Out walking with Fuji C200

A little while back, I bought some rolls of Fujifilm C200 colour negative film. A consumer film I remember very well to have used as a photo-interested teenager. Back then I had a Nikon F60, a camera that sadly has stopped working and that is too expensive to have repaired. I upgraded it with a Nikon F80 after it died. When I tried C200 again, I was excited to see how well this film actually performs, even today in 2021. On my first tryout I shot it at 160 just to be sure that I biased towards over-exposure and not under-exposure. I realized that I lost some shadows at 200, and I decided to go out once again the other day, but this time, I shot it at ISO 100. One stop over-exposure. I was a bit nervous about this tactic as I don’t know the films characteristics that well. I was afraid I would get the very «washed out» colours you get when you over-expose Fuji-films too much, but I needn’t worry.

My chosen camera for this outing, was the Canon T70. A camera that I find to have a very good light-meter and aperture-priority setting. Since I was out walking and scouting for possible locations, I shot it using aperture-priority. The camera is manual focus and you can set your aperture, so this program gives med decent control over my exposures even if I am not controlling the shutter-speeds myself.

An iPhone snap of the Canon T70. When this image was taken it was on frame 24.

Over-exposing colour negative film is normally not an issue. The dynamic range is made to deal well with over-exposure and you get more details in the shadows. Exactly what I wanted for this outing. My location this time is Steinsodden, a little islet that is accessible by foot in spring-time when the water in the lake is low. Once the snow-melt in the mountains pick up and reach the big lakes, this islet is inaccessible without either using a boat or getting wet. The name of the Islet is «Steinsholmen» or «Steinsborga» as the locals say. It is home to the ruins of a medieval castle that you can read more about if you google «Mjøskastellet». The ruins are protected, and when I was there id didn’t see any reasons to photograph it, as some moron has figured out that putting up barrier-tape around was a marvelous idea. It is just ugly and dis-respectful to the historic site and I guess the medieval king who got it built will haunt this moron forever! (At least I hope)

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But.. No-one reads this blog for my thoughts about barrier-tape in nature, you want to see my images:

The path – Canon T70 w Canon 50mm f1,8. f8 – Fujifilm C200@100 Tetenal C41

The first image I am going to show here, is this lovely image of the path leading towards the islet. I just love all the leading lines giving this image the depth it has, and I also love seeing that I have retained so much shadow-detail with my process of over-exposing. I was a bit concerned as the day was very sunny, but not even the sky in the background is completely «blown out». Also, with my Epson v600 scanner, this film is very easy to scan. I am having trouble getting good scans of 35mm Ektar, but the C200 really is a star.

Some nice rocks – Canon T70 w 50mm Canon f1,8 – Fujifilm C200@100 – Tetenal C41

I really love the way this image turned out. I cannot remember whether this image was taken at f4 or f5,6, but it gives a very nice focus area, and a very smooth and sift background. It is so nice that the snow is melting and that I once again can take these nature-detail images that I love looking for. I have not corrected this image for sharpness or haze, but I have tinted the colours slightly, as they were a tad too green for my liking.

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The last one that I will show in this post, is a shot at your famous f11. The main setting of the landscape photographer. It is an early afternoon view over the lake and the weather was indeed very sunny and harsh. Even so, I see that the film coped very well with the over-exposure and I am very pleased with how it turned out.

The view – Canon T70 w50mm Canon f1,8. -Fujifilm C200@100 – Tetenal C41

I am actually surprised how well this film works and considering its price, it is quite good value for money. I might very well be shooting it again soon.

Capturing bleak winter colours

As I have previously written on my blog, I like shooting Kodak ProImage 100 in the winter. There is something about the colours and the subtlety of it, that I find to be exactly the right media for my style of winter-shooting. Some days ago, I gave the Konica a roll of ProImage and went for a little outing to some different locations where I could access the lake. The day were one of those days where it was clearing up after some dull and grey days, and there were very bleak, oranges and purples in the landscape.

Lith Print feel – Konica Autoreflex TC – Hexanon 50mm f1,8 – Kodak ProImage 100

I have also found myself to be very fond of the little Konica camera. Yes, it has a bit fewer shutter speeds than the OM-1 that inspired me to buy it, and indeed it hates cold weather. But the camera, and its lens is in mint conditions and takes beautiful images. The lens is very sharp and produces beautiful bokeh. It also feels very sturdy in the hand. From what I gather this is because mine is an early model where the whole body is a metal construction. It does not produce any light leaks at this point and I guess the light meter would work if I gave it a battery.

*Tree root in snow – Konica Autoreflex TC – Hexanon 50mm f1,8 – Kodak ProImage 100*

Based on the fact that this was marketed as an «entry level» SLR camera in its time, I must say that its performance is incredible. If I was to recommend an entry level SLR to anyone at this point, I would be very tempted to say Konica Autoreflex TC and just smile. I am very happy that I purchased this camera and I will probably keep it as one of my regular users over some time, along side with the Olympus OM-1.

Testing a Konica Autoreflex TC (Part 2)

This entry is a sequel of a previous entry where I shot a roll of Ilford FP4 plus trying out my new Konica Autoreflex TC camera, and where I, somewhat irrelevantly compared it to the Olympus OM-1 because I saw a video about it on Youtube. In retrospect, I regret that comparison because I find the cameras to be very different and not too comparable. I therefore cleared my mind, and I rolled the Konica up with a roll of Kodak ProImage 100, which is my preferred colour film for 35mm winter photography, and I went for a little walk.

My car needed to visit the garage that morning, and I had some time to walk around shooting the Konica handheld to get a good feeling about how it performed. Since the morning weather (The lovely thing about Winter-Norway around 10.00) was bright, colourful and vibrant I chose to go with Colour Shooting

A short time-lapse of the beautiful weather conditions this day.

Even though the Konica really dislikes the cold weather and can start to play up in different ways, I learnt from this last time, and this time, I chose to consider where it had issues last time before I started working. Fist of all, when the shutter gets cold, it tends to stick a little bit, therefore I tried to keep the cameras as close to my body, under my jacket, most of the time. This probably looked a bit strange, but it worked. I also avoided the lens fogging up due to this.

Another issue I found last time, was that the rewind button under the camera sticked and would not operate properly outside and the film ripped. I tried this button on multiple occasions indoors later, and it always worked. So this time, I did not rewind the film before I came home, and I did not have any issues with ripped film. That said, though. The take-up spool did in fact cut off the tip of the film leader in some weird way.

Konica Autoreflex TC w 50mm Hexanon f1,8 lens – f11 1/60th Kodak ProImage 100. Tetenal C41

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I shot without filters this time, but I would probably have chosen to use a two stop polarizer if I had one for the ø55 filter tread. But when looking at the images, that was not really necessary after all. Working with the Konica camera is very pleasant, and it lies very well in the hand and has easy controls to operate. It also seems to be quite accurate in the normal shutter speeds that I have tried out, but then again, it doesn’t have shutter speeds between 1/8th and B.

What I really like, is that lovely Hexanon-lens. It has a very nice sharpness and it helps me render really vibrant colours and grey tones very well. I am looking forward to trying this one out with some Bokeh-shots with wide apertures at some stage. Stay tuned.

*Konica Autoreflex TC w 50mm Hexanon f1,8 lens Kodak ProImage 100. Tetenal C41*

Shooting Boots film?

A short while ago, I shot a roll of expired medium format film and got «interesting» results with a lot of mottling and so on. I am not a very frequent user of expired films, but once in a while, I get hold of some expired film, and I do not mind trying it out either. Normally, the expired films you get hold of are your big manufacturers such as; Kodak, Ilford, Fuji and their friends. However, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, there were a huge number of rebranded films and budget options that are not present today.

In this entry, I am writing about my tryout of one of these films. A film sold in the pharmacies back in the day. The Boots Universal 400. Which film this actually is, is not easy to read out of the packaging or negatives. The negatives are fairly anonymous without much writing on them, and on the box, it only says that it is made in the EU for Boots Pharmacies in England. The EU-part leads my suspicion to either Agfa or Ferrania as the real producer of this film, but I will not make any claims. Please let me know in the comments if you know.

My equipment and film for this entry. Olympus OM-1 and the Boots Universal 400. Sadly, I did not get the extra 100 advantage card points from Boots, because I developed the film myself at home.

I chose to go with the Olympus OM-1 as it was a very cold morning. The temperature was -20 degrees when I arrived at the location, and the Olympus has an impeccable record of always functioning in cold weather conditions like the ones today.

Because the film expired in 2006, I chose to abide with the rule of thumbs, one stop pr decade, and I metered my shots at ISO 160, and did some slight bracketing just in case. My expectation from this film was slight colour casts and an increase in grain, which I indeed got. The colours were severely off in many of the shots, rendering the misty lake in everything from strong oranges to fiery reds. Instead of making heavy colour corrections in post-processing, I chose to go with the colours the film gave me, and I did not do any grain reduction either.

Boots photographic aquarelle – Olympus OM-1 w Zuiko 50mm f1,8 lens. Boots Universal 400@160

Some of the images got a nearly «Aquarelle like» mood to them, and I find them quite interesting and beautiful in their own way, even though they are clearly not the most spotless, nor grain free images I have taken by any means.

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Another interesting thing from this morning, was the the lighting conditions changed so much over the 45-60 minutes I was out shooting. The previous image was taken at the beginning of the session, and the following was image nr 36 on the roll.

Shooting films with huge amounts of grain is not normally my thing, but sometimes grain gives you images a little extra punch in the mood and makes them more interesting. In this case, I think that is what the grain did. It gave the images a level of abstraction that I find very pleasing. But I appreciate that this might not be everybody’s cup of tea.

More Christmas decorations

This entry is a sequel of the FP4 shoot with the Advent decorations. If you haven’t seen that entry, please scroll down and find it. In this entry, I have once again done like a cat, playing with the Christmas decorations. This time, I played with the Christmas tree and a roll of Kodak ProImage 100 and I used the Olympus OM-1 with the same 50mm lens that I often use it with. Originally my plan was to shoot this with the Praktica MTL5 B and the Helios 44-2 lens, but it turned out that the lovely Praktica didn’t really appreciate being hooked up with the shutter release cable, and it therefore decided to jam. Not the kind of jammed that you can easily fix yourself, the properly jammed jam. Therefore, I had to restart the shoot with the Olympus, which handled the cable just fine.

I shot the Zuiko Lens fully open at its maximum aperture of f1,8, but I chose to let the Christmas tree lights be my only light source and ended up using longer shutter speeds, such as 1/2, 1/4 and even one and three seconds.

Christmas tree angel – Olympus OM-1 w 50mm Zuiko f1,8 lens. f1,8 shutter 1/2 seconds. Kodak Proimage 100

I know that there are many opinions on the Kodak ProImage 100 out and about. For my style and preference of photography, I find the ProImage to be brilliant for capturing winter colours where I often find Ektar too vibrant. Also, for indoor photography like this, I find this film to work perfectly, as I would often have to de-saturate Ektar in these situations. But again, this is personal preference. Personally, I like the «level between» Ektar and Portra as I see this film to be.

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These images are slightly colour corrected in Photoshop after scanning, there were no colour shifts, but I found that the images got scanned with slightly different white balance. Not a big deal though, as it was easily correctable with Photoshop. The film was developed using the Tetenal Colortec C41 kit, which I find to work very well and be easily controllable. When using this kit, I cannot understand why it took me so long before I dared to try developing colour myself.

*Shooting around the Christmas tree – Olympus OM-1 w 50mm Zuiko f1,8 lens. f1,8 shutter 1/2 seconds.*
*Kodak Proimage 100*

Thank you for reading and following me through 2020. Let us all hope for a better and less troublesome and pandemic 2021.

Capturing the winter colours

Shooting in winter time can sometimes be very uninspiring and difficult. There are no vibrant colours in the nature, and the weather is sometimes really and truly nasty. Therefore, I have made myself a project this winter. To capture the mood of the Norwegian winter with analog photography. I have not limited myself in terms of films, developers or styles. The goal with the project is to convey the Norwegian winter mood through my photography.

This is the second entry in the project, and in this one, I am working with one of the days where the weather is nice and where there are colours to work with.

To capture the colours, I chose to go with a very under-rated film that I find to work very well with the Norwegian winter tones. The Kodak Pro Image 100. I have used some rolls of this film previously, ordered on eBay as it was not sold in Europe. From what I have gathered online, this film was originally introduced in South America and Asia as an entry-level professional colour negative film. Based on the Kodak Gold, it was then altered, tweaked and improved to produce better skin tones, but keep the warm Kodak colour palette that the Kodak Gold is renown for.

Olympus OM-1 Zuiko Olympus 50mm f,18 w 1,6 stop Circular Polarizer. Kodak ProImage 100

When you google this film, you get a lot of «so-called experts in the field» who has written some kind of a review of this film based on their experience after shooting one roll of film. All of these conclude with something like «This film is so cheap, why would Kodak brand such a cheap film professional, Ektar is far better». I find this to be unfair to the Pro Image. KODAK Ektar is a brilliant film, and a film I use a lot myself, but I find it to be too vibrant for my winter shooting. I also mean, that you can never judge a film just by shooting one roll of it, and choice of film is a personal choice and relies heavily on personal preference. after fifteen rolls (three five-packs) of Pro-Image, I have found this film to work brilliantly for my preferences.

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One of the lovely things about working in Norway in the winter, is that morning light happens at more comfortable times than in the summer. My «early morning shoot» started at 09.30 with a cup of coffee and ended around 11.00 with me rewinding the film back into the cassette and traveled home for development. Even so, I did not meet as many people as I expected on my little outing into the lovely lights and colours. And I find that I was able to capture the mood of this morning.

A sunny, cold winters day after many grey dull days, with some lovely almost purple colours in the skies and a yellowish tone on the ground near the lake.

I then ended my day with doing a C41 process. I had fresh chemicals which were mixed right before, and the cycle went like a dream. I see a slight cyan-cast in the scans. This could be because I had to pause the development between the Developer and the Blix due to a temperature fall in the Blix. I then left the films in the tank with some 38 degrees clean water for some minutes, while the Blix heated up again.

More with Frida and the Ford

In my last entry I wrote about my vintage-style shoot with Frida and her 1950 Ford Shoebox and I added some black and white shots shot on Ilford FP4 plus. As I mentioned, I also ran a roll of Kodak Portra 160 through the Ikoflex to really get the Vintage colour feel on some of the images.

The Kodak Portra is a low-saturated colour-negative film specifically made for obtaining the absolute most beautiful skin tones, but I also adore the effect it gives on scenery and backgrounds. With its soft greenish pastel tones it gives the true feeling of a vintage colour shot. The current emulsion was launched in 1998 following the professional Vericolor-series, and it was intended to be used in the professional market by wedding photographers and portrait photographers.

Running a colour film through an old camera with an old lens is always interesting. You never know how the old lens will cope with the colour reflections. It can seem as my Ikoflex enhances green somewhat, and gives a nearly «marine» colour palette.

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Again I am very thankful and happy to have a friend like Frida, who is as passionate about vintage and keeping the old alive as I am. Her outfit and car matches this shoot in the most exquisite way, and helps the Ikoflex make the Kodak Portra shine.

Based on the limited shutter speed on the Ikoflex, I had to set my apertures wisely. Because of age, My Ikoflex has only three properly working shutter speeds, 1/300, 1/100 and 1/50. I would also guess that the B-mode works, but I have not yet tried it. Because of this I had to shoot with smart apertures to get the pictures I wanted. The Through the window portrait is shot at maximum aperture F3,5 at 1/100, while the picture next to the car was taken at somewhere between f4 and f5,6 at 1/300 to keep some detail in the background.

No colour corrections are done after scanning. The shots are in colour as the Ikoflex shot them. My only corrections are some contrast correction, and obviously some dust removal.

Thank you for reading. Stay tuned for more fun stuff coming up soon.