Posts

Showing posts from February, 2020

A Test Film For A Rollei B35

Image
I really must get some drawing done sometime but I have been having a lot of fun playing with old cameras. This time I think I've found the ideal camera for exploring the world in monochrome and learning how to render it in ink, I now have a Rollei B35 camera from the period between 1969 and 1975. The Rollei 35 series were the first ever compact cameras and this one is still smaller than my mobile phone. So I took it out and about and shot some photos in Ilford HP5+ and got some of the best exposed and sharpest negatives yet.. and this camera doesn't have a focus aid - you set the distance manually. Here are some of the photos. I have made no corrections to these, they are just as they came out of the camera. One sunny day and one rainy day.

Adventures In Colour

Image
I picked up some rolls of outdated Kodak Color Plus film at a local antique dealer's and tested one out in my old Canon Canonet. There was some additional uncertainty with this adventure. Not only was the film ten years out of date but the Canonet's old selenium exposure meter was showing signs of imminent failure. However, there were some interesting images that came out of this. Here is one that tests the colour balance, a flash shot of a blanket in glorious comic colour. The colours in the photo look more like 1960s comic colours than those on the actual blanket. The colours of nature come out in a warm almost sepia wash. Here are a couple of views of the River Nith in winter swell.  The river looks almost bronze when backlit. And here are a couple more taken with flash. The old rangefinder can still produce a good sharp image.   I've a couple more rolls of this film. I'll try some shots with my Zenit TTL when it's du

Christmas with a Canonet (and a Zenit 11)

Image
I loaded some colour film into my ancient Canon Canonet rangefinder just before Christmas and it's taken until today for me to get round to developing it. C41 processing is much more demanding than black and white and I have to work up into the right mood for it. Anyway there are some nice colourful Christmas pictures here that are fun to look back on in the dark days of late January in 2020. My brother gave me a lovely old Zenit 11 SLR for Christmas and I took some photos with that too. The Zenit photos are all in black and white.       For this year, I'm experimenting with medium format film and I'm using a very ancient Braun Paxina (1st model) and I've run off a test film already. I think it'll be great for landscapes but it struggles indoors as the exposure range is limited. Might have to do a lot of time exposures in lower light. I'll add some more arty stuff soon.