Shitty Camera Challenge

 Papa Shitty Cams issued a challenge to all photographers who enjoy using crappy cameras to come together from July 1st to August 31st 2024 and use a Shitty Camera for some photography shenanigans. Some folks explored the recent trend for early compact digital cameras to pursue some low resolution digital whilst others, myself included, found a P.O.S.* and shot some film. 

Of course I had to dig out my Praktica Sport Royale, which is still looking really awful with cheesy go faster stripes. I loaded it with my last roll of Wonderpan B&W film and I went for a wander on a late summer afternoon in September. Yes I was late to the party, but I had committed to it before I struggled with my health in the summer and better late than never comes to mind.

I enjoy the #ShittyCameraChallenge as it gives some often overlooked cameras a little love and can be a catalyst for the spark of creativity to pay us a visit. This year it definitely found me eventually. I took a couple of photos at the start of my walk and then concentrated on shooting my roll of Kentmere 400 for the Frugal Film Project. Once that was done I got stuck into my roll of Wonderpan for the #ShittyCameraChallenge.

I walked along the footpath across the wheat field, which had been lined with windrows of straw the last time I walked that pathway. The farmer had been busy getting it all raked up, baled and put away over the preceding days. I noticed the birds were enjoying feasting upon the kernels of wheat that had fallen to the ground during harvesting as they took full advantage of the last food supply before winter comes along and the farmer ploughs the chaff into the ground.

I was expecting the footpath to be closed as there is drainage works scheduled, but it remained open on this day and I got to say hello to the horses in the top field. I thought I might not have been able to see them again, so I made the most of our encounter and took plenty of photos.

My last stop was my favourite tree on The Wash. I wanted to see if its leaves had started to change colour to mark the arrival of Autumn and it is just on the edge of that change, as are many of the trees on there. I will have to come back with some colour film or my DSLR to document the final display of colour for 2024, but for now, having finished my roll of Wonderpan shot with my Praktica Sport Royale 35mm P.O.S, I headed home.

I developed my roll of Wonderpan in 510 pyro 1+100 for 17 minutes at 20 celcius and soon had it hanging to dry in my bathroom. Once dry I digitised it with my Nikon D700, Tamron Adaptall 2 90mm f/2.5 macro lens, Valoi 35mm film holder, Pixl-Latr and led light pad. I processed the RAW files with Affinity Photo 2.

My Praktica may be a P.O.S, but fitted with fresh batteries and film, it works. Most people wouldn't give it a second glance and you can find them on ebay for not a lot of cash. They are just so easy to use. The lens cap slides to one side and doubles as the lock for the shutter release. It has a built in flash which you can switch on when you need it or set it to automatically fire if the light is too dim for a regular photo. 

The DX code reader chooses your iso, if your film is not DX Coded it automatically sets itself to 100 iso, so I have to be careful with that. The film advance is a motor wind and a switch on the bottom of the camera puts the motor in reverse to rewind your film back into the cassette. Simples!

Here's a few favourites from my roll of Wonderpan shot with my Praktica Sport Royale for this year's #ShittyCameraChallenge and I rather like the results. I know they are crap and I'm not putting them on Flickr, but the whole point of the Shitty Camera Challenge is to give shitty cameras some love. It's supposed to be fun and I had a lot of fun doing it, which is all that matters. I would normally hope you enjoy them, but as they are crap I hope you bask in all their shitty glory!

P.O.S. = Pile Of Shit.

Frugal Film Project 2024 - August - 35mm

 First I have to tell you that I missed the deadline of August 31st for my August roll of Kentmere 400 shot with my Olympus OM101. However, I was allowed 14 days grace to get it done and I didn't need telling twice. I have mental health issues stemming from traumatic times in my life. Sometimes I can get through August relatively unscathed, but this year it slammed me and I was unable to do anything other than take the hit until it passed. PTSD is not something I enjoy having, nor is it going away. I will always have it, I have learned to live with it and that's all I'm going to say about it.

September came along and I started feeling better. Two of my daughters have their birthdays at the end of August-beginning of September, along with two Grandchildren, my Brother from another Mother and Sister from another Mister and it cheered me up enough to head out around town with my Olympus OM101 loaded with Kentmere 400 35mm black and white film. I actually took 2 shots in August and really needed to finish my roll.

I wasn't photographing anything special. I took a few of the old Wigan and Leigh College buildings being demolished to make room for a new building and it's interesting to compare the development of the college over the years. Wigan and Leigh College has gone into partnership with the University of Central Lancashire and the new development will be in support of that partnership.

Who would have thought an old mining and market town would become a university town. It was at Wigan and Leigh College I gained my English GSCE 30 years ago which, in a bit of a circuitous way, led me to this blog. I enjoy writing and it has helped me through some tough times over the years. Photography was the icing on the cake. I never dreamed I would have as many friends in the Photography community as I do in the Biking community and I appreciate those friendships enormously.

My theme for the second half of this roll is "windows". We see them every day and many folk, me included, don't give them enough attention. Most people just get on with their day and don't notice them, but here in darkest Wigan we are blessed with a wide range of architectural styles that follow the history of the town as it has evolved.

The Mock Tudor buildings hark back to the true Tudor buildings that once graced the town before the demolition crews pulled them down and up went the "modern" buildings in the late 19th century. The 20th Century saw various revivals of Georgian and Edwardian styles before the town was hit with the 1960's concrete brutalism of the Civic Buildings.

More recently the stye has seen large glass walls, brick facades and large, rectangular windows to maximise natural light. I finished my roll at Makinson Arcade and headed home, glad to have finally got my mojo kind of running again and I actually looked forward to developing my film.

I developed my roll of Kentmere 400 in Kodak HC110 dilution B for 6 minutes at 20 celcius and soon had it hanging to dry in my bathroom. Once dry I digitised it with my Nikon D700, Tamron Adaptall 2 90mm f/2.5 macro lens, Valoi 35mm film holder, Pixl-Latr and A5 sized led light pad. I processed the RAW files with Affinity Photo 2.

Here's a few of my favourites from my August roll of Kentmere 400 shot with my Olympus OM101 and 50mm f/2 lens for the Frugal Film Project 2024. Despite it being a suitably autumnal day with plenty of gloom, I got some decent shots and I think concentrating on one thing for the second half of my roll has done me some good. As always I have placed them and more in my Frugal Film Project 2024 album on Flickr you can visit using the link below. I hope you enjoy them.

Frugal Film Project 2024 - 35mm

One photo that was actually shot in August!

Frugal Film Project 2024 - August - 120 medium format

 For my August roll of Ilford HP5+ 400 shot with Baldy the Baldax, I went for an informal approach. I loaded the film and took the camera out with me on two separate days, I was shooting some colour film and hoping to catch the farmer harvesting this years wheat crop. Sadly I missed it again as on the first day I was too early and the second I was too late, the crop had been harvested. I picked the wrong day to go for a photo walk before Storm Lillian hit the UK. Wigan got it's share of wind and rain for a few days as the back end of Hurricane Ernesto also swept to the north of the UK and soaked us.

It's not often we get named storms in August, but as we live near the northern extent of the Gulf Stream/North Atlantic current, we can get them at any time of the year. North Atlantic storms often batter the British Isles and Scandinavia, having named ones is still relatively new here and it's the first time we have had one so far up the alphabet.

Enough moaning and groaning and waffling about the weather, I'm British and we are masters at it. My two walks in the local countryside did try to elevate my spirits and I got my roll finished on my second walk when I visited the Horses in their pasture. I enjoy having a chat with them, but I'm not so sure they enjoy my company as much as I enjoy theirs. You can tell a lot about an animal by seeing which way their ears are pointing. One wasn't feeling too happy so I left them in peace and headed home.

I would have developed my film a day or two later, but I got hit by a hefty dose of poor mental health that put all my plans on the beck burner until it passed. It's one of the banes of my mental health troubles over the years and I can often get through it, but sometimes you just have to take the hit. I still managed to shoot my August roll of Ilford HP5, despite taking two attempts, and that's all that matters.

When I did eventually develop my August roll of Ilford HP5+ 400, I dunked it in Kodak HC110 dilution B for 5 minutes at 20 celcius and soon had it hanging to dry in my bathroom. Once dry I digitised it with my Nikon D700, Tamron Adaptall 2 90mm f/2.5 macro lens, Valoi film holder, Pixl-Latr and led light pad. I processed the RAW files with Affinity Photo 2.

Here's a few favourites from my August roll of Ilford HP4+400 shot with dear old Baldy the Baldax. I'm still getting light leaks, but there are one or two that turnd out rather nicely. As always I have placed them and more in my Frugal Film Project 2024 120 medium format album on Flickr that you can visit using the link below. I hope you enjoy them.

Frugal Film Project 2024 - 120 

Back in Time.... Kirkby Lonsdale - Olympus 35RC - Ilford HP5

 I'm running late with everything this month as August is not a very inspiring month for me for lots of reasons. In anticipation of this I wrote a blog back in March from our day out at Kirkby Lonsdale and it's time it was published. I will be back on track next week all being well, but until then, enjoy this little sojourn back in time.

Our afternoon in Kirkby Lonsdale was a very productive one for Keith and I. Both of us shot four rolls of film with four different cameras and my final roll of film was shot with my little pocket powerhouse, the Olympus 35RC. I will never tire of telling you all how great this camera is. It's a small compact rangefinder that is light weight and punches way above it's diminutive stature. The reason? Its 42mm f/2.8 lens.

I have waffled on about this camera in previous blogs. It is a fantastic little camera with an outstanding lens. I have heard folk describe it as a "Leica Killer" due to the lens that was very precisely polished to render your photos as sharply as your eye can see. Add to that a built in light meter and an automatic mode that gets your exposures right every time and you have a little pocket powerhouse. However, there's always a downside and this camera was built to use a 1.5 volt mercury oxide battery.

I spoke briefly about this type of battery in my Minolta Hi-Matic 7 blog. A lot of cameras used it in the 60's and 70's as they were cheap to make and lasted a heck of a long time. The Pentax Spotmatic range used it as did the Olympus OM-1 and my 35RC. However, mercury oxide batteries were banned a long time ago and we have to use inventive ways of making our cameras work properly.

I use an adapter with a modern 1.5 volt SR44 battery in my 35RC. The adapter seems to do the trick by acting as a resistor and bringing the voltage down to 1.35 volts. I have no idea how this actually works as electrickery is witchcraft! I could happily use my 35RC without a battery as it is a fully manual camera without it. You just need an external hand held or shoe mounted light meter, but I digress...

Regardless of manual or automatic, my 35RC is a joy to use and I quickly rattled through almost a full roll of Ilford HP5 before our parking time was up and we had to skedaddle. I documented the streets and back alleys of Kirkby Lonsdale as we made our way back to the car. Its full auto mode makes the 35RC quick to use, just point, focus and shoot. By the time we left I had a couple of frames left that I shot on a walk around my local countryside a few days later.

I developed my roll of HP5 in my now favourite dilution of HC110 developer. 1+47 dilution E for 8 minutes at 20 celcius. and soon had it hanging to dry. Digitising was done with my Nikon D700, Tamron Adaptall 2 90mm f/2.5 macro lens, Valoi film holder, Pixl-Latr and A5 led light pad. RAW files were processed using Affinity Photo 2.

I will never fail to be impressed with the photos I take with my little pocket powerhouse. The Olympus 35RC is a small and elegant pocket camera that everyone can use as their everyday carry. Here's a few of my favourites from this roll and, as always, I have placed them and more in an album on Flickr you can visit using the link below. I hope you enjoy them.

Olympus 35RC - Ilford HP5+ 400