Mono

Monochrome experiments.

Colour

Goring, near Reading.

Random foggy Manchester.

Manchester city centre.

Edale.

More random Manchester.

Places

Manchester and Edale.

Super Ikonta test roll

Super Ikonta test roll. All seems to work OK. Handheld its not absolutely perfect, as in a bit blurred anywhere more than 1/50th of a second, a contrast to the Rollei (albeit on a strap).

More autumn

A few more random things, photographed in London and Manchester.

Also I acquired this Super Ikonta 530/2 folder. It is quite old but in good condition and everything seems to work. The lens is quite clean, also seems to have been coated at some point, but either way is a nice Tessar (maximum aperture f/4.5). It takes pictures on 6x9 bits of 120 film.

An example picture from a test roll, shot wide open. There are 8 photographs on each 120 roll, so it might be nice to use the camera for a "photo a day project", I'm not sure yet.

Three

Recent experiments. Sort of ok.

Shanghai GP3 again

Shanghai GP3 fun/"informal test" using a Rolleicord Vb.

To be short, the film is good, but fiddly. The tonality and contrast seem reasonable, I'm not sure how close it is to FP4, but there is some similarity. The grain is probably quite comparable. As I mentioned earlier what lets the film down, for me, is:

(i) The base, which is a bit curly and somewhat uneven. Quite difficult to load onto a development reel.

(ii) The fragility of the emulsion, which is somewhat easy to damage at every stage in the development process.

(iii) The reels themselves, which are thin, and (though I haven't tried) might be problematic in some cameras.

(iv) The end seal doesn't have any usable gum on it. Obviously one can just use a rubber band (incidentally quite easy to find in the UK, as Royal Mail leave them all over the place).

I developed the film in 1+50 new APH09 (equivalent to Rodinal) for 12 minutes, exposing the film at about 80 ASA. This is probably the optimal speed for my use; going to 50 ASA didn't seem to help the grain or the contrast.

Daffodils, Manchester Victoria, London and more

Daffodils, Manchester Victoria and London. If you're curious the film used was, I think, 160C, 160S and Fortepan 400.

Some badly developed (perhaps not enough developer leading to bubbles forming?)HP5. A shame, but the photographs weren't good, the developing went wrong and something to do with the drying went wrong.

Some photographs and 1996 Menghai Orange in Orange

I rescanned these sometime ago, probably as I was doing something else (more useful) with the scanner. Next, tea.

Found a few chunks of some Menghai Orange in Orange (1996, I think) in my stash of samples and other things. Quite tasty, above photographs try to convey this. Not very full though, maybe more aromatic.

Otherwise, I'm busy enough doing reasonably useful things to avoid annoying the few people who stumble upon this journal with further repeated and useless photographs, for a little while at least.

Though you can still see my more updated photo albums:
http://picasaweb.google.com/vladimirlphotos/

35mm is...

Low resolution. Low tech. Rather grainy. Undoubtedly fun.