A couple of weeks ago I was sorting out one of my travel bags and I came across a roll of 120 film in one of the pockets that I would have taken with me on my holiday in June but must have missed this pocket when unpacking everything back on my return.
It was in a white plastic packet with no writing on it. I decided I wanted to use it up asap because I couldn’t remember what it was so I wouldn’t be able to add it to my film inventory for a particular plan of use.
It was a nice sunny morning the other Sunday and my dog, Daisy, needed a walk so I decided to take my Hasselblad with me over to the beach and use up this film.
I was hoping when I opened up the plastic packet that there may have been a label but all it said on the paper inside was a strange graphic of 100.
I decided to take this as being the ISO and took photos using that ISO for my exposure.
I also wasn’t sure if it was black and white or colour. When I took it to my local lab for processing, I decided to get it processed in black and white.
I figured if I was wrong and it was ruined, they were beach photos which I regularly take so it wouldn’t be much of a problem.
Thankfully it was a black and white film and the photos for the most part, came out fine.
It stated 100 pan on the processed negatives so I think it must have been a Rollei film I had taken with me on my trip to Turkey in June but never used.
Here are some photos of the beach:
Here are some photos I took of Daisy on the beach:
I can’t make up my mind whether I like this photo or not? I think I would have preferred it if I had put Daisy in focus and the people in the background had been out of focus:
This photo of Daisy has a sea mist feel about it as it seems slightly over exposed:
I had great fun that morning using my Hasselblad on the beach and I’m really pleased that I had guessed the film type for developing correctly.
In my previous blog post I mentioned that I wanted to turn some of my sheep photos into prints so that I could frame them and put them up in my knitwear studio.
On Saturday I had some time to visit the darkroom and I am pleased to report I managed to successfully do some 8 x 10 resin coated prints.
You’ll see from the cover photo, that I initially printed a contact sheet and selected several photos I’d possibly like to develop into prints. In the end, after lots and lots of test strips, I printed a total of three photos.
Here are the first two I enlarged from the 6 x 6 negatives into prints:
In the next print I decided that the people in the background were a distraction and didn’t quite fit in with the two previous prints I had done:
I therefore cropped the original photo on the enlarger so the final print showed just the sheep:
This did mean that less of the closest sheep was shown in my cropped photo but I actually didn’t mind this since I had a similar thing happening in the first print so felt it helped towards the cohesiveness of the three photos.
Needless to say, I am absolutely thrilled with these prints and am really excited about framing them and putting them up on the wall of my knitwear studio.
Back in July I visited the Rare and Traditional Breeds Show at the Weald & Downland Living Museum with my husband.
He has fond memories of visiting this show when he was a child with his Dad and hadn’t been for several years so was keen to go this year.
I thought this would be the perfect opportunity for me to take some black and white photos of some of the animals.
I decided to take my medium format camera (the Hasselblad) since I thought that would give me greater detail if I wanted to develop any of the photos in the darkroom.
I also had a roll of the Bergger Pancro 400 film in my film stash so thought I’d use this.
Here is a photo of one of the bulls being shown:
My main profession is a hand knitwear designer, so I was particularly drawn to the sheep breeds at the show which I found easier to photograph with the Hasselblad:
I was extremely impressed with the fleece detail on this breed of sheep in the following photographs and yet again, was pleased I had taken the photos using the Hasselblad:
I have a real fondness for the Southdown Sheep as they remind me of ‘little teddybears’ plus they’re bred in Sussex. However, as a knitwear designer, I’m frustrated that I can’t really knit with their fleece since it is very coarse when spun into yarn so isn’t very comfortable to wear for the ladies garments that I design which is a shame.
I couldn’t help but watch and take a couple of photos of the showing of them:
Although there is still a lot of room for improvement of my animal photography, there are actually a couple of photos of the sheep that I now want to develop in the Darkroom and get framed to put in my knitwear design studio which is an added bonus!
This is my final instalment of films I tried out in the Hasselblad whilst I was away in Turkey.
As previously mentioned with the other films, I thought this ISO 50 film would be great to try out in sunny Turkey.
The photos were again, taken during my visit to the Kaunos Ruins in Dalyan, Turkey:
This was the first time I had ever used this film and I was extremely impressed with the high contrast and tones. I also thought that the landscape and ruins worked well with this film.
It’s definitely a film I’d consider using again on a bright, sunny day for my landscape work.
I was pleased to see that Cool Film Club are now doing a monthly 120mm Film Subscription so I signed up to it to enable me to try out films that perhaps I’d never tried before.
I got my first box of 2 x 120mm films the other week from them and in the box was the Washi S 120mm 50 ISO black and white film.
I had been intrigued by this film in the past because it is an emulsion designed for sound recording and it appeared in the sample photos to have a high contrast which I quite like.
However, when I looked at purchasing this film in the past, it always appears to be sold out so I was really happy to get a roll of this in my subscription box.
I decided to try out the film in my local cemetery as I thought the film style would be suited to this style of photography.
Since it’s ISO 50, I went and shot the roll on a bright sunny day and used the sun shade attachment on my Hasselblad.
I wasn’t sure how the negatives would turn out since I felt this film is quite unusual.
I noticed that the film is packed in a recycled roll of 120mm film and this particular film had been repacked in what was originally a Tri-X 400 film roll. This actually turned out to be an issue when taking it to my local lab for processing because although I packed it in the plastic Washi Case which, clearly states 50 ISO, they processed it as the Tri-X 400 film so I’m not sure if this affected the way the negatives turned out.
I can completely understand how this confusion would have been caused and in some ways it was frustrating that a) I didn’t make it extremely clear to them that it wasn’t a Kodak Tri-X 400 film and that b) the Washi is packed in a recycled film package and they don’t have their own brand one which clearly states it’s an ISO 50 film. This makes me wonder if anybody else has encountered similar problems if relying on somebody else to process their film for them.
Thankfully the photos still appeared on all 12 negatives!
I scanned the negatives myself using my Epson V600 scanner and here are some of the photos I took:
The photos are quite high in contrast as I expected they would be. Where I’ve taken the photos in shaded areas they have come out quite dark. I’m unsure at this stage whether this is the traits of the film, the way I exposed the photos (i.e. not stopping up or down and shooting exactly as my light meter stated) or if the fact the film was processed by my lab as a Kodak Tri-X 400. Unfortunately I don’t know enough about the film developing process to know if that would actually make much difference?
I also couldn’t help but have a play with my new (to me) multi-prism filter:
I quite liked the results of the prism effect, especially the last photo. I just knew the statue may be quite an interesting one to try out with the prism filter and the contrast of the film has given it quite a cool, heavenly effect in my opinion.
I’m quite keen to see if any of these negatives will develop into nice prints in the darkroom or whether the high contrast will mean I will struggle.
In one of my latest Darkroom sessions I decided I wanted to enlarge a photo I’d taken of some logs which were outside a house I was staying at during a recent visit to Rye.
I had taken this photo using my Hasselblad 500 C/M camera and some Fomapan Creative 200 ISO black and white film.
I used Ilford IV Multigrade Resin Coated Pearl paper to make my prints. In the first print I made I used a 2 1/2 Contrast Filter and exposed the print for 5 seconds:
I was quite happy with the detail in the top half of the photo but I felt the detail was lacking somewhat in the lower part of the photo on the logs.
It was a bright, sunny day when I took the photo and I didn’t have a lens shade at that point to use on my camera. The lower logs were more exposed to the sunlight.
I therefore decided that this would be a good photo to try out the ‘burning in’ technique. I exposed my next print again with the same contrast filter and exposure time. However, this time I hovered some paper over the top part of the image and exposed the lower part of the photo to a further 5 seconds and this was the result:
I was pleased to see that the lower part of the photo was starting to show more detail in the logs. However, I felt the contrast filter I was using was lighting the lower logs a bit too much.
In the next print I decided to remove the contrast filter completely but I still ‘burned in’ the photo the same way as I had done for the second print and here is the result:
I liked the fact that you can see more detail in the lower logs but by not using a contrast filter, it made the photo darker overall. I also still had the problem of the little log that looks almost white in all of the photos. Although there was minimal detail on the actual negative of this log.
Perhaps I could perfect this photo even further but I wasn’t sure what would be next best to try. I don’t think I wanted to try any other contrast filters and all I could think is that I try ‘burning in’ some smaller areas a bit more.
I note the majority of my photos tend to be of still objects outdoors and I’ve recently been trying to push myself outside of my comfort zone and try other types of photography.
From a previous blog post, you’ll see I attempted to take some indoor photos of my cats which wasn’t very successful.
Next I thought I’d attempt to take some photos of my nephews using some black and white film.
So with my Hasselblad in tow, I headed to a local park with my sister and nephews.
I decided on a park setting as I thought this would be enjoyable for them and ideally, I wanted to capture some photos of them having fun.
I wasn’t sure how successful this photo session would be since my nephews are used to having photos of them taken digitally which is a very quick process.
Obviously, my film format Hasselblad camera was going to take longer.
I recently acquired a Hasselblad Lens Shade for my 80mm lens on the advice I had received from a professional photographer who used this exact model camera back in the 1970s/80s. It’s a lens shade made for the Planar C and F lenses (which mine is) and is provided with a bayonet mount. There is an alignment dot which helps facilitate attachment to the lens.
The reason I decided to use a lens shade was because it was a very bright, sunny day so I thought it would help reduce sun glare and reflections. It also helps protect exposed lens surfaces.
To my surprise, my nephews were really good at staying still and posing for the photos. They were absolutely fascinated by the camera and quite enjoyed the experience.
Here are some photos I took using the Ilford Delta 400 black and white film:
After I had used up the roll of film, my nephews wanted more photos taken of them which was really lovely. Thankfully I’d also packed some Kodak 400TX film so used this too. Here are some of the photos I took:
Overall I was really pleased with how the photos turned out as I didn’t know what to expect. I think it helped that they really enjoyed me taking photos of them and it was a fun environment to photograph in.
I was thinking today about the satisfaction I’ve had recently in being able to produce silver gelatin prints in the darkroom for gifts.
Whilst I appreciate that it’s a very personal thing to decide what photos you would like on display in your home, I’ve only gifted a couple of photos so far, to people who I know would love them and would definitely have them on display.
The first silver gelatin print I gifted was to my friend Clive, who went away with me last year to Singapore when we watched the Formula 1 Grand Prix there.
It was an amazing trip away and I managed to take a nice photo of Singapore using the zoom lens on my Pentax K1000 camera and Kentmere 100 black and white film.
I really liked the photo when I got it developed and practiced printing it on silver gelatin paper at my second black and white photography course at Varndean college. Here is a scanned copy of the print I did using a 3.5 Contrast Filter:
Clive saw the photo and really liked it. He had recently moved houses and said how lovely that picture would look framed up in his home office.
I therefore mounted it using white card and framed it in a nice black frame and gave it to Clive and he was really happy with it. It also felt like a nice moving in gift to his new home.
The second photo I gifted was to my husband today as it’s his birthday.
He is actually quite a difficult person to buy gifts for since he never really wants anything and if he does, he just buys it himself.
In the past I’ve taken him away on holiday for his birthday but due to current work commitments, he cannot take any time off work in the near future so I knew I wouldn’t be able to do this for him at the moment.
In fact, I think I felt more sad for him than he did at going to work today.
A couple of weeks ago, I had been practicing portrait shots with him using my Hasselblad 500 C/M camera and some Rollei RPX 400 black and white film.
I particularly liked a picture I’d taken of him cuddling our dog so decided yesterday when I was in the darkroom to make an enlargement of it.
Early this morning before he got up for work, I placed the photo on the mantel piece in our living room for him to see.
I’m pleased to say he really loved it and left for work with a big smile on his face. That was a great feeling for me knowing how happy I’d made him and I knew that photo meant more to him than anything material I could have bought.
I attached a copy of the photo in the blog heading but here it is again:
I suppose it’s quite obvious that there will be differences in a photo from being scanned onto a computer compared to if you print a copy of it in the darkroom.
I really noticed a difference in the contrast in a couple of my photos this week that I’d originally scanned using my Epson V600 scanner and then developed copies in the darkroom.
These photos were taken using my Hasselblad 500 C/M Camera and Ilford Delta 400 film.
The first image was of a close up of a tombstone in the shape of a cross with a tree in the background. Here is the original image that I scanned on my Epson V600 scanner:
I didn’t tweak the original scan as I was happy with the original exposure. As you can see, it isn’t high in contrast and there are many subtle shades of grey which is what I would have expected from the Ilford Delta 400 film.
I’m not sure what I was expecting when I decided to print an enlargement in the darkroom but I was surprised by how different the contrast and tones were:
I cropped the photo slightly as I wanted more focus on the tombstone and tree and I felt the extra detail on the right hand side of more trees took attention away from this. The biggest difference I noted though was how much darker the trees and shadow detail were. Also, the grass, tombstones and background detail were left with really nice shades of grey.
I next decided to do an enlargement of a tree image I’d taken on the same roll of film with the sun shining through the trees. I was keen to see how this would look in a print. Here is the original photo I scanned on my Epson V600 scanner:
I made no amendments to this photo at the scanning stage as I was happy with the exposure. As before, the photo consists of various shades of grey with no real contrast.
Here is the same image which I printed in the darkroom:
Once again, I cropped the image, this time on the left hand side because I wanted more focus on the two big trees with the sun shining through. You’ll notice that the greys are much darker on this print compared to the original scan. I’ve also lost the grey detail from the sky which was in the original scan. This gives the image a lot more contrast.
I used Ilford chemicals to develop both prints and also Ilford Multigrade IV RC Deluxe Pearl 8×10 paper. I exposed both images for 1 minute and I didn’t use any contrast filters.
Personally I prefer the darkroom prints over the original scanned images. I’m very keen on contrast in my photos as I feel this adds to the dramatic effect I wanted to achieve in these particular images I took.
Perhaps I could have achieved this effect too on the scanner by changing the contrast but I am just surprised by how different they look in print.
I’m very grateful to have access to a darkroom and I get so much satisfaction in seeing my images almost come to life in print instead of just looking at them on the screen.
I’ve also enjoyed messing about cropping my images to see how different it can make my photo look.
Needless to say, there are many more prints that I now want to develop in the darkroom to see how different they look compared to my original scanned images.
Lastly, the darkroom prints have also been scanned onto the computer using my Epson V600 scanner and they look the same as the actual print.
I have now visited the Brighton Community Darkroom a couple of times since I joined and am slowly getting more familiar with the Durst DA 900 enlarger every time I use it.
Currently I’m managing to get there once a week and am spending approximately 4 hours there per session.
I was there yesterday afternoon and wanted to work on developing some prints from my 120mm black and white negatives that I took on my Lubitel 166B Camera.
There was a really nice beach shot I recently took on a stormy day in Brighton and the waves were crashing against the sea defence wall and there were some clouds in the sky.
I’m still very much at the learning/experimental stage of my darkroom work so accept the fact that without a tutor on hand (like during my black and white photography course) I’m going to probably make many mistakes and waste a lot of paper.
Yesterday was my first time enlarging a 120mm negative print on the Durst DA 900 enlarger as in previous sessions I had been making contact sheets.
I was slightly nervous if I was actually going to do it correctly. I had an initial introduction to the enlarger by one of the helpful members of the community darkroom but that was a few weeks back so I wasn’t sure what I’d remember.
Thankfully, as well as an actual manual on the enlarger, there were some helpful notes provided to me by Paul who is one of the community members and in the notes he provided his recommended combination of condenser and lens that he feels work best depending on the size negative I’m doing an enlargement from.
Rather than going by the manual recommendation, I used Paul’s guidelines since he has experience of using this particular enlarger.
I therefore used a Unicon 105 Condenser lens and 105mm enlarger lens for the 120mm (6cm by 6cm) negatives.
After doing an initial test strip, here is the print I did with the aperture moved down a couple of stops from the brightest aperture to f/8:
You’ll see that its quite dark and doesn’t have much contrast. I also was annoyed at the fact there were dust/hair marks on the photo, which I hadn’t noticed on the negative. I currently use a cheap plastic air blower but I’m seriously considering investing in the more powerful aerosol type of blower as I think that will do a better job of getting rid of unwanted hair/dust as I don’t think my current one works very well.
I decided from this initial print that I wanted more contrast in the photo and also to be lighter.
I had learnt about contrast filters at my college course and thankfully the community darkroom has the Ilford Multigrade filters that I can add to the condenser lens.
I decided to try a No 3 contrast filter and again, did a test strip. I also removed best I could with the equipment I currently have, any unwanted hair/dust on the negative.
Here is the print I did with an exposure of 40 seconds:
This photo is much brighter than the original one I did but I’ve also lost all the cloud detail.
I looked at my test strip again and decided to do another print with the same No 3 contrast filter and a slightly longer exposure time of 50 seconds:
This resulted in a slightly darker photo (as you would expect) but there still wasn’t much cloud definition.
I decided at this point that I perhaps didn’t want so much contrast so changed the contrast filter to No 2 and did another test strip. I did the following photo with an exposure of 80 seconds:
I was much happier with this photo in the fact it was lighter than the original one I did and that it had the cloud definition.
I wanted to next experiment with a No 2.5 contrast filter just to see the difference but I unfortunately ran out of time in my darkroom session so will have to try that next time.
Although the photos aren’t perfect yet, I’m really enjoying the whole process of experimenting and the trial and error.
I noticed on this final photo that more dust had managed to somehow get onto the negative which shows in certain areas of the photo so I really do need to find a way of making sure I can fully clean the negative. I do also wear white fabric gloves when handling the negatives to avoid finger marks.
I look forward to blogging more about my darkroom sessions as I learn more.
Natalie Smart Film Photography 