Its been a while

But I have been stil using film, just not as often as I want. :-(
I have been learning a new job, David moved away for his job, then I have been going to funerals, sickness in family and now I have been sick for over a week. My Sickness is Viral Laryngitis so, due to the nature of my job, I can't work. BUT my limbs are fine, so I have been inspired to play with pinholes again to fill in the hours.
OF course Wagga and Junee have no film developing place so I have to wait until my return to work to get to Redfern to have then developed or see if my E-6 chemicals are still good 10 months on. (I Hope so)

In the mean time, I saw this amazing Pinhole from an Agfa Clack on flickr. The Artist is Phot Orel


I have discovered two of my pinholes are winding on incorrectly BUT David's new house has a dark room! Well he calls it a walkin robe but it has the right level shelves an next to a bathroom, so it screams DARKROOM to me. :-)

Lomokino

Have yet to try this as I had an idea for a short model but my model had to go to work. :-(
Biggest issue for me is slide is the best way to shoot with it but I have no more Scala or if I do, I would have to send it out to the USA for processing. SIGH.. I don't think I have the fortitude to scan 144frames of C-41 or B&W t the computer and splicing 144 frames to a software program.. I woud just use a digital camera for that.

Hmm

Burning a hole in my bag here..

Also a 4X5 camera came from Italy.. I was rather disappointed in that It is very primitive. OK its a pinhole and you will argue that pinholes are by nature primitve.. BUT if you are selling a supposed professionally made one... then make it professionally finished. I have been spoilt by Cezary in Poland. HIs cameras are consistantly marvellous. He is the most friendly and tolerant person. I even get beautiful plates on mine now as they are all rolling together and I can remember the F/stop of each. (Oh dear)

Some fun cameras

I havent had much social time. :-( I have been trying to find the time to soup up E-6 chemicals but PJ day after PJ day has left me flat. I have been menaing to change some canegs too but of course no time for that either.
STILL there are some fun cameras that are waiting for attention.
Life is just too busy for words. Hopefully Monday is the last funeral I have to go to for a very long time. It suxs majorly as the funeral of a baby is the single worse thing in the world. I cry at the thought of it. :-(

Cigar Box Pinhole Camera

Fun with instant film and the Pinhole cigar box

The back of the cigar box

Thsi camera is a lot fo fun. No waiting I can relax and play and see my results. Its is so refreshing. I am not sure of the f stop but I am guessing f180 as my f/200 was overexposed... I will keep playing and get a more acurate aperture.

photo from http://instacanv.as

This is a canvas from the instacanvas company. They do spam a bit with all the emails. But looking at their work, its quite good. I usually use cancas pop and they are on par. Canvas pop has discounts and that sways me in that direction, but Intsacanvas has other artists. If buying my own work, I'll use Canvas pop but if I want the the work of others then I'll happily use instacanvas.

Yashica 126 camera. Bummed about this as I have sold my last 126 catridge

Disappointing that I wasnt paying attention. I would never have bid on a camera that I cant use no matter how cheap. :-( I had its flash and even some bulbs. Very disappointing. I could drill it and bodgy up the cam to use with 135...

Clicks version 1 and 2

Have a click 1 in average-poor condition and a Click 2 in great condition. Thinking of selling these....

Argus C3 version VI Colormatic

Not a new camera just one I need to use the film in it. I need to jut get out and shoot. Shame I cant rememeber what film is in it..

Free Book from Alternativeprocess.com

recycled Impossible project Box. Now a pinhole cam

This is Great! Its a recycled Impose project film box, loaded with BW400cn. I can wait to shoot this.

Cute 135 film pinhole cam

This little cam is great!! It has a magnetic Pinhole and you can change it easily to a zone plate. I have never shot a zone plate, so I may give this a try with a 12 exposure film. The pinhole is f/200. I'll probably load this and shove it in my bag.

Comes with all this and a zone plate

Have some hald made pinhole cams but need the husband's dremmel .......

randomness

Found a man in Flickr with the most awesome collection of cameras here are a few from his collection....

This is stunning. Alas it takes special cartridges.

Even more lovely but I have not found an Oxblood one. :-(

Just how cool is this!!

for geeks

I have one of these, its the forerunner of the Sprocket Rocket

Wollongong Station at Night Taken with 1898 camera

I was trying to participate in Take your camera to Work day (Feb 29th) but due to my hours I was only able to take one shot. SO When I had a chance, I took two at my husband's work. :-) I even guestimated the reciprocity failure. :-) Total win.


David took me to Douglas park Weir where I used this Old camera for shooting Velvia. I have yet to soup up my E-6 chemicals.  I took some photos of a barn that caught my eye. I see this barn everytime I drive past.  I took two shots them realised that I have overexposed the shots :-( When I developed the shots, I thought at first at it was all black. DISPAIR!! But when held up to the light the image was there WIN!!
David and I shot a silhouette of a passing Endeavour. I, of course had to use the Graphlex. SO I had 6 minutes to set up. I could of hand held but it was far easier to use the tripod.

Otherwise I have been super quiet with camera. I am essentially penniless so that encourages me to stay good. Sigh. Luckily the weather has been shit. Saturday and Sunday was lovely and blue. Glad we got out.

Built in Filter

So the "Redscale" film was processed. I am very happy with the results. The contrast is a vast improvement over the original usage of the film.
See what you think

Enterance to Museum station

Mark Foy's Building, Sydney

Appartment Block in Sydney

Inside at work

Silhouette of St George's Presbyterian Church Castlereagh St Sydney

Old National Australia Bank Picton

So it you like the results go back one post and see how to do it.

Learning cool things from friends

This post is more a stream of consienceness than a tutorial.SO please keep this in mind..

 A cold and wet day in Picton, a rare to myself and I was chatting to Tim and Kevin in a yak conference whilst I took some BW400CN and reversed it. Before you all scream REDSCALE I would like to remind you all that BW400CN Is black and white. Kodak is the only maker of chromographic film with an orange backing (mind you, all Of kodak's c-41 film has a deep orange backing) and yes, I know there is ilford and Fuji, but their backs are clear (shows up grey) so no good for this experiment.

This is so I can have a built in filter for my black and white film. All the time I was doing this still chatting. All finished and I proudly show off my new pink film.. And suddenly Kevin asks innocently enough.. What will you shoot it at? Aargghh I had forgotten to work out a filter factor. And of course a camera can't work this out being on the wrong side of the lens. Lol. I took a guess at 2 or 3 stops and it was then that Kevin and I dug out our lightmeters. I couldn't find the one David lent me, think its in my camera bag.. Anyway.. He showed me how to measure the light drop off of a film. He didn't have the same film but it works and my brain had a click moment. OF COURSE!!

He measured the light. I used an app called Light Meter not my usual one, but does this job.

So you set an arbitrary asa, and select an arbitrary shutter speed measure the resulting f stop.

Hold the film over the the light Meter and measure again. The first reading with no film was f/4.5. Holding the BC400CN in front of the light meter I measured again and got f/2.2 that's close enough to two stops.

So I have to adjust the exposing times by two stops. That's rating it at 100asa. 



Kevin's example, before putting the film across (Kevin's photo)

 

Kevin's example 2 with asa 100 film (Kevin's photo

In Kevin's Example, he selected 1/30th of a sec and asa 400 (The figures don't matter) and he got f/11 when he put his asa 100 film across he got f/1. He is meauring the whole thickness of the fim but if we redscale we are only looking to get the light through the anti-halation layer and not all the way through that would be 2.5 stops. 

My meauring was 7.5stops. and using a 100 speed film gave me 6 stops. all this runs around 2-3 stops we have to allow for the anti-halation layer. Now of course this is all witch doctory and at the end of the day, red-scale is always 2 stops at least depending on your wanted result. Slightly underexposing  will ove a deeper red. This only means in my case that the red/orange filter strength for my B&W film is 2-3 stops strength.

remember this is only to get you a ball park place to start. by all means just shoot at 2 stops and if you are wanting a different result move over or under.I feel 4 stops would be too much and you would lose too much detail. Then again if you are using colour film and want yellow then 3 stops would be a setting to use.

My town was hit with another heavy storm and I had to toss stuff into David's car and go to a safe place for the car.

Sitting in a cafe watching the storm, I went to load the newly re-spooled film into my F-1. Um. D'oh! In the rush I had forgotten to cut a new leader. Sigh. Going to Coles, I found the cheapest scissors i could find and a laundry marker. Problem fixed. But my photo op had passed. Oh well.

Revolog Teslar 1 film

Surpirsing film. As stated in the film wins blog, its not a portrait film. I took her advice and stayed away from people subjects. As with the tecture film, my biggest issue with this film is cost. Its a bloody expensive film. Its 12 exposure, its €7.50 per roll plus the outrageous postage cost. ALSO to develop a 12 expoure film, it costs as much as a 36. Its ferrania. I know most people love ferrania but I don't. I border on loathing for ferrania. Its yellow. No matter what camera I use, what settings or light avaliable, its yellow and I have to change the white balance. ALL this aside. This is a damned fun film. You know you will get lightning so you try to find subjects that will suit the bolts. Of course you do not know where the bolts will be. And as with the exture film, the more under exposed the brighter the lightning bolts.

This worked surprisingly well as the bolts followed the web

St Marks. Soft focus with Canon lens on Nikon cam

Soft focus with canon len and Nikon cam

had to correct the horrible yellow cast. The bolts look cool here.

Vaby's near the station

Doesnt work as well without a building or object to attract focus. The bolts seem lost here

The Woolshed

Would I use this again. No. Unless they make a 36 or 24 exposure film, its too specialist. You need to shoot outside and avoid shots of people. It just looks weird, check out the Film Wins blog for her opinion. If you have a friend who loves lomo and fun films, make sure they try this.

Revolog Film #1 Texture

Before I start, I bought these at great expense to myself. I received no discount or anything from Revolog or any subsidiary so I shall say as I please. They are mine after all..


Texture
Thoughts. My first thought was €7.00 for 12 exposures... this is a damned expensive film.. I am not including postage form germany I bought the package of all the films as I wanted to try them all once (See previous post about Revolog's film stock.) The package is €52 or $64AUD plus €16 so a total cost of €72 or $88.90AUD. Making this the most expensive film in my collection. Put all that aside and lets put this in the Camera.

I chose (For some reason) a Nikon FM. I also had a canon 50mm f/1.8 with adapter on the camera. Being a canon user, I do not know why I didn't choose my usual test camera the Ae1-Program. SOO here is the test bed..



and the film after the session.


ALAS I made mistakes and Don't worry I have a spare texture to re-shoot just to be fair. OK me and ferrania film don't like each other.. and this film gives odd results. I find the ferrania is unforgiving of a manual camera. But I have to say I LIKE the texture idea. As you underexpose the image, the texture bubbles show up and really start becoming distracting. This film is NO GOOD for night shots as I found out. Day time only. (Yes its asa 200 but I do shoot at night too with all films) This film is unforgiving is under exposure. Very. More forgiving of over exposure. I like the effects on houses and buildings, and flowers work surprisingly well too. Alas my set up was not perfect so I buggered up my shots, not as sharp as I would like to shoot but what did I expect from a franken camera. I promise next time nikon lens, nikon camera. But look past that and look at the film.

I rather like this, the texture is there and rather adds to the photo

Again the Texture adds to the photo

Inside a Waratah, It wasn't that dark, but the film didn't like it. Cool bubbles though..

5am predawn at Sydenham. Hmmm The bubbles dominate! Crap pic anyway but still

Early afternoon and the bubbles are starting to take over. If the big bubble wasn't there but a smaller one, it would work better. Oh well its pot luck

Early Morning Just after sunrise. Almost no bubbles!!

The other issue that arose was, it is confusing to the photo lab. They see the bubbles and freak out. WARN them!
For all the Lomo fans out there, this is a fun but VERY expensive 12 exposure film. If you are wanting a fancy pants film for a summer's day BBQ this this is your film. If you want to use a fancy film at dusk or overcast or anything other than sunny 16 forget it. The texture is overwhelming and obliterates the image.

Would I use this again?? If I found some of special?? YEs sure, if I was in the mood to be silly.. Australia has heaps of sunny days.. but most likely I wont be getting lucky after my back up texture roll is shot. Think I'll save that film for the Tulip festival.

You can buy revolog from from their web site. Postage to OZ and the USAis  €16 I hope cheaper to Europe. This cost is even for ONE FILM so buy a bulk pack.

Next film is Teslar1stay tuned

cataloguing?

Its occurred to me that cataloguing my cameras may be a good idea. DER you all say. You have so many, you need a way to keep track of them all.
True but what?

Well Kevin of @egaeus fame on IG suggested Bento and I found TMI and MyStuff2 as alternatives. ATM I chose to use TMI as, although Bento is good, TMI is set up for 90% of what I would catalogue. The jury is out atm... NONE of these apps are cheap. SO I drew the line as downloading all three.

TMI has a slick interface BUT the date seletion is annoying. It doesnt pop up correctly. aside from that, (I dont rememeber purchase dates anyway) its a nice app.



I tried to store my used cameras in a pelican case but my husband thinks my digital stuff should go in it. Trouble is, my digital stuff travels with me in the overhead locker and this new case is far too big for such a job. SO it would be a domestic bag only. I dunno what to do. I really want my pretties in a nice case. All protected and cared for but still used and easily accessable. This presented another problem.. How to store my other pretties the not every day ones. ATM in a box but I need to buy those anti humidity bags. ALSO need to source the perfect size to sort lens in. Low humidity sachets in that too.



I have now three lens with mould. All three are sitting in the sun now. GRR and one was bought from a shop here in sydney. If I could find the receipt I would return it. Then again its been 3 months? and YES I should have done a proper look at the glass. Lesson learned. Well all are isolated from the collection.



I did have a few photo expeditions, but mostly not whole rolls of film. A werra turned up late december and I have been having fun with that, but still a roll shy of developing. Grunt.

Have two rolls in my bag awaiting developing.. I just need time and motivation at the same time.

This werra is a work of Eastern European art. Its just a stunning camera to behold.



NEW YEARS came and went. I did a heap of digital photos of the fire works as I felt that film would be a waste as the settings change each year and I didnt want a roll of blank film (again) Prior to midnight, I used a roll of film with the AE1-Program Tim gave me and a beautiful F1.4 lens. Its lovely just to look at.





Used the roll up before 2350hrs and headed for the fire works.



From the 1st I did no film. Not by choice, but no time. Back to it soon!! I miss using the Canons and my werra.