General Photography | Lost Films Part One

A short while ago I decided to catalogue all my cameras so that I could keep track should I ever decide to lift my ‘no lending’ rule. In doing this, not only was I surprised by the amount of film cameras that I had somehow acquired over the years I was also surprised to find how many had half used films in them.

Half used films would usually happen from when I would take the camera out for a specific event and then completely forget to take an adequate amount of photographs.

I found around 25 films in total and I thought that I could make it a regular feature. I find waiting for the photographs to come out one of the interesting aspects of film photography. So when it comes to handing in a film without even knowing whether anything has come out at all I find getting the result quite exciting. When it comes to actually getting these films processed I generally opt to get the film developed without getting any prints made. This is mainly because I haven’t a clue how many (if any) photographs are actually on the roll of film and if I were to pay to get prints as well, it would prove to be quite expensive in the end. This is especially true if the films only yield one or two shots.

For our first instalment I’m going to use what must be the most recent of films. This film was first started in Meopham a few weeks ago on some Kodak Everyday ISO 200 35mm film (I seem to have a surplus of ISO 200 film at the moment). The photographs aren’t all from the same day, this is mainly due to what I said earlier, I take along a thirty-six exposure film and manage to take only ten shots. This leads to a variety of photographs when it finally gets processed. The photographs were taken on a Belomo Villia; a simple 35mm point and shoot camera. I received this camera as a gift some time ago and I’ve not used it as much as I should have.

I have just noticed whilst scanning the film, that the name of the film changes halfway through. It goes from Kodak Everyday ISO 200 to Jessops Diamond film.

So hopefully this can be the start of a new series of blog post showing photos from moments past and forgotten. It should provide a wealth of material as I have quite a few rolls still to get processed.

General Photography | Street Photography On the South Bank, London

Before I get a tweet or comment on this post stating that I am focusing way too much on the topic of Street Photography I would like to point out that these photographs were taken on the 12^th of April using my Rolleiflex TLR and the photographs taken in the post previous to this were taken on the 21^st of April on the Polaroid 600SE. So I’m not lingering on a subject, I just had to wait a fortnight for the 120 E6 film to be processed.

If you hadn’t of guessed, that photo above is now how links are shared on the blog. I’m calling them Badges, click on it and it will take you where I want you to go. I think it looks better than just a text hyperlink. Now, if you had been paying attention you will have read that for this post I am using my Rolleiflex Twin Lens Reflex camera. My camera from the 1930’s that takes 120 film. And yes it’s the same camera that I had used in the Pisa post.

As you may or may not know [depending on how often you read my blog] I am always looking to improve on where I feel that I am lacking. Hence the sudden arrival of all the videos to accompany the posts, anyhow, one thing that I’ve never really been that great at was street photography. Anyone who knows me will know that I have no problem with striking up a conversation with someone I have never met before [a habit I am sure will get me into trouble one day] but before taking someone’s photograph I feel the need to get to know them first.

For example, there is a blog post on here with photographs of my friend Azita, and as always, the link to that post is below. Now, I had met Azita for the very first time that day. This had happened because she had been referred to me by my friend Steve, who I have also taken photos of that are on this blog and yes there will be a link. And even though that was the first time we had met we still had a coffee [well, hot chocolate] at Starbucks first to chat for a bit and get to know each other which I feel improved the photographs.

Now, what about WEDDINGS you ask? Obviously I don’t know every person in the wedding party yet I am able to go along to the church or registry office and take their photographs. That is a very good point but when they go to a wedding they expect their photograph to be taken, to be remembered as part of that particular couple’s special day. But when you take that person away from the wedding scenario and put them in the everyday I doubt that they are prepared at all times to have their photograph taken and not feel strange about it.

The video at the top of the post shows a short clip of the busker who is the subject of a few of the shots below. This video came about for two reasons. The first was the couple that you will see thoroughly enjoying the lady’s singing and the second reason is because upon noticing the couple and how happy they looked I was midway through changing a roll of film. So making a video seemed the quickest option available to me. And may I add, I think that it works well as a video, much better than it would have done as a still image.

The shots below were taken on Fujifilm Provia that expired in 2005 and although I am usually quite lucky with the results I achieve from expired film this was not one of those times. But I decided against editing the colour and tone of the shots. I generally dislike editing to begin with. And although the video is of the busker there are other shots of people on the South Bank enjoying the day. Hopefully you will enjoy the shots. There are six images in total, all of them taken on the South Bank in London.

I gave her a business card.
I wonder if she will get in contact.

General Photography | Instant Photography In London With The Polaroid 600SE

If you are a regular reader of this blog or just a casual passer-by, by looking at a few of the posts that are on here you can no doubt surmise that I have a few rare cameras. A few of them I can’t really use because you can’t get the film for them, but there are ways around that. Click the link to the previous post to find out.

One of my favourite of these cameras is my Polaroid 600SE. It’s not the easiest of cameras to carry around with you, one good example for this can be seen when I have to separate the camera and lens to fit it into my bag. Add to that that I had to take a light metre [due to the camera’s lack of an internal exposure metre], a couple of notepads, pencil and the HD camera for the video. So as you can imagine my bag was pretty heavy. Oh and before I forget to mention, in the video above I give a quick ‘how to’ on using the Polaroid 600SE and things to remember as well.

The camera itself was quite hard to find with a lot of people on eBay either selling it for way too much in my opinion or without lenses, which makes it useless to me. I found myself calling around a large group of local photographic shops at first and then expanding my search. And that’s when I found one at a camera store called Mr Cad [link below] at their Croydon branch.

I got the camera body itself at a slightly reduced rate because of a slight dent on the top but aside from that the camera works perfectly. I have used the Polaroid 600SE is one other blog post and that was my portrait session with Holly Defroand.

Actually the photos that I took of Holly were actually taken on the day I bought the camera, getting a lift from Mr Cad to the train station and making my way to central London. If you have clicked the link it may be obvious that it is only the top image that was taken with the Polaroid 600SE and that’s because that was the image that I was actually proud of from that day that was taken with the Polaroid 600Se the rest were taken with the Canon EOS 50D.

On this particular photo trip [the one that this post is about] I was joined in London by Tom Giddings and Heather Torrance. Both of which had their own individual photographic equipment and all three of us had our own techniques that we were trying out. These are explained in detail in the video which is above. And you can see examples of their photography in the links below.

Street Photography. Now although I have always thought that Street Photography has always lent itself to film photography but it’s somewhat hard to feel inconspicuous when you are holding a Polaroid 600SE as it is pretty big but I feel that with some of the black and white shots that I managed to get some good ones, especially the one of the two old men.

All of the photographs in this post, if you haven’t guessed it, were taken with the Polaroid 600SE. The colour shots were taken with Fuji FP-100C Instant Peel-Apart film and the monochrome shots were taken Fuji FP-100B Instant Peel-Apart film. I used one pack of each. One pack should in theory give you about ten exposures but the majority of my Fuji Peel-Apart film expired in 2005 so photographs are never really guaranteed. Also, the day before I went up to London I found a Polaroid film back with five shots remaining in it and decided to get through those. So on this trip I had five colour shots and ten black and white shots. I am including eleven shots in this post with the majority of them being taken on the Fuji FP-100B monochrome film.

Also a little note, I digitally edited one of the shots, the first shot below had a black mark on it that I decided ruined the shot somewhat. Also, below I have put the links that I said I would include in the video.

Experimental Photography | Brighton. And The Rising Cost Of Postage.

The camera loaded, the plan set, we were on our way. The journey to Brighton seemed to take less time than the one to Dover but I could be mistaken. We got to Brighton and for some reason decided to park a 15min walk away from the seafront. Parking a distance away from where we wished to be meant that after walking for some time we thought it best to move the car to avoid paying quite a bit for parking. One of things that we did was try to find a post office, this was for another project that I am up to. The details and results of this mystery project I will post about when it’s completed.

You may be wondering why I decided to use a camera that was made in the 1930’s that you can’t even get the film for and the answer for that particular question is simple, and the answer is one I can give for the majority of my actions: Because I hadn’t done so before.

Before I forget to mention it the camera that I took along with me was the Kodak Six-20 Brownie Junior UK model. Information of which can be found on the link below

Kodak Information

The film that this particular camera takes [as the name of the camera suggests] is called 620 film. Which can easily be mistaken for 120 film as they are a similar size. When I first bought this camera I only really glanced at it and assumed that it took 120 film and I had already got home when I tried a film and noticed it didn’t work. This camera was produced from 1934-1938 making it quite possibly my oldest camera. I have a Rolleiflex Twin Lens Reflex [TLR] that was make in 1936 [I think] which takes 120 film that I have used on this blog before [as always, the link is below]. Now the TLR takes 120 film and even though it is quite old works perfectly and can even be connected up to a modern studio set up, which I will hopefully be doing sometime this week.

General Photography | London Through The TLR
Date Posted: Friday, 10th September 2010

Travel Photography | Pisa, Italy
Date Posted: Monday, 23rd August 2010

Whilst in Brighton I did look around for some cheap electrical tape to plug up the red exposure window but I couldn’t find any so I settled on the stamp which is also how the camera got its name, The Rising Cost Of Postage. Firstly, the reason I wanted cheap electrical tape was so that when it was peeled of it didn’t take any of the camera off with it and secondly I tend to give my cameras stupid names at times. The Holgaroid that I made was in its 4^th rework when I got some OK photos out of it. OK in that they were exposed correctly, it still didn’t focus. And due to the blurriness and the fact I mainly used black and white Fuji peel apart film in it [Fujifilm FP-100B], I named it ‘The Sweeping Shadow Camera Four’ [link below].

Experimental Photography | Self Made Holgaroid
Date Posted: Thursday, 27th August 2009

Now as with anything experimental, photography or otherwise, you cannot expect good results on the first go and I did make some mistakes this first time. I didn’t wind the film on enough so a lot of the images are over exposed and the stamp wasn’t as opaque as I had originally hoped. A couple of days afterwards I went and got the film cross processed and looked at the results. Now as I had said in the video I know it was going to be an issue when it came to scanning and as it turns out, with my scanner it wasn’t actually possible. If you look at the image below you can see the set up I had to make in order to get the photos to my computer. I taped the film to the light and photographed it with the Sigma 18-50mm lens at 50mm and then once I had got it onto my computer I inverted the colours and cropped the image. Even though it was slide film that I had used, getting it cross processed meant that it had become a colour negative.

Now as you can see in the video, the Kodak wasn’t the only camera I had taken, I had also taken the Canon EOS 50 just in case. And below you’ll find a few photographs from the day in Brighton taken on the Canon EOS 50D and a combination of the Canon EF 28mm f1.8 lens and the Canon EF 50mm f1.8 lens.

And now you can see the images produced with Kodak Six-20 Junior Brownie. In case you didn’t catch it on the video the film I used was Fuji Velvia 35mm ISO 100.

So that’s it for today’s blog post, there are a lot of links to previous posts in this one. But I feel it’s a good way to make sure that old posts and websites with relevant information don’t get left out. I’ve got another post [and corresponding video] all written and finished but I have to wait a couple of weeks to get the prints done. If you feel like getting in contact feel free.