This month's roll of Kentmere 400 shot with Baldy the Baldax was shot during a visit to the city of Chester. Our dear friend Keith, who took my wife and I to Blackpool in October, had to head back to Lancashire for a funeral and stayed with us for a few days. After attending the funeral he wanted to get out for a photo walk and suggested we go to Chester for an afternoon. How could I refuse!
In addition to my Baldax loaded with Kentmere 400, I also took my OM-2 with 28mm f/3.5 loaded with Vision 3 250D and my OM-10 with 50mm f/1.8 loaded with Kodak Double-X. Variety is the spice of life they say and Chester is an old city with plenty of architecture to keep photographers busy. One hour's drive later we were unloading Nedward, Keith's chariot, from the car and headed into the city centre.
Oh why did we pick a Saturday to visit Chester? It was very busy, and not just any busy, it was chocker, rammed, heaving, etc! Chester city centre isn't very big as it's mostly built within the walls of the Roman Fort, Deva. It's a city steeped in history and it shows in the names of the streets as well as still having some of its original Roman Wall built to fortify Deva around 100 A.D.
The iconic shot of Chester has to be of the Clock on Eastgate, the once grand entrance to the Roman Fort and now slap bang in the middle of the busiest shopping street in Chester. I think most of the residents of the city and a fair chunk of folk from the surrounding area were in Chester on the day we visited. There was also plenty of tourists doing the same thing we were and taking lots of photos. Did I mention it was busy?
Alas we couldn't climb the steps to walk along the historic city walls, but we did decide pretty early on that our best hope for photos amongst the madding throng was going to involve looking upwards. There are a lot of black and white revivalist style buildings with black timbers and white washed rendering courtesy of Victorian designers who wanted that Tudor feel when they remodelled the city in the late 19th century.
We made our way to the Cathedral and Memorial Gardens. The Cheshire Regiment Memorial and Cenotaph at Chester Cathedral which still had wreaths of Poppy's that were laid on Remembrance Sunday. We didn't go into the Cathedral as it was, you guessed it, very busy. We also had a wander to the Town Hall where the Christmas Market was situated. It was so busy I got a bit jittery and had to find some space. I'm not fond of big crowds.
I finished my roll of Kentmere 400 pretty quickly on our walk as we slowly made our way through the multitude of folks out doing their shopping and looking for bargains. I spent the rest of our time there switching between my OM-2 and OM-10 and a few other films. I will talk about those rolls of film in future blogs, but for now we shall leave Chester and adjourn to my kitchen for a developing session.
I developed this month's roll of Kentmere 400 for 8 1/2 minutes in Kodak HC110 1+47 dilution E for a change. Keith has been raving about this dilution and I thought I would give it a try. After stopping the development with Ilfostop I fixed my film for 6 minutes in Fotospeed FX30, gave it a rinse and a dip in Ilfotol wetting agent.
When I took my film from the tank I was immediately impressed with the density of my negatives, but the proof would come when I scanned it and I hung my film to dry in my bathroom. Scanning was done with my Nikon D700, Tamron 90mm f/2.5 macro lens, Valoi medium format film holder, Pixl-Latr and A5 led light pad. Processing the RAW files was done with Affinity Photo 2.
Here's a few favourites from my Frugal Film Project 2023 roll of Kentmere 400 for November. It was good to get further afield and explore a city I haven't spent a lot of time in. The last time I was there was many years ago with my wife and it was good to be back. As always I have placed these and more in my Frugal Film Project 2023 album on Flickr you visit using the link below. I hope you enjoy them, especially the obligatory double exposure.
Frugal Film Project 2023 - November
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