Stikkord: ilford

Shooting the beast

Sometimes you are really lucky. A few weeks ago, I signed up for the news-letter from a Youtube-channel run by a Canadian photographer named Azreal Knight. If you have not heard about his channel, you should really check it out. A lot of interesting content about analog photography. By signing up to this news letter, I also entered into a little «lottery» or whatever you would call it, and I won. When the price arrived, the box was rather big and I was curious what was in the box.

The content of the box was: One roll of Ilford HP5 plus, one roll of Kodak Gold 200, a selection of stickers, a really cool box-set of darkroom prints of the best Azreal Knight images of 2020… AND… A weird and huge BEAST of a 35mm camera. An Olympus iS-1.

This camera did not make sense to me at all when I first held it in my hand. It was huge and bulky, heavier than my Hasselblad 500C, has a plastic feel to it and the design is best described with the word hideous. At the same time, I am a big fan of Olympus and their lenses never let me down, so I was curious to try it out.

Loading the camera was actually rather fiddly. The take up spool is in the back-door of the camera, in a purpose built box on the back making up most of the bulky design of the back side of the camera. This sounds like a great idea as you would not ruin your whole roll if you should be unlucky and open the back door mid-roll. At the same time, getting the film to load properly is difficult because the motion of closing the door makes the film curl up and away from the take-up spool.

A tree – Olympus iS-1 – Ilford HP5 plus – Ilford ID-11 1+1

In use, the camera is an interesting experience. Even though I don’t really feel that this is a camera for me, I did enjoy using it. Not to be mistaken, there are a lot of small problems with this camera that I find to be very annoying, but using it is very different from using any kind of SLR og PaS-camera I have ever used. This belongs somewhere in the middle from my understanding.

First of all, the camera is heavy and bulky and does not really fit my hand very well. Especially the part about the ergonomics I fear would make me not bring the camera along.

Second, the camera has one of the slowest and least precise AF-systems I have used in a long time, and focusing it manually is fiddly and difficult as well. I ended up doubling and sometimes tripling the shots on many occasions to be sure I had something usable at least.

Third, due to its size and weight, this camera is difficult to hand-hold even at shutter speeds around 1/100, and many of my images shows severe camera shake. Even images I know were shot at 1/100 and above.

A tree – Olympus iS-1 – Ilford HP5 plus – Ilford ID-11 1+1

On the positive side, I must say that the lens is its Olympus name worthy. It performs very well both on its widest and longest settings and the when the AF hits it seems to be a very sharp lens.

As you can see through the images and their captions, I went for Ilford HP5-plus for my test this time. I actually used the roll that came with the camera. This is a film I use often and that I find works very well with the conditions like what I had on this day. Overcast with a bit of rain. I find that this film adds an extra element of texture to the images in a very nice way with its grain-structure which is visible, but pleasing. Even in 35mm shooting.

Olympus iS-1 – Ilford HP5 plus – Ilford ID-11 1+1

A fun little German one

The analog camera market is very focused around a few certain brands and models such as the Leicas, Nikons, Hasselblads and Zeiss’s. But cameras that does not hit the «name requirement» can be just as good and fun to shoot with. Today, I went out to a flea market run by some friends and I found a little interesting camera that I just had to buy. The camera in question was produced from 1957 to 1961 in Germany. With such a short production span, only four years, it is an interesting little camera that probably didn’t hit the market as well as its producer would have hoped.

The camera is an AGFA AMBI SILETTE. A little rangefinder camera with interchangeable lenses and some very clever patents on it. The camera has a Synchro Compur leaf shutter and its highest shutter speed is 1/500th second. When changing between lenses, you can use a little switch on the top to set the viewfinder up with different lines to help you compose while using the rangefinder unit. I found the rangefinder on this camera to work beautifully even after all these years, and the main lens, the 50mm f2.8 Color Solinar is clean and appears to be rather sharp based on this test. The tele lens that also came with it, the 90mm, has severe fungus on it, and I’d guess it would affect the image quality, although, I have not really tried it.

The AGFA AMBI SILETTE – straight from the flea market.

Since I knew that a camera purchase would be a possibility, I brought along a roll of Fomapan 100 and two camera batteries. The Agfa is fully mechanical, so the batteries were not used, but I loaded the roll of Fomapan 100 and went for a little walk at Husodden, to try it out and see how it felt to use. Mind you, I hadn’t really read anything about this camera in advance and I had not even heard about this particular model. So this is a true first impression entry.

My first little quest, was realizing that the rangefinder and viewfinder is hidden behind a little covering lid that you have to flap open before using it. This is a really clever invention both because it protects the cleanliness of the glass behind it, but also because it works as a sun shield making focusing easy and smooth without any disturbing sun-glare. After that, the camera is very straight forward and simple to use.

Agfa Ambi Silette – Agfa 50mm f2.8 Color Solinar lens – Fomapan 100 Ilford ID-11 1+1

Age is noticeable on this camera, but it seems like it just will need some use to get back into life. Both shutter speeds and aperture settings seem to be in reasonable working order, but I did not try the longer shutter speeds this time as I shot hand held in the September sunshine. My guess is that shutter lag will be present from shutter speeds lower than 1/60th and that the lens will show diffraction at f22. But this must be for another time.

The most important error I found with this camera, was the fact that my first shots were all double exposed, and I only got a few decent shots on my roll. This seems to be some lag due to lack of use, and I am sure this will sort itself out with some use. I will not give this camera a CLA. That would probably cost more than the camera is worth in 2021 money.

An old barn by a field – Agfa Ambi Silette – Agfa 50mm f2.8 Color Solinar lens – Fomapan 100 Ilford ID-11 1+1

The shot above, was the first shot on the roll that turned out to be just exposed once, and no images after this one showed any sign of double exposure. This leads me to believe that there probably isn’t anything wrong with the film advance other than lack of use.

The focus ring was light, but still firm and very pleasant to use, as well were the rings for setting shutter speeds and aperture opening. The camera seems to have been very well looked after and I believe it to have been serviced before it was stored. It can indeed seem like that. The back door on the camera is somewhat sticky, and the camera came with one of those horrendous leather cases that looks good enough, but makes loading and unloading film very unpractical and the camera bulky and larger than necessary to use. I took it out of the leather case when I used it, and there are no signs of light leaks from the camera.

A tree root – Agfa Ambi Silette – Agfa 50mm f2.8 Color Solinar lens – Fomapan 100 Ilford ID-11 1+1

All in all, the little outing with the Agfa was a fun experience, and I will definitely be shooting this camera again. The only slight annoyance is the patent for rewinding the film. It is one of those that doesn’t have a lever for rewinding but just a small knob that you wear your fingers off while using. But with a camera this good, it is worth some sore fingers.

Agfa Ambi Silette – Agfa 50mm f2.8 Color Solinar lens – Fomapan 100 Ilford ID-11 1+1

APX 100, another go!

Yet another time, I find myself out trying the ultra-cheap AGFA APX100 that I managed to buy 100 ft of earlier this year. This time, I loaded it into an old Delta 400-casette because I wanted to use it in one of my more automatic cameras. My initial thought was to use the Minolta Dynax camera I own, but since I loaded it a cartridge DX-coded 400, and the fact that I cannot override the ISO on the Minolta, I had to look another way for this outing, and I opted for the Nikon F80 with the Voigtländer Skopar 28-80mm Zoom lens I used in the last entry.

I have previously struggled quite substantially with making this film work for my type of photography, and for this time, I decided to go out to a logging area close to where I live. When you are cutting down trees in Norway, you have to let some trees stand to accommodate for the loss of animal homes, and this creates a rather interesting atmosphere where some trees really stand out. This very contrasty scene should help the film to get this contrasts out rather than creating some bland mushy mess, as it tends to do with very green scenes.

A lonely thistle – Nikon F80 w Voigtländer Skopar 28-80mm f3,5-5,6 – Agfa APX100@50 – Ilford ID-11 1+1

For positive things, I really found that the sky was brought out really well on these images, if that is due to the exposure or the film I am not sure, but it does create some extra mood and context to the images which I find really nice. Also, this time, I chose to overexpose the film a stop in exposure and develop for the full film speed of 100. Ive found that this gives me the best negatives with this setup and I chose to develop with ID-11. I am not sure if I find ID-11 to be a good match for this film as it seems to enhance the feeling of the grain somewhat. The film itself is extremely grainy for a 100 ISO film, and maybe the best idea is just to embrace the grainy feeling and go with Rodinal.

A lonely birch – Nikon F80 w Voigtländer Skopar 28-80mm f3,5-5,6 – Agfa APX100@50 – Ilford ID-11 1+1

As you can see in the sky on this image, the grain structure of this film is very coarse and raw even with a fine-grain developer like ID-11, and I actually find it rather unpleasant in these images. Just to rule out the fact that this could be down to my scanner, Epson V600, I went for a quick dark-room session making a print of the Thistle-image, and the grain is very prominent even in relatively small enlargements such as 4×5 or 10×8. This film might not really work very well for landscape-photography in any way, and I think my next experiment with this film will be more in the fields or architecture or urban details and embracing the rawness and graininess of these negatives.

Tree-lines – Nikon F80 w Voigtländer Skopar 28-80mm f3,5-5,6 – Agfa APX100@50 – Ilford ID-11 1+1

I actually really like the composition of the image above, but it is clear that it does not really work with this setup of film, camera and lens. I like that centered slightly diagonal stem and the upright spruce behind it, bit I do not care that much for the mushy gray grassy-area where one cannot really distinguish what is grass and what is small spruces. Also, the sky shows the raw grain that I feel is rather unpleasant even though it makes for somewhat of a moody feeling.

A lonely thistle – Nikon F80 w Voigtländer Skopar 28-80mm f3,5-5,6 – Agfa APX100@50 – Ilford ID-11 1+1

Morning mist and APX100

This last week has had really beautiful mornings and the other day, I decided to go for another tryout with the bulk of Agfa APX100. I bought this bulk a while back as I found that it was the cheapest bulk-film on the market and I was curious about its performance and capabilities. So far, I have not been really sold on this film. I find it grainy, slow and to lack latitude. I also find that, even with a very sharp lens and a very accurate camera, I get very inconsistent results. In this entry, I paired it up with my Olympus OM-1 and the 50mm Zuiko f1,8 lens.

From my previous experience with this film, I have found that metering it at 50 – a whole stop over-exposure – and developing for box-speed typically gives me the best results. Also, the yellow filter usually gives me a bit more contrast and definition in my negatives. This was also my tactic for this outing, and my results were just as inconsistent as they have been previously.

Since it was very early in the morning, and I wanted to travel very light, I chose to leave the light meter at home and rely on the light metering app I have on my phone. This is a very simple light meter, but I can easily meter at different places in the scene to get a decent exposure. I have done this in many instances before and never had any issues with poor exposures. If hesitant, I double up with an additional exposure just to be sure that I have at least one usable one. I’ll honestly say, that I only got one out of my 15 exposures this time to be anything that I would refer to as a decent image and what I had in mind while composing.

Over the misty hill. Olympus OM-1 w 50mm Zuiko f1.8 & yellow filter – Agfa APX100@50 Ilford ID-11 1+1

In this first image, which is the only one that I am actually happy with, the film manages the masterpiece of being both over and underexposed at the same time when the range was within about 4 stops. Even so, I find this image to really convey the mood of this morning very well and I like its dark gloominess. However, I know that this image would have looked far better on both Fomapan 100 and FP4 plus, which both are very affordable alternatives to the Agfa APX100, and that gives me more consistent results.

For my second composition, I wandered into the woods looking for a slow-flowing river passing under a very simple bridge. This image did not turn out in any way the way I thought it would. To me, this image is just a grey mesh with a lot of grain and lacking definition on what the real subject was. Even with heavy dodging and burning, I still am not convinced with this result. I also made three bracketed images of this, and all of them are severely lacking on definition.

Crossing the river – Olympus OM-1 w 50mm Zuiko f1.8 & yellow filter – Agfa APX100@50 Ilford ID-11 1+1

In the two upcoming images, you see the main issue with this film, completely lost shadow-detail even with a full stop over-exposure and metered for the shadows. I will keep trying this film for different purposes, but I must say, that it does not look like this film is for me and my use. I’ve read about people using this film for one or two stop push-processes, but I cannot for the life of me figure out why, when I have these issues when overexposing it.

Olympus OM-1 w 50mm Zuiko f1.8 & yellow filter – Agfa APX100@50 Ilford ID-11 1+1

Another go with APX100

A while back, I made a post where I tested out a film I had never tried before. Agfa APX100. I was not 100% sold on this film at that point as I found it to very easily lose the shadows even when meters specifically for the shadows. After this outing, I have tried it on multiple occasions. I have tried pulling it both one and two stops. Shot at 50 with 20% reduction in development time seems to work the best of these. If shot at 25 and pulled, it comes out dull and grey and you have no shadows, nor highlights left to work with.

In this entry, I am covering my experience with shooting it at 50 and making no changes to the development time. A full stop over-exposure and develop for the full film speed. This test; however, became somewhat untrustworthy, as it seems that the film somehow must have been exposed to light. My guess, reading the negatives, is that the exposure to light must have happened after the images were taken, since the frame itself is visible through the light-leak area. I will include a raw-scan that shows the issue.

The interesting light leak situation. (Unedited scan)

Now, I have not had any problems with the bulk-roll nor with the cassettes or loader before, and my Canon T70 has never shown any signs of light leak. Not that this kind of light leak would happen in the camera anyway. It does not show on all the images, but on most of the,. I was able to salvage 4 images from this roll, maybe the best ones, who knows.

My trip this day, went through a forest-area and into a swampy area next to a very rarely visited forest-pond called Sevalstjernet. I chose this location because I knew it would give me a very varied range of objects to photograph as well as nature. I had never visited this pond before, and I strapped on my wellies, a choice that would be crucial for this outing, as I most of the time waded around in bog and fen. With my normal hiking-shoes, I would have been soaking after just a few minutes.

I was also accompanied by a cloud of black-flies. It is nice to have company when you are out walking, but I would have preferred people or a dog rather than flies. On the plus-side, the huge swarm of flies seems to have kept the mosquitoes and horseflies away, so I should maybe me grateful.

A forest watch-tower – Canon T70 w Canon FD 50mm f1,8 – Agfa APX100 @ 50

It also seems like my idea of exposure helped me greatly on retaining the shadows in this film. I do think, however that this film could be over-exposed another stop in normal development without any issue. I do still have some inky-blacks on some of my scans. Based on mob experience this far, I will not buy another roll of APX-100. FP4 plus isn’t that much more expensive, and it is a far better film. An in between, Fomapan 100 is a film I have found to work very well for me.

Some beard – Canon T70 w Canon FD 50mm f1,8 – Agfa APX100 @ 50

One of the things I love with the Canon T70, is its lens. The little, cheap 50mm FD lens performs consistently very well and is very sharp and flexible. I know there are better FD-lenses out there, but there is something to this lens that just appeals to me. I like the way it portrays the world to my images, especially when photographing the «smaller things» like this little beard-moss on a tree. I think this one was shot at f2,8 but it could also be f4. Since I lost all frames before and after this one, I am not sure.

Finally I made it into the swampy area around the lake. I think the correct term for this land would be either fen or mire, but I am not sure whether it is acidic or alkaline ground here. My guess would be acidic given its vegetation, but I might be wrong here. Sadly, what I would think is my best shot of this pond got lost in light-leaks, but I will add the one that survived.

Sevalstjernet with the farm – Canon T70 w Canon FD 50mm f1,8 – Agfa APX100 @ 50

Misty Woodland

Spring is an incredible time of year in Norway. This spring has been incredibly cold and slow, and even now, in the middle of May, we are bothered with snow in the forest. The good thing about that is that you, as a photographer isn’t very bothered with other people along the paths and you in most cases have the place to yourself. Today, I went out into some local woodland that I know quite well. Yesterday was a very rainy day, and it rained all night, so I figured that the snow was most probably melted away in the forest by now. I was very wrong, and I was not able to walk further into the forest than about four hundred meters before the snow was too deep. Also, the path looked more or less like a stream, and I had the feeling that most people would go for a swim rather than a walk on a location like this.

Traces of winter – Zeiss Ikon Ikoflex, Ilford HP5 plus, Ilfotec ID-11 1+1

Nevertheless, I went out this morning and waded myself through the soaking wet forest floor searching for nice woodland-compositions. These kind of conditions, grey, wet and misty days, are the conditions that inspire me the most. They makes the location stand out in a very different way than you would see it on sunny days, and you spot details and areas you wouldn’t see if the light was brighter.

On this particular outing, I went for the Zeiss Ikon Ikoflex, a TLR-camera that I have owned for a while, and that I absolute love using. There is something about this camera that inspire me. The world looks very nice through the waist-level viewfinder on the Ikoflex, and there is something about the way the lens renders the images that really suits my eye. I chose to shoot at shallow depths of field in this particular outing for two different reasons.

First of all, I wanted to emphasis the relaxing bokeh-feeling this lens gives and how smooth the sharpness of this lens is at around f3.5 and f4. It gives a very relaxed feeling to the scene. Secondly, my particular Ikoflex has some faults with its slower shutter-speeds and below 1/50th can give a very unpredictable result when used. From no activity at all, to just a random shutter-speed. I should probably have it serviced, but I guess fixing this one would be too expensive compared to its value, and it serves me well as it is at this point.

Scene of melting – Zeiss Ikon Ikoflex, Ilford HP5 plus, Ilfotec ID-11 1+1

For that last reason, I chose to go with a very flexible film to give me some wiggle-room with my exposures. I went for a roll of Ilford HP5 plus that I shot at its box-speed of ISO 400. After seeing the conditions in the forest when I came there, with that layer of mist that I didn’t expect to find there due to the conditions in general, I was very happy about this choice of film for that reason as well. Ilford HP5 plus is fantastic at capturing the mood of a misty forest.

Old mans beard – Zeiss Ikon Ikoflex, Ilford HP5 plus, Ilfotec ID-11 1+1

Even though the walk this time wasn’t that long, and the way there was rather wet and unpleasant; I actually had to jump across a stream of melting-water to reach the path; I got some images that I am very happy with. I also really enjoyed my little adveture into the wet and misty forest, and I will certainly be out again in these kinds of conditions soon.

From a wet and misty day in the woods – Zeiss Ikon Ikoflex, Ilford HP5 plus, Ilfotec ID-11 1+1

An enjoyable walk

The other day, I went out for a little walk by the lake Mjøsa, biggest lake in Norway. Along me I brought the Canon T70 and a roll of Ilford FP4 Plus. It was a rather windy day and the weather was dull and overcast and with some threatening skies promising some downfall in some form. Whether it would come as snow or as rain was anyone’s guess at this point. Since the weather was rather unpredictable, I chose to not bring any video-equipment, so this is a blog-only post. For readers only.

Threatening skies ahead – Canon T70 + Canon 50mm f1,8 FD lens – Ilford FP4 Plus – Adox Atomal 49

At this time of year the lake is still low and one can walk on what most of the year is submerged by the lake. Once the snow-melting in the mountains picks up some time in the middle of may the water level in the lake will rise and the are I photographed this time will noe be accessible.

Frozen water motion – Canon T70 + Canon 50mm f1,8 FD lens – Ilford FP4 Plus – Adox Atomal 49

I snapped some shots on my way along the lake towards a little woodland area not far from the main path along the lake. I noticed a lot of motion in the water, and I tried to freeze it in action with the higher shutter speeds on the Canon, and even though some of the ended up slightly under-exposed I also got a few decent exposures.

Once again I chose to develop this film with Adox Atomal 49, a developer I know gives me very fine grain and is very good at keeping shadow-details without blowing out the whites. Whether this is considered a compensating developer or not, I am uncertain, but I find it to give me relatively flat negatives that are easy to scan and work with in post-processing. After using 10 liters of this developer I have found that the dilution 1+1 is the right one for my taste. I also like the way you get Perceptol-grain without having to sacrifice film speed. In these times when Kodak Xtol seems to be in shot supply, I have used Atomal instead. However, for my next big-batch I am mixing Ilford ID-11 instead of Adox Atomal 49.

A bent tree – Canon T70 + Canon 50mm f1,8 FD lens – Ilford FP4 Plus – Adox Atomal 49

After a while I approached the trees and the little woodland-area which sadly has shrunk quite a bit over the last years due to construction of new residential areas closer to the lake, but some interesting trees are still left, and with the snow disappearing, it is once again accessible.

I find woodland-photography the most pleasant challenge for me as a photographer. Shooting a decent woodland composition can be very difficult, but at the same time, working in such an environment has a certain peace to it. The feeling you get from being in the woods is unlike anything else.

Better times ahead- Canon T70 + Canon 50mm f1,8 FD lens – Ilford FP4 Plus – Adox Atomal 49

Frames of Norway pt. 2

In this second entry in the series “Frames of Norway” I am walking towards the viewing point “Amlisberget” to get the view over the little town Moelv and the lake Mjøsa in the east of Norway. This area of Norway has a very different landscape to it than what one often thinks of as Norwegian landscape. Rather than steep mountains and dramatic valleys and fjords, this area has a calmer, more rounded mood to it. The calm landscape forms were eroded during the last ice-age. There are a huge number of lakes and ponds, and the area has a lot of glacial till and in summer time, the area is one of the lushest farming areas of Norway.

The lake Mjøsa is the biggest lake in Norway and I will feature it in a number of entries in this series, focusing on different aspects or areas around it. Living and working in this area, it is a rather difficult to “forget” about it due to its size, and the landscape around the lake changes a lot from south to north, as well as its history.

A view over Mjøsa from Amlisberget – Canon T70 w Canon 50mm f1.8 – Ilford FP4 Plus Adox Atomal 49

The area around Moelv, has a long history for its industry and being one of the centers for trade and communication in its part of the lake. Being the “mid-point” between the bigger towns around the lake, Gjøvik, Lillehammer and Hamar, just about 20 minutes to each of the bigger towns, Moelv was an ideal loading-area for steamboats doing the so-called “across-trafic” indicating that they were crossing the lake, rather than doing longer trips along the lake. Boats doing this “across-trafic” were in general smaller boats owned by locals or smaller companies, and they would carry goods from smaller ports to the bigger port in Moelv where the bigger boats and ships would take over.

This is an interesting point, today, when we have the bridge over Mjøsa, we see the lake as an obstacle in our travels, but back then, the lake  was the biggest and most efficient “highway” of the area with an incredible number of steam and motor boats sailing all over it. At some point, the church in Moelv served for a parish including farms and houses on both sides of the lake and having “church boats” to transport people across for sermons and so on. This connection between Moelv on the east-side of the lake and Redalen on the west side of the lake, is still strong today. This is also where the bridge is crossing the lake.

Woodland and farmland – Canon T70 w Canon 50mm f1.8 – Ilford FP4 Plus Adox Atomal 49

For this outing, I chose to go with a 35mm camera. I wanted to get a very “analog feel” to the images and I figured that being on a new location where I had never been before, I might get “shutter happy” and boom off a lot of shots. And I was right, I filled the whole roll in about half the trip.

A view towards Næroset – Canon T70 w Canon 50mm f1.8 – Ilford FP4 Plus Adox Atomal 49

I chose to go with the Canon T70, the revolutionizing first attempt from Canon on making a computerised camera. A camera loaded with different “safety features” such as sliders and buttons to make sure you don’t accidently open the camera mid-roll or accidentally rewind the film mid-roll. It also has a very good and accurate light-meter, and an apperture-priority setting that is working flawlessly. I also like the fact that this is a 100% Manual Focus camera and that you can focus manually without having to deal with the “sloppy” and “vague” feeling of an AF-lens. This is personal preference of course, but I prefer MF for this kind of use.

The Path – Canon T70 w Canon 50mm f1.8 – Ilford FP4 Plus Adox Atomal 49

I set out into a forest area where there are a lot of ski-tracks in the winter. I parked at Høgring, where the sports team Næroset IL has a little skiing cabin, and I walked from there. Forestry has meant a lot to this area, and previously Moelv had both a cellulose factory and a huge sawmill. The sawmill and its wood-workshop is still active and is one of Norways biggest providers of wood even today under the name of “MOELVEN”. The cellulose factory ceased operations in the late 1930’s due to the big depression in international trade.

A view over Mjøsa and Moelv – Canon T70 w Canon 50mm f1.8 – Ilford FP4 Plus Adox Atomal 49

Because the colours in the Norwegian nature is rather greyish and boring at this moment right after the snow melts, I decided to shoot black and white. I went for a traditional film, the Ilford FP4 plus, one of my absolute favourite films, and I used both yellow filter and a two-stop graduated orange filter. I was a but uncertain how the aperture-priority setting would deal with a soft-grad filter, but it seems to have correctly exposed the sky and overexposed the land-area, which was what I wanted it to do. Concidering the fact that the filter-thread on the lens is damaged, the images turned out rather well.

More forestry – Canon T70 w Canon 50mm f1.8 – Ilford FP4 Plus Adox Atomal 49

I chose to develop with Adox Atomal 49, a developer I have found myself to really like. Especially traditional films like FP4 and HP5 gives great results with this developer, and I find it to lift their abilities. It seems to be somewhat compensating and gives a rather flat negative and great shadow-detail even when the films are shot at box-speed. The down-side is its toxicity, and I find that even though I have loved my two first batches of it, I am hesitant to buy more of it because of this. I obviously collect the rest-developer and deliver it to a designated collection place where it is dealt with properly, but I still don’t like the thought of using something this toxic.

As you can see from many of the images, farming, as well as forestry is important for the area. Moelv was, and still is an important hub for the distribution and sale of grain and farming products in the area. Strand Brænneri was opened by the local farmers in the mid 1800s and was one of the first cooperative agricultural businesses in Norway, and became an important part of building Moelv and the surrounding area into the successful area it became in this time.

A lonely birch – Canon T70 w Canon 50mm f1.8 – Ilford FP4 Plus Adox Atomal 49

I am proud to live and have so easy access to an area with this amount of “cultural landscape”, and where you can really see how nature and man has lived together in peace over so many years.

A Bladventure

For the sake of balance, and because I happen to have some nice images, I am going to deviate slightly from the line of «cheap cameras» in this entry, and show some images taken with my, not by any means cheap, Hasselblad. Or in my case, some times a hassle-blad. The first thing my Hasselblad did to me after I bought it, was jamming up. And not the cute little sweet jam that can easily be mended, but the proper jammedy-jam-jam that has to be sent off for a very expensive repair abroad.

I recently got it back from repair, and I have brought it along for a few outings lately, and I really find myself to love using it. Not that it really makes any big difference to anyone an image is taken with an expensive or a cheap camera, but to me it has to do with inspiration. Some cameras inspire me to go out shooting and some do not. That’s why i often feature the Olympus, the Konica, Ikoflex and the Bronica ETR. For different reasons, these cameras make me «get out there» and «get the shutter finger active».

Reklamer

Here are some shots I did recently with my Hasselblad, that I find to inspire me a lot. The colour ones are taken with Kodak Ektar, and the BW ones are done with Ilford Pan F plus, that I pulled a stop. The Pan F is developed in Adox Atomal 49 stock for six minutes, which is 20% off the time for box speed. After having used Atomal 49 for a while, I have found this to be a developer I am very happy with, and it might replace Xtol as my number one developer.

A persistent winter fighting an inevitable spring at Kremmerodden – Hasselblad 500CM – Planar 80 – Kodak Ektar
Hasselblad 500 CM – Planar 80mm – Ilford Pan F plus @25 – Ados Atomal 49 Stock

The scent of spring

Nothing fills me with such joy and happiness as the day when I for the first time see grass being liberated from the firm fist of the winter-snow. Today was that day, and I immediately decided to go shooting. I loaded the Zeiss Ikon Ikoflex with a roll of Ilford FP4 plus, and went down to Kråkvika by Hov. A location where spring is often present early. And sure enough, there were a lot of spots and spaces where the snow was melted away, leaving the lifeless brownish colour of grass that has been buried for a while under the snowy carpet. The colours weren’t really spectacular, hence the choice of black and white-film.

To me, the Ikoflex is maybe one of the cameras that inspires me the most. There is something about the sensation of using something so brilliantly engineered and with a lens that sharp in a very light and beautiful box that appeals to me. I haven’t used it for a while because the winter was exceptionally cold this year, and I don’t think the Ikoflex would be too fond of the cold weather. Also, my Ikoflex has developed misfiring on lower shutter speeds, so I tend to keep it at 1/100th or 1/300th, which could be too short shutter speeds for winter-time. Whether I will have it repaired remains to be decided, but for my current use, the Ikoflex works well.

Spring landscape with melting snow – Zeiss Ikon Ikoflex – Ilford FP4plus – Adox Atomal 49

I find that filling the roll and finding the right compositions, is a very easy task with the Ikoflex. The inspiration comes naturally when using it, unlike the Zeiss Ikon Nettar, which I find that I can get bored when using. I have heard a lot said in negative ways about the Ikoflex and it being like an «over protective mother» or «insanely difficult and complicated to load», but I cannot understand how any of these can be true. If you read the manual, which I know is a very uncommon thing for people to do today, you will very easily understand that the advance wheel will turn freely when it reaches frame nr 12, and that you have to manually reset it for frame 1. Not at all difficult. I have a video on Youtube showing how it is done.

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I am a rock – Zeiss Ikon Ikoflex – Ilford FP4plus – Adox Atomal 49

Walking around on a day where the snow is melting and the landscape comes back into sight, makes you notice objects or shapes that would normally either be removed or invisible in the greens and lush landscapes. There is something «rough and contrasty» about these snow-melting days that really appeals to my way of composing.

An object – Zeiss Ikon Ikoflex – Ilford FP4plus – Adox Atomal 49

All in all, I had a very joyful little day out in the sun and I enjoyed every minute of shooting with the Ikoflex again. It is such an amazing little camera and the images really speak for themselves.

Zeiss Ikon Ikoflex – Ilford FP4plus – Adox Atomal 49