Spring 2021

It would appear that I didn't blog any photos during 2021 - OK, I didn't take a lot (actually the fewest in a year since I switched to digital), but I do have some to share. I'll share three sets here from Spring 2021. First up are images from a stroll round parts of Westbury-on-Trym in March - down the side of Henbury Golf Club, and then to the church in Westbury-on-Trym village.These are all on film - my dad's old Pentax MX 35mm and my new Ondu Panoramic Pinhole camera, also 35mm. The colours in the panoramic pinhole aren't great, but in my defence it was the first roll of C41 I'd developed. The second set are from an April visit to Abbey House Gardens in Malmesbury, Wiltshire - somewhere I have visited many times over the years, but usually for their clothes-optional days. This was a "normal" visit - I wanted to go earlier in the year than usual, and also...
Read More

Large Format Photography

Is this the end? I started with my large format camera in mid-2016, having ordered an Intrepid 5x4 on the back of their Kickstarter campaign in late 2014.It's a beautiful bit of kit - I even have a black cloth to put over my head while I focus it. No exploding hand-held flash though. Large format was one of those things that had been at the back of my mind for a long time as I experimented with photography, but it was always way out of reach because the cameras were so expensive - Intrepid changed that. I hadn't shot much film beyond a little bit of pinhole work for several years, but I couldn't resist when I saw the Intrepid Kickstarter - it was only £130 on the original offer, although they are now £280 now, on the 4th version of it. OK, I had to buy a lens as well (I eventually bought a second), and I had buy some...
Read More

Further Adventures in Film

Following on from the posts earlier in the year about getting back into film (see here and here), I thought I'd give a progress report after having bought the Hasselblad. There's also the Intrepid 5x4 to consider.Once thing that's quite interesting is how little 35mm I have shot (with one exception, which we'll come on to later) - it's mainly been medium and large format. But when you've got a Hasselblad, why wouldn't you concentrate on that? The HasselbladI managed to cram the Hasselblad into my luggage when I went to Amsterdam, but somehow managed to mis-load the roll of B&W film I shot - no idea how I managed it, but it meant I lost half of the film images from there.The next block of photos are from Caen Hill Locks (see Day Trips), which I think worked well - exposures all looking pretty good. On that note, the photos I took at the Pershore Confetti Fields weren't so...
Read More

Going Back to Film, part 2

A bit of a follow-up on the previous post, with some more on my adventures back into film photography. In February I upgraded the TLR, buying an MPP Microcord. Unfortunately it turned out that mine was faulty so it went back to the supplier. The first images on it were taken during the heavy snow we had - I wish I could claim that I was trying to emulate the soft look of some of the early photographers, but no - the shutter was slow and it also had issues with winding on. It did take some slightly sharper shots on a visit to Aust for the spring tides, and at the SS great Britain, but it wasn't good enough so back it went.   This left me with the dilemma about what to try next. In the end I went for a substantial upgrade and succumbed to a Hasselblad, having lusted after them for many years. I found one on Ebay at a...
Read More

Going Back to Film

Long and a bit image heavy... I was about to post something about getting back into taking and developing my own black and white film when I realised that I haven't actually posted anything at all about starting off with large format photography, which was where the whole film thing started - so this is going to be a long post with quite a few photos. This dates back to late 2014 when I heard about a Kickstarter project that was launching an affordable 5x4 large format camera, the Intrepid Camera Company. That's something I've thought about a few times over the last 20 years, but it's always been way out of my league - far too expensive. But suddenly this made it affordable, so I signed up. It took them quite a while to get production sorted and I didn't get my camera until mid-2016, and it's been a slow process getting used to it. I started with some cheap film,...
Read More