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*

Going Panoramic in the fog

I have never worked with any kind of panoramic equipment before. I have held a Hasselblad X-pan in my hand at one point, but I never tried shooting it. Even so, panorama photography is interesting, and I have wanted to give it a proper try. Not that I will really try it properly in this entry, but I recently bought some very cheap 3D-printed (I guess) plastic parts off eBay. Specifically, the small plastic parts that you use for using 35mm film in your medium format cameras. To be honest, I didn’t really expect much results from this. My anticipation was the following:

The film will not be kept dark enough after exposure and will be fogged.
The film might not be kept flat enough in the camera.
Composing the image will be difficult not having a proper viewfinder for it.
Unknown amount of images pr film and difficult to know how far to wind.

The plastic-stuff and a canister of film. Not the one I used for this test.

I decided to give it a try in my Zeiss Ikon Nettar. This because it is the only MF camera I have where the film is inserted in the horisontal direction, allowing me to easily shoot landscape without turning my camera into portrait. I decided to go for a roll of Ilford Delta 400 and go for a little walk while the fog was lifting over the lake. I was looking for wide compositions, which was a new experience for me, and I felt that I often reverted back to looking for squares or normal rectangles rather than the super wide compositions that this line-up would allow for.

Didn’t quite nail it with this one. See the light leaks that I got for most of the shots on the roll. Luckily not too bad in this shot.

First of all, I can confirm the first part of my assumption. Using this system, with the 3D-printed parts, will give you severe light leaks between the shots. I know for a fact that it is not the light seals acting up, because I used black tape to ensure no light-leaks would come from that area.

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For the most part, I think that the film stayed flat in the camera, and that the adapter kept it reasonably well aligned throughout the roll. I did; however, notice that the film was not as «in the middle» of the viewfinder as I had thought, and I shot a few of the frames «too high» losing parts of my intended compositions.

Over the rocks – Zeiss Ikon Nettar, Ilford Delta 400 Adox Atomal 49 Stock

Even though I like some of these images and the way they look and how they turned out, I am not certain I would use this adaptor system a lot. I will very likely do some more experiments with it and try it out at different occasions, and maybe I am luckier with my next rounds and avoid some light leaks. I find the system to be functional for shooting only one frame at a time. This would mean a lot of «cutting the film out of the camera» and «developing fragments of a roll». Not that I mind doing that, but it is a hassle.

*Lifting fog – Zeiss Ikon Nettar, Ilford Delta 400 Adox Atomal 49 Stock*

The Nikon-guy using a Canon.

The endless debate.. The friend-breaker. The source of family feud and potentially divorces. Canon or Nikon. People tend to be very sworn to one of them and show some (somewhat humorous) hatred for the other. Personally, I usually shoot Nikon Cameras. I own a fair amount of them both digital and analog, and the main reason for my choice of Nikon over Canon, is that I find their ergonomics to suit my hands and style more than the Canons. If shown images or specs, I am not able to tell any difference between the two brands, and I see them as equally brilliant manufacturers.

Even so, I have never before very recently owned a Canon camera. A little while back, I came across a Canon T70, and its extremely complex nature sparked my interest. Its incredible «inboard» 8 bit chip and how it was sort of the bridge between Canons older generation of very manual cameras, to the soon-to-follow EOS systems was, I found, intriguing and I started my search to get one for CC-adventures money – less than 100 Euros. I got lucky, and found one way cheaper with 50mm lens included. As a very happy man, I was now the owner of my first Canon camera, a T70.

My very clean and nice Canon T70 from the mid 80s.

Operating a new camera is always interesting, and the T70 has a very interesting button based menu system. It does not read DX-coding, but you set the ISO by pressing the ISO-button and one of the two buttons on the top over the LCD-screen named «Up» and «Down». It is programmed to go 1/3 steps and setting the ISO is very easy and the buttons are big enough to be operated with gloves in winter time.

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Another lovely feature with this camera, that I notices straight away, was the fact that it takes AA batteries instead of the CR123A batteries. Both these types are readily available and can be picked up cheaply in most shops, but you more often tend to have AA batteries lying around than CR123A, and hence you are less likely te find yourself in a Cannot Shoot Situation with the T70.

I also like the different safety features it has. You need to press a button to unlock the release mechanism for the film loading door, preventing you from accidentally opening it «mid roll». It has an extra slider beside the rewind button, preventing you from accidentally rewinding the film too early, and it has a little button to unlock the «Power ON» button. A feature that helps you save battery. On the downside, mine has clearly a tiny light-leak, but nothing that in any way affects the images.

Canon T70 w Canon 50mm f1,8 FD lens – Fomapan200@160 – Adox Atomal 49 Stock

Using the camera is a real treat. It is very easy to focus and set, and the main setting is an aperture priority where you set your aperture and the camera will find the suiting shutter speed to go with it based on your entered ISO-speed. You also have settings for full Program-mode and you have two additional settings, one called «wide» where the camera will bias towards a higher f-stop to get deeper depth of field, and one called «TELE» where it will bias towards higher shutter speeds and shallower depth of field. I did not try out these fully automatic modes in my first tryout, but based on the function of the rest of this camera, it would surprise me if it wasn’t spotless.

Holding the T70 is an interesting sensation. The plastic body feels very cheap in you hand, but it is as heavy as a brick and has the noise-level of a helicopter. Even so, this camera feels like what it is, a quality piece of kit, with that feel of «80s science fiction» over its design and the «buttonyness» of an old Volvo dashboard.

This is a very nice camera to use, and clearly one I will use again many times.

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.

An image from a forgotten roll

Sometimes, you shoot a roll of film, and you just put it in a drawer. Either you forget about it or you wait until you have shot more of them before you develop. The other day, I found a roll of Ilford Delta 100 35mm, that I couldn’t remember what I used for. I developed it in Adox Atomal 49, and it turned out to be a film I used at a trip during the summer of 2019 at a landscape photography trip to Veståsen in Nordre Land.

What camera I used, is completely blank to me, but based on the time the roll was exposed, and the quality of the exposures, I would imagine it was either done with my Nikon F80 or the Minolta Dynax SPXi. Here; a beautiful view over the little lake «Akksjøen»:

Summer mood at Akksjøen in Nordre Land – Ilford Delta 100 – Adox Atomal 49

This is one of my first rolls that I have developed with the Adox Atomal 49 developer, and I must say that I am very happy with how this developer makes the images look. The grain is very fine and I get the full film-speed without any issues. In comparison with my other Veryfinegraindeveloper Ilfotec Perceptol, where you have to shave off some of your film speed.

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I just quickly wanted to share this picture with you, from a distant past without any Covid-regulations nor fear of a world pandemic.

Mitsubishi Film?

Did you know that Mitsubishi, the manufacturer of cars, air conditioning units and heaters also at some point made film? At least, they had a line of film branded with their name on it at some point, and whether it is a rebranded Fujifilm or Konica film, is unknown to me. What I do know, is that the film I got in my hand is «Made in Japan» and has English writing on it. It also states that it was made at «Mitsubishi paper mills».

Roll with 24 frames of Mitsubishi MX-III 400 colour film.

Since the film was 15 years expired, I decided to shoot it at ISO 160 and use a camera that I trust. I therefore went for my Nikon F80 with a modern 85mm Sigma lens, that is substantially newer than this film was at the time it was exposed in January 2021. I chose to shoot mainly at aperture priority, because of very changing lighting conditions and the fact that I wanted to shoot with gloves in the cold weather.

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All in all, I am very pleased with how well the film held up over the years in terms of colour representation. How this film was when it was new is unknown to me, but as it stands today, it gives very nice colours, really capturing the subtle greens and detail in the shadows, really showing the nice day it was when it was taken.

Fluberg Bridge – Nikon F80 w Sigma 85mm f1,8 lens. Mitsubishi MX-III 400 @160 (Expired 2005)

In some images, I saw a weird magenta cast in the images. This was only visible in some of the images, and not consistently over the whole roll. I developed a roll of Kodak Portra 160 in the same tank at the same time as I developed the Mitsubishi, and I could not find any of these colour shifts on this roll, leading me to think there might be unevenness in the emulsion of this film. The images with the colour shifts, were at the end of the roll. Scan settings were identical all over the roll, and should not be impacting the images in any way.

I do like the images and how this film looks 15 years in though, and I have another roll of the same roll in the freezer, that I will meter at ISO 125 to give it a little more exposure. This will be done sometime in the spring, when there is more colour around to play with.

*Nikon F80 w Sigma 85mm f1,8 lens. Mitsubishi MX-III 400 @160 (Expired 2005)*

A DDR Rangefinder camera

We all have our weak-spots as photography enthusiasts. I certainly have a weak spot for the lovely Carl Zeiss Jena Tessar lens. I will not in any way claim that I am even close to a lens and optics expert, but this lens, with its four elements in three groups, gives a sharpness and tone to the images I just love. I had one of these lenses for my M42 cameras, but this lens would benefit from some servicing as the aperture blades keeps jamming when stopping down further than f8, and the focusing ring is very heavy to operate.

A little while back, I read about a little rangefinder camera from East Germany that was said to be magnificent value for money and deliver splendid image quality and sharpness. The camera was called «Welta Belmira» and was, believe it or not, equipped with a lovely Carl Zeiss Jena Tessar 50mm f2,8 lens. I started looking for one of these cameras to try out, and it was not difficult to find them. However, they were often in very varying condition and it was clear that getting the right and good one would take a while. And so sure it did, but after some months of searching and looking, I found one in decent condition. Yes, it was a bit dusty, and yes it had a dim rangefinder, but the camera in itself seemed to work really well.

My lineup for this test – a Welta Belmira and a roll of Kodak Tri-X400. I also used an external rangefinder unit, because the inbuilt one is very dim and only usable if the light is bright.

I went out to a location where there is a lovely artistic installation close to the lake, and I have thought for a while to experiment with some photography around this location. The origin of this artwork is unknown to me, but it is only accessible in the winter and spring time, as it will be submerged by the lake most of the summer time.

Welta Belmira – Kodak Tri-X 400 Adox Atomal 49 1+1

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I also with this outing, made my first test of the Adox Atomal 49 developer. I read a bit about it online and saw some images developed in it, and I got curious to try it out myself. Atomal 49 is a very fine grain developer that gives you full film speed unlike Perceptol that will eat some of your speed. For that reason alone, I bought a 5L package of it and decided to give it a try. And based on these results with Tri-X at 35mm, I am very happy with what it looks like. This might well become a developer of preference to me, but I will obviously have to make more tests before deciding.

Back to the camera. I really enjoyed using the camera. It has a very special and differently engineered slider instead of the usual advance lever. It is a bit fiddly to use and has a tendency to stick at different points, but it works faultlessly. The dim rangefinder is not really an issue as long as you have an external one, and the focus ring seems to be pretty much accurate. However, I believe the camera «drags» the shutter speeds a little bit, but slight overexposure is not any issue with any negative film really.

Trying out a Konica Autoreflex TC (Part3)

As you have seen through my previous posts, I have been playing around with a Konica Autoreflex TC lately, doing different styles and types of photography with it and different films. Some days ago, I took it out once again with a roll of Fomapan 100and a yellow and a graded orange filter. I went for subtle snowy shapes in nature to test out both the sharpness of the lens, and to once again try the Fomapan 100. Over 2020, I shot many rolls of Fomapan 100 to test it out and get familiar with that film, and I must say that Fomapan 100 is a film I really like shooting, and that I find to give very fine grain when developed in Kodak X-tol at stock level, and that I get very nice results with it for most of my photography. However, this is my first test of this in snowy conditions.

Konica Autoreflex TC w 50mm Hexanon f1,8 lens w yellow filter. f11 1/125th Fomapan 100@100 Fomadon Excel 1+0

I did not have Kodak Xtol at this moment, because I’ve recently had two batches that split. I initially thought this was my mistake and that I hadn’t mixed it properly or made some other mistake with it; however, after some research online, I got leads about a bad batch of Xtol that had this issues. The date I bought the two bags of powder correlated well with the production and estimated sell-dates of the problem batch. Even though the two batches didn’t cause me any issues, I have not bought Xtol for a while. I will, however buy another batch some time soon. But I had a few bags of Fomadon Excel left, which is basically Foma’s take on the Kodak Xtol.

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Previously, I used to have Xtol in the spring, summer and autumn-time, when I shoot most film, and Fomadon Excel in wintertime, when I shoot less. When handeled properly, I cannot see difference between negatives developed with Excel and Xtol. One difference though, is that Fomadon Excel can be slightly more challenging to mix. I have found that mixing it as you wold mix Ilford Chemistry, with warmer water, makes the powder dissolve better and easier, and that is how I mix Fomadon Excel. For this particular process, I also used Foma Fixer and Foma Stop bath as well. So this is a all around Fomapan Process.

*Konica Autoreflex TC w 50mm Hexanon f1,8 lens Fomapan 100@100 Fomadon Excel 1+0*

All in all, I am very happy with these images. They were taken very quickly whenever I saw something that I found worthy of shooting, and I find that they make the sky come forward in a very pleasant way.

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.