KosmoFoto Mono

Passing my favorite photo shop the other day (Ruby Ye in Excelsior Plaza basement), I noticed a stack of an unknown (to me) boxes of film. I was told it is Kosmo Foto Mono. I heard of the brand before but never tried it. So I could not resist, parted from 14 SGD and walked home.

Next day was an unformal outing of the HUGS (Hasselblad User Group Singapore) and I brought both the Hassie (see last post) and the Leica M6 loaded with the said Kosmo Foto Mono and mounted with the 50mm Summilux v2 (My first ever Leica Lens). We met in Chinatown, to capture the Chinese New Year atmosphere.

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The Urban Sketchers

That day was also the outing of the Urban Sketchers group, which gave us (me) plenty of pictures opportunity, I like shooting random strangers, but strangers in action is even better.

The Mono is a 100 ISO film, the weather that morning was quite ok for outdoor shots with normal speed and aperture. Except the below, inside the Chinatown complete, probably full open and 1/60 sec.

When I reached home after lunch the tricky question came : how do I process this film? Querying the Caffenol Facebook group I learned that this is some rebranded Kentmere 100, so I looked up processing time. But when I removed the label to take a nice scan of it for my collection I noticed the canister actually says Fomo.

Who to believe? Anyway checking the Massive Development Chart I noticed both the Kentmere 100 and the Foma 100 have the same development time for the same Caffenol formula. My vitamin C stock is a bit depleted but I still could find enough to process one roll with the following formula:

500 ml water. 27g Washing Soda, 8 g Vitamin C , 20g Netscafe classic

My room temperature here in Singapore is 28 Deg, so I scaled the time and processed for 6 minutes, with agitation the first 20 seconds then 3 inversions every minute.
Using Ilford method to rinse, Ilford rapid fixer and dishwashing soap in the last rinse batch.

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Life goes on in Chinatown (Vertical)

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Life goes on in Chinatown (Horizontal)

The negative is a bit over but the scams are looking good. There is a certain softness to them which is quite pleasant. 14$ is a bit expensive for a standard 100 ISO film, but I quite like the results so I may give it another try (oh yes maybe I have to finish by 100ft roll of Ilford Delta first, I probably have the equivalent of 12 rolls left in there)

The HUGS gang that day.

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Wayang (Chinese street opera) – Hong San See Temple – Singapore

The artists from this Chinese Street Opera (Wayang) troup preparing for the show at Hong San See Temple Mohamed Sultan road Singapore

You can read more on the Wayang .

All shots done with :

Camera:Nikon D700
Lens:Nikkor 85mmF1.8D

Almost as good as new – Singapore Kite Festival

A couple of weeks back, we had a lovely weather for the week-end and by complete chance this was the Singapore Kite Festival. NTUC, which is a kind of local “Union”, organized this day out on the Marina Bay, right in front of my office, and their own nice office building.

So a lot of people, kids running around, kites, sun, colors, but also acrobats, jugglers, and much more. A perfect opportunity for a photo walk, and by the number of cameras around I was not the only one to have the idea.

In my current line of thinking that nobody cares if I miss or succeed in an individual shot, let’s try to make things a bit more fun and bring along a manual lens. Namely the very nice, 70-210F3.5 Angenieux zoom lens. This is a very nice piece of kit, made in France and still goes our second hand for a bi of money. I bough it second hand in Belgium back in 93 or 94 for the equivalent of then 500 EURO. It has a constant aperture of 3.5 which is fast enough with the auto-iso option of the D700. Using a manual lens with the D700 is very easy as you can either rely on our eyes or use the internal rangefinder. Using a digital body, if you miss a shot no bid deal, you can try again at no costs.

Just a couple of negative remarks:
– the Angenieux focuses the opposite was to the Nikon lens

– the infinite focusing does not seem to work well

– it looks to me that with manual lenses the D700 has a tendency to underexpose the shots…

  

Above: The waterdrops stilt walkers

Above: I like very much the colors and the “dark side”, pity the woman on the right is not totally in the frame.

 

Above: the wind garden, close, wide open
  

above: one of the pro kite flyers 

 

above: all ages gathering at Marina Bay this day

Above: one of the artists, a mime

 

Above: there was even a band playing

 

Above: A very funny juggler, unfortunately I have no outstanding shot of him.
 

The lens is now mounted on the Nikon F… (to be followed)

A tour at Wessex Village – Singapore

A few weeks back an Art Walk was organized in  Wessex Village here in Singapore.  Wessex Village  is an area of  old colonial style apartment blocks. Originally they were used to house British soldiers, but a few years back they have been offered as residential and studio space for artists.

The buildings are apartment blocks with an external design similar to Singapore black and white colonial houses. The blocks have name of cities, regions or countries. I suppose they are name of regiments or cantonment cities of the British army.

Aden

Aden is one of these magic names that sparks ideas of exoticism and 19th century adventurers to my mind.

Noé was posing for this Japanese painter whose apartment / workshop we visited.

Aden – Arabie

A very easy homage to Paul Nizan book “Aden Arabie“.

What do we seek when we travel? Do we need to go to Aden to seek the truth about where we live? Aden is here anyway.

More down to earth you can imagine this is the score of a soccer match !

Marne

This was the week before the International Commie Camera Day, so I took the Kiev IV loaded with an Ilford PAN 400ASA with the Jupiter 8 50mmF2 and Jupiter 12 35mmF2.8. As you can see on my post about the Kiev I had to tape the body to avoid light leaks; got a couple funny looks.

Mons

I love the black and white of this set of pictures; particularly the black of the tire on this one.

Camera: Kiev IV
Lens: Jupiter 8- 50mmf2
Film: Ilford Pan 400 ASA
Digifilm:Epson V500+Lightroom