And somewhat exhausted C41 chemistry
A few days ago, the weather and conditions were perfect for a little afternoon outing, and really worked set itself up for some lovely muted colours. Since I had some C41 chemistry and a few rolls of different colour films, I decided to go for Kodak ProImage 100 and the Canon T70.
I wanted to shoot hand-held, and I wanted a film that is gentle with the colours, but not either over, nor under-saturated. As it later turned out, my C41 chemistry is probably shot. The scans I got had a severe cyan-green cast, and since the C41 mix is three months old, I wouldn’t be surprised if it is a dying blix.
I chose to drive up to an old outdoor-museum, a museum with an old, lovely yellow farm-buildingand some old houses. The area is accessible for everyone at any time, and walking around there is very relaxing, since there rarely are too many people around.
Outside the main farm building, there was evidence of a snowy winter with heavy and mild snow. Big branches had broken off the tree outside the main building and I took the chance of photographing them, as they are likely to soon be removed when the snow melts. The broken branches made for some nice compositions in themselves, but they also «framed» some other nice elements, such as wilted autumn leaves, that have been buried by the snow over a long winter.
This time with the Canon, I went for images demanding wider apertures. The last time I used the camera was a very bright day, and I mainly shot f11 and occasionally f8. This time, my narrowest aperture was f4, and in most cases, the lens seems to perform very well: The images have a sharp and defined focus, and creates a soft bokeh that is very pleasant to the eye. There are no evidence of any vignetting or other issues with the lens at these apertures. But I have found it to have some diffraction when used at f22 (not in this outing obviously), and I will avoid that in the future.
Cheap Camera Adventures 