Autumn Colours

These are just a few images taken during October with my Rolleiflex 3,5F some with the Rolleinar 2 close-up lens (a must for Rolleiflex/cord owners) The above chestnut leaves were taken on Kodak 400 VC

This 'Fly Agaric' was taken under a tree with very little light hand held at 1/15 sec on Kodak 400 VC film

This tree shot was taken on a very dull day on Fuji 800z film. The following shot is of the same tree taken just a day later with Fuji 400H.

And finally English Apples taken on Fuji Superia 400

Words and images  © Photo Utopia 2010

Book Review: Making Kodak Film– by Robert L. Shanebrook

I don't normally review books, so please excuse my awkwardness but I feel this particular book is very important because it is as far as I know unique.


If you're reading this blog chances are just like me you're still using the odd roll of film or two, and if you're slightly geeky about it you've probably wondered about how that roll came into existence.
If so this book will certainly answer any questions as it covers film production from the manufacture of the base, the emulsion and perforating and slitting and packaging.
The book is clearly presented and very well written with over 150 photographs and illustrations showing the machinery and production methods at every stage.

The book itself is a soft-back about A4 size the paper and printing is very good quality.

I liked the images of the silver ingots showing them being put into the Nitric acid and also the confectioning machinery showing how films were perforated or this case the image below rolled with paper backing for 120.

(image of the book showing 120 film slitting and confectioning)

The author Robert L. Shanebrook worked at Kodak for 35 years and must have spent quite a lot of time putting together this book, the photography is excellent as is the annotation and overall layout.

In fact I can't think of I'd criticise, the book is an invaluable reference for anyone interested in film.
If you'd like a copy of this book it's only available from the author at his website:
http://www.makingkodakfilm.com/

So all in all a quite wonderful book and I have enjoyed it immensely. It is a fantastic reference which I think Kodak should give to every member of their sales team especially customer support.

© Text Mark Antony and images Robert L. Shanebrook.

New Fujifilm Medium Format Camera

Fuji Has just announced that it plans to release a new medium format camera. The camera is called the GF670W and has a wide angle 55mm ƒ:4,5 Fujinon lens and has the capability to shoot 6x6 or 6x7 it also accepts both 120 and 220 film.

The shutter is a leaf type that has speeds 4-1/500 sec + B, features aperture priority as well as manual exposure modes and has an ISO range 25-3200.

Its not everyday a new film camera is released and after the sucess of their GF670 folding camera (known as the Voightlander Bessa outside Japan) it proves Fuji is committed to the medium.

Kodak announces new Portra 400 film

Kodak Have recently introduced a new 400 ISO film to their Portra range here is what their blurb:

"The new PORTRA 400 is the world’s finest grain high-speed color negative film. At true ISO 400 speed, this film delivers spectacular skin tones plus exceptional color saturation over a wide range of lighting conditions"


The film actually replaces both existing 400 speed films in the Portra range Portra 400NC and 400VC and colour saturation wise falls between those two films, the grain is supposed to be finer than it's predecessors so obviously incorporates the technologies from their Vision movie films.

I think if this film lives up to Kodak's promises it should have a colour saturation similar to Fuji NPH only with slightly finer grain, which will make it a very competitive product.

Like most photographers I see this as a consolidation, the loss of NC and VC will be less of an issue to those who work in a hybrid workflow, and if it helps Kodak to keep turning out better and better products albeit in a smaller range-that's Ok by me.

Portra 400 should be available in November, as soon as I can get my hands on a sample I'll do one of my mini reviews to see if the claims made by Kodak are substantiated.

Here is the Kodak web Page:

Kodak Portra 400

© Mark Antony 2010

Human Rangefinder

As you probably know at this blog we occaisionally use old folding cameras like the Zeiss Ikon and Ensign Selfix.
The biggest problem with these cameras is that some of them just have albada viewfinders, that is there is no focusing aid such as a rangefinder.
I'd like to share with you a great tool that allows you to make a custom RF just by placing some details into field on a webpage.
This generates a PDF which you can print, cut out and store in your camera case(I laminated mine too).
Here is the link.
http://tomchuk.com/rf_hfd/index.php

Here is how mine looks for my Ensign

It works by holding the card at arms length and opening your left eye and lining up a vertical with the '0' line, close the left and look though your right, note the number that the vertical line now passes through–that's your distance.
I'd like to thank Thomas Achtemichuk for this great tool!

Film is Expensive?

Film

An often repeated claim I hear goes like this: I don't use film anymore as the whole thing has become too expensive, or some incredulously saying 'do they still make film'?

I'm finding quite the opposite, firstly consumer colour film is far cheaper now than it was when I first started photography in the 1970's

This Week-End just for fun (and my upcoming holiday) I decided to take out £10 and see how many rolls of film that small sum of money could buy.

First stop was Boots the chemist, a British High Street chain whose photographic departments often have minlabs as well as a small stock of film.

I noticed on the shelf they have their own brand 200 36exp 5 packs for £8.49 and Fuji 200-24 for a little less.

They also sell slide film and Ilford B&W and a few single use recyclable cameras although they don't publicise this on their website (c'mon guys).

This particular shop had some short dated Fuji 'Holiday Pack' for £1.99 for 5 rolls I bought all they had which was 2 packs (10 rolls) at a total of £3.98 not bad...

Next a short trip to Poundland which unsurprisingly has a ticket of a pound for any item. Here I found Kodak 200-24 and their own single use recyclable cameras each (drum-roll) £1

My price cap for the afternoon was £10 so I bought 5 rolls of the Kodak giving me change of £1.02 which I used for the car park-15 rolls of film for less than £10.

My haul can be seen in the picture at the top of the post.

Processing

On the High St there is still quite a lot of choice regarding processing most chemists and supermarkets offer processing from as little as 99p up to about £5.00 or so depending on the service I have the 99p develop only which has been fine quality wise apart from the cutting into 4s

Prolabs have become much more thin on the ground, generally they use dip and dunk machines that take longer to process a roll and cut into 6's develop only can range £3-5 this becomes pricey if you need to post them.

I use a cheap minilab for 35mm and pay £2 for them they cut them in 6s and do a nice job.

Cameras

The choice here is huge, the rush to digital means yesterdays consumer compact is mostly worthless, recently I have purchased a Pentax Espio zoom 35mm compact for 50p! I have seen Canon sureshots Olympus trips and the like for 5-£10.

Lower end SLR of 10-20 years ago like Zenith and Praktica can be had for similar money, while mid tier SLRs like the Yashica FXD, Fujica STX 1n and Ricoh KR 10 can be found for £20.

The cheaper first tier cameras include the excellent Olympus OM1 and Canon EOS 650 of which I've seen many examples under £50, lots of choice with very high quality.

Modern AF cameras like the Nikon F100 and Canon EOS 1 can be found for a few hundred and make excellent occasional film use bodies for those with digital equivalents.

So film can be relatively in-expensive and should be though as a pay as you go model, especially if you don't shoot many images and enjoy just shooting and forgetting only to re-find that image 6 months later.

A camera like an Olympus OM1 will deliver great images for many years and gets a 'sensor' upgrade every time a new film comes out, something like a film compact can be slung in your cars glove-box taken to the beach and can be cheaper that a single use camera.

Fun with POP

Printing out paper or POP as it is often reffered to has been around since the 1880's and is one of the first gelatin based photographic papers.
POP has a very slow photographic speed, that is you need quite a lot of light to make an image, so much so that it can be handled for short periods under indoor lighting.
The normal method for printing an image is to put the paper into a printing frame (I used a photo frame) and contact print negatives by placing them on the paper so they are sandwiched between the glass and paper–this keeps them nice and flat.

What you see above is all the equipment you need to make a print, the only extra things you'll need are a tray of water and sunlight.
Firstly in subdued light place the negative into the frame and lay the POP emulsion side down against the neg, then snap the back of the frame in to hold the paper agaist the negative–you may even like to put some card packing in to hold the negative against the paper.

I am using a 4x5 negative in order to give a good image size, negatives can be made from any image by inverting B&W images in photoshop and printing on transparent film

The next step is to place the frame outside in sunlight, I have found that a bright slightly overcast day gives the best results, trial and error being the best method of exposure, my times are normally between 5-15min the shorter time would be in bright light the later in open shade.

You can tell when the exposure is nearing completion as the area that was paper white begins to turn a plummy brown.

When taken from the framethe tones can be anything between yellow-red to purple-brown, and in this state the photograph isn't stable, that is bright light will fog it.

In order to 'develop' the print it must first be briefly washed to remove the excess silver nitrate which gives the image a better stabilty, and also causes the image to turn yellow/red and become slightly lighter.

The resulting image can be fixed in plain hypo for further image permanence this can further lighten the print and change colour.

My personal preference is for the plum colour, and I have scanned the image straight out of the frame to keep a digital record.

Many people have suggested to me that gold toning will give a cooler brown result and I'll probably have a play with that.

It should be noted that since I bought this paper that Kenmere have discontued it, if you would like to try it you'll have to make your own paper or try the similar modus of cyanotype like papers made by this toy company I feel another blog post coming on....

Early Kodachrome film test

The following is an amazing test of Kodachrome colour movie film from 1922, of course its silent but quite beautiful.
This test predates the commercial introduction of the film by about 12 years, and is possibly the earliest colour movie film-certainly the earliest I've seen.
Later this year Kodachrome will be no more, thank you Kodak for the wonderful historic emulsion, I'm glad I got to shoot it.
Enjoy the film.

My Penultimate Kodachrome Roll

After Kodak anounced that they were deleting kodachrome I had three rolls in my fridge. I had all sorts of ideas about grand last projects but in the end I gave one roll to a friend who hadn't used the film before and shot one roll on the spring flowers and my children.

Here are some of the shots from that roll.

All of the above were taken on a Nikkormat FT2 with 50mm Nikkor H and 55mm Nikkor Micro.

I just posted off my last roll which I shot at the beach, it felt strange to post the last yellow mailer (in Europe Kodachrome has mailers which go to Switzerland) Kodachrome was the first colour film I shot and I have hundreds of little yellow boxes, I feel happy that the last roll was of my children.

Kodak Release Ektar in Sheet sizes

Kodak have recently announced that they will introduce a 4x5 and 8x10 sheet film size of their popular Ektar 100 emulsion.

Now large-format photographers will be able to enjoy the impact and flexibility that EKTAR 100 brings. With ultra-vivid color and ultra-fine grain, it's the ideal choice for creating high magnification enlargements for commercial display.

It will be available in April.

Adjacency effects in B&W film development

There are many types of density anomalies that can be recorded in the silver photographic image, flare and other optical chain faults, as well as turbidity within the photographic emulsion during exposure. This article concerns itself with a group of anomalies that occur during processing, these are commonly referred to as adjacency effects.

The image above is a small section of a lens test chart, when photographed on B&W film the transition from black to white can be represented by a square wave form thus:

Obviously the representation above is what would be recorded by the film in ideal circumstances, in reality the action of the developer causes a peak (A) and a trough (B)

These density anomalies happen during development, at the border of a high/low density areas where the exposed part of the film diffuses bromide (which is a byproduct of development) into the lower density region causing a trough to form (B) as the bromide has a retarding action.

The developer is exhausted in the area of greater exposure causing developer to leech from the lower density area to the higher one, this causes a peak to form (A)

The enhancement of density at the edge of the dense area is known as the border effect the depression at the bottom is called the fringe effect.

Together they form edge effects seen in prints that are known as Mackie lines.

The figure above shows that the increase in density becomes greater as the lines on the chart decrease in size, this is known as the Eberhard effect.

Strangely this effect slows at around 0.1mm and then from that point decreases.

As the lines decrease further the area between them is retarded with respect to the rest of the image and this produces a lower density that is known as the Kostinsky effect.

Studies have concluded that adjacency effects occur with all developer types and that in practice there is little difference between them.

It should be noted that agitation (or rather a lack of or reduced agitation) can make a difference. It has been reported by some users of Rodinal that using the developer at high dilutions combined with minimal agitation can result in increased edge effects.

These are probably produced by macro bromide effects as bromide is the main cause of developer retardation and a byproduct of the development process.

© Photo Utopia 2009

Rolleiflex 3,5F

Last year I bought a Rolleiflex T and re-acquainted myself with using a TLR and although not the perfect camera (what is)? it is one that works well for me with my style, I like square images and find composing in that format helps me to find a focal point.

The first TLR I used was a 3.5F with a Schneider Xenotar lens, which at the was the company 'training' camera, most of the photographers used Hasselblads because of the inter-changeable backs and lenses, the TLRs were considered 'learner' cameras.

So here am I twenty plus years later finally investing in what most see as one of the classic TLRs.

Xentotar vs Planar

The Rollei TLR during its long history was supplied with either Schneider or Zeiss lenses, depending what or whose web pages you read both a claimed to be superior, I have owned a F2,8 Planar a Tessar and two Xenotar models and can comfortably say at around F11 it will be hard to tell any of them apart. Conventional wisdom has it the Xenotar is sharper in the centre while the Planar is slightly better at the edges at wider apertures.

All I can say is that all the lenses used on the Rollei are excellent, quite capable of producing stunning results.

Operation and comparison with my Rolleiflex T

The fist thing I noticed was the F is heavier than the T, and feels slightly more substantial and robust; not a great deal more but no doubt the internals gears etc are also more robust, talking with service technicians confirms this.

The thing I like least about the T is the way the shutter speeds changes, the mechanical linkage has a less 'direct' feel, sometimes I even feel a slight slippage when changing apertures/speeds.

In contrast the rotating wheel used on the F feels very positive and accurate.

This camera has a built in Selenium light meter, it still works and as such is a welcome addition but I wouldn't like to trust its accuracy for really critical work.

One of the disadvantages compared to the T (and Rolleicord) is that the F has a 'bay II' bayonet fit, this means that accessories like lens hoods and my favourite close-up lenses the Rolleinars are all much rarer and expensive.

During the first few rolls I also found another feature that I like. If you push the F&H logo on the hood then look through the eyepiece on the back of the hood you get a focus magnifier, you cant see the whole field of view and its inverted (upside down), but the focus is more accurate using this method.

Here below are a couple of shots from the Rollei on the new Ektar 100 film not for any other reason than I like the colours...

This one is against the light

Summing up I find the F an excellent camera, not as a cheap way to get into MF photography, for that I'd recommend a Rollei T or even a Rolleicord/Yashica/Autocord.

What it will bring you is a camera that in my opinion is one of the classic designs of all time, if you forced me to pick one camera to use for the rest of my life it would be this one.

© Photo Utopia 2009

Kodak Ektar 100 in 120

It is now over a year since Kodak announced the 35mm version of this film, after which many photographers asked for it in 120 size. After a few months Kodak obliged releasing a 120 version. I have a review of the 35mm emulsion here Ektar 100 35mm

So why review the medium format size?

My feeling after over 6 months of use (about 10 rolls) that the two are slightly different in character, I'm sure that its not just the format or the cameras, I actually think they behave in a different way.

First of all some tests that as normal centre around a Kodak No13 colour chart taken in a shaded area, first taking a 1 per cent spot meter reading from a grey card then taking -2 N and +2 exposures
The -2 has a slight lack of shadow detail, but just as with the 35mm shows an acceptable result, slightly more grain and lower contrast with a slight colour cast .
he normal was the easiest to scan and wet print, good colour and contrast greys remained neutral
The +2 has better shadow detail, but seems to have a blue/magenta cast which although can be filtered was in my opinion not as neutral as the normal neg
In bright sunlight colours are saturated,but detailed, slightly more conventional than the 35mm Ektar emulsion but in the same ballpark.
This shot and the following shot were made in quite dull conditions and for me this is where the results are different from the small format version. I would have thought that colours would remain fairly saturated, but in fact what I got from the two rolls shot on this day would be similar to what I would expect from Kodak Portra 160. I know what you're thinking that in some way they are under-exposed or possibly processing may have been different.
Seeing these results raised doubt in my mind about firstly my Minota spotmeter which checked out fine and then with the processing. In later trials though I tested the film in both cloudy and full sun and can confirm that the 120 film has slightly more muted colour when the weather is dull. I can say that I haven't come to this conclusion lightly and have actually re-written and put back this review until I felt that I had repeated consistent results from different cameras, processors and conditions.

This shot was taken in shadow and was to see how the film rendered skin tones, overall Ektar impresses me how it boosts reds and blues and yet gives quite natural believable skin tones, it does this with both versions of the film in a similar manner, I'd imagine it would be a great choice for fashion photography.

Something I've noticed though is a slight tendency for cooler colours in the shadow regions, this in my opinion is more so with the 120.

My overall conclusions are that this version of Ektar is similar yet not exactly the same as the 35mm version. So if you need a very fine grained film with good (yet not over the top) saturation especially in the red and blue parts of the spectrum this film is well worth a try.

1930's Zeiss Ikon Exposure table

I found this old 1930's Zeiss exposure table in my loft recently, it has little value apart from photographic history, having bought an Ikonta of similar vintage recently its nice to have some period documents.

One thing I did note of interest is the DIN, Scheiner and H&D film speed values and their equivalents which may be of use to someone trying to work out speeds of 1930's films.

Above is the 'how to use' instructions and a reminder of some accessories available for your Zeiss camera.

If you'd like to see the text more clearly just left click the images to open at 100 per cent view, the text should be easily viewable.

© Photo Utopia 2009

Silver and filamentary growth

The above is picture of a developed silver crystal that during reduction has transformed into a filamentary mass. This is quite common with most modern developers and film types, and is especially true of fine grain developers of the MQ and PQ type.

What I'm often asked is what causes the filamentary growth? why don't the grains always keep their original post exposure shape?

I'll try to explain.

When a silver halide grain is exposed to light electrons move within the crystal with extreme rapidity. Some of these electrons are 'trapped' in lower energy areas of the crystal such as defects or impurities, the trapped electron makes a still more efficient trap for other electrons and so on.

In this state the silver is said to be a 'latent image' and needs a developer to magnify it.

During development the charge that has been concentrated at the traps is highly negative and especially so at the tips which attract positive ions from the solution.

A needle like protuberance is formed which rapidly turns into a filament, such filaments have a large surface for their volume giving plenty of opportunity for developer ions to be adsorbed along its sides forming a flat ribbon like structure.

This results in a very strong negative charge at the tip of the filament which attracts silver ions, which when they come in contact with the tip are neutralised to give metallic silver and therefore even more rapid filamentary growth.

I hope that this explanation helps those who have asked how these filaments are formed.

© Photo Utopia 2009

Zeiss Ikonta 520/2

The Zeiss Ikonta was designed by Dr August Nagel shortly after which he left Zeiss to form his own company Nagel Werke who eventually became part of Kodak and made great cameras such as the Retina.

The camera above is a 1932 model with 105 mm F4,5 Tessar lens which because of the age is uncoated, despite this it is a well renowned optic and during the time of manufacture one of the best lenses available.

The shutter is a Compur 'leaf shutter' type with speeds 1/250 down to 1 second plus B & T, in which the T setting is used by hitting the release once to open and again to close and is useful in dark conditions when on a tri-pod, probably would make a nice astro photo 'star trails' setting for several hour long exposures.

The apertures run from F4,5 to F32 and are changed using a lever under the lens.

On the back you can see two red windows, the left is for advancing the film 6x9 (8 exposures) the right is used in conjunction with an insert (nearly always lost) to give '645' (16 exposures)

Also in the picture you can see the Albada view finder which is used for framing only, the focus point being guessed- you needed a Super Ikonta model for rangefinder focus.

Inside the back is an advert for Zeiss 'Pernox' film

Operation

When you consider how old this camera is (it was produced in the year Hitler came to power) it works very well, all speeds seem to work, the bellows is without holes and the Tessar is free of scratches.

The uncoated Tessar is pretty sharp, probably short of Rolleiflex or Hasselblad Zeiss lenses by a margin but impressive considering the age and very useable in but the most demanding conditions.

The camera is quite a challenge compared to modern SLRs as pretty much everything is guessed, the focus distance, the exposure, the shutter is manually cocked before exposure the wind-on has no lock making double exposure a danger should you forget to advance (also nice for some effects). The alabada finder although yellow with age is reasonably accurate for infinity work closer work is more problematic.

The lens has a minimum focus of 5 feet which makes it none to useful for head and shoulder type portraits full length being the best you can hope for:

The above is a shot on closest focus at around F8, note the chopped of feet due to parallax error.
This image was a real test, loaded with ISO 100 film guessed exposure of 1/25 at F4,5 at roughly 25ft distance- actually turned out surprisingly well.

You can clearly see the wires (see enlarged section top right) in this shot of the Jewelers shop proving the old Tessar is quite up to the task for most infinity type work. I'd not be quite so happy to shoot portraits because of the 5ft minimum focus. Finally just a colour shot, Fuji 400H 1/250 at F11

In all I really liked the Ikonta, will probably look for a later Super Ikonta with a coated Tessar ultimately.

I now have quite a collection of folding cameras, and really like the big negative small package they are great cameras available in some cases for very little money (I paid £18 for this one) and despite their very manual operation they can be fun.

© Photo Utopia 2009

Ensign Selfix 16/20

Ensign was the trademark of the British company Houghton-Butcher Ltd a company with a long history of camera and plate making. In the early part of the 20th century they were the largest British camera maker, and at its height in the 30's the Wathamstow works employed over a thousand people. After the war they found themselves with bombed out factories and in a poor financial state so joined forces with Ross the lens manufacturer and the camera factory was moved to the Ross Clapham Common works. The Selfix 1620 pictured here is a mark II model from around 1950 with a Ross Xpres F3,5 lens and has a negative size of 6x4.5. Model I cameras had an Ensar lens later ones had a built in finder rather than the alabada one the top model sported a Rosstar lens.

The camera is of excellent build quality, quite comparable to either Voigtländer or Zeiss, and has an interesting and quirky design.

First off is the shutter release which is on the left side, which in itself isn't too bad except on the right (where you'd expect the shutter release to be) is the lens board door.
Furthermore if you look at the image above of the shutter button you'll notice a central pin. The pin is designed to depress with the shutter button unless you forget to cock the shutter!- let me explain.
If you wind on the camera and forget to cock the shutter which is a lever near the aperture when you depress the button the pin pricks your finger to remind you 'please don't do that' One can only wonder in this litigious day and age how this feature could be even considered or what sort of designer would create such a feature? was he forced to sit on a spike as a child and just getting his own back?

The lens is a Ross Xpres F3,5 which I've been told is comparable to a Tessar both in design and quality. he Epsilon shutter seems to have a similar range to a Prontor. The Selfix doesn't have a rangefinder so is as manual as you can get but after a while guessing both distance and exposure aren't as problematic as it would seem.

Here is a 100 per cent view of the centre:

Certainly not bad, quite up to the standard of Zeiss or Voigtländer


The image below shows the inside, special things to note are the key ways for the roll which meant that the camera can use 120 or 620 type films the bottom of the holder is sprung and when pushed down makes a plunger release from the button making for easy loading.


The following picture is just to show the size relative to my Leica, its not trying to suggest a preference for either. But it does show the relative advantage of a folding camera– medium format film in a small package, coupled with a good lens makes a very decent picture maker.



The Ensign Selfix is a great little camera if you stumble across one in a junk shop or car boot, it has its quirks (the finger pricking pin) and its main disadvantage is lack of rangefinder meaning you have to guess distance.
Also on a personal note it is the first British camera I've owned, and I remember my grandfather telling me about his Ensign 'bellows' camera.