Experimenting with depth of field

Playing with the Christmas decorations is not an activity reserved for cats. When I tested the Petri 7s for the first time in the beginning of December, I noticed how good the lens seemed to be. Even though my test then showed that the camera had seen better days, the f1,8 lens turned out to give very nice, details and I decided to shoot some frames to test it out. I decided to go with the Christmas, or actually Advent, decorations. I lit a candle in a glass candle holder, and let that work as a foreground, and I placed the rest of the decoration approximately 80cm away from the lens, which would be the closest focus length for this camera.

My setup. Petri 7s on a black glass plate with the decorations. I have taped the camera because the back has a tendency to «pop open» at any point.

I went with shots at f1,8, f4 and f16 to see how much difference there would be in sharpness and how they would turn out. I did not change the lighting conditions, but I adjusted my shutter speeds to compensate for the smaller aperture. for the f16 image, that was two and ha half minutes with compensation for the Schwarzschild effect.

Petri 7s – Ilford FP4 plus Xtol Stock. f1,8 1/8 seconds – f16 180 seconds – f4 1/2 seconds

All in all I think the lens gave me the results I anticipated. The f1,8 gives me a very nice bokeh, but the focus is a little bit off, so maybe the focus ring isn’t as accurate as I would hope for. The f4 image gives more sharpness and retains the nice bokeh feel, and the f16 gives a very sharp image.

The mood changes a lot between the images, and I am not sure which one is my favorite. You can make a judgement yourself, and I hope the images are to your liking.

Capturing the mood

Some days ago, I was tidying up my darkroom, and I found what I assume to be a previous test-roll. I assumed that the roll was around half, but it turned out to be around 24 exposures of HP5 plus. I then got the Idea of trying to capture the miserable weather we have had in the area lately. I figured HP5 plus would be brilliant at that, it has grain, but not too much and coarse. I also chose to go with Ilford’s Perceptol developer, to reduce the grain in the whites a bit, but not eradicate it.

My aim was not to get razor sharp images, but rather to capture the feeling and mood of this time of year. I am thinking more in the direction of a charcoal drawing than a crystal clear image of the mood. I know some photographers would have gone with a Holga or something similar to that on an outing like this, but I have never really befriended my Holga camera, and I prefer the effect the Petri Racer gives.

Snowy and wet December day – Petri Racer w Ilford HP5 plus@250. F8 1/60s – Ilford Perceptol stock

For that reason, I chose to bring along the Petri Racer. For long term readers of this blog, you know the Petri Racer camera very well. It was the first camera I bought for this blog, and the camera that inspired me to make a blog about cheap cameras, hence CCadventures – Cheap Camera Adventures. Not that all cameras featured on this blog is «Cheap», but they are reasonable and affordable alternatives that in some way sparks my interest.

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The day was very snowy and it was unpleasant walking around in the snowy weather. I also had to wipe and dry the Petri a few times during the outing, to make sure it was not soaking or that the lens got fogged up. The camera had been in the car for a few hours before the shoot to «climatize» somewhat, but the wet snow and humidity made it fog up slightly anyway. I therefore let the film reach room-temperature before developing it. I often do this when the weather is cold to avoid swift temperature changes during the process. Not that the weather this day was very cold, only around -2 degrees, but it never hurts to be on the safe side.

Even capturing the snow falling – Petri Racer w Ilford HP5 plus@250 f8, 1/4 sec – Ilford Perceptol stock

The whole outing took me around half an hour, and I was soaked afterwards after wading in deep snow to reach a dam with view over the little lake Skumsjøen close to Gjøvik.

For the images, I am quite satisfied with the images as I find that they convey the mood and feeling I was aiming at conveying. These are not my strongest photographic moment by any means, but in terms of conveying the unpleasant Norwegian December-wet snow, I think I did a decent job.

Petri Racer. -Ilford HP5 plus@250 f8 – 1/60 sec. Ilford Perceptol stock.

Playing with a Point and Shoot

The market for film cameras has changed substantially over the last two-three decades. In the 90s there were a range of very simple easy cameras that you could use to get some pictures without knowing anything about photography nor wanting to learn about it. They were simple, fully automatic and would give you acceptable images with minimum effort. These were the fully automatic point and shoot cameras. They’d set the film speed through DX coding on the cassette, they would set the aperture and shutter speed accordingly. The small catch, you had to press the shutter release button yourself. The bigger catch, you had no idea what the images would look like.

This morning, I played around with one of these cameras. I haven’t used one of them for a long time, and I was curious about what it would «bring to the table» of images and quality. The camera was bought cheaply online and arrived by Norwegian snail mail two weeks after it was posted from a town reasonably nearby. Well done Snail Mail. After this wait, I was the confused owner of a Chinon Pocket Zoom AF.

The Chinon Pocket-Zoom AF – 38-60mm lens (probably f8 or something like that as widest aperture)

I was eager to test it out, and I gave it a roll of Rollei Retro 400s. The electronic and automatic wind-on mechanism did its job and rolled on a few frames that could have been used, and the display on the back showed «1». The Chinon was ready. I went out in very dull weather and the Chinon did not seem to be too fond of dull and «boring» light. It constantly set off the flash, and I had to manually reset it to «flash off» every time I changed compositions, as it would have reverted to flash mode automatically. It is a bit like an overbearing parent, the security net is always there.

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Shooting the Chinon was like shooting with your phone. You aim vaguely in the direction of what you want to photograph, you press the shutter button and wait for a while while the small elves inside the camera gets to work setting up your exposure. This takes a while, and you would probably not use this camera to photograph running animals or people in action. If you used it to photograph someone playing football, they would be done with their game and home for dinner before the camera takes a shot. After a while, when you hear the reassuring sound of the shutter and the winding mechanism, you are ready for your next shot.

Chinon Pocket Zoom AF – Rollei Retro 400s – Xtol Stock

When looking at the final images, they are not that sharp and crisp as you would hope. But since I have not had any control in the making of there images other than pressing the shutter release button, I don’t really feel it is my fault.

Some issues I see. The lens is probably not that bright and certainly not very sharp, and the images seem all slightly under exposed. They have a strange vignetting, much like the one you get while shooting a Holga camera, and the lens perfomance isn’t that much better on this Chinon. Also, you get these imprinted numbers on all your frames, and I was not aware that it would be printing numbers on my frames. I have left them here in all their atrociousness.

My conclusion. I will sell this camera to someone who will use it. I will certainly not use this camera again and if anyone wants it, please contact me.

I like this image because of the mood, and that it is evenly blurry all the way over.
*Chinon Pocket Zoom AF – Rollei Retro 400s – Xtol Stock*

Did I choose the wrong film?

When I drove home from work today, I noticed that the contrast between the December darkness and the artificial light from lamp-posts, lit buildings and petrol stations actually would make very nice images indeed. I thought about going for long exposures with either Tri-X or HP5 plus, and I composed some nice images in my head. My chosen subject, Skibladnerhuset.

Skibladner is an old paddle steamer the people who lives around the lake Mjøsa are very proud of. It is currently the oldest paddle steamer in scheduled traffic, and it will sail on the lake in the summer months. When the winter comes, it will be parked on display in its own, specifically designed house. A special building with I find to look incredible with its triangles and diagonal pillars and poles. The house was drawn by the architects at Kontur in Gjøvik and was built in 2001. It has become a landmark for Gjøvik and is visible from RV4 as you drive through the town.

I chose to roll up the Zenza Bronica ETR with a roll of JCH Streetpan 400, and test out how an extremely contrasty film would deal with the lighting conditions in a Norwegian December afternoon. In retrospect, this might have been the wrong film for this outing, I should have gone for Tri-X og HP5 plus.

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First of all, I could not find any information about the reciprocity features and long exposure compensation anywhere. Therefore, I went for combining the information from the Ilford HP5 plus and Kodak Tri-X. This means compensation from 1 second and more. My logic became – If the meter gives me 1 second, I’ll shoot 2 seconds, if it gives me 2s, I’ll go for 4. It could seem; however, that this was not anywhere near enough compensation.

Marina light – Zenza Bronica ETR w 50mm Zenzanon f2,8 – JCH Streetpan 400@400 1 second at f8

My negatives got very thin, so thin, that I wouldn’t imagine printing them in the darkroom. Three negatives came out reasonably OK, and showed the contrast level I was aiming for, however, the other 12, not so much.

I developed the film in Xtol stock, both because I have a batch of Xtol that is about to go out and I want to use it, and because I just did not «love» the prospect of doing development for 17 minutes with 30s agitation frequency. Call me lazy, but this is who I am.

I also considered using Rodinal 1+100 and do Semi-Stand development, but I wanted a more specific development cycle that I knew would give me the correct film-speed. And with Rodinal at that dilution and development times of an hour plus, I don’t really get that level of control.

Skibladnerhuset – Exposure times 4 and 8 seconds.

This was just an experiment and a shot in the dark (pun intended), but I learnt quite a bit about the Streetpan 400, and when not to use it. I might do a reshoot of this outing with a roll of Tri-X at some point, to pay the amazing architecture the respect it deserves.

Please enjoy the images.

Working with a slow film

I have shot some slow films before, especially PanF 50 and I love the way a slow film looks. Smooth, calm, invisible grain and deep contrast. I also love how they allow me to shoot with very open apertures and longer shutter-speeds without having to compensate using ND-filters.

A film I have tried some times before without success is the «Rollei RPX25». I bought some rolls of this film for my medium format cameras, and my experience was not that great. One of the films turned out to be incorrectly cut and was more or less impossible to reel for development, and when I finally got it reeled and developed, it had the nastiest mottling I have ever seen. From some research online, I understood that this problem could be down to lack of prewash. Wiser and happier, I went on to try another roll, but on this one, I got nasty camera-shake even though the camera was mounted on a tripod and triggered using a release cable.

Some weeks ago, I bought a few rolls of RPX25 for my 35mm cameras, and today I set out to try it.

My equipment for the day. Olympus OM-1 w 50mm Zuiko f1,8 and the Rollei RPX25 canister.

I wanted to try this film out in a snowy winter environment, to see if I could tame the contrasts the film gives and end up with a contrasty, but nice winter shot. I chose to shoot at f8 with a yellow filter, to have some aperture to go on, as well as not shooting very long shutter speeds. The yellow filter is also very helpful to shape the contrasts. To be on the safe side, I bracketed the shots to be sure I get something.

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So why did I chose the OM-1? I chose this camera because I wanted a reliable camera that I know is fairly accurate both at aperture-settings and shutter speeds. I don’t worry too much about this when I have films I know and that has some latitude, but I was very unsure how this film would handle potential under-exposure, and chose to play it safe. I exposed the film at 20 ISO, which is the lowest my light-meter would go, and developed as shot at 25. My negatives were contrasty but actually rather good looking.

Here are some shots.

Olympus OM-1 w 50mm Zuiko Lens. f8 – f4 for the one of the door. Rollei RPX 25@20 Kodak Xtol 1+1 8 minutes.

I am very happy that my shots didn’t completely blow out the white snow, and the yellow filter helped me keep the detail in the overcast sky, without adding too much extra contrast to the already dark buildings. I am happy with this try-out, and I will finish the roll at another time.

If you want to join the shooting and hear some Camera-babble, a video will be available on YouTube shortly.

Going minimalistic with Delta 100

Today as I was relaxing, enjoying a cup of coffee, I looked out the window. The first fall of snow has just blessed us with its arrival, and this always brings new objects to my attention. Things that I maybe haven’t noticed because it is hidden in the November-browns.

Today my attention was drawn towards some wilted plants. Their very dark brownish colors made a nice, almost minimalistic, tone towards the snowy background. I immediately ran to put a roll of Ilford Delta 100 into my Bronica ETR. I also fitted it with a lens I just bought. a Zenzanon 150mm f3,5. Equivalent to around 90mm at a 35mm camera, and used a yellow filter to get the minimalistic contrast that I was looking for.

Zenza Bronica ETR w 150mm Zenzanon f3,5 + Yellow filter. Ilford DD-X developer

I aimed to keep the snowy areas around zone 8-9, to not completely blow it out, and my dark areas around zone 3-4 to retain some shadow detail. I got fairly good negatives, but I would have loved to have retained some more detail, especially in the most contrasty images.

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Once again I chose to develop Delta 100 in DD-X developer, and this time as well, it gave me fabulous negatives. I am really looking forward to working with some of these images in the darkroom, and I expect to use lower grade filters, or maybe some split grading to get the most out of the negatives. A spot on my wall is already prepared for one of these images.

Zenza Bronica ETR w 150mm Zenzanon f3,5 lens. Ilford Delta 100 – Ilford DD-X developer.

Once again. Thanks to Bjørn for sending me these films and the developer to test. I do really love the results it gives.

Messing up a test

Testing old, cheap cameras is always exciting. Sometimes they work, and sometimes they don’t, but in mist cases, you get something. In this test, I got something, but I managed to damage the film when winding it out. More of that to come.

Some weeks ago, I found an interesting camera on eBay, that I had never heard of before. The camera is called «Condor I» and was produced in Italy from 1947 by the Italian manufacturer of optics Officine Gallileo. After a while, Ferrania entered and most of the cameras were sold with the Ferrania logo on it. Mine, however did not. Whether this means that mine is among the earlier cameras, I don’t know, but – in mild terms – the camera does have some patina.

My dirty and somewhat tatty copy of the Condor I.

The first thing that really struck me when I played around with this camera, was the unusual selection of aperture stops. 3,5 and 4,5 are not that strange, but 6, 18 and 25 are stops I have never seen before on any manual camera. However, the aperture selector is the only part of this camera that is easy and smooth to operate. It seems to me that this camera has not been used for a long while, and that it will take some «jiggling» and maybe some sewing machine oil to get the focusing mechanism and the shutter speed dial to move with ease.

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After cleaning both the rangefinder windows (there are two of them on this camera) and the viewfinder window as well as a light wash with some glass cleaner over the whole camera, I loaded it with a roll of Rollei Retro 400s. Previously this day, I had spotted two lines of bicycle stands that I thought had an interesting look to them. I decided to shoot some frames, cut the film out of the camera and develop the film to check whether it does work.

So far so good, I shot some frames and went home ready for developing the film. I loaded everything I needed into the changing bag and cut the film out of the camera as intended. But for some weird reason, the take-up spool would not accept the «rewind setting» and roll backwards. I fiddled a bit with it, and after a little while, the film spun up into my hand, and I was able to carefully wind it off manually. It does seem, however, that I was not able to do this carefully enough. I got nasty scratches and marks on my negatives, and I can only blame myself.

Condor I – Rollei Retro 400s – Xtol 1+0 9.30 at 20 degrees

The nasty scratches aside, the lens seems very sharp and the exposures fairly accurate from what I would expect with the settings. All shots are f4,5 at 1/100th and the Rollei film is shot at box speed. Also, the I love the smoothness of the grain I see in these scans.

I do definitely have to take this camera on a new test. The images seem to be decently sharp and pleasant for a messed up shoot like this. I’ll make a video about this little quirky camera and my next time shooting it.

Printing lonely leaf

In my previous entry, I went out in the grey, misty Norwegian November to take some calm and pleasant pictures with my Bronica ETR and a roll of Ilford Delta 100. I also tested a new developer, Ilford DD-X, and I was very pleased with one of the images. So pleased in fact, that I decided to take a trip into the darkroom to make myself a print for my own wall at home.

I brought along my GoPro and made a very basic and amateur video coverage of the darkroom session. My video skills are not good, and this is actually the first time I have tried to mount together a video in this way. I might do more of these.

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My very amateur video. Please enjoy.

Silky water with Fomapan 100

I have written a lot about Fomapan 100 on this blog. This is a film I absolutely love shooting, and that I have found to have some really nice qualities such as insanely fine grain when developed in Xtol stock, a rich and wide exposure latitude, that makes it very pushable and pullable. An obviously, the fact that this film is an absolute bargain with its low price.

Back in the beginning of May 2020, when Norway woke up from lockdown, I brought my Zeiss Ikon Nettar 6×6 camera out to a location, to test longer exposures with Fomapan 100. To really get the longer exposure times, I brought with me what I thought to be a four stop ND-filter, but what turned out to be a three stop red filter.

My Zeiss Ikon Nettar Medium format 6×6 bellow camera.

Having already made the effort, and trotted myself a path towards the three waterfalls I wanted to shoot, I decided to go with the red filter, and see what results I would get in the darker forests in the early morning in May. The Nettar was placed on a tripod, and I had a cable release to avoid camera shake on longer exposures. I did some metering, and used an app to calculate the correct exposure times. For Fomapan 100, the Schwarzschild effect becomes important from shutter speeds at 1 second. Since I shot most of mine at longer times, I used the cable release all the time.

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I had some happy time shooting this roll, and I struggled my way through tree roots and forestland with threes that had fell down over the winter. But when I went for the last three pictures, on a little view-point above the biggest of the water falls. I noticed a «marked» path around the whole area. At least I got some unusual angles in my shots. I cannot imagine that anyone else have been where I went that morning.

Zeiss Ikon Nettar w three stop red filter, f22, 4 seconds exposure time. Fomapan 100 Xtol Stock 5 minutes

When I pulled the developed negatives out of the tank, I was surprised to see how «normal» they looked. I had pictured a more contrasty result from a red filter than what I got in this shoot, and I did not really think a lot about these images before I started working with them in the darkroom a few days ago.

I realized that they were actually quite interesting, and that the three stop red nearly gave me an «infrared» look in my shots. I have no huge experience with infrared photography, but I do like the effect it gives, and I will most likely do more of that in the future.

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I also love the way the greys and whites create a dramatic scene and that it puts its emphasis on the silky water effect, creating a more dramatic look than I expected. Maybe the misplaced «red filter» was actually a good idea for this shoot. I do at least see this as a happy mistake. And I got to see a side of Fomapan 100 that I did not expect. The Infrared-ish side.

Zeiss Ikon Nettar w red filter, f22, 4 seconds. Fomapan 100, Kodak Xtol 1+0 5 minutes

Aiming at contrast and grain

I haven’t really done any contrasty BNW-stuff for a while, and the other day I loaded a roll of StreetCandy ATM400 into my little Petri Racer and brought it with me for some days, aiming at whatever caught my eye wherever I was at the time. I haven’t used the Petri Racer for a while, and I found this was an option to use it and its little, interesting lens.

The Petri Racer is a little rangefinder camera that I have used a lot on this blog. It was the camera that made this blog happen and the camera I used for my first two entries. I am very happy with the way the Petri makes the world look. It has a special tone to it that I cannot really put my finger on.

My first pictures for this entry were taken a few minutes after it stopped raining at a car-park when I filled my coffee-cup in the nearby petrol station. I experimented somewhat with the DOF on these images, and they are shot around f4 on the little 40mm lens. My favorite one is here:

Petri Racer, StreetCandy ATM400@400 – Rodinal 1+25, 6 minutes

As I aimed for the contrasty and somewhat grainy look on this roll, I went for a pretty concentrated dilution of Rodinal; 1+25. I guessed this dilution to give me the maximum accutance and give me deep and sharp contrast as well as the lovely Rodinal grain. I don’t really mind the grainy structure of Rodinal, and I find it to suit these kinds of images as it gives them a raw impression.

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A bit later that day, I went to an old, derelict school building to set up for the shoot mentioned in a previous entry. The first thing I noticed was the interesting lights in the old hallway. Filled with old chairs, a ladder, dirt and the smell of old building, it really gave an incredible shot. I shot this one on a tripod using f5.6 for 1/2 of a second, and I find that this shot shows the mood of the hallway well.

Then I went to an old museum where someone had backed their Tractor-trailer into a ditch. There were some interesting contrast to be captured there and I went for it.

All in all I am very happy with this roll of film. I got the grain and the contrast that I wanted, and the little Petri got another run. Shame it hasn’t been used for a while. It will not sleep as long this time.