FP4 Party Week 3 and 4 - Show, Celebrate and Lament

Developing and scanning my negatives was fun and I have become more comfortable with my basic skills each time I develop another roll., but as always the proof is in the images. Week 3 of the FP4 Party is all about showing your images, week 4 is all about lamenting what went wrong and celebrating what went right. For me a lot went right.

Wasn't entirey happy with this composition, but I managed to get the exposure and focus reasoanbly decent.

And this is what happened when I missed by a mile

I was happy with most of my images, but using expired film that has been in the fridge for a long time can be a challenge. I kind of underestimated that challenge, but got lucky at the same time. The film photography community has always been filled with folks willing to share their knowledge, but now it has the added bonus of the internet to help novices like myself get that all important education and keep our wonderful art alive.I decided early on that I would keep my learning pretty tight and not get distracted by dozens of websites and possibly get the wrong advice. I must stress that what worked for me may not work for you, so always keep an open mind and be receptive to the great knowledge base the Film Photography community has built over the last 150 years.
There are many websites in the ether that have all kinds of advice and techniques for the budding film photographer, it can be quite overewhelming at times and have the opposite effect, holding back the unsuspecting chap wanting to learn. I was lucky to be directed towards a wonderful community on facebook, the "Negative Positives Film Photography Podcast" group, by Mac Macdonald after a chat with him on his you tube channel "Mac Shoots Film". The Negative Positives Film Photography Podcast is the brainchild of Mike Gutterman, from Louisville, Kentucky in the US. It was through listening to the podcast and joining the community that I heard about the FP4 Party and Em's wonderful Emulsive.org website. That conversation with Mac was the luck I needed to put me on the right path and give me the structure I needed to take my Film Photography forward.

Over exposure was a battle on the day

But when I got it right I was happy

The FP4 Party was a great way to learn both shooting expired film and getting my developing skills up to speed. I really enjoyed taking part and, whilst not everything was perfect, I have the knowledge to move forward with confidence. I made a couple of mistakes along the way and learned from them, but I also learned that I am not as green as I was in 2017 when I started my photography journey. I have the confidence to do something like this thanks to the excellent knowledge given to me by some fine folk, most of whom I have never met.

Huge thanks to Emmet from Emulsive.org for the FP4 Party, Mac from Mac Shoots Film for pointing me in the right direction and Mike, Andre and Roxanna from the Negative Positives Film Photography Podcast for ther enthusiasm and inspiration. You can find them by clicking the links below. Here are some more images, including a couple of not so great shots that made the FP4 Party an excellent educational experience. 

Emulsive - https://emulsive.org/
Mac Shoots Film - https://www.youtube.com/c/macshootsfilm
Negative Positives Podcast - https://anchor.fm/mikegutterman

My Olympus OM-2 needs new light seals

But still produced this banger on the same roll.

I like the contrast on this, but the clouds weren't right.

FP4Party Week 2 - Developing and Scanning Negatives

I spent week 2 of the FP4 Party developing and scanning my negatives in readiness for week 3 when I get to share some of my images. I have some decent shots, and some howlers too, that have taught me a lot about using and developing expired black and white film. It was fun to do and also gave me a chance to experiment with the scanning process using things I have to hand. My DSLR, some accessories, and a cheap negative and slide scanner you can buy for pennies on ebay.

Developing film is something I have not done for around 30 years. I tried it when I was still in my teens, but managed to splash a small amount on my arm and had a bad reaction to it. Dermatitis isn't fun, so I never bothered again until recently. I set my self 2 goals for 2020 and one of them was to develop my own film.

I had my first attempt at the turn of the year with an Ilford Simplicity starter pack that was designed to develop 2 rolls of 35mm film. I followed the instructions Ilford provide on their website and took some time to get the temperatures right to give me a decent chance of success. My first 2 rolls were Kentmere 100 I had used between christmas and new year and I soon learned how fiddly it is to load exposed film onto a developing spiral in a dark bag. They key was taking my time, there's no need to rush each step. With care and a fair bit of concentration I soon had the films loaded onto the spirals and in the light tight developing tank. I also took my time mixing the chemicals for developing. It's important to use jugs that will not be used for anything else. You don't want to fill your kettle with a jug that has chemical residue in and I also made sure i clearly marked each one so I would not get the chemical order mixed up. Once that was done it's an easy task to agitate the tank by turning and tumbling it for 10 seconds every minute and used my mobile phone as a timer. Following the steps is easy, but I was nervous as hell doing the developing, stop bath and fix in order. It was only during the final wash that I could take a peek at my negatives and see the results. Success! I had images. It didnt take long to hang them in the bathroom to dry.

Now I was confident, I bought some Ilfosol 3, stop bath and fix from Ilford and cracked on with develping my FP4. I had asked for advice on using expired film from the good folks on the Negative Positives Film Photography Podcast facebook group and shot 2 rolls at 100 asa and 2 at box speed, 125 asa. I developed the film as per Ilfords instructions and developed the 100 asa and the 125 asa seperately from each other. Again, I was successful and after allowing my film to dry thoroughly, I set about the task of scanning them using my DSLR and my Ion Slide and Negative scanner.

I used my Nikon D90, a Nikkor 50mm f1.8 and some extension tubes for the camera set up. Extension tubes can be found for a reasonable price if you’re patient. I used a white image on my mobile phone as a light box with a piece of white opaque plastic to diffuse the light. I put my D90 on my tripod and used the negative carrier from my Ion brand negative and slide scanner. I wanted to have a bit of fun to see how it all works and find out what was going to be better, the cheap scanner or the expensive DSLR.

I set up my camera on my tripod, (it helps that I have an L Bracket and can easily switch between portrait or landscape), chose a strip of negatives I had developed a few days earlier and put them in the carrier. I chose one to use as my test subject and placed it on my makeshift light box. The Nikkor 50mm with extension tubes between it and my camera looked odd, but did provide a clear image of my negative once I had found the focus point. This involved raising and lowering the centre column on my tripod and was a bit fiddly to get right even with a handle to wind the centre column up and down. It’s one of the joys of discovery that teaches us how to do this kind of thing with what we have to hand.

To be fair to the DSLR method, I don't have a macro lens and was using a bit of a frankenstein set up, but it did work. I was able to capture a 12 megapixel image with my DSLR that I was reasonably happy with. To reverse the negative I used Adobe Photoshop Express, a free bit of software from Adobe I found in the windows store. Considering Adobe software is expensive compared to it’s closest rivals, this freebie is a welcome addition for times like this when I need a quick process that will give me a good result. A couple of clicks and a few adjustments later I had an Image I could use. It's never going to be the fastest method for the novice, it takes a lot of fiddling around to get it just right, but I will persevere with it. It’s one of the joys of learning a new skill.

My Ion negative scanner that cost me pennies on ebay is quick, easy to use. It is plug in and play tech, it has carriers for 35mm negatives and slides and has a simple interface you can play around with to adjust brightness and colours. It is basic, no nonsense tech that does exactly what it was designed to do. The built in software is a tad limited, but it gets the job done and gives you a 5 megapixel image suitable for posting on social media or printing up to A4 size with a decent level of quality. Neither will ever replace the awesomeness of the Fuji Frontier S3000 scanner at my local Max Spielmann photo store, but for the person who likes to develop their own film at home, the capability to scan your negatives into your computer is something we can all do.

There are of course other ways you can scan your negatives. Many folks use a flat bed scanner with a negative carrier supplied with it to scan their 35mm and 120 negatives. Epson and Canon seem to be the favoured items and come with Vue Scan software to reverse your negatives and get your images looking their best. There is also software called Negative Lab Pro that gives you the capability to adjust the scan and get your image looking great as a positive image with similar quality to scanning equipment found in Photo Labs. It’s not cheap at around £100, but it does get regular updates from the good folks who designed it and continue to improve it. I’m told by folks who bought it that Negative Lab Pro is worth every penny.

Also available are high quality scanners from Nikon, Pakon and Optek that cost around the same as a flat bed scanner, both new or used. These will produce high quality scans of your negatives, but it is old tech. You will need a computer that runs on Windows XP, which does make your old tower, probably sat unloved in the cupboard under the stairs, useful again. It is a sad fact of film photography that once high tech solutions are now old hat and becoming rare. The advantage is you are recycling perfectly useable electronics and delaying their eventual deposition into landfill or rubbish tips around the world. Solid State Drives are also breathing new life into old and unloved computers and speeding them up. If you don’t fancy using Windows XP, Ubuntu Linux can be loaded onto an old windows pc and use emulator software to run your old windows programmes. Happy days!

As I said earlier, the best scanners are the ones in your local photo lab, my local Max Spielmann Photo Store has a Fuji Frontier 3000 that has been scanning my colour film since I came back to film photography in 2017. If you ask nicely, most labs will scan your negatives onto a disc or a USB drive for a reasonable price, and that is what it ll boils down to really. How much are you willing to spend to be able to digitally edit and print your images? It can be as little as a few pounds or as much as a thousand for the satisfaction of learning a new skill and truly making your favourite images all your own work. Here are a few images from the FP4Party I developed and scanned at home, I hope you enjoy them as much as I enjoyed creating them.

Ion Slide and Negative Scanner

Scanned with Slide and Negative Scanner

Scanned with the DSLR

Nikon D90 and Macro Tubes

Scanned with Ion Scanner

Scanned with Ion Scanner

Scanned with Ion Scanner

Scanned with Ion Scanner

Scanned with Ion Scanner

FP4 Party 2020

Now that I have a fair bit of my back story sorted, let's jump to the present and talk about my current film photography activities. You didn't think my jump to digital would see me abandon the joys of film, did you? Of course it hasn't, I enjoy film more than ever and a recent event has given me an excuse to use some of my camera's all at the same time. It has been sheer, unfettered Bliss! Read on....

For the last few years the film photography community has been having a bit of fun courtesy of Emmet Brown, proprietor of the excellent film photography website https://emulsive.org/ and friends who have been encouraging the film community to get out and about with a series of “Parties” through the year. The idea behind these parties is that a film is chosen for everyone to use, dates are set and we get on with it. It’s all designed to be fun and encourages us to experiment and learn the capabilities of the chosen film stock in the camera’s we own. One of those parties is the FP4 Party to get folks using Ilford FP4 Plus 125 black and white film. I was recently given some Ilford FP4 that expired in 2003 and it was the perfect opportunity to use some and learn about developing my own black and white film at home.

Week one of the FP4 Party is photography week and I loaded my trusty Pentax SP500 SLR and my Olympus 35RC rangefinder with a roll of Ilford FP4 in each. I got some welcome advice from the good folks on the Negative Positives Film Photography Podcast group on facebook about using expired film and, in the spirit of experimentation and learning, I set the film speed on my Pentax to 100 and on my 35RC to the film’s box speed, 125. This would hopefully give me a bit of latitude during developing and give me a definitive answer to the question of whether the film had been stored correctly before it came to me. All I needed was a break in the weather.

The weather here in the UK for the first 2 months of 2020 has been pretty horrendous with three major storms battering the country with gale force winds and very heavy rain. Flooding has been a big problem and the reports on the TV of people having to clean up after their houses were flooded, destroying furniture and sometimes treasured belongings, were shown around the world. Fortunately for the FP4 Party, the first week in March saw calmer weather and a couple of dry days enabling me to get out to shoot FP4.

I didn’t want to head too far from home for my first outing just in case the rain came back and took a gentle stroll along a local farm road. It is a place I enjoy as there are plenty of nature trails either side of the road to explore and folks walk their dogs along it every day. I was soon taking photos, exploring texture and contrast with both my camera’s.

My Olympus 35RC has a fixed 42mm f2.8 lens and a bright rangefinder that can be tricky to use in bright sunshine. It also has a shutter priority setting that chooses the right aperture for the speed you choose on the camera. I chose a shutter speed of 1/60th that hopefully would eliminate camera shake.

I fitted my Pentax with a Carl Zeiss Jena 135mm f3.5 lens that I haven’t used for a while. It has a sweet spot at around f5.6-f8 that would give me a short enough shutter speed to stop camera shake and not have to shoot with the lens wide open at f3.5. I wasn’t hunting bokeh on this day but it’s nice when it finds you.

I hadn’t walked far before I had used up both films, the afternoon sunshine gave me plenty of contrast to explore and the log rails at the side of the road gave me lots of textures too. There was also a few signs along the road and I thought what the heck and photographed them too. A productive hour went by quickly and I was soon back home and unloading my camera’s.

A couple of days later the weather was nice again and I decided to use a different camera for my next 2 rolls to get a better idea of the differences between the two speeds. Wigan Park has long been my favourite location in town for testing gear out and, with the weather on my side again, I headed there with my Olympus OM-2.

Looming large near Wigan Park is the derelict Pagefield Mill. Once a hive of activity weaving cloth for export around the world, it was repurposed as the Construction and Engineering campus of Wigan and Leigh College for many years until a new building was opened nearby. Maintenance costs and the need to remove asbestos from the building was more expensive than a new building and soon after moving out, Pagefield Mill was sold off to Property Developers who planned to convert it into apartments. That was 20 years ago and the once busy site has been gradually decaying and hit by vandalism ever since.

I attended Wigan and Leigh College when it was housed in the Mill and have fond memories from that time. Seeing the place derelict and unloved saddens me and I wanted to capture a few images of it before it’s inevitable demolition at some point in the future. It is a protected building, but the current owners are content to let it rot so they can pull it down and sell the land for a tidy profit.

I shot the second roll around the park, the statue of Baron Sir Francis Sharp Powell and the Boer War memorial have seen me many times since 2017 when I took my first step back into film photography. I have probably covered all the best angles in that time, but I never tire of them and continue to explore them and try to learn something new each time. A fine afternoon soon went by and I headed home to have a much needed cup of tea and make sure I had all I needed for the next phase of the FP4 Party, week 2 – develop my film!

Next week I talk about learning the black and white film developing process, until then here are a few images from my FP4 Party films, I hope you enjoy them.

The Jump To Digital

I was having a lot of fun shooting film again after many years, my decision to go back to basics and learn the shutter triangle was a good one. I had been fortunate enough to have a plentiful supply of Agfa Vista 200 colour film courtesy of a local discount store, but I knew it wouldn't last forever. I wasn't the only one buying it, but I didn't want to be greedy, so I bought 10 at a time. I also knew a decision was going to be made sooner than I thought. Owen was gently pushing me towards a DSLR and the hunt for a decent one for not a lot of cash was on.

When I began my Photography Journey, i bought my Pentax camera's from ebay, so I went there to see what was available and the price range for various DSLR's. I soon realised that I didn't have a clue what to look out for as most ebay sales are short on detail. Here's where you tube came in handy again as I expanded my search. I had a lot to consider, did I want an APS-C or Crop Sensor camera or did I want Full Frame? Did I want Video and if so, HD or not? I soon learned that up to date camera's were out of my meager price range, I would have to choose something older. After a lot of thought and a few pointers from owen I found Ken Rockwell's website.

Ken is noted amongst the photogrphy world as having a website that gives honest appraisals of the various Nikon camera's he has owned over the years. It's rather extensive too. He has owned just about every Nikon DSLR, yet preferred, at the time I was looking, a Nikon D60. After checking the D60 out, I decided it wasn't for me. What had caught my eye was a Nikon D90.

First put on sale in 2008, the Nikon D90 was the first DSLR to capture 720p HD Video, but that wasn'r what attracted me to it. I was drawn by it's 12.3 megapixel crop sensor and the huge selection of lenses that would take advantage of those pixels to provide decent images. It was also within my budget.

After a couple of weeks of searching and a few disappointments on ebay, I happened upon the Wex Photo Video website. Based in Norwich, but with stores around the country, Wex is one of the few photography retailers to thrive in the digital world. I also discovered they have a healthy used items section where they sell trade in's they have taken in. I found a Nikon D90 there with a low shutter count, a clean and undamaged sensor, a 12 month warranty and it was within budget. I would have to use an adapted lens until I had enough money for a lens to fit it, but that gave me a chance to learn to use it with my growing collection of Tamron Adaptall 2 Lenses. I pulled the trigger, bought it and a few days later it arrived.

Wex gave a good description of the camera, but some of the marks they noted were bloody tiny. I reckon I got a good deal and left them a bit of good feedback as a thank you. The Nikon D90 is a mid range camera, lightweight yet able to produce great images either in RAW, Jpeg or both. At maximum resolution it can produce an image you can happily enlarge to A3 and above without losing too much detail or sharpness. I fitted my Tamron 28mm wide angle lens and began learning how to use my Nikon D90 in manual.
 

The one true advantage the DSLR has over it's cousin the SLR is you can keep taking shots until you get it right as opposed to having to think and getting your shot right first time in an SLR. Having spent the first few months of 2017 shooting film, it certainly helped me to decypher the various fucntions and features that I could use on my D90 and nail a shot first time in short order. I have several folders on my PC entitled Test Shots For Learning that are full of my experiments and excercises as I learned my way around my D90. Owen was kind enough to give some suggestions for things to try out as I was getting up to speed. I looked at form, texture, contrast and macro with extension tubes I picked up for pennies off ebay. Above all else, it was fun to learn a new system and expand my knowledge.

My previous experience with Digital was all irrelevant when i bought my D90. Point and shoot is just that, point and shoot. A DSLR was a revelation in creativity for me, but I made a big mistake at this point in my journey. I jumped way ahead of myself too quickly without understanding where it all fitted and I was tripping myself up. I had the tools to achieve the goal of becoming a published photo journalist in the future, but I had a lot of learning ahead of me to get it structured and to reset my brain to get used to using two forms of photography that were years apart, but linked at the most basic level. I also realised it was time to get some professional tuition. Owen pointed me gently in the direction of Mr Mike Browne and I will talk about that next time. Here's a few images I took with my D90 as I got to grips with it.

Nikon D90

My faithful hound, Charlie

Monkey!

Gladioli

Gladioli

Banger of a sunset

Flash Photography - Harder Than It Looks....

As I became more comfortable with using my Pentax Camera's I knew I would be in need of a flash at some point in my photography journey. Having no experience with on camera flash apart from my point and shoot Fuji A700, this was going to be another steep learning curve. Flash Guns can be expensive items, as I soon found out when I saw some eye watering prices for dedicated speedlights the manufacturers say perform best with their camera's. I knew there was a healthy market for 3rd party, or aftermarket items for a fraction of the price of native equipment, so I went hunting on you tube.

You Tube is a great resource for getting informative reviews on the things we need, but you have to be prepared to sort the wheat from the chaff. There is a multitude of you tubers giving their thoughts on why you should buy the products they're talking about and you soon get to know the ones to trust for an honest appraisal. I watched quite a few before I narrowed my list down to a couple of candidates and checked out their specifications.

I wanted something universal that I could use on any camera's I bought in the future and I wanted a decent amount of control over the power and speed of the flash. This had me looking at a speedlight rather than a simple, single power flash that would be more at home on a compact camera. My price range wasn't a lot of cash, but also wasn't going to be stupidly cheap either. One item started rising to the top at a reasonable price, a Neewer NW-561 for around £35. I checked my piggy bank and ordered one.

When it arrived I was pleasantly surprised by the build quality, things mass produced in China often get a bad reputation with empirical evidence to prove it deserves one. Not the Neewer, it came well packaged with some concise instructions and I set about learning how to use it. The Neewer NW-561 is a fixed 35mm flash, which made it ideal for my 35mm camera's and one less thing to worry about. (until I acquired a Nikon SB-24 that has a zoom capability to tighten or broaden the flash beam, but that's for a future blog). I had also purchased a cold-hotshoe adapter as my Pentax camera's, being the budget spotmatics, did not have one built into them.

To be fair it didn't take me long to get used to the weight of the flash on my camera, it felt nicely balanced despite looking like a house brick. The flash came with a diffuser and also has a reflector card and wide angle diffuser built into it.The instruction booklet has some basic tips on how to use it, setting the flash interval, using the built in diffuser and reflector card and was ok to get me started. I also watched several you tube tutorial video's on flash photography to get me up to a reasonable level to use whilst out and about. The sharp eyed amongst you will have noticed some of my images in my previous blog about the NABD were taken with this flash. It really does pack a hefty burst of light and I soon learned, with help from my dear friend Mike, the art of bouncing the light off the ceiling.

I have used this flash many times since I bought it in 2017, it has been very reliable and I have become comfortable with using it. I'm not at pro level yet, but I can instinctively guage a room, or a marquee and set my speedlight up and take reasonable images. Flash photography was once a bit of a mystery to me, but the sheer plethora of situations in which it can be used to improve your compositions makes it a must have item in your kit. Here's a few of my early images taken at an event in 2017 called The Big Barn Rally. I hope you enjoy them.