Films through a CT Scanner

We have all been hearing about the damage that the new airport CT Scanners can do the film and it has made me more apprehensive to travel through airports with a film scanner. Traditional x-ray machines are fine for films under 800 speed and I have frequently sent films through them with no visible effect.

Recently I was going on a work trip to Dublin and leaving from London City airport where they had just announced they were now fully using CT Scanners. You know it is a CT Scanner as you no longer need to take electronics out of your bag or liquids.

Thus I figured there was only one way I’m ever going to find out for myself what these CT scanners do to film. Thus I took one roll of fresh Kodak Ultramax 400 and one roll of fresh Ilford HP5 Plus on the trip with me and let them go through the CT Scanner. On the return trip they came back through a normal x-ray machine.

I want to be clear here, this is not a scientific, controlled and monitored experiment. Just me wondering how the films would turn out. I shot both films in my Olympus OM4Ti and left it on automatic metering.

I am going to make no further comment and just post most of the images here for you to make your own mind up. These are as received from the lab scans and I have made no further tweaks. The one thing I will point out is for the Ilford film as I was shooting indoors it was at wider apertures. These are all test shots, so excuse the out of focus and crap compositions, I just wanted to finish the films to see what if anything the CT Scanner did.

It’s OK

I’ve not taken a lot of photos this year. It’s OK as there have been other things to concentrate on.

I’ve only shot a few rolls of film this year. It’s OK there is a global pandemic right now so I have been thinking about other things.

I think I’ve lost my photography mojo. It’s OK I have been worried about keeping my family and myself safe.

When I pick up my camera I’m lost for inspiration. It’s OK the world and indeed my local area are a lot smaller right now.

I’m not really photographing in the house. It’s OK I am more interested that my kids come home safe and well from school.

Working from home should have given me time to concentrate on photography. It’s OK I have not been working from home, but shielding at home and been lucky enough to still be able to work.

I haven’t written many blogs or produced a zine like I said I would during lockdown. It’s OK, it felt right to set these goals but it became more important to ensure we got a supermarket delivery slot each week.

It’s OK, because I also know the time will come again when I can concentrate on photography. The vaccines are starting to roll out, the days will start getting longer, winter will pass and the sun will shine again.

It’s OK.

The (Not) lockdown photos

I don’t think I am alone in this feeling, but when the lockdown started to come into play, I lost my photography mojo. I had grand plans to shoot still life, macro and make some zines, but what transpired was actually my mind was all over the place and photography was right at the back.

For me photography has always been my escape, my time to myself to gather my thoughts.

I made a throwaway comment on Twitter about not having photographed anything for a while and Paul from Analogue Wonderland ( www.analoguewonderland.co.uk) asked if I would be up for a challenge. Coming from the Marty McFly school of don’t call me chicken I said yes. BTW to be clear this is not a sponsored or paid for blog.

About a week later I received the following package from Paul.

An empty simple use Lomo camera, a roll of Kodak Ultramax and an “anti-lockdown” challenge not to shoot empty street, people in masks closed shops etc. It suddenly dawned on me that this could be very difficult, you see I am on what is known as the NHS vulnerable list so the advice for me was to not even leave the house for 3 months. But I had accepted the challenge and was determined to give it a go

Before I get to the images, my thought process was to shoot everyday normal things as if life was going on without any differences. The normal mundane day to day things we do. After the images I will tell you how I felt seeing them. One extra point, I shot most of the frames late April and through May. In May going stir crazy I did start taking the dog for early morning walks when no one was around, I just could not sit anymore.

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Looking at the images, I failed the brief, that’s OK though. It really is representative of what lockdown has been like. Both the light and the dark images are quite reflective. The one that really sums it up for me was taken through our kitchen skylight. This is lockdown

Cameras on camera

I recently purchased a desktop light tent, light box thingy. You know a box you can put on your tabletop, it has various back ground colours and led lighting so you can take product and other photos. I have a few indoor projects in mind for it.

I figured before starting any projects I should probably practice to see how images come out and what pitfalls there are. So I thought I would start by taking some photos of my film cameras.

I originally planned to take these on film but I started with my digital camera (Fuji X-T1 with a zoom lens )to get an idea of the settings and look. It quickly became apparent to me I would need to think more about how to use this when using film. Thus this whole set is shot on digital with some post processing

Before sharing the images the main things I will need to consider for using film are white balance (although can adjust a bit in post). What camera and lens to use to get the right framing that works and with the required focussing distance. Anyway this was just for practise and fun so please enjoy my film cameras on camera

Olympus OM1n

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Olympus OM2n

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Nikon 35Ti

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Hasselblad 2000fcw

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Fuji GF670

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and a couple of randoms on the black background but ran out of time at this stage

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6×6 lunchtime photochallenge

Earlier in January I had some time over one lunchtime where I knew I would be able to get out and about with my camera. During the week lunchtimes are the best time for me to get some photography under my belt. The one downside of this is that I know my area well so it can become a bit monotonous. So I thought I should shake things up a bit and make it more interesting for me. I asked my followers on Twitter to suggest some photography themes for my lunchtime walk. As always they did not disappoint and there were many good suggestions. I decided then that I would pick 6 themes and try and do 6 shots on each theme.

These are the following themes I choose:

– Shadows suggested by Parminder Matharu (@psmatharu81)

– Lines suggested by Jason Avery (@_JasonAvery)

– Sandwiches suggested by Duncan (@silverpanlab)

– Impermanent suggested by Duncan Waldron (@ozalba)

– Glass suggested by Duncan Waldron (@ozalba)

– People on phones suggested by Matthew (@Twinlensreflux)

I loaded my Olympus OM1n with a roll of Ferrania P30 and headed out. I had no real planned route and thought I would see how it went. I was also careful not to try and shoot all of one theme and then all of another in a sequence but just be sure I got them all over the time. I had fun doing it and it was great to be challenged and think outside of my normal safe photography. I struggled with sandwiches and eventually had to throw in the towel with that one. The results were not important to me, this whole exercise was about trying to interpret themes and along the way it also taught me that maybe I take them to literally and I need to think more conceptually. Anyway enough words here are the results. Btw I needed more than one lunchtime to finish the roll, a combination of the sandwich theme and failing light meant I had to go out for a second time.

Shadows

Lines

Sandwiches

Impermanent

Glass

People on Phones

The Hoff – Rolls 17 and 18. It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas

So two more rolls for The Hoff to share with you.

The first roll for this write up (roll 17) was Ilford HP5 Plus. This roll sat in The Hoff for nearly 8 week’s before completing it. I decided to rate it at 320. I like HP5 pushed but when shooting ‘normally’ I tend to prefer it rated at 320. For the few shots where I also used an orange filter I adjusted the exposure to 200 to compensate.

So why did the roll take so long. Partly it was the same reasons that affect us all. Finding the time, everyday stuff taking precedent and not having the opportunities to shoot. I also think however that I went through a bit of a phase of ‘is The Hoff the right camera for me’ as I found myself taking out my Olympus OM cameras with me. To explain, when I had the opportunities to go out shooting, I picked the lighter, faster and no requirement for a light meter camera. During this period I also contemplated if medium format film really was for me and should I stick to 35mm. This roll really became my wall I needed to breakthrough. I did eventually by forcing myself to take the camera with me one lunchtime at work to finish the roll with the view that if I didn’t feel it then I would need to make an honest decision about keeping the camera. I enjoyed it again and that was helped by the fact external non-photography reasons were falling away. I also reminded myself that this was a possible lifetime camera, there was no rush or pressure to shoot it regularly or indeed always take it with me as I have other cameras that may be more appropriate for the day’s shooting I was planning. I broke through the wall and The Hoff remains.

Here are a few images from that roll. Some scans adjusted in Snapseed.

By now you may be wondering why I have Christmas in the title well let’s move on to roll 18. We were taking the kids to see the Christmas lights in London and I happened to have a roll of Cinestill 800T in 120 so I figured why not load The Hoff and take it with me. I really like the Cinestill film, the 50D is also fantastic. I prefer to rate it at 500 (based on the Kodak Vision 500T) that is derived from. For those of you familiar with London, or any city centre for that matter, at night with street lights, shop lights and car lights, trying to meter to get the Christmas lights right is no mean feat. So to be honest I didn’t even try. I went with my gut, set the camera to wide open (2.8) and slow shutter 1/60. This was based on experience shooting Cinestill at night previously, trying to capture specific lit areas of the frame.

See what you think, scans adjusted in Snapseed

The Hoff – Rolls 15 & 16 AmeriCARna

A quick note for those reading for the first time. The Hoff is my Hasselblad 2000fcw and this series is documenting how I am getting on learning to use this camera by shooting 52 rolls through it.

Every year for the last three years a town near me, Horsham , has held an American car festival combined with US street food and music acts. It is a fun day out and has got bigger each year. I take my camera with me each time and this year was the turn of The Hoff. Unfortunately the weather was not great this year with lots of rain forecast. I had initially wanted to take black & white film as the other two times I took colour. Going through my 120 film stash I realised I had run out of my favourite Ilford HP5 which I wanted to take but shoot at 800. The other B&W films I have in 120 are a bit more specialist i.e. Washi S 50iso.

Thus I picked one of my favourite colour negative stocks, Portra 800. I love the colours from this film. It is expensive but as it is C-41 development I can justify the cost. It is also very adaptable and I prefer to shoot it rated at 400iso. You may now ask why don’t I just buy Portra 400? The answer is, because I find it too orange/warm. Portra is designed for Portraits which is why I guess it has that warmer feel for the skin tones. Portra 800, to my eye, is much truer to actual colours. Also a side note here for the film manufacturing industry, not every one is light skinned the warming does not work for all skin colours.

So off I ventured into the rain. I set my meter ( Gossen Digisix 2) to 400 iso. As per my previous post the meter is new to me and I am finding it easy to use and very accurate.

The next thing that I will remark on is something that will be obvious to seasoned photographers but has taken me a while to get my head round. When metering, for example through my Olympus OM1n, I would get the needle in the right place and take the shot. What I really wasn’t thinking enough about was adjusting either the speed or aperture from this starting point to get the look I wanted. The new meter is helping me think more the final look I want and not just be driven by the original meter reading.

Out I went with The Hoff into the rain to take some photos. The camera got wet, but it didn’t bother me too much. So now I have bored you all with words, here are some of the images. All Porta 800 rated at 400 iso some scans adjusted using Snapseed.

The Hoff – Roll 14 a day out with Ashley

So I finally got round to shooting The Hoff again. I purposely did not take it on holiday with me as where I went I was travelling light and the temperature averaged 34C most days and I didn’t want to subject myself and the camera to that. Also it was a holiday not a photography trip.

I was excited for the day’s shoot for three reasons:

1. I was trying out a favourite film of mine Kodak Vision 3 50D. I had never tried it in 120 format before, you can normally only get it in 35mm. This is a cinema film stock and has a covering known as remjet. Thus it needs to be processed by labs that know how to handle it. If sent to a ‘normal’ lab the remjet could foul up their machines. The other reason I sent it to a specialist lab ( SilverPan Film Lab in the UK) is to have it processed in its native chemicals ECN-2. You can get this film with the remjet already removed and thus processed in a ‘normal’ lab in standard C-41 chemicals and that is CineStill 50D 35mm, which is lovely.
2. I finally invested in a dedicated light meter. A Gossen Digisix2. Previously I had been using a light meter app on my phone. The phone app was relatively reliable, but it started to become a hassle to use having to take my phone out before each shot, unlock it, open up the app and then meter the scene. Also the phone app only gave one reading ie not settings across all the different speeds or apertures. Never having had to pay attention to metering before (my OM’s are through the lens meters) I had to do a bit of reading on the differences between incident and reflective metering. It will take me a while to judge when to use which one.
3. The main reason I was excited was that I was getting to meet my friend Ashley (@Grumpyfck on Twitter). Ashley is a fantastic photographer and loves his old cameras and black and white films and great guy too.

So it will come as no surprise to anyone who knows us that we met up in a pub in Covent Garden. A couple of beers later we figured we should actually make an effort and go out to take some photographs. I loaded up my film in the pub, obviously I started to load it the wrong way round and then struggled to get the back on to the camera body, much to Ashley’s amusement.

Covent Garden was very busy so finding space to shoot was not easy. This was my first shot using the new light meter.

We decided to head towards the river as it would have been less crowded and there would be more light. We walked along Waterloo Bridge up to the National Theatre, there may have been another stop in a pub en route….

We walked back across the bridge towards Somerset House.

Whilst this may seem like a short walk this took us most of the afternoon as we were strolling, talking and taking photos. It was also thirsty work, so we may have stopped in another pub after Somerset House.

Overall I am pleased with this roll shot through The Hoff. The light meter was easy to use, the film has given me the colour palate I had hoped for and I had a great afternoon out. It was a pleasant change from the last few rolls of misadventure to get back on track.

The Hoff – Rolls 9,10,11,12 and 13

It’s been a while since I updated on my on going adventures with The Hoff. Life got very busy. This update is actually from when I took The Hoff to Scotland back in April.

I shot five rolls of film in my time there. Expired Fujifilm Neopan 400, Expired Fujifilm Pro 400H, expired Fujifilm Provia 400X, Fujifilm Velvia 50 and Fujifilm Acros 100.

I started with the Neopan and shot it on a day out Culzean Castle. I knew the film was a bit of a risk as I had no idea of it previous storage. I had the odd frame that came out (see below), but most of the rest the film was pretty damaged from poor storage.

I next went with the Provia 400X and took a walk along Ayr Beach. I had a CPL on the lens so set the meter on my iPhone app to 320 to compensate. Unfortunately something went very wrong. Everything was totally underexposed. (Pic sent by my lab). The big white square exposure is that thing where if you don’t set the shutter speed quite right. The lines are just from the poor compression of the photo.

This is where things really started to go horribly wrong and completely down to my error. I next loaded up the Velvia. These are the results

White square again, where I hadn’t selected the shutter speed accurately. The rest, can you guess what happened? Yep, my meter was still set to 320. Anyway blissfully ignorant I then loaded the Acros 100 with and orange filter on the lens. Do you think at this point I adjusted the meter.

No I had continued my error. The negatives were very underexposed and only a ton of post processing has even managed to get the pretty poor image you see above.

Again blissfully unaware of my errors, I loaded the Pro400H. I know what you are thinking, the meter was right again, even though it was by chance. You are correct, however we now circle back to the beginning and how I started with the Neopan. The film had been badly stored so most of the images were spoilt. The below is my favourite where I asked my daughter to pose, but I purposely added in some camera movement and her moving as a bit of an experiment.

Thus as you can see I terms of photography the visit was a bit of a bust. Most of it user error, rushing and not be patient or detailed on my part. The expired film being ‘bad’ is just one of those things you need to accept if you are going to shoot it.

I haven’t shot with The Hoff since, only because of time not because I am put off. Let’s see if I can remove the user error next time. One thing I have done is purchased a dedicated light meter (Gossen Digisix 2) as it is more user friendly than the phone, now I just have to remember to change the settings when I change the film.

Ooh Wheels- Kodak E100 Ektachrome

A few weeks back a town near us had an Italian festival and part of that (aside from the food and drink) there would be a display of Italian supercars and other car nationalities too. The weather was to be good, so I figured what a great opportunity to finally try a couple of rolls of the new Kodak E100, Ektachrome slide film.

This is not designed to be a film review and I have posted warts and all shots, but I thought it would be interesting for me and hopefully you to talk through my thoughts during the day shooting these cars.

Thus setting out the easiest decision was which camera. My OM1 was still halfway through a roll of Ilford HP5, so I took my relatively new to me Olympus OM2n. I did not want to carry a lot and I like simplicity thus I only took one extra lens. In the past shooting cars I had good success with the 50mm lens so obviously that wasn’t the one I picked. No, I decided to take the 28mm which I knew deep down in my soul would be too wide for crowded places and also my 100mm as you can get a different point of view with it. I regretted not swapping the 28 for the 50 for most of the day.

I started with the 28 on the camera and I don’t know about you, but it takes me a few shots to get warmed up. I think this is for two reasons, one being that it takes me a few shots to get into the swing of what I am shooting, almost practice shots. Even though I have no screen on the camera you get a sense pretty quickly what works and what doesn’t. Secondly, being there on my own amongst crowds I also feel a bit self conscious walking round taking shots like I’m some kind of photographer and feel (for no reason at all) that I’m being looked at by those with their phone cameras having fun with a ‘who does he think he is David Bailey.’

Quick note. All shots were at box speed, with a circular polarising filter on the camera. Some have been tweaked in Snapseed ( the ones I liked) the rest as per the scan. Oh yes, importantly all developed in E6 #SayNoToXpro chemistry.

So here are the first practice shots, as you will see I really had no idea yet what I wanted to capture.

Pretty boring eh, like I said test shots. I was also struggling with crowds at this point so I put the 100mm lens on to try something different.

That all felt better, I was starting to warm up and at this point it’s normally where I slip back into rushing again because I was excited and getting in the mode.

Aaaaaaaaand I was right, I started thinking more about the lens I was using rather than the image. More meh shots ensued.

I call this next set, ‘standing in a crowd waiting for the event to start and as I have a camera in my hand I should take a shot’. I should have shown patience instead.

After giving myself a telling off, I reminded myself that car details can be interesting.

‘Ooh wheels’. Not sure why I thought it would work as I have taken these shots before and was never really inspired by them.

‘Oh look you can see the engines.’ To be fair to myself, better composed and focused these could have been ok.

Again gave myself a bit of a talking too and then tried again with a lovely Porsche

‘Obligatory side shot’

‘Back in the swing of things and concentrating’

Then I tried to get a shot representing Porsche past and present, one close focus, one further. These haven’t really worked but it was worth a try. More patience and thought as well as considered lens choice next time.

‘Ooh wheels.’ FFS man what are you doing

After a short pulling myself together session, I tried concentrating again

Better and then…… ‘ooh wheels’. Dude!!

Concentrate again

‘Ooh Wheels.’ What is wrong with me (answers on a postcard, not in the comments)

Concentrates again

I tried a couple more through the windows shots but they didn’t really work

and a couple of more lined up shots that are OK

It then got to that point in the day when it was time for a drink before heading home. It was then the curse of 36 exposures struck. I was on my second roll and there were about 6 exposures left. So what else was a boy to do but

Dog

Wine

Pigeon

Dog

Flowers

So what is the point/learning of this post.

Well firstly, I am very impressed with the new Kodak E100. I still need to learn to pick my moments better and not get caught up in the excitement. For a while now I have been at peace with the fact I should not expect 36 ‘winners’. Experimenting is fine and good, trying new compositions is important as long as you learn from them. To stop wasting the last few frames on a roll of 36, I mean a Pigeon!! Mainly and overall STOP TAKING PICTURES OF WHEELS.