Back in March after initially trying out the Metropolis film in my Hasselblad, I decided to test out the 35mm version in my Olympus Trip 35 Camera.
I took the photos whilst having a walk along Brighton seafront. It was an overcast day which I think helped the effect of this particular type of film and the film was shot at ISO 400.
Here are some of my favourite photos that I took on this film:
Back in February, I went for a walk on a sunny Sunday afternoon with my Husband and my dog, Daisy along Brighton beach. I decided to take my Hasselblad 500 c/m camera with me on this walk and the Metropolis film as I wanted to see if the film would still have that dark, steely edge when used in bright sunshine.
I shot the film at 400 ISO. Looking back, I think it would have been interesting to try a 100 or 200 ISO on such a sunny day so I may try that next time. There were clouds in the sky and I wonder if that is why I decided to shoot this film again on a 400 ISO.
It’s taken me a long time to post this blog as I put the film in for development with my local lab literally a few days before we went into lockdown in the UK and my local lab didn’t re-open until July.
Although I picked the film up several weeks ago, due to busy work commitments, I hadn’t got around to scanning the film on my Epson V600 scanner until now.
Here are the results:
Here are a couple I managed to take of my husband and Daisy:
I love these two photos of my husband and Daisy playing on the beach:
Here is one of Daisy:
During the winter months, my husband and I sometimes like to stop at this fish place along the beach for lunch and have a nice warm fish chowder soup with some bread.
One mistake I sometimes make with the Hasselblad is I wind the film on when I’m not ready to take my next photo. The camera then will face the floor when hung on the strap around my shoulder and what can happen is that the shutter will accidentally press against my leg when walking and go off. Here is a prime example of this happening and wasting a photo of my precious 12 roll film. I’m hoping I will stop doing this going forward! Here is the result of me doing that on this walk:
I still felt the photos had the gritty, street feel, even on a sunny day. It would definitely be interesting to use this film on some architecture. Perhaps I need to arrange another visit to the Barbican Centre and try out a roll of this film there. I’ve not yet been to London since COVID-19 happened and I don’t currently have any plans to visit anytime soon.
For the second roll of film that I tried out in the Leica M6 TTL, I decided to use the Lomochrome Purple 35mm.
In the past, I’ve really liked the effects of this film so was keen to see what it would look like when taken on the Leica camera.
I initially went down to the local Pavilion area in Brighton where I took these shots:
After taking a couple of the Pavilion, which in my opinion, were rather limited with the amount of the building I could fit in due to the fact I was using the 50mm Summicron Lens, I decided to take some photos of the local plants since I knew the green works quite well with this film:
I still think at this point, there was room for improvement on my focusing of this camera, however, I was quite impressed with the detail of the following photo I took:
I then walked back home along the seafront and took some beach/wave shots:
I was keen to get this film developed asap so decided to use the remainder of the film up in my garden. I was quite drawn to the table and chairs at the back of my garden so took a photo of those:
My cat Robinson loves a lot of attention from me when I’m at home so he came out into the garden and I took a couple of photos of him:
Again, I wouldn’t say the focusing on these two photos was particularly great but there are some nice purple tones in them.
Whilst there were some fun shots taken from this film, I knew that I needed to try out some ‘normal’ style films out in this Leica camera.
I questioned whether I should leave the LomoChrome Purple effect film for my Lomography camera’s rather then use them in my Leica.
Therefore at this stage, I still didn’t feel I had seen the full potential of what this Leica Camera could do.
This made me excited about what film to use next and see what the results would be like which I shall blog about next week.
Until then, stay safe everyone.
I had been really excited to use this film since receiving the 5 x 120 rolls from the Lomography Kickstarter campaign that I had backed.
On New Year’s day, I went on a photography walk with my friend Keiko along Brighton beach. Here are a couple of photos I took of her using the Metropolis film:
These were the first two photos I had taken and also scanned and I was quite impressed with the tones of the photos. It really did give that darker edge that I was hoping for from this film.
There were some people on Brighton beach new years day swimming etc and I took a couple of shots of the fun they were having:
Once again I really liked the tone of image this film produces. I had wanted it to look like a cold winter’s day on the beach and this film certainly achieved that look.
I was desperate to get a shot of the West Pier in Brighton as I thought that would look quite effective on this film and here is the result:
Although my Hasselblad only has 12 shots, I didn’t manage to use up the whole of the film on New Year’s Day.
Over the following week, I went to my local cemetery (where anybody who has followed my blog for a while, knows this is my favourite go to place when testing out new film/camera’s) and took the remainder of the photos there:
You’ll see from the cemetery photos that they were taken on a sunny day. However, the film has managed to retain the cool tones it is known for.
All of the photos were shot at ISO 400 and also developed at this ISO too.
Overall, I was very impressed with this film. It had the tones that I quite like and I can imagine this would look great when taking architectural shots or for street photography.
I’m really looking forward to trying out some more of this film in my Hasselblad and since I’ve really liked the photos it produces, I’m also going to purchase some 35mm format of this film to see how it works in my 35mm camera’s.
I was quite excited to recently receive my order of the 120 LomoChrome Purple film that I had pre-ordered late last year when Lomography announced they were re-doing the film.
I knew the film had previously worked well in Hove Cemetery when I had used the 35mm version so that’s where I wanted to try out this film. I decided to try it when it was a bright sunny day and I used my Lens Shade to hopefully avoid sun glare.
I wanted quite a vivid purple so shot the film at 400 ISO and here are some of the results:
I also tried out my prism filter to add to the fun of this film:
I already knew from previously trying out this film that the reds remain red and I found a couple of areas in the cemetery which had red flowers/berries:
The above two photos were taken towards the end of the roll of film and I noticed some areas of sun glare even though I had the lens shade on.
In the end I figured there may have been a slight fault with the actual film as the last photo below showed the backing paper marks on the film:
I bought these films as a batch of five so I’m really hoping the others don’t have similar problems like this.
I know next time I need to try this film out on a different subject matter since in the past year, I’ve taken so many purple shots on different camera’s at this cemetery.
I was also not as impressed as I thought I would be at using the Hasselblad with this film. I thought the photos were going to be extremely crisp and detailed.
I won’t deny that there is some slight crisp detail from using this camera but not as crisp as I get in my black and white films and I can only put this down to the fact it’s varied shades of purple perhaps softens the photos.
These photos were taken handheld so I do think it would be interesting to try this film out next using a tripod and seeing if that makes much difference.
I recently purchased a triple pack of Lomography Redscale 120mm film for £5.00 which had expired back in 2012.
I’ve shot redscale film on my 35mm film camera’s before but thought it would be fun to test out on my Lubitel 166B camera during the daytime.
Here are some photos I took using a roll of the film:
The rescale wasn’t as ‘red’ as I thought it was going to be but I wonder if that was because the film was several years old. Instead, I thought the pictures had more of a Sepia tone to them. I also note that the film states to have an ISO of 200 for super-intense red and orange colours and ISO 25 if you want to mix additional tones of blue and green to the image. The Lubitel doesn’t have a light meter but from my previous use of the camera and the weather we have in the UK in the winter, I tend to shoot the Lubitel with a shutter speed of 1/125s and an aperture between f/5.6 and f/8.
Either way, I think the Sepia tone works quite well with the garden images I took.
This camera was a bit of an impulse buy because Lomography had slashed 50% off the normal retail price on a random Monday several weeks back so it cost me £24.50 rather than the usual £49.00.
Although my Diana F+ camera has a pinhole shooting option, I was drawn to this camera because of the different colour filters it comes with so thought it would be a fun camera to try out.
Also, I had never tried out pinhole photography before so thought this would be a good starting point.
I really like the yellow colour of the camera and it is plastic and lightweight like the Diana F+. It also takes 120mm film as it’s designed to be shot in medium format. However, there are two frames provided with the camera to take 16 small square shots (4.2×4.2cm) and endless panorama (4.6×4.6cm) both on a 16 shot setting instead of the normal 12 shots if you didn’t use the frames.
The camera is fully manual so there is no lens or shutter. You can select how many pinholes you want by moving the switch under the front barrel. You can choose between one, two or three pinholes.
To take a photo, you need to open the pinholes and close them when enough light has gone onto the negative using the switch on the left of the barrel. You push the switch down to let light in and up to stop the light from coming in.
Lomography recommend that you use a tripod if you want to avoid blurry images. There is also an option to attach a flash (although this wasn’t included with the camera).
I was very excited about testing out this camera and have a flimsy travel tripod which is fine for such a light camera as this.
Out of all the filters provided, I only really like the orange and pink ones the most as the other colour combinations don’t really appeal to me that much. There are three filters that are designed for the two pinhole option and three filters that are designed for the three pinhole option.
I decided that I was going to test this camera out on the beach opposite where I live. Unfortunately I hadn’t really thought about the fact it was a very windy day and since the camera and tripod I was using were so light, it did have a tendency to blow about.
Also, the colour filters are very small and flimsy. Lomography recommend storing the filters in a 35mm film canister and even provide little round stickers to label it.
However, when using the camera for the first time, I took out the original packaging with me and as I was taking out the filters on the windy beach, two of the filters flew out of the packaging (aaaarrrrhhh!).
Searching for them amongst the pebbles was literally like looking for a needle in a haystack. After searching the surrounding area for approx 20 minutes, I never found those two filters and had to admit defeat which was extremely frustrating.
On the plus side the two filters I lost were of colours that I didn’t really like so would probably never really used them anyway. However, I was still annoyed that my camera was no longer a complete set, especially on it’s first use!
I used the Lomography Colour 400 Iso 120mm film in the camera.
I tried to keep the tripod as still as possible to avoid as much blur as I could. Here is a photo I took on the one pinhole option with no filters:
 Here are some photos I took using the colour filters which are best used with the two pinhole option, again using a tripod:
Finally, here are the photos I took using the three pinhole option on the camera with the colour filters:
Overall, I think the photos are quite fun and I like the colours. I prefer the three pinhole option the most because I think the colours on the filters blend better together.
Sadly, as I found this camera quite fiddly and time consuming to use, it isn’t a camera that I’ll use regularly. It will be used as and when I have specific artistic style photography shoots in mind.
In view of this, I think £49.00 would have been too much for me to pay for the camera. Although at £24.50 I think that price was reasonable for how many times I’ll use this camera in a year.
Here is a link to where you can purchase the camera online in the UK:
https://shop.lomography.com/en/cameras/pinhole-cameras/diana-multi-pinhole-operator
Following on from my recent blog about using the Lubitel 166B camera for the first time and after being quite impressed with the photos I took with some colour 120mm film, I knew I wanted to try out some black and white film in the camera.
I had some Lomography Lady Grey 400 120mm black and white film in my stash so promptly loaded the camera with it and had a walk along Brighton Beach.
I’m still getting used to the camera so there were again some wonky photos but that aside, I was really impressed with the overall style of the black and white photos that the camera produced.
Here are some of the photos I took and you can judge for yourselves:
I’m definitely going to be shooting more black and white film with this camera, perhaps with some different makes of film to see the difference in the photos.
I recently did an interview with Lomography which has now been published in their online magazine about the Highgate Cemetery Workshop I attended in October.
Check out the interview and photos here.
I recently became aware of the Lubitel range of cameras when I arranged for my husband, a couple of friends and myself to go on a photography workshop with Lomography in London.
We were to choose one of their range of cameras for the workshop which, involved an evening of wondering around Soho for a couple of hours taking night time shots with one of their loaned cameras.
We had to decide on which camera’s we would like to try beforehand so they could make sure it was available at the workshop. I therefore showed my husband the range of camera’s on the Lomography website and he decided that he liked the look of their Lubitel 166+ camera.
I asked him what he liked about it over the other cameras and he said he liked the fact it was a medium format camera using 120mm film (as he likes the square photos) and that you have to look down into the viewfinder rather than a standard camera that you put up to your eye. He also liked the fact it had two lenses rather than one and just the general box style of it.
I had never been particularly interested in this style of camera before. However, the more I researched it, the more fascinated I was by it.
When I booked the workshop, Lomography informed me that they may not have a spare Lubitel 166+ camera for my husband to try as they had already loaned one out and wasn’t sure if it would be back in the shop in time for the workshop.
I thought this would be a shame since he seemed so keen on trying it out so I thought about buying him one as a surprise so he would have his own to keep instead.
However, I wasn’t prepared to pay £289.00! I therefore began the hunt of finding a second hand cheaper one….
I quickly discovered that the actual Lomography 166+ Camera doesn’t seem to come up for sale second hand that often. There was one on eBay for £40 but it didn’t have it’s original box or any of the accessories that it would have originally come with. It also wasn’t in great condition with marks on the paintwork.
I knew from my research that this camera was based on the original Lomo Russian Lubitel camera and quickly found that various models of the original Lubitel camera are for sale in abundance second hand and at a price that doesn’t break the bank.
I quickly decided that I would like to buy him the Lubitel 166B model since it was a bit more simplified than the earlier models, plus it is easy to do multiple exposures if you wanted to because you have to wind the film on manually with this particular model.
Ideally I wanted to buy one that had the original box, instruction manual and accessories. A few complete ones I found on eBay in great condition unfortunately also came with a higher asking price of £60-£80 plus.
As luck would have it, I ended up purchasing one completely boxed in mint working condition (looked like it had hardly ever been used) with the original box, a film winding spool, soft case, lens cap, neck strap (still in packet!), english instruction manual and cable release from a guy in Littlehampton, which had recently been listed on Etsy for £34.50. What was even more lovely was that the date of manufacture is handwritten on the back of the instruction manual (February 1986):
So I attended the Lomography Workshop and fortunately they were able to loan my husband the Lubitel 166+ camera. Since he isn’t that familiar with film camera’s, it quickly became clear that he had picked a rather complex camera to try out since it doesn’t have a built in light meter and the way of winding the film on in this camera and how to point and shoot it was extremely unusual to him.
On this particular evening in London, there was a constant heavy down pour of rain throughout the whole evening and we got completely drenched. It meant that it was very difficult for any of us to try and take decent photos outside and I found myself constantly apologising to my friends and husband for dragging them all they way from Brighton on the train (which had engineering works so was a long journey each way) to an event that none of us were really enjoying due to the bad weather.
What made things worse is that within 5-10 minutes of us leaving the Lomography shop to take our photos, it became clear that there seemed to be a fault with the Lubitel 166+ camera my husband was trying to use and it just didn’t seem to wind on properly and we weren’t sure if any of it was actually working at all. By this point we had lost the leader of the lomography workshop and was doing our own thing until it was time to return back to the shop and hand back our loan cameras and the films to be developed.
The following week, once our films had been developed by Lomography, we discovered that the Lubitel 166+ hadn’t produced any photos whatsoever and the roll came back blank so the camera hadn’t worked at all which was a shame.
This in turn, put my husband off completely using this style of camera. I then had to break the news to him that I had actually treated him to a version of one and as you can imagine, he wasn’t very excited by this.
So the camera arrived in the post and since I knew my husband wouldn’t be using it anytime soon I decided I would try it out for myself.
I managed to pick up a copy of the ‘Lubitel+ Love from the waist level’ book by Lomography cheaply on eBay (since Lomography have currently sold out of this book) and after reading that (which I really enjoyed) and watching various youtube videos and reading the actual Lubitel 166B instruction manual, I took the camera out to play and test that it actually worked.
As mentioned before, it doesn’t have a built in light meter and the photos I took was on a cloudy day. I was using Lomography Colour ISO 400 120mm film in the camera and rather than use a light meter, I went by my gut and my experience from using my Pentax K1000 camera and shot the film at aperture f/8 with a shutter speed of 1/125.
After my husband’s experience with the camera in London, I was quite nervous about getting the photos developed as I wasn’t sure I had done anything right on the camera and if there would be any photos. The main reason for this is because the shutter button releases so fast when pressed that it almost doesn’t feel like the camera has taken an actual photo.
Yesterday, I picked up the negatives from Colourstream in Brighton and thankfully there were photos…..11 in total! I knew I had missed a frame because I accidentally wound the camera on over one frame in error and couldn’t figure out how to wind it back.
Here are the photos:
To be honest, I wasn’t sure what to expect which in my opinion is part of the fun of film photography.
However, I am quite impressed by the colours and detail in these photos! I really love the overall feel and style of photo that the camera produces. The last image is a double exposure as I wanted to see how that would look but I chose a tree and a bush to photograph which seem to merge so it may be difficult to tell that it’s actually a double exposure.
I really love this camera which I’m quite surprised at. I’ve much to learn still as some of the photos are wonky because I’m not used to shooting a camera ‘from the hip’ so to speak so I’m currently working out the best way of holding the camera to keep the image as straight as possible without having to use a tripod.
I feel this camera actually suits my style of photography because it is a slow camera. By that I mean that you have to take your time in taking a photograph as it’s not easy to point and shoot. You have to really work on getting the photo as you want it in the viewfinder and it shows as a reversed image which I’m actually fine with but I can imagine some people may find that quite tricky to work with if they want absolute precision of an image. As I work quite artistically with my photography, there is give in my style of photos so they don’t have to be 100% accurate to what I’m actually seeing.
A lot of my photos tend to be of still objects so I can patiently take my time perfecting the shot to how I want it to be. I would imagine in other fields of photography such as street photography that this camera would be an absolute nightmare to use because I would imagine the moment would have passed in the time it would have taken to line up the shot, get the exposure correct and distance etc.
I also need to work on the distance scale. From my first attempt, I couldn’t seem to see the focus in the viewfinder making any difference if I changed the lens from 1 metre to infinity. Apparently from what I’ve read the camera has a well know flaw for this and most people just tend to shoot with it on infinity.
You’ll see that some of my photos do seem out of focus so I’m hoping as I use the camera more, I’ll become more accurate with the focusing and if not, then perhaps I’ll just have to see that as being a fun quirk of the camera!
Now I know it can take photos, I’m going to be using it a lot to learn more about how it works. This camera is also quite light weight as I suppose it is cheap and cheerful in comparison to better made TLR’s but I actually like that because it is easy for me to walk around with it.
I look forward to blogging further about this camera as and when I take more photos with it.
I’m also hoping that when I show my husband the photos, it may encourage him to try it out again.
Natalie Smart Film Photography 