It's been a while and seems like I have missed a month. I got January's roll done on the second day of the year. It was on the last day of February, very nearly 2 months later, when I was able to get out on a glorious afternoon to shoot my February roll of Type 517 Cine Film. There was three, yes three hours of daylight left in the month as I headed off to my local countryside to find something to photograph for the project.
I deliberately left it late this time because I have been frying my brain with a project that my friends and I in the Photozine Collective have been working on, with the aim of producing a Photo Zine with profits going to Asthma & Lung UK. I will do a blog for that when we are ready to announce it properly, but it's safe to say it drove me quite mad.
The Photography Gods must have recognised my efforts and blessed me with a superb afternoon for photography. Overhead the skies were clear with clouds over the hills in the distance giving me a nice back drop for a few shots. There's nothing special about my compositions, they are locations I have shot many times, but not with this film.
My January film was shot on a sunny day in town with lots of shadows and contrast. This month I was able to take advantage of the sunshine in my local countryside and also found several gnarly trees to photograph. The shadows and highlights snaking along the twisted branches caught my eye and I couldn't resist them. I metered with my trusted Gossen Trisix and dialed in my focal distance with my Watameter rangefinder, ensuring I was having a battery free experience.
Once I got confident with my focal distance I was able to work quickly at each of my locations, but I had to loiter a while and admire the scenery in various places. It's been a long winter and sunny days have been few and far between. Taking time to just look at the view on a sunny afternoon really does soothe the soul.
I was really enjoying my afternoon walk and it wasn't long before I had finished my film, happy with what I found, and with an hour or so of daylight left. I put my Kodak Retina 1a in my bag and got my FED 2 out, which I had loaded with HP5, for the second half of my walk, but that one's for another blog.
I developed my February roll of Type 517 Cine Film in Kodak HC-110 1+31 dilution B for 14 minutes and 30 seconds at 20 celcius. It's a long time to develop a film in dilution B, but well worth the effort, as I saw when I was hanging it to dry in my bathroom. Once dry I digitised it with my Nikon D700 and Tamron Adaptall 2 90mm f/2.5 macro lens mounted on my K&F Concept tripod. My film was held nice and flat with my Valoi 35mm film holder mounted on my Pixl-Latr and illuminated with my A5 sized led light pad. I processed my RAW files with Affinity Photo 2.
Whilst editing my photos with Affinity Photo 2 I knew immediately I had done a good job of this months roll of Tye 517 Cine Film. My exposures were decent and developing was again right on the money for this film. I also took my time to dial in my DSLR when digitising my photos to take full advantage of my Nikon D700's legendary dynamic range. This left me with a simple and easy reversal and small tweaks as I processed the RAW files, which suits me just fine.
I did encounter a problem when I got to my open country shots, scratch marks across a few frames were glaringly obvious and I did try to remove them, but wasn't entirely successful. I'm not too stressed about it as it is expired film and it could be either the film or some grit in my camera. I gave my camera a good clean and will know for sure after I develop my next roll.
Regardless of that little problem I got some great photos on my February roll of Type 517 Cine Film. It loves sunny days and has enough dynamic range to forgive mistakes we might make with a stop of exposure either side of the right one. With the aid of my Gossen Trisix and my Watameter Rangefinder, I managed to make a pretty decent go of it for this roll, and with no batteries required!
Here's a few favourites from my February roll of Type 517 Cine Film shot in my local countryside for the Frugal Film Project 2025. As always, I have placed them and more in my Frugal Film Project 2025 album on Flickr that you can visit using the link below. I hope you enjoy them.
Frugal Film Project 2025 - February
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