It's all good: dltphoto

Here are two very similarly shot images with two very different formats. One shot with the timeless Olympus OM-10 with a  Zuiko 50mm 1.8 and the other with my trusty Nikon 1 V1 with the 70-200 2.8 VR.

I remember not so long ago that a potential Bride told me to "get with the times" when I informed her I shot with both film and digital, at that time.
Both of these images have great characteristics, the Fuji Neopan film I used was old and I have found it to be kind of low contrast but amazingly smooth grain. The digital is obviously more contrasty and a little sharper, that doesn't surprise me. I can see why people still enjoy the purity of film, really as old as the technology is it is still able to compete in so many ways. People who dismiss film so quickly are misinformed about it, film camera's are everywhere and are cheap. Sure there is no instant gratification but whats wrong with waiting a little bit? Out of my roll of 36 I only had one bad image. Out of your last 36 shots from your digital camera did you keep all 36? or did you delete a lot of them?

Omer R Cordell/ Seventh frame Photography: dltphoto

A real loss for the film photography clique, as it is becoming. My good mate, Omer R Cordell, is hanging up the Canon gear and by hanging up I mean selling off. This is tragic. Omer's ability to create unbelievable images with film has been, well... Unbelievable. Understanding light and working most often with very little with film is very challenging. We are now seeing amazing images with digital cameras which  have unbelievable low light capability but the users doesn't have to be particularly gifted .
 Omer didn't have those opportunities and he didn't need them or want them. When you know the film and you understand the light, all you need is the patience and timing.  Glad to have helped him shoot many, many bands throughout his career and have watched him grow into one of the premier live shooters. Why oh why didn't some quality music magazines hire him, fortunately he made some friends in the music biz and can been seen in many posts at Metal rules, plus he has pretty much been the personal photographer for bands such as Fear Factory and the Devin Townsend Band. I am sure if you want to google images "seventhframe photography" or "Omer R Cordell Photography" you'll find much of his work scattered around.
On the other hand we can enjoy Omer's new adventure, Trailight Music.
Good Luck chap and I can loan you a film camera if you ever need one!

 Shot By Me!!

Fantastic Plastic: dltphogr.am

http://instagram.com/p/bsJcDOq3zM/

It's still an Epic: dltphoto

Well I was gifted an excellent camera from Mr Koopmans, an Olympus Stylus Epic, or known as the Mju in Europe). Many moons ago I owned one of these splendid little camera's that I bought from the Duty free shops in the Port of Ashdod, Israel whilst on my first Cruise Ship the "Sapphire". I ended up giving to my mother if I recall and moved on to other cameras but I still had a passion for it! Really so simple and so convenient, even today and yes, it shoots film. Don't be afraid people. Film isn't a disease. It doesn't really cost as much as people think and it gives unbelievable results. Try it, you might like it! For this first roll I used the marvelous Kodak Ektar 100 which has really fun saturation!

Boneyard by Howarth Photography: dltphoto

I had the pleasure of visiting a local gallery to check out a local photographer and close friend. A great showing of vibrant work shot exclusively with film. Love those film shooters.
I can recommend a visit but please don't judge my images on this as they aren't nearly as accurate and fun to see as her images on the wall. Who knows maybe you will end up buying one or two! The gallery runs until April 14th I believe.

Ruby Tuesday..wait, it's Saturday!: dltphoto

Sometime ago I acquired an extremely vintage camera called a Ruby, made in England sometime between 1925-1934. It is in fantastic shape, even in the original box. Since it is using a discontinued film format I had to use the only format that is commonly available today, medium format (120). This camera shoots an impressive 6x12 format. Wonderfully large negatives. Optically though not equally as impressive. My Yashica-D  is using the same film but in the square format 6x6 with a far superior optical lens.

My chum Colin, from our Photoclub, took the camera home and cleaned the optics of the Ruby since the lens was not really usable due to years of air and moisture, it was almost impossible to see-through it. He also rigged a spool to accept the smaller 120 film. Since it doesn't have the frame counter marking available, I loaded it and guessed the winding necessary to get it to the next frame without any overlapping. I fluked out with that as I got no overlapping at all.

Shutter speeds and Apertures.

It has very limited shutter speed capabilities, 1/100th, 1/50th, 1/25th, 1/10th Second Also with Bulb and T which is a different type of bulb mode, somehow.. Since I only had a 400 ISO 120 in my fridge I had to wing it. (winging it refers to utilizing my educated guesswork for all my years with film). I think I shot it at about 100th sec and F8 or F11... seemed to be close. Films delightful exposure latitude makes winging it a little easier.

Nikkormat FTn w/ Nikkor-S 50mm f1.4: dltphoto

Buried somewhere in peoples basements/ crawl spaces are film SLR's. Hundreds if not Thousands all over the world. Everyone one of them yearning  to be used, to have it's "eyes" opened one more time. Recently I was asked to sell some equipment for someone else. It's a shame, the equipment is actually pretty good, but the demand is very, very low. Making sure to test the equipment is my favourite part of this process, before I try to get whatever "pennies" I can for it, and with this stuff it may well be pennies!

"The Brick"

This recent acquisition is a Nikkormat FT N, with an assortment of prime lenses. Quite fortunate for me since I have the same body which no longer winds the film though. Its in good shape but missing a winder handle. I am thinking I can combine both models to create one perfect working order camera, but then I have one I can't sell. Dilemma!

Lightmeter- Check
Loud Ka-Chunk Noise when  Button is Pushed- Check
Film loaded and Winding (as far as I can tell)- Check

For this experiment and to make it more creatively interesting for me I decided to throw one of my 50mm 1.4 Nikkor Lenses on it, and shoot it more creatively at as low an F/stop as possible ( ie 1.4 or 1.8, conditions allowing). The downside to such low depth of field shooting is quite often you will be out of focus unintentionally even with today's more modern auto-focus systems, it is still incredibly hard.

Random Film Images: dltphoto

On rare occasions I stumble upon images I shot a while ago. Often it takes me a while to figure out what I was doing at the time and why did I shoot them.

I was just wandering through some folders and came across this image and thought how lovely and warm the image was and then the thought process commenced and remembered where I took it.

This was shot at the end of summer, during the our first Worldwide Photowalk participation in Abbotsford. I remember I went out with two camera's, one of which the Film batteries died and I recall I had some other issue with my DSLR and ended up fooling around with flash for other peoples shots....!

Here are the few I just found.

Cross Processing..was it a happy accident?: dltphoto

  Slide film development is a colour reversal  process allowing a positive image instead of the classic negative, there is also a technique of doing it incorrectly, purposefully, to reach an entirely different end result. This has become commonly known as Cross Processing.
I imagine someone sometime ago accidentally, not on purpose, developed there Slide film in the colour negative process and was probably jolly ticked off, however, after calming down found the results to be somewhat interesting!

Instead of the Slide film (E6 process) going into the correct chemical procedure, putting it into the regular (C41 process) film negative process can render some very interesting results.

 Firstly, its no longer a Positive, please remember back to holding up slides to the light and seeing a positive image (Fig A) you may have to go back a few years!!

Fig A

Anyways, since we are scrapping this correct process the film now becomes a negative! ( Fig B)

Fig B

 Now we have run it through the in-correct chemicals we have also "tainted" the colours in the process. We should now expect a higher contrast and bolder colours in the cross processed negative. This can lead to blown out highlights and sometimes loss of detail.... but we are monkeying with the correct process. Its our own fault. ummmm Blah blah blah..... here's the good stuff!