A few time last summer we bumped into this lot of happy skaters, who were engaged in what can be described as a party.
Good atmosphere, disco music and smiles all around, all lead by the above MC.
Hurry up Alice or you ll be late to the party.
The sun was going down and available light was no much, but good enough for the Summicron 50 and the roll of HP5 loaded in the M6.
A bit of line dancing.
I m just passing by, please ignore me.
A bit more than a month back I bought two rolls of Cinestill XX in the Aperture UK shop in London. I have read about this film, but its the first time I saw some available for purchase, so I picked two rolls to see what it is like, keeping in mind that I will have a road trip in France a few weeks down the line.
I loaded the first roll soon after and started shooting in London over a couple of very sunny week-ends we had in late April.
The XX box claim to be a variable speed motion picture, but on a conservative move, I set the M6 speed dial to 200, and put a 50mm lens in front of it, most likely the Summicron v5 or the Summilux v2 with a yellow filer.
It is very difficult to tell which one I used from the pictures.
So a good first part of the roll was shot in London, the weather was nice and my brain clicked in shooting mode.
When holidays started, I spent a day in Paris, with not much shooting action, then drove to the Loire valley, where frankly I felt more compelled to use the digital M and 28 mm cron.
But here are three shots of the park of the Chenonceau castle.
At this point we drove to Bordeaux witch I never visited before and seems to be a good place for street photography, just enough people, and specific places.
Worth visiting for modern architecture buffs : the cité frugès built by Le Corbusier, one house is a museum and can be visited upon appointment.
The film was processed by my usual lab here in London : Analogue Films in Shoreditch, it seems they were not very familiar with the film at first. They managed to do their usual good job as processing and scanning.
The last part we moved to Biarritz in the Basque Country, capital of surfing in France.
I always found very odd to shoot sea side in black and white, but hey why not, my parents did this ages ago.
I found the XX a bit too grainy for my taste, maybe blame the processing, who knows? Lets see how the second roll turns out.
Oh yes, the cost. The film was 11£ a roll ( almost 13 Euros, 14 USD, 19 SGD), mmm I think I still have some HP5+ in my 100ft roll. And Analogue Films charge about 8£ for process and scan.
Hope you enjoyed the ride.
I am a slow shooter and a slower poster. So here is a roll shot in late October / November 2021 in London and in Paris for the last few shots.
I am sure the film was from my 30m meters roll of Ilford HP5, and shot with the Leica M6. I cannot se so sure about the lens.
The roll was processed by AnalogueFilms in Shoreditch again. I had to explain a bit that the film was not what was said on the canister, but I think the message passed across. They were also very kind and gave me a handful of empty canisters that I will replenish with more HP5.
The first three shots were taken during a long walk from Knightsbridge to Borough Market, the one above and the one below were taken another week around Covent Garden. The guy above was having some kind of practical joke with friends.
Then we went to Paris for the last week of November, from now on I used the Elmarit 50 only on the M6.
We are all kids in front of the Galleries Lafayette Christmas display.
Hope you enjoyed the reading.
As my Ilford roll only had 22 shots, I loaded my last roll of Tri-X into the Nikon F3 while we were still in Tekka Market. I could not resist running after the guy with the umbrella hat, even I did not really got a really good shot.
316 on the bowl is probably the number of the stall so the staff attending to the hawker center know where to bring it back after picking up and cleaning. I felt really hungry at that time, but it was way too early to get a second breakfast.
It was still raining outside and this guy was playing with his phone inside a wheelbarrow.
At that point we had stepped in the street, and faced the last few drops of rain. I have a hood on my 50 which does a good job at protecting him from small rain (although that’s a metal hood for a 28mm)
Ez was still with me of course. At this point you would have realized that the pictures are not as sharp as usually, for instance compared to the last post. I have several options to explain this.
First option is that the Tri-X is notoriously difficult to process in Caffenol. I have used my usual Delta recipe scaled for 500ml. BUT because I think my films are usually over processed I have decided once again to try to lower the temperature.
I feel that usually the time for processing is 4’40” and that does not give much leeway for control (I may be wrong), so I decided to keep the same time but cool a little bit the mix by using 10% of water from the fridge (probably 3 degrees) and 90% of tap water (29 degrees) to get a mix around 26 to 27 degrees.
Of course I have no thermometer and the reason you have not seen roll 2001#11 yet is because I quite screwed up by making the mix too cold back wen I processed it. But I must say that this time, looking at the film drying it has gone in the correct direction, showing more contrast than my usual processing’s.
So what could have gone wrong ? Err not sure, could the difference of 3 or 4 degrees between the developer and the rinsing water caused an effect similar to reticulation?
.. or shall I just blame the Tri-X and look for another recipe for this film the next time?
I could simply finish my bulk roll of HP5plus and keep things simple what do you think? It’s a pity as I was quite happy with the content of the film ; that will teach me to try experimenting. This is also probably the last roll of the F3 for a little while.
The little fellow made 3 turns ( understand rolls ) and will now go back to the box. Yielding a SLR, even the not so bulky F3 with a 50mm, to the face of people is a bit gross. I’ll go back to the rangefinders for a little while
I realized this Saturday that these old folks are hanging around in that place because the are polls nearby ; you can expect more shots of this place soon.
All these shots were done in Aperture Auto mode with the F3, very convenient. A facility I don’t have on the M6. It looks the shots were properly exposed, I had some difficulties as I thought that holding the shutter button would store the speed. I may get it wrong by 20 years or so. I think after these 3 rolls and the two ones form last year, I can happily conclude that the F3 focuses properly. With the 50mm at least, I did not bother trying other lenses.
I collected yesterday my first roll in a long time. It was probably finished the first week of the lock-down in Singapore which was on 5th of April.
This is an expired roll of Fuji Across shot with the Leica M6 and probably a mix of Summaron 35 and Summicron 28.
The roll is so so , maybe the roll is too expired maybe sitting on my drawer for 3 month was not a good idea, maybe I just mucked up the metering. Well there is a couple of fun shots. I put them as a slide show just to try.
This is a small follow-up to my former post : A NIGHT TRIP TO SENOKO FISHERY PORT .
These pictures were shot on Cinestill 800T with a Leica M6 with Summicron 35 Asph v2 or 50mm V5. Processed at the lab around the corner and scanned at home with the Epson v800.
I shot the roll at 640 ISO, still I found the pictures being under exposed, unlike the roll I shot in Tokyo last year.
So after the Road Side vegetables market of Toa Payoh we are heading north to Senoko fishery port. There is wholesale fish market providing stock from local fish trawlers, in-shore vessels and fish farms as well as imported sources, and distributes to markets, supermarkets, food courts and restaurants across Singapore
The market is located at 31 Attap Valley Road, Singapore 759908; east to Woodlands checkpoint. It is lucky hat one of my friends was driving otherwise it would have been difficult to get there and back.
Around midnight the market starts to be busy. Individuals come here for cheaper seafood particularly in this time coming up to Chinese new year.
But the market is also preparing orders for hawkers, wet markets and the restaurants of Singapore.
The place is busy, the ground slippery, that’s a nice small adventure.
You can find different products types, like crabs, prawns and fish from all types.
Each company have its own delimited concrete square , with scales and a boss, noting down orders
The work of others is always a nice show to behold.
People are quite friendly, I did not really go asked not to take a picture, but the place is very busy so mind not standing in the way.
Prawns or shrimps arriving and being thrown to the ground. They will be sorted manually later.
Outside more fish is coming.
Ice is a big business here.
All shots Leica M262, Summilux 50mmv2
So here I am back from Sri Lanka! We did a big tour in only 10 days and that was far too much. The country is big (bigger than Singapore for sure), and there are so many interesting things to see. We mostly visited the archaeological remains and Buddhist monuments from the center, the tea plantations, the beautiful Fort Galle in the south before a quick tour of Colombo.
I took far too many pictures, and too much gear as usual. For those who did not read my travel pots before, I brought the usual travel kit : a Nikon D700 DSRL, a 50mmF1.8D, a 17-35F2.8D, a 80-200F2.8D and a Hasselblad 500CM with the 80mmF2.8, plus tripod, plus small accessories and of course my son’s coolpix 7100.
I disappointed myself on the Hasselblad this time, I only managed to take 3 rolls, including 3 or 4 ruined pictures, but that’s life. We did a lot of driving and did not have much time to wander around in villages and towns. I could not resist to post these two which are the best of the first B&W roll.
These Hindu women picking up tea leave in a plantation close to Nuwara Eliya. They are refered by our Cingalese driver as “Indian Tamils” by opposition to the Local Tamils. They are people who came from India (or so did their ancestors) to work in the plantations, I understood that they are not migrant workers as they tend to settle down. (well that’s what was told).
Yes, digital can wait! My 500 and so pictures from Indonesia taken with the D700 will have to hang around a temporary folder for a while : I collected 2 rolls of films from the shop Monday and I am amazed. How can these 24 shots, painfully taken over a couple of weeks which costs me nearly 1 EUR each please me so much? Well I don’t know really. Probably because of the pain and the cost. Nothing perfect here just 24 shots most of which I have no shame to show; pretty good hit ratio compare to the D world.
Paradox of the day: I had to use a bit of lightroom magic to make film looks nearly as good as digital!
Camera: Hasselblad 500CM, Planar 80mm F2.8
Film: Kodak Portra 400 NC
Scanning: EPSON V500, Lightroom 3, PSP Elements 4
I’m a bit lazy these days and did not shoot anything worthy the last month or so; so I’m going through the Lightroom library for something to post.
Here is a portrait of Mrs B. shot with the Nikon F last April and the (by then) new 50mmAIS.
Camera: Nikon F Photomnic (Prism in working order)
Lens: Nikkor 50mmF1.4 AIS
Film: Hilford Delta 100
Scanner Epson ,V500
Processing: LR3+PS Elements 4.0
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