View from O Terraço Restaurant looking towards Sagres

The post Martinhal Beach Resort Panoramic photographs appeared first on .

Anticipating good light, I packed a pile of well-expired Kodak Gold 200 film along with my Olympus OM1 35mm camera. I took two lenses; 50mm f1.4 and a 35mm f2.8 – both cracking bits of glass and so easy to carry about. It never felt a chore carrying the Oly thanks to it’s size and weight.  It’s also a pretty discreet camera to shoot with, attracting a lot less attention than a DSLR and kit lens. I metered using the in-camera meter and adjusting by eye and shot with as wide an aperture as the light would allow. The 50mm lens can be a bit dreamy at f1.4 which can be quite pleasant if that’s the look you’re after. The 35mm is scarily sharp throughout the range and really is a great bit of glass.

The films were processed and scanned by the very good people at AG Photo Lab in Birmingham. It’s the first time I’ve worked with them and am more than happy with the results I got back. They called me once the films were received and we discussed how I’d like the scans to look. I was a bit concerned shooting an out of date contrasty film in quite harsh light but they tamed the contrast and presented a very consistent set of scans over the dozen or so rolls I gave them. I have done very little work to them in post, just my usual little tweak to bring the colour palette in to my liking.

The post Martinhal Beach Resort, Portugal – Family photography appeared first on .

If you’re a fan of kids standing in front of white backgrounds in cramped studios with artificial light then that’s great. If however you’d like to capture your family having fun in a natural environment and create a set of real nice photographs that you’ll cherish then please get in touch here. Portraiture doesn’t have to be boring!

The post Fun family photography at the beach in Scotland – with coats! appeared first on .

I shot the image below just a couple of days back on some Polaroid Type 51 film that expired in 1999. The positive images are unusable but the negatives turn out just fine. Due to it’s age I’ve been rating it at 80 asa and developing it for twice the suggested time. The picture (of my wife) was snatched in a bit of a rush at the end of the day, the exposure was 1/30th at f2.9 (wide open) and was shot using a very sturdy pod. I wasn’t expecting wide open performance to be as good as it is and was pleasantly surprised at how sharp it is, I think it renders the background quite nicely too – I wasn’t entirely sure just how smooth the bokeh would appear. I focussed on the ground glass with a loupe – the Kalart rangefinder could be calibrated but it’s unlikely I’d ever shoot that way and it’s a slight pain to do if you have as little patience as me.

I’ve read reports of varying quality with these aerial lenses. It seems some were produced in a great hurry during WWII and consequently were better (or worse) than others. Mine was made by the National Optical Company (NOC) in Leicester which I believe was a sister factory of Taylor Hobson, it doesn’t carry the Air Ministry badge on it and is made of brass. I’m really happy with it. I was concerned that it wouldn’t perform so good at portrait distances since it was probably designed to shoot best at infinity but I’m really quite pleasantly surprised! I’ve added a lens hood in the guise of a Mamiya 77mm effort that covers up to a 350mm lens and it seems to shade the lens nicely and happens to be a well made hood – good quality heavy rubber.

So, in a nutshell I’m pretty impressed with my first test with this combo. It’ll be interesting to see how it performs with colour stock which I’ll try and shoot soon, I have some nice Portra lying in the fridge waiting on some nice light and a suitable subject. Thanks for reading and feel free to ask me any questions here on anything photo related!

The post Graflex Speed Graphic & Dallmeyer Pentac test Polaroid appeared first on .

This is the thing digital cameras can never take away from film cameras… they can age well. The shot on this page was taken with a camera that is very special to me. My Zeiss Ikon Contina IIa. It was built in 1956 as an exceptionally well made point and shoot. It is all manual and has a selenium cell light meter (NO batteries required). It is not a range finder nor an SLR (looking through the lens). To focus it you have to judge the distance to your subject and turn the lens scale to match your guess. It helps to be able to convert to meters as it is a German camera. It had not had a roll of film in it in as long as I’ve owned it until this trip to San Diego . Despite it’s lack of modern conveniences  it is capable of adding beauty to the world when given the chance. Imagine how well a 55 year old digital camera will hold up. This camera will be able to work alongside it then too.

The reason this camera is special to me is not because it is old or beautiful (even though it is both of those). It is because it was given to me by a beautiful German lady named Helga. Helga lived in the Bronx when I met her and she was in her mid 70′s then. That was around 2000 or 2001. She lived in a house behind my mother’s that had been built by her husband when that part of the Bronx was still farm land. I used to periodically talk to her over the adjoining fences and it was always a treat. One day she asked me to come around to the house. When I arrived she said she was selling the house and moving since it had become too much to handle after the passing of her husband John (John by the way was a wonderful painter, a kind man and the subject of one of my favorite photographs I have ever taken). Helga handed me this camera and said that it was a gift. She had purchased it when she was leaving Germany as a sort of insurance policy. If things did not work out in America then she could sell it and buy her way back. Things did work and she stayed.

I have looked at this camera for years. I decided to run a roll through it on our swing out to California and I got this photo. I love it. It is old and new all at once. It is new beauty in a changing world and it was placed here by a camera that is as gorgeous and functional in it’s 50′s as when it was new. Thank you Helga for one of the best gifts that was ever given to me.

I’d really like to thank Keith for sharing his story and image here. Please click the links to see more of his fabulous work on his wedding site, his children’s portrait site and his blog. Thanks for reading and please check back for more guest blog posts from fantastic photographers choosing to shoot on film.

The post The story behind the shot by guest blogger Keith Pitts appeared first on .

I felt a real connection shooting with the OM1 – I guess it reminded me of my first camera, a Nikormat FT2, which was a good bit bulkier to be fair but similar in many ways; for example the shutter speed selector sits just behind the lens instead of on the top plate like many other cameras of the period. Another nice feature (and just like Leica glass) is the aperture dial is at the front of the lens making it a doddle to turn, especially with gloves on. The film rewind release is on the front plate just like a Leica M. The pics were shot on well expired Fuji Superia 400 rated at 800 asa and pushed two stops by RPL. The scans are a bit on the grainy side but I think they suit the  subject matter and the environment OK.

The pics were taken on a wee break we took between Christmas and New Year to the Ardanaiseig Hotel not far from Oban in Scotland. The weather wasn’t great to be honest and there was very little available light. Despite having a lovely time we won’t be rushing back there and I’d struggle to recommend the hotel to anyone, especially with young children – unfortunately the experience is not as suggested on their website – shame. I can however thoroughly recommend the Olympus OM1 as a great inexpensive film camera – it’s so much fun to use and is light enough to travel with. Go and buy one now before the word spreads!

The post Some personal work with an Olympus OM1 film camera appeared first on .

Both these lenses were originally designed and used by the military during WWII in aerial cameras shooting on 5″x5″ roll film – hence the crazy fast aperture. I suspect they’re probably designed to perform best at infinity but they also make for a very interesting portrait lens with pretty thin DOF wide open and hopefully a pretty decent bokeh. Time will tell, I still have to figure out mounting it to the camera and running some tests to see how accurate the focal plane shutter is so it’s very much a work in progress.

I found someone selling some Polaroid Type 54 sheet film that expired in 2009 and I jumped at it. This stuffs been out of production for a wee while now but should still work OK being only 3/4 years old. I was pretty excited when it arrived and stuck it in the fridge overnight to shoot a test the following day. I took a couple of sheets out in the morning to come up to temperature only to find they were in actual fact Type 51HC film and were dated 1999. Now I’m not all that familiar with these Polaroid stocks but after a quick search it became apparent that the Type 51 film was mostly used for copying purposes and produces a very high contrast positive. I was just a little gutted until I found that unlike Type 54, it produces a negative and positive image in a similar manner to the much desired Type 55 film. My first shot didn’t produce an image so I doubled the exposure and process time and whooped as I saw a picture – all be it a very, very contrasty one. The neg looked OK though so with no sodium sulphite to hand, I washed it in running water for a while and applied a drop of washing up liquid at the end acting as a wetting agent!

You can see in the image above just how vast the Pentac lens is compared to the standard lens supplied with the camera. Because these lenses were made during war time, some are apparently better than others. My copy has N.O.C. stamped on it which I believe indicates it was made by Taylor Hobson’s daughter factory so I’m hopeful of decent results. After all I’m not trying to achieve optical perfection with this, it’s more of a fun experiment to be honest. Be sure to look back and see how I’m getting on with this. I can’t wait to get the Pentac lens mounted and shoot some colour neg film. Thanks for reading!

The post New adventures in large format film photography! appeared first on .

The post Photo Professional Magazine film wedding photography feature appeared first on .

You can download a complimentary photograph of you child by clicking here (password is: free). Images are suitable for viewing on mobile devices and sharing on social media. If you’d like to purchase a photograph or download a full resolution copy to print at home then please click here.

The post Julie Young Dance Studios Pretty in Pink! appeared first on .

“Like many photographers I started my photography journey by shooting film and printing in a darkroom. Like most of those photographers I also made the switch to digital when DSLRs were finally available at a price less than the cost of a luxury car. And like a small handful of those photographers I have made the switch back to shooting film over the last few years. Why? I can talk on and on about the difference in the way film looks and feels, about the tangible quality of loading and advancing film, about the way it makes me slow down and think more about each frame I expose, about how inspiring it is to use classic old cameras. I won’t dare to try to qualify film as better than digital or vice versa. I know that is an endless and dangerous conversation to enter into. In the end, shooting film is a personal thing for me.

Recently I have discovered a bonus advantage for shooting film. Whether shooting with an old classic camera like my Hasselblad, or my tiny old school Pentax K100 or my large funky looking Contax 645, pulling one of these cameras out is a great conversation starter. People stop and notice, they recall memories of their father or grandfather using the Hasselblad or they might exclaim excitedly that they also learned photography on a Pentax K100 and relate “I should pull that old thing out and give it a try again.” Usually, this conversation leads to portrait making between the two of us, often it leads to a great cup of coffee and an afternoon talking about art and swapping stories. This autumn I vowed to carry the Pentax with me everyday for a month. When it wasn’t slung on my shoulder, it was parked next to my car keys at the front door, ready to go. I met many people, had coffee and lunch with several artists and students, and even scored free sushi when I started photographing the beautiful interior of a new sushi restaurant in my neighborhood. To my surprise, I was also stopped by the local TV News crew who were out filming a story one day during the lunch hour. I don’t know that I was necessarily ‘newsworthy’ but they did ask me to speak about what I was photographing and why. I declined the story, it felt to personal to me. It felt great to make these connections in my city and it was also very satisfying to discreetly document the activity going on that month. With such a vast amount of people owning, carrying and pointing digital cameras, I felt less conspicuous and like I had a free ticket to photograph the public.

Following is a snippet of the series I created documenting my new hometown. I think I will do this again in the spring, but with a fabulous old Polaroid, I would love to be able to immediately hand over a photograph to the people I meet, a little token of our encounter. I wonder if the news crew will be out that day…”

I’d like to thank Dena for sharing her story and her photos. Please click the links here to see more of her work on her website, her blog (which is filled with gorgeous film photos) or connect with her through Facebook. Thanks for reading and please check back for more guest blog posts from fantastic photographers choosing to shoot on film.

The post Why I shoot film by guest blogger Dena Robles appeared first on .