film, the louder it gets, if that even makes any sense ;P

Official item description,

This is a roll of 24 exposure Holga 35mm Black and White Film from Foma. It’s a panchromatically sensitized black-and-white negative film designed for taking photographs under unfavorable lighting conditions or using short exposure times. This film will help you maximize your Holga experience. Under or overexpose it by 2-stops to achieve a wide variety of effects. 191424 Holga 135-24 Black and White Film Feature Highlights: Holga 135-24 Black and White Film, ISO 400, High Speed 35mm Format Film, General Purpose Indoor/Outdoor Film, Excellent Grain Structure, Pushable + or - 1 EV 

-eleanorrigby236

Testing the Epson V700

Shanghai GP3 BW 100 on Lubitel 166B

(Black tea + Vit C, 15 mins, 3 agitations every 30s, Epson V700 BW Negative mode in 16 bit color)

When eleanorrigby236 was scheduled to leave for Europe, I realized that I’ll lose access to her scanner, and that means spending more on scanning at my local lab! So she asked me if I wanted to buy hers at a discounted price since it’s practically mint and I said OK! Heh.

Anyway, I’ve developed this quite some time ago in Tea & Vitamin C. This roll was my best Tea-C result so far, the negative was clear with light tannin stains and images sharp & crisp. Since I used the Shanghai, you still get the typical grainy texture although they aren’t as pronounced as the ones developed in the normal B&W developer, probably owing to the almost continuous agitation scheme for a whole 15 minutes!

Now, I experimented with 3 scanning modes, namely Color Negative in 16 bit grayscale, B&W Negative in 16 bit Grayscale and B&W Negative in 16 bit Color; and I found that the 3rd option yields the best result - B&W with light tea tones. The scratches were probably due to my rough handling while “squeegee-ing” the wet film with my hands.

Nice huh?

-delusiana

Shades of insanity

Ilford FP4 on Nikon F80D, Lensbaby Composer & Double Glass Optic

I ran out of models to shoot so again, this pitiful teddy became my unwilling victim.  Although I must say that Akd, a dear friend did a very good job in this set. Thanks babe.

The scratches in a few of the photos were completely accidental, mainly due to my wonky film reel and wet hands. But I quite like them…especially the ones in Akd’s photo which totally completed his pose, don’t you think?

-delusiana

Are you bored of the film soup yet?

Lucky BW SHD 100 on Olympus XA2

I decided to crop this photo into a square because I thought the standard panoramic format didn’t do this photo justice. It was really easy getting the pigeons in my backyard to pose for me: I just had to bait them with Sora’s leftover biscuits. Hahah.

So here’s Sora getting really annoyed with me and staring intently at them birds.

Self-dev: Ilford Ilfosol 3 (1+9, 7 minutes)

Recipe:

1/2 cup Persil detergent
I tbsp Clorox
25ml potassium permanganate
25ml apple cider vinegar.

Mix everything in boiling water and dunk the film into the soup and leave it overnight.
Dry the film in a darkroom with a hairdryer & start shooting!

-delusiana

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

Playing with doubles

Shanghai GP3 100 on Kiev 88

When I first saw Dan Mountford’s double exposure portraits some time back, I knew it was something I wanted to attempt one day, but just never got to practicing. For my test shots I used a very low grade film which I have come to love dearly. Many photographers dislike the coarse grain the film has to offer, but as I’ve said time and time again, I actually like how you can always expect the unexpected when using the Shanghai GP3. Sure it has its low points, like how its very thin film backing can cause the numbers and symbols from the back to burn onto your film when shooting at slower shutter speeds. What I usually do when I am doing some serious shooting with the Shanghai is to always take two shots, just in case the film gets too botched up in exposure.

How do you take these doubles? Well, it is plain and easy.

1. Shoot your subject against a white glaring background

2. Shoot the object you wish to super-impose onto the main subject

Having said that, it is very easy, but you may need to tinker around with your exposure to see what works the best. I also attempted to reverse the process, first shooting the object and then the subject against the white background, but that came out as weak doubles (as you can see in Images 2 and 3 above), which could still work if you want a more subtle fusion of two images.

Some tips you may have read online about shooting your first image at a lower exposure and then the second overlapping image at normal exposure will not work here, as you really want to blow out the white background and make your main subject appear darker for ease of a double exposure. If your background is not fully blown out then you will end up with the second exposure bleeding out of the main subject as seen in the last image above.

Of course, in the end, it is up to your visualization of how you want your double to end up looking that should determine your technique. Have fun and do share your results with us at CGSF!!

-eleanorrigby236

Kodak Tri-X 400 is still a favorite

Kodak Tri-X 400 on Nikon FG-20 w/ Nikkor 24mm f2.8

Dreamy shots by Lensbaby? Get a load of this nightmare!

Ilford FP4 on Nikon F80, Lensbaby Composer + Sweet 35 optic

(self-developed: Ilford Ilfosol 3, 1+9, 6 mins)

Before I stepped into that old abandoned house in Bangsar, I was hoping that my experimental portrait shots with my borrowed gear (Lensbaby courtesy of eleanorrigby236  & the Nikon F80 from my boss!) would go all well and the lightmeter would be spot on. Little did I know that the F80 lightmeter is completely useless without a Nikon CPU lens! I had to meter it manually using my trusty old Canon A1 and thank the stars that they’re adequately exposed.

I’m still having trouble focusing with the Lensbaby on an SLR as what you see in the viewfinder isn’t exactly what you’ll get on film. I didn’t expect that the distortion would be extremely exaggerated when I got the roll developed, and certainly with almost a non existent sweet spot. But I guess I should’ve seen it coming when I chose to shoot everything at the biggest aperture of 2.8, although in the dim interior it’s a wonder that I managed to get anything decent; with the camera handheld and all!

BUT despite my gripes, I must say that I’M ABSOLUTELY IN LOVE with this set and I’m definitely getting the Sweet 35 and maybe the Edge 80 once my pockets permit! 

Yes, this is my first ever series of portrait shots although 99.9% of them turned all artsy fartsy and abstract, heheh. But I guess that’s what the Lensbaby is all about - creative photography.

I really didn’t fancy lugging two huge cameras around just for the sake of metering so until my Sekonic L308s arrives, I have foreseen a long and satisfying dalliance with the Sweet 35 in the not too distant future! 

-delusiana

Framing your analog photos digitally

Rollei RPX 400 w/ Diana 151 + digital frame

I did this once before, where I merged analog with digital (in Supersampler Hack meets RadLab), and I did it once again, this time to bring out the old from my photos. The images were originally shot in black and white using the Diana 151 and I thought the images came out a little too contrasty than I had anticipated. To tone is down a little I decided to merge the images with a frame template I found online. You can easily google “vintage frame template” and choose one to work with. Most probably you would need to resize and crop the frame to fit your photo.

I did this all in Photoshop, and you can do it too.

1. Resize frame to fit image.

2. Import image into Photoshop, change opacity to Multiply at 30%

3. Paste same image into a new layer, change opacity to Overlay 30%

4. Paste same into once more into a new layer, change opacity to Saturation 30%

You can play with the opacity strength based on the color of your frame. I thought a more sepia look would suit this frame than a faded straight B&W one and ended up with this.

Just for your reference, here is the original image shot on film.

-eleanorrigby236

A long lens at the Zoo

Ilford HP5+ on Nikon FM2n w/Nikkor 105mm f/2 AF-DC 

Sad…because I am eating dried leaves

Sad…because it’s to dry out here!

Sad…because I’m not a white bird

Sad…because I’m not the king of my pride

Sad…because I’m almost 100 years old

Meeh…

I quite recently came into possession of Nick Brandt’s spectacular photo book of the animal kingdom he shot in Africa and suddenly had the urge to shoot some animals. Of course my photos are no where close to the film guru’s, for one my animals were all shot in captivity and they were very much sulking at the sorry state of their living compound, which made my visit to the zoo a pretty forlorn feat.

I chose to shoot with a fix lens this time, the 105mm f/2 AF-DC. DC stands for defocus control which actually gives me the ability to emphasize the degree of foreground or background blur (bokeh) in my pictures, but my subjects were all too far away for me to make use of this special feature. This lens is most suited for portrait and still life shots, where you can play around with the bokeh to come up with some amazing results. 

I developed the Ilford HP5+ in Ilfotec 1+4 and somehow the film came out with a faint yellowish stain that spread unevenly throughout the lower half frame of the roll. It is not only visible after scanning but you could also see it on the negatives. I am not sure if this is a fault of the old batch of developer I used, but my later rolls developed after the HP5+ turned out fine. Perhaps the Ilford Hp5+ is more sensitive to chemicals? I have loaded a roll of the same film but in 120mm in my Kiev 88, and will see how that turns out.

Although I did get some OK shots at the zoo, the whole trip was an overall downer. The atmosphere was bad, the animals didn’t look very happy (but when are they in ANY zoo??), and it was just too hot and bright outside that day, which made focusing manually a pain as all the squinting I was doing was not enough to block out the sun. More the reason I need to get an auto focus Nikon body!! ;)

-eleanorrigby236

Mirrors and Reflections

Shanghai GP3 100 on Kiev 88CM

I am a huge fan of medium format and as I progressed deeper into my experimentations with plastic cameras like the Holga and German-born Felica, I wanted to take things up one notch. Everyone’s dream medium format camera is the Hasselblad, I know, but before I ventured too far, I wanted to get a feel for the SLRs of this breed and decided to get a Kiev 88, known for producing pictures with a touch of antique obscurity and old-fashioned mystery. 

The package arrived from Ukraine no more than 2 weeks ago and I immediately loaded the camera with a test roll (always the Shanghai!) and got down to the gritty. Ok, not really. These vintage beauties are quite a load to carry and I don’t trust my hands for anything below 1/60 (shutter speed), and as my tripod was out on loan, I looked for the only large enough surface I could find in the house. 

My coffee table with a cool and clean reflective surface. 

It was late evening and the sun was low, but still bright enough. The inside of my house was dark, so I made use of the remaining light to create these moody shots. This is what I would like the call the natural flash effect, where the subject is perfectly lit, with the background enveloped in darkness. The black spots and not-so-fine grain you see is once again courtesy of the Shanghai film, which yet again worked very well in this series of photographs. The faint but sometimes there white fog-like splotches you see behind the subjects are actually part of the background bokeh produced by the Arsat C 80mm lens that came with my Kiev 88.

I like what I got on this first roll and more than excited to set out on procuring other lenses and perhaps another body of another kind. I must say, the 120mm SLR is giving me a different kind of high and I love it ;)

HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY EVERYONE!! …even if the one you love is a cold piece of photo-taking metal/plastic box!!

-eleanorrigby236

Meow, if you love Kodak!

Kodak T-Max 400 on Diana 151

(self-developed: Ilford Ilfosol 3, 1+9 at 6 mins)

Even Sora wants you to know that our beloved Kodak is here to stay and that FILM IS NOT DEAD! 

-delusiana

Ensign Ful-Vue, my new hero!

Ilford HP5+ 400ISO on Ensign Ful-Vue Box Camera

(Self-developed: Ilford Ilfotec DD-X, 1:4, 9 minutes)

So here’s the test roll for my cute frog-like vintage 1950s box camera, the Ensign Ful-Vue. This is actually the 2nd incarnation of the Ful-Vue, made in Great Britain during the post war era - its large and bright viewfinder making it one of the best cameras at it’s time. Despite its pseudo TLR looks, the Ful-Vue is actually a very simple box camera with a pull-out lens for close up shots, as seen in the last 2 pictures of this set. 

Composing pictures with the viewfinder needs a little getting used to but once you get the hang of it, it’s pretty easy. I bought this camera from Charlie Wray, who’d  written that wonderful piece on the Leica M6 last month. 

There is a noticeable stain in the first 2 shots which I think is probably due to the dust on the lens but I’m not complaining, I think it made my shots look super retro. :D 

I didn’t actually research on this camera until after I’ve developed this roll, I thought that you had to pull out the lens to shoot, which resulted in the soft focus in the first 4 shots and the sharper images in the last 2. But I’m not complaining, not a bit!

A little bit on the location of the shoot, this was taken at an old abandoned colonial bungalow in Bangsar, Kuala Lumpur - a favorite haunt of local film photographers, so much so that the lady who lived next door actually asked why so many of us are fascinated with the place, lol.

-delusiana

Film Soup : B&W roll dunked in detergent

Kentmere 100 on Nikon FG20 w/ Helios M44-2 58mm f2.0 

(self-developed with Ilfotec DD-X 1+4, 10:30mins)

The results of this film soup experiment is no way as exciting as those carried out on slide film but you just have to love the old washed out look it produces on the final pictures. I have never had superb results shooting on the Kentmere because it lacks contrast and produces blacks that are not very desirable. I am not sure if the hot water did it, or if the detergent worked its magic on this roll, but I love the tones the film now exhibit, post-dunk. I am going to make sure I dunk my cheap B&W rolls in detergent and hot water from now on, and that means you Sunny and Fomapan!!   

Film Soup Recipe

Soak film for 2 days in the following solution, dry thoroughly and expose.

• 1 cup boiling hot water
• 1 tablespoon washing detergent

I also shot some pictures in my little garden using a close-up lens, which turned out pretty cool as well. 

The black hairlines you see going across the images are actually scratch marks resulting from me trying to dry the film in my darkroom bag and yanking the film out of the canister forcefully. Even after leaving the canister out in the sun for over 3 days, the insides of the canister can still be damp and wet from the film soup solution. If you do not dry it thoroughly, you will end up breaking your film in your camera or worse, killing the advance reel rendering your camera useless. That is not something you want, so do make sure to dry your film 100% before loading into your camera if you are attempting to try this out. The scratch mark is in the end a small price to pay and can in fact look cool in your image, depending on what you’re shooting. ;)

-eleanorrigby236