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.

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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.

E6 cars

I have not posted a blog in a few months due to being very busy so I aim to start posting regularly again.

I took my trusty Olympus OM1n to an American car show recently and shot a roll of Velvia 50 and a roll of Provia 100F. Below are some of my favourite images of the cars on show. Hope you enjoy viewing them.