Frugal Film Project 2022 - August

 For my August roll of Ilford HP5 I wanted a change from my local area. I enjoy taking photos in the town I call home, but with it being the summer holidays my wife and I had a chance to go for a day out with our Grandsons. It's tough to choose a place to keep a 5 and 10 year old entertained, but in Manchester there is the Museum of Science and Industry. You might think looking at old machines wasn't really kids stuff, but many of the exhibits have interactive features and there's a dedicated area where everyone is encouraged to try everything out, even old farts like me.

Getting to Manchester from Wigan is easy as there are regular train services between the two and a mid morning train soon had us transported to Manchester. It's a short walk from the train station to the museum and, thanks to booking in advance, we didn't have to wait outside. The tickets are free so it made sense to get some.

The Museum Of Science And Industry has beeen going through a multi million pound refurbishment over the last few years. The pandemic delayed the works by a year or two so not all of the exhibits are open yet, but there's enough to keep visitors engaged in Manchester's role in the Industrial Revolution.

Manchester has been a hotbed of science and engineering for a couple of centuries. Machinery that once worked in the many textile mills in the city were on display alongside some of the machines that made them. Equipment that was used to make some groundbreaking discoveries at the University of Manchester was on show too and there was a lot of concise information about each exhibit that also was available in audio.

The University of Manchester is the place where the worlds first electronic stored-program computer was built and it is on display in the museum. Graphene was also discovered at the University and it too is going to change the world, particularly in batteries that will make electric vehicles a lot cheaper. Graphene Aluminium-Ion batteries allow a full charge to take just a few minutes and transport you up to 1,000 miles or more.

The big attraction for kids are the interactive exhibits that allow kids of all ages to get involved and learn about basic science principles whilst having a whole heap of fun. This part of the Museum is very popular and was filled with families having a great time trying out all of the fun tasks. There was an exhibit where motion sensors were used to create sound based on our movement. There was a lot of dad dancing was going on alongside kids bouncing around like loons.

After our grandsons had been around each exhibit a few times we were all getting a little tired and we made our way back to the train station to head home. Our day out at the Museum of Science and Technology in Manchester was fun for the kids and my wife had a lot of fun talking to them about what the machines did and having a go at the various fun tasks with them.

I enjoyed taking photos of our visit to the Museum which proved to be a challenge indoors. I shot my roll of HP5 at box speed and several photos were shot at 1/30th of a second with my lens wide open. Yes, I know I could have pushed my film, but I forgot what iso I had set it at and didn't check until I had rattled off a few frames. When we got back home I was too tired to develop it there and then and developed it a couple of days later.

I developed my roll of Ilford HP5 in Kodak HC-110 dilution B for 5 minutes at 20 celcius and soon had it hanging to dry in my bathroom. A few of the frames looked very thin and I thought I was going to have to break out the DSLR scanning gear. I needn't have worried as my Ion Slides2PC 35mm scaner handled them with ease. I tidied the frames up with Affinity Photo to remove dust spots and scratches.

Here are a few photos of our day out at the Museum. I have to say ilford HP5 handled my hamfistedness rather well, I didn't have to do much post processing to them at all. Hindsight says I should have pushed the film to 1600 iso, but at box speed HP5 is able to handle low light better than I expected, especially when using a slow f/3.5 lens. As always I have put these photos and more in my Frugal Film Project album on Flickr you can visit using the link below. I hope you enjoy them.

P.S. My e-zine "In The Zone" is available in my Ko-Fi shop, you can purchase it via the link below.

Frugal Film Project 2022
Buy "In The Zone" e-zine

Rollei Superpan 200 - Agfa Isolette 1

I have been having a lot of fun this year learning new skills and teaching my Grandson about photography so we could have some quality time together. I had a plan and stuck to it fairly well, despite a couple of last minute dashes to take photos for the Fugal Film Project. I am not so strict in my schedule that I stick to it religiously, I still have a chance to do something different. This week's photo walk was triggered by Jason Avery on Twitter who struck up a conversation about folding cameras. He asked everyone to name their favourite folding camera and why they liked it.

I only have one folding camera, my Agfa Isolette 1 6x6 medium format folding camera, a gift from my friends Helene and Budgie and I decided it was time I took it out with me again. It has been sat on my shelf since March as I have been learning to use my Goodman Zone Z1. I took it from my shelf and was giving it a clean ready for me to use when I noticed a problem, a light seal had perished. This is no problem to fix, all you need are some basic tools, Isopropyl alcohol, cotton buds/q tips, tooth picks, some light seal material, a straight edge/ruler and a sharp scalpel. It just takes a little time.

I removed the perished seal and cleaned as much of the old glue and seal material off as possible with some tooth picks, isopropyl alcohol and some cotton buds/q tips. Once that was done and the area was nice and dry I cut some seal material to the right length and width, removed the backing paper and carefully stuck the new seal onto my camera. I was happy with how my repair looked and loaded a roll of Rollei Superpan 200 into it to test it out.

Before heading out on this sunny Sunday afternoon I took a light reading with my Gossen Trisix light meter to check if Superpan was the right film to use for the conditions. It was a 1/250th at f/11 kind of day so I set my Agfa Isolette 1 to its fastest shutter speed of 1/200th and switched between f/11 and f/16 depending on what I found as I took a walk around my local countryside.

As this was a test I kept to shooting compositions I have shot previously so I could compare results easily. I have only shot one roll of Rollei Superpan 200 which was for Infrared and have no examples of it at box speed without filters. This was going to be my benchmark for this film in my archive, so I gave it my full attention. I didn't hang about either as it was coming up to tea time and I was getting "Fur Klempt" as we say here in Wigan when we are hungry.

With 11 shots done I finished the roll with a throwaway shot of my garden fence and developed the film later that evening. I developed it in Kodak HC-110 dilution B for 6 minutes at 20 celcius as per the Massive Dev Chart and it was soon hanging to dry in my bathroom. One thing I noticed straight away was a lack of stray light leaks that I had been getting on my last photo walk with my Agfa Isolette 1. It would appear my repair was a success. Huzzah!

I digitised my Rollei Superpan 200 with my Nokia 5.3 phone camera and processed it with Affinity Photo. Having never shot this film at box speed without filters I have to say I was very pleased with the results. I didn't have to do much processing and managed to get 12 shots without any double exposures. I did say I gave it my full attention and it shows in the photos. Here are a few for your perusal and I have put them and the rest of my shots in a album on Flickr you can visit using the link below. I hope you enjoy them.

p.s. My e-zine "In The Zone" is available as a digital download for £3 from my Ko-Fi shop. You can find it using the link below.


Rollei Superpan 200 - Agfa Isolette 1

In The Zone e-zine

Infrared with Rollei Superpan

 A couple of weeks ago I shot a roll of Adox HR-50 in my Minolta X-700 with an IR filter and I had planned to do a follow up using the same camera and film, but using manual control. However, I soon got to thinking about the manual cameras I own, specifically my Goodman Zone Z1. There was two things stopping me using my Z1 for infrared film photography.

1: I had no IR sensitive film in 120 medium format.
2: didn't have an IR720nm filter big enough to fit that gorgeous Shneider-Kreuznach 90mm f/8.

I went shopping.

I bought another Kood IR720nm filter. I had a good experience the first time with the 52mm filter so I ordered a 72mm filter which would fit on my Schneider with the aid of a step ring. It wasn't cheap, but it is good value for money. I also ordered a few rolls of Rollei Superpan 200 from Analogue Wonderland. When I asked for advice from the #Believeinfilm community on Twitter this film was mentioned by several people who also provided examples of their work. Thanks guys for inspiring me.

A few days later my filter and film arrived and I had to wait for a suitable day to give it a try. That day arrived recently with another heatwave here in the UK that lasted a few days. I went out on the Saturday afternoon with my Goodman Zone loaded with Rollei Superpan and my IR720nm filter to see how my usual haunts looked in infrared on medium format.

The very first thing I had to contend with was the lack of the helpful red indicator mark that most 35mm lenses have. My 3D printed helical mount has no markings whatsoever and I had to guess where the focus should be. Thankfully I have a focus screen and a dark cloth to help, especially on a bright summer afternoon. I also metered by covering the sensor on my Vivitar 45 meter with the IR720nm filter to give me a clue where my settings should be. Mostly they were 1 or 2 seconds at f/45 which hopefully would also give me a decent depth of field at infinity.

I took my time with my compositions, most of which I have shot before. I am familiar with them and my comfort zone wasn't over extended. I had no idea if this would work or not so that familiarity helped me out. I still made a pigs ear of one shot, I had slipped into auto pilot and forgot to fit the filter. I really need to stop doing that. I do have the measure of that bloody dark slide though, progress at last!

I took the path across the pasture where the horses are usually enjoying some freedom to roam and munch away on the grass. I couldn't see them from the gate and figured they were at the bottom of the hill. I got half way and a lovely view opened up that had big trees and nice wispy clouds. I began setting up and had just got my focus dialled in when a familiar noise made me turn around.

One of the horses had come to investigate what the human was doing and hope to get some food. For some bizarre reason known only to the dark recesses of my noggin, I talked through what I was doing to the horse. This particular horse and I have known each other for a while as I always stop to say hello when I am out and about. I have no idea if she thought I was mad or not, but she didn't mind a chat and a tickle behind the ears after I had taken my photo.

With my socialising done I headed for my final composition, my favourite tree. Sadly I made a bit of a mess of this one too, but at least I got a photo that I can try to work with and practice my editing skills. With that last frame done I headed home to develop my film.

Developing film in a heatwave isn't the easiest thing to do, especially when the water from the cold tap is over 20 degrees celcius. I took some ice from my freezer and put it in my sink to help bring my chems as close to 20 degrees as I could whilst I got my film loaded into my developing tank. This time I used Kodak HC-110 dilution B for 6 minutes as per the Massive Dev Chart and soon had it develped and hanging to dry in my bathroom.

That didn't take long in the heat of the afternoon and I soon had my film digitised using my Nokia 5.3 and processed using Affinity Photo. Here are a few of my photographs from this attempt at infrared film photography, they haven't turned out too bad to be fair. I still have a lot of learning to do to get my infrared film photography dialled in properly, but this was a decent effort with the only electronic help being my Vivitar 45 light meter. I have put them in an album on Flickr, with the latest photos showing first, that you can visit using the link below.

Also, please consider buying my e-zine, "In The Zone" from my Ko-Fi shop. It contains photographs shot using my Goodman Zone Z1 as I got to know this wonderful camera. It costs £3 and you can find my e-zine using the link below. As always I hope you enjoy my photographs.

Infrared Film Photography
Buy "In The Zone"

 

Another Photographer In The Family

 It's the summer holidays and, like a lot of grandparents, my wife and I are helping out by having our grandsons stay with us for a few days each week. This week our grandson Ethan wanted to go for a walk with me and learn how to take photos. The easy way would have been to hand him my DSLR set to full auto and tell him to get on with it, but we don't do things the easy way in my family. If we were going out with a camera or two, it was going to be a film camera.

I had a think about it as I knew he hadn't used one before, it had to be an easy option, but with just enough manual to make him work for his photos. My Pentax MV was the perfect choice and I fitted it with my Hoya HMC 28mm f/2.8 which has served me well in the past. With that choice made I began teaching him how to use the camera.

The Pentax MV is an easy camera to get on with, it is an aperture priority camera that automatically sets the shutter speed based upon the aperture the user chooses. All Ethan had to worry about was focus and aperture. The camera has a traffic light system in the viewfinder which he picked up on straight away. Green means it's ok, yellow means you have to play with the aperture ring. The Hoya 28mm has 6 f stops from f/2.8 to f/16 making it even easier for him. I loaded a roll of Ilford HP5 into the MV and we set off for a wander in the local countryside.

We had a chat about film photography and how it works and he seemed quite curious about it. He soon figured out how to focus and choose the right aperture back at the house and began to put it into practice when we reached the power lines across the wheat field. He chose a simple composition for his first ever film photo and began looking for other things to photograph.

This is where his curiosity took over and he began experimenting with dutch angles. I asked him why he was turning his camera to shoot diagonal photos and he said he thought it looked cool. Who am I to say no to that? As we walked we spoke about keeping our eyes open to the world around us and he was soon looking through gaps in hedges and at the odd bit of street furniture that stood beside the gravel roads. His eyes lit up when he saw the corn field!

He really got into his first try at film photography and by the time we had crossed the corn field and hopped over the stile to the pasture beyond it, he only had a couple of shots left. I still had half a roll in my Minolta X-700. Good thing I had my Fuji Instax Mini with me to keep us occupied as I finished my roll. We had a really good walk and it seemed like no time had passed when we arrived home a couple of hours later. I needed a rest and we both needed a drink before we developed our film later that afternoon.

I talked him through the process as I set everything up and mixed the developer, HC-110 dilution H 1+63 from concentrate, my go to developer. I loaded the film onto the reels and then began the developing process. He understands that film developing chemicals are to be handled with care and he graciously let me do most of it up to the rinse stage. I let him do that bit to keep him engaged in the process and his little brother enthusiastically helped to count the inversions. Then we took the film to the bathrom to dry. His roll was nicely exposed and I have to say he did really well for a first crack at film photography. I didn't tell him any rules or things to do or not to, he took to it naturally.

I scanned the film later that evening with my trusty ion Slides2PC 35mm scanner and liked what I saw before I removed any dust spots or scratches with Affinity Photo. Here are a few of Ethan's photos from his very first film and I'm happy to host them and more in an album on my Flickr account you can visit using the link below. All film photos used in this blog are copyright Ethan Power 2022 all rights reserved and used with his permission. I hope you enjoy them.

Ethan's First Roll Of Film

In The Zone - My first e-book

 When I won my Goodman Zone Z1 in the giveaway hosted by Dora Goodman and PetaPixel.com I thought a lot about what I hoped to achieve with it. My first goal was to take a half decent photo with it and my film of choice was Fomapan. It's cheap, readily available and I don't mind making a pigs ear of it at £5 a roll. I set about learning how to use this unique camera with regular walks in the countryside near my home and it was a very steep learning curve.

I soon began to get some half decent photos, despite that bloody dark slide being my nemesis, and I began to give more thought to what my main goal was with this camera. Long time readers will know I have written about this camera often enough over the last few months, I have waxed very lyrical on here about it as I had fallen in love with this quirky 3D printed box from Budapest. The last time I fell so utterly in love I married her. That realisation gave me some impetus to make a big effort to master the camera and that bloody dark slide once and for all.

The learning curve is getting less steep with each roll of film I put through it and I decided to go through my photos to pick my favourites just to see how far I had come. As it happens I had enough photos to put a small photo book together to document my first few months of owning and using my Goodman Zone Z1 on a regular basis. I began to formulate a plan and I had to learn how to use Affinity Publisher, the software that I used to create my book.

That was a lesson all by itself and I was woefully out of my depth.

It took me a while to figure it out, but with time and some help from my wife Jo and my friend Dave Whenham, I put my book together. It took a lot of drafts, several changes of layout and some sage advice from Jo and Dave before I had something that looked right. I didn't want it to be half arsed, this is the difference between a book and bog paper. I may want to get this printed in the not too distant future. If it looks crap you wouldn't think twice about it come the next bog roll famine.

I have learned so much through the course of this project. It's easy to think that writing a book is easy. Writing is the easy bit, you can trust me on that one. I had never done anything like this before and it has made my brain hurt in ways I was worried about at times as the project progressed. After many drafts, a lot of paper, printer ink and frayed nerves later I had something I was happy to publish and put out into the wild.

Why an e-book? you may ask, well I'll tell thee. I have published it as an e-book as I wanted this to be as much my own work as possible. The camera was an unexpected gift and it inspired me to get out of my 35mm comfort zone and learn something new. It has fried my brain, gave me a nemesis that I still have to conquer once and for all and gave me as much joy as I could hope for in the space of a few short months.

I had to learn to compose my photos, focus the lens, work out the exposure times, develop the film, scan it to my computer and make it look presentable. Basically I had to learn how to be a photographer all over again and I am so grateful to the Photography Gods for giving me this opportunity.

So here it is, In The Zone, my very first e-book available to buy as a digital download right now on my Ko-Fi shop using the link below. There are also links to PetaPixel and Dora Goodman Cameras, give them some love. I put everything I have into this project both physically and mentally, the price is £3 of her majesty's finest sterling and I really hope you enjoy it. I have a feeling it wont be my last.

In The Zone e-book 
PetaPixel
Dora Goodman Cameras

Ilford Delta 100 - Olympus OM-1

This week I finally got to shoot a roll of Ilford Delta 100 I was given last May by my old chum Keith Sharples. The sunny days we have been enjoying in July had me getting stuck into infrared and I needed a decent film to get me back on track for B&W. I have never used Ilford Delta 100 so this was the perfect opportunity for me to continue my learning and see if my skills were up to shooting a film that has a very narow exposure latitude. I'm told It's an easy film to get wrong, but get your metering right and it shines.

I loaded it into my OM-1, took the battery out and relied upon my Vivitar 45 light meter to guide me. I had gone out to shoot a roll of HP5 in my Goodman Zone and as I was going to be using my Vivitar 45 light meter, it made it an easy choice to use it for my OM-1 as well. I headed off towards the local farms to see how this years crops were coming along.

It's been a warm year thus far and I soon discovered the wheat had already been harvested. This year's wheat harvest was the earliest I have known since moving to my current home 20 years ago. Given the dry weather we enjoyed throughout June and July It shouldn't really surprise me. I had watched the wheat slowly ripen and turn golden brown as I have studied the power lines that cross one of the wheat fields this year. I grabbed a couple of shots with my Goodman Zone for a future project and carried on my way.

It was arriving at the next field that I saw the other crop for the year has been thriving. This year the farmer decided to grow Corn and I enjoyed shooting a few frames of Delta 100 to explore this crop. The broad leaves and strong stems gave a lot of texture to my shots and especially the wispy tendrils on the female plants that will eventually become corn cobs.

I was soon on my way and heading towards the stile to the next field where the horses were out, waiting patiently for some humans to come along and say hello. I spent a few minutes getting a couple of pictures before climbing over the stile and greeting them. They are a friendly bunch of animals and ever hopeful of a bit of food from passing walkers.

If you come across any livestock whist enjoying the countryside, be it horses, cows or sheep etc, please don't feed them. Follow the country code and just say hello as you pass by. Dont hold your hand out to a horse as it can have your fingers off very easily. Their humans spend a lot of money on buying the right food for them and not everything we enjoy is suitable for a horse.

My last stop was a large patch of thistles that are very popular with insects who were out in force feeding on the nectar from the flowers. I took a few pictures of Small White Butterflies that were out in numbers and soon finished my film. After a pleasant couple of hours out and about I headed home to develop it.

I was brave this week. I have fallen for HC-110 dilution H, 1+63 from concentrate and decided to develop my Delta 100 in it. I looked for some info and there wasn't a single thing about using this dilution for Delta 100. Nearest I got was dilution G, 1+119 from concentrate for 24 minutes and made an educated guess of 11 minutes at 20 celcius. I was delighted to see some very nice frames as I hung the roll to dry in my bathroom. I scanned the film with my trusty Ion Slides2PC 35mm scanner and removed dust spots and scratches with Affinity Photo.

I enjoyed shooting Ilford Delta 100 and I can see why Ilford position it as a professional grade film. You really need to meter properly, but although the exposure latitude is narrow you can still bring shots back from the brink of obscurity. If you wish to help me continue my journey please consider buying me a roll of film by using the Ko-Fi buttons on this page. All donations are gratefully received. Here are a few of my photos from this weeks roll of Ilford Delta 100 and you can see them and more on my Flickr album via the link below. I hope you enjoy them.

Ilford Delta 100 - Olympus OM-1