Colourful Colorplus

I use the Grain2Pixel Photoshop plug-in to convert colour negatives. I’ve found it can be a bit finicky on certain film stocks – Portra for instance – but it always seems to do a great job with Kodk Colorplus, producing lovely saturated colours. I’m not sure how accurate these are to the film’s profile (and who really knows when scanning?) but I like the results very much. In scenes like this the reds leap off the picture.

Olympus XA3 and Kodak Colorplus (expired 2012 and shot at 100asa)

Taken on 31 January 2021

Wig & Pen

A couple of photos of the Wig & Pen pub in Sheffield City centre. I don’t think I’ve stepped foot in here for thirty years! I remember going in occasionally on work’s nights out, but it never featured as a venue when out with my friends. It didn’t use to be red back then either, but it makes for a nice vibrant picture.

Stuck for a haiku?
Just make up some old rubbish
That will do just fine

Nikon F80, Nikkor 50mm f/18 AF-D & Fujichtome Velvia (expired 2003).

Taken on 13 June 2021

Another pillar box

A few weeks ago I posted a couple of photos of pillar boxes (or post boxes if you prefer) that I shot on some Fuji Velvia 100 and which exhibited vividly saturated reds. Today I have a photo of a different pillar box, this one dating from the reign of Queen Victoria – hence the VR insignia on the front. A quick bit of Google research points to this being a VR Penfold model.

Once again, the slide film has delivered vivid reds. While I’ve tweaked the contrast a little which might account for some of the rich colour, I’ve not touched the saturation of vibrancy controls at all. It looks pretty much like this on the original transparency too.

Olympus OM-2n, Zuiko Auto-S 50mm f/1.8 & Kodak Ektachrome 100 EPP (expired at some unknown date).

Taken on 17 September 2020

Pillar boxes

Given Fuji Velvia’s penchant for rich saturated colours, I couldn’t help photographing a couple of red pillar boxes with it.

Scanning this Velvia 100 took a bit of trial and error to get the colours and tones correct. My initial attempts resulted in slightly flat looking images, lacking in that brightness that you see when viewing a transparency in natuaral light, so I had to create a Lightroom preset to make the necessary adjustments required. Even then, however, the scans still had a very warm cast to them. A little research revealed that scanned Velvia 100 is sometimes nicknamed Redvia due to the red tones in the shadows. It might be possible to remove this in Lightroom, but I found it easier to set up an action in Photoshop to use a curves layer to drop the shadows in the red channel. They look much closer to the original transparencies now, but retain those saturated tones that the film is known for.

I’ve been really pleased with the results from this roll (and the fact that the OM-2n’s meter has proven itself to be dependable even when metering for something as finicky as slide film). I hope the other four rolls I have will be just as satisfying.

Olympus OM-2n, Zuiko Auto-S 50mm f/1.8 & Fujichrome Velvia 100.

Taken on 2 August 2020

Freedom?

This is the first weekend in England under the slightly relaxed lockdown rules, which allow people to travel for exercise or leisure. The weather is forecast to be good in many parts of the country.

This has resulted in calls from the national parks, seaside resorts, and other areas likely to attract visitors, that people should stay away. Many locations have not opened their carparks and other facilities to try to prevent visitors from coming. Despite this, there have been reports of full carparks and large numbers of people turning up at these locations. I expect we’ll be able to look forward to another full lockdown in due course…

Today’s photographs were made in the back garden during the Easter weekend a month ago. I was reading William Eggleston’s Guide in the sunshine and it inspired me to make pictures myself. I ended up shooting nearly a full roll of film during the afternoon, so you’ll see some more ot those in the comimg days. Some of them worked out pretty nicely, some not so much, but I’m pretty happy with the Kodak Gold. It’s the first time I’ve shot a roll of this, believe it or not, and I like how it looks.

Nikon F80, Sigma 105mm f/2.8 OS HSM & Kodak Gold 200.

Taken on 11 April 2020

Tyres

My dad recently gave me a bag of cameras and film that someone he knows had given to him. Most of the cameras were unbranded digital cameras probably 15-20 years old with very low resolutions and built-in batteries that I had no way to charge, so they went in the bin. The only film camera in the bag was a Samsung Fino 60s. There were also three rolls of expired film dating from 2005.

The Samsung had a roll of film still in the camera, which I assumed to be of similar age as the rolls in the bag. After fitting a battery I used up the remaining shots on the roll and got them processed. Sadly, all the shots I took were unuseable due to the film’s deterioration, but the frames that had already been shot by the original owner had some recoverable photographs. They were still pretty poor quality, but featured images of a baby and (I assume) their grandmother and a picture of a dog, so I burned copies to a DVD and gave them to my dad to pass back to the person who’d given him the cameras.

While the specs of the camera are not great, I’m not one to waste things, so loaded it up with a fresh roll of Kodak Colorplus and took it out for a walk. The resulting images I got are a bit of a mixed bag – some are tack sharp and look great, but many more are somewhat soft. I’m unsure as to why this should be the case – the photos were all shot in similar lighting and, mostly, at the same focal length. A lot of the shots also had a distinctive defect on the images – a metallic looking arc in the same place on each shot – very noticeable on some shots, but feinter and smudgier on others. After asking around, I was informed that it was most likely the result of a light leak on the telephoto lens barrel assembly. Luckily, the placement of the defect was such that it could be cropped (or removed in Photoshop) in most of the photos.

As a result of this defect it’s unlikely I’ll use the camera again. It’s not worth putting on eBay, I don’t think, and I don’t want to donate it to a charity shop given the fault, but I dislike the idea of throwing away something that mostly still works. Oh well, I’m sure I’ll figure something out.

Todays photo is one of the sharp results, and I really like the vivid colours that the Colorplus has delivered. Give this cheap consumer-grade film the right conditions and it shines!

Samsung Fino 60S & Kodak Colorplus.

Taken on 1 March 2020

Red and expired

I’ve shot a number of rolls of expired film, some turn out wonderfully (some 20-year-old Tmax was beautiful) while others are less so and can result in grainy images that look muddy and, even worse for the home scanners among us, hideously curled negatives that are nigh on impossible to hold flat (or even get into the negative holders!).

All of which goes to reinforce just how nice this batch of expired Fuji Superia 100 that I bought a couple of years back is. Although it expired over ten years ago, it had been well stored and as a result behaves pretty much as good as when it was fresh. Obviously I don’t have a fresh roll to compare it with, but the colours it produces are both vivid and natural in a very satisfying fashion. The vividness is illustrated in todays picture, with the red of the fire engine leaping off the image. It’s not quite as in-your-face as Kodak Ektar, but it still pops and has a more natural look to the colours.

I’m very happy to have three full boxes of it in the freezer yet to shoot.

Nikon F80, Nikkor 28-80mm f/3.5-5.6 & Fuji Superia 100 (expired).

Taken on 17 August 2019

Fire engines

Another cropped shot, this time for artistic reasons rather than a glaring light-leak!

The vintage fire-engine in the foreground has a wooden ladder, similiar to those seen in the background, but I’ve annoyingly managed to chop some of it out when framing the shot. I think it was because, as I was composing the image people were wandering between of the fire-engines, and I wanted to get the shot before one of them walked into the frame. This probably caused me to rush a little and thus mis-compose the picture. As a result I’ve cropped it to a 6×7 ratio. The bell is a little tight in the top-right corner (and if you look really closely there is a tiny sliver of the wooden ladder still in frame), but the bell is intact and I still think it works ok.

Ektar certainly gets on well with the reds!

Zeiss Mess-Ikonta 524/16 & Kodak Ektar.

Taken on 17 August 2019

ERF

For a 65 year old camera (or for any age camera for that matter), my pocketable Zeiss Mess-Ikonta is a great little medium-format machine. It produces lovely sharp photographs. The uncoupled rangefinder serves to slow you down a little – spur of the moment shooting is not the forte of this camera (unless you’re shooting in steady light and at a set focal distance / aperture that removes the need to change settings) – but I really don’t care when it allows me to make pictures like this.

Zeiss Mess-Ikonta 524/16 & Kodak Ektar.

Taken on 17 August 2019

Red No. 7

Inside the Maremagnum shopping mall at Barcelona marina were this pair of Ferrari’s. I don’t have a great deal of interest in cars, but they often make for great photographic subject matter and I liked the colour and light so took the picture. It was amusing to see just how many men took selfies or got someone else to take their photo in front of the cars. This included me too, as my wife took a shot of me on her phone. 🙂

Canon Sure Shot Z135 & Kodak Portra 400.

Taken on 18 June 2019