Numpty Behind the Lens - Photosharing Thread

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Yv

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OK, everyone that managed to get their backsides into gear to take part in the one use camera challenge, here is where you can start posting your photos. As many as you like, tell us a bit about them, what you were hoping for, how close you got, that sort of stuff. Lets see how everyone got on.

The original thread is HERE if you haven't got a clue what this is all about.

However, I want you to hold ONE photo back, the one that will be your competition entry, don't post that in here. I will start the thread for that later in the week. ;)

All the photos are open for comments and critique, though do remember the equipment they were taken with when making your comments. You don't have to have taken part to comment either, though if you didn't, WHY pray tell? :shifty: :p

Also remember this was set as a fun challenge, so lets keep the thread friendly too please guys :whistle:

Now then, who is going to be the braveheart first poster I wonder? :D

NB - Best Photo thread now available to post your pictures HERE
 
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All taken with a 3 year out of date one of these.

I found exposure control (or lack of it) the hardest thing. The negatives range from incredibly thin, to so dense they'd hardly print, so there's a range of quality from really quite acceptable to incredibly grainy and contrasty. The HP5 was developed in ID11. I printed on Ilford Multigrade IV Fibre based paper (unglazed gloss) at 8x10, then scanned the finished prints.

The Camera's ultra small aperture meant that focus was pretty much academic, but it's field curvature is just LOL :) In bright conditions, despite the tiny aperture, it has a really slow shutter speed, so over exposure was a major headache.

Enjoyable little project this... Something good about getting back to basics.


1. Somewhere near Preston Bus Station... can't remember where now. Red filter held over the lens. Negative very over exposed.
yJOuqqS.jpg


2. Also in Preston somewhere..
pWwCUup.jpg


3. Preston Bus Station again.
RrthOjv.jpg


4. Preston again
RAXGOYg.jpg


5. ...and again...
k5ju7VF.jpg


6. My Mum's garage door after sanding paint off some shelves.(very under-exposed neg... printed at grade 5 and still flat)
a9CEC5r.jpg


7. Rossall Beach (incredibly dense negative)
QSsloB7.jpg



Yes.. I know there's a hair on every single shot :) Was on all the negs, so inside the camera, not the enlarger.
 
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Certainly looks like Preston caught your attention David! I can't pretend to understand what effect the issues with the negatives actually mean, though I can see differences in the results. #1 draws me in, though probably not for the reasons you were hoping for I'm afraid... I keep looking for the tip of plane wing as it reminds me of the old viewing platforms out over the terminals at manchester airport when we were kids - that's what they would have looked like if you could have stuck your head through the railings and looked along them, something we desperately wanted to do as 7 year olds of course.

#5 is the one that really grabs me, probably partly because of it fitting the rule of thirds/ninths-ish [take your pick] but mainly because the pigeon looks uncommonly big, or rather, prominent in a way it has no right to.

Mums garage door... that actually looks almost like it is a negative, very odd but strangely attractive despite being as you say, quite flat. The dog on the beach, you say the negative was incredibly dense, and the resulting picture looks like it was a very foggy day, wintery day, yet the sun says it probably wasn't? Proving the camera can lie perhaps? ;)
 
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Thanks for the feedback. It was actually foggy on the last one :) It was very bright though, and the sun illuminating the fog was so bright, that the area on the neg was just completely black, and being so dense, the grain is a little severe.

It was GREAT to get back in the darkroom again.. which, if I'm honest, was why I took part in this :) Not done any PROPER printing for years! I give demos to students, but nothing like going in by yourself, and losing 6 hours under a safelight :)
 
Nice set, David, and I definitely admire your approach to this, developing, printing, assessing the camera, the works! The pick of the bunch for me was the web by the garage door, but like Yvonne I also liked Preston again and again.
 
OK I'll post some (saving one for the other thread as per instructions). My camera was a Fujifilm 400 ISO colour version, with flash. The instructions seemed to suggest always using flash, but I didn't very much, and the results when I did were not encouraging! Looking at the negatives, more were under-exposed than over, but generally it wasn't sunny. Nevertheless the scans from Photo Express came back pretty good. These are uncorrected except for resize (I'll check and note it I did change one or two, can't quite remember)...

1) Post box, recently re-painted. Very struck by the red and the texture here... The tilt wasn't deliberate; at first I corrected it, but I've set it back as it was.



2) Doorways in Kenilworth Castle. I was right, this one did have one click of the magic "Auto-enhance" button in Aperture, I think it's the only one.



3) Buildings in Kenilworth Castle. This was quite bright, as you can see, but the negative doesn't look over-exposed to me. There's a bit of purple CA on the right and yellow CA on the left, but not worse than I've seen on a Canon P&S costing £200 originally! (It was a lemon, though.)



4) Looking up the tower. Exposure fine here; in this case, the angle was deliberate.



5) Flock of pigeons. The camera did remarkably well here, I thought; slightly over-exposed but not too much. Not too much sign of camera movement, which surprised me, given the small size.



6) Arcade at the Pump Rooms, Leamington. This is uncorrected, and without flash; you can recover quite a lot from the shadow area, although I found that you could only go a little way before it starts to look a bit unpleasant (not far enough to get colour in those hanging baskets in the shadow area). [EDIT: corrected to add the right image!]



Each time I use these little boxes, I am amazed at the results!
 
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Love shot 5. Somehow the imperfections of the camera really lend atmosphere to this.. the softness, and the pastel shades in the blues from the Fuji emulsion (tones remind of me of Fuji Reala) really work. Sometimes, imperfections can create moods that perfection fails to realise. The actual photographs as an artefact comes into play. Loving shot 1 too... the tilt is irrelevant - it's just a great vernacular image using the appropriate gear.

That Fuji camera appears to have a better lens than the Ilford thing I was using!! :) Appears to have a decent shutter speed too! I struggled to freeze someone walking, let alone pigeons in flight.
 
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Thanks David. Yes, I think this is better than the Boots ones I used two years ago, but the Kodak one from last year was at least as sharp.
 
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Crtm said:
Oh well here goes with my Ilford black and white film nothing special in fact worse than I had thought they might be!!:D
Click to expand...

Did you also use the Ilford camera I did? Got a feeling from the prints that it was the XP2 version? Same crazy field curvature though :) That last one is starting to show how sharp you can get it though. I gaffa taped mine to a tripod as I already knew it has a really slow shutter speed.. You should have seen the looks I got :)

Love that shot from the car boot sale. Just makes me wonder about some people who go there... I mean, where would you get so many car badges?... and why would you want them? Who buys them?.. people who need a replacement, or other people who also collect car badges?
 
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Pookeyhead said:
Did you also use the Ilford camera I did? Got a feeling from the prints that it was the XP2 version? Same crazy field curvature though :) That last one is starting to show how sharp you can get it though. I gaffa taped mine to a tripod as I already knew it has a really slow shutter speed.. You should have seen the looks I got :)

Love that shot from the car boot sale. Just makes me wonder about some people who go there... I mean, where would you get so many car badges?... and why would you want them? Who buys them?.. people who need a replacement, or other people who also collect car badges?
Click to expand...

Hi David yes it was the Ilford XP2. :D
I never thought about shutter speed or anything like that I pointed and pressed the shutter button......... as you can tell! :ROFLMAO:
 
I really like the last one, Carol; the first one is surprisingly soft. I would have expected it to be quite sharp at that distance. Looks like the XP2 camera isn't as good as some of the others!
 
ChrisR said:
I really like the last one, Carol; the first one is surprisingly soft. I would have expected it to be quite sharp at that distance. Looks like the XP2 camera isn't as good as some of the others!
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Hi ChrisR no I don't think it is, not that I have that much experience with these types of cameras but I would have thought the pictures to be slightly better quality than what I got.

The colour one that I also bought at the same time is a lot better than this. Will pop the photographs from it on later.
 
I will tell you what, impressed so far, there is definitely a feeling that a lot of effort has gone into getting these and more importantly that people have enjoyed seeing what they could do and how the camera/film combo has affected the results. I feel quite pee'd off that a massive family issue stopped me doing some of the stuff I really wanted to do, so just hoping the flash of inspiration I had on the last morning of the challenge has helped me out here. Also a bit annoyed that what I photographed from that flash of inspiration would have looked perfect on the cameras I have used for the past couple of years [out of date, or cross processing stuff] but might have less impact on the standard colour kodak I opted for this year. However, I will find out soon enough, they are off being processed atm.

Chris, really like your set, but I have to agree with David, something about the cameras imperfections works really well on number 5. I also like number 6, yes its a bit dark but is VERY reminiscent of a load of old photos from my Kodak retinette I scanned on last year from its days as a new camera used by my late pa-in-law. If it wasn't for that Ford Focus arse, that could have been taken any time since about 1956, onwards. Timeless.

Carol - I think these better than you think. Yes, there is arguably a lack of contrast but that is possibly just the nature of the film and we get so used to digital images artificially converted and contrast boosted that we forget that it didn't always happen that way and especially not if you were the of the 'drop the film at Boots' kind of photographer. I really like the car boot picture, though I confess it might be because I know I will never have to walk round another autojumble again unless I want to! :LOL:
 
All of these were taken with a Fujifilm one time use camera loaded presumably with Fujifilm but rated at iso 400 ... developed and scanned at Boots ...

The first challenge I had was knowing the minimum focus distance, it isn't as close as I would have liked so a number are totally oof ... next was framing, it would seem that even allowing for the offset I was still wrong! The first image below shows this, un-cropped as scanned - I thought I'd framed this so that there was a lot less grass and a lot more sky - talking of which all the detail in the sky has gone, it was light cloud and blue ...numpty_challenge-00017 by PabloRosso, on Flickr


EDIT : I've replaced the images with un-cropped versions as I failed to RTFM - oooppppssssssss.

Sign of the times ...
numpty_challenge-00004 by PabloRosso, on Flickr

Water
numpty_challenge-00018 by PabloRosso, on Flickr

Sheds
numpty_challenge-00011 by PabloRosso, on Flickr

Dereliction
numpty_challenge-00007 by PabloRosso, on Flickr

EDIT (again!!) seems I deleted the wrong file too - aptly named thread - NUMPTY!
 
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PaulButler said:
All of these were taken with a Fujifilm one time use camera loaded presumably with Fujifilm but rated at iso 400 ... developed and scanned at Boots ...

The first challenge I had was knowing the minimum focus distance, it isn't as close as I would have liked so a number are totally oof ... next was framing, it would seem that even allowing for the offset I was still wrong! The first image below shows this, un-cropped as scanned - I thought I'd framed this so that there was a lot less grass and a lot more sky - talking of which all the detail in the sky has gone, it was light cloud and blue ...
numpty_challenge-00017 by PabloRosso, on Flickr

I've cropped most of these, but that is the only adjustment I have made ...

Sign of our times ...
numpty_challenge-00004 by PabloRosso, on Flickr

Water
numpty_challenge-00018 by PabloRosso, on Flickr

Sheds
numpty_challenge-00011 by PabloRosso, on Flickr

Dereliction
numpty_challenge-00007 by PabloRosso, on Flickr
Click to expand...


NO No NO!! Naughty naughty boy, uncropped versions please, thats the rulz :D
 
Paul that last one is terrific, definitely ramshackle and really suits the film/camera. There's something very appealing about the third one with the Water ironwork too; somehow it looks more oof away from the centre, as if the road-gravel is running away! Shame about clipping the top of the tower on the first one, that looks very nice otherwise. Interesting how again it's more oof at the edges of the frame. I didn't notice that so much... but I guess the quality control on these is not particularly strong!
 
That last one Paul... resonates with me. Again, the imperfections of the gear has really hammered home a narrative... a context. Unlike all these hyper real, ultra sharp images PROCESSED to give a feeling of nostalgia, this oozes it, because its very qualities are of a time and place - the artefact that is the photo offers the same viewpoint as those taken in a past era. You can't MAKE this by processing. It's like hearing a Bach piece played on a period "Klavier" in it's original temperament.... so much more compelling than a digitally mastered recording from the 21st century. Sure, the new one, ran through my 24bit DAC, Schitt amplifier, and pumped through my Beyerdynamic DT880 headphones will sound exquisite, but I'd rather here it played from an original, unembellished score, on a period piano as it was heard by Bach's contemporaries.

Just my 2p worth :)
 
Thanks for the feedback guys, yep a real shame the tower was clipped - next time I'll allow a bit more space I think. Glad you liked the last one as I am happy with how that has turned out and it does convey my intention too (remarkably!). I agree David I think we sometimes try for pin sharp pixel perfection and perhaps lose sight of what the image can say.

Now had 5 mins to look properly at the others so far and for its worth here's my tuppence worth ...

@Pookeyhead nice set David, 1st is intriguing, what is on the other side, where does it go ... Rossall beach stirs memories and it has a sentimental feel for me, I spent so many hours on that beach. I just love that pigeon one though, it is surreal, the broken slabs, the angular lines, the damage around the drain and the lone slightly soft pigeon which I'm guessing is motion blur as the rest is sharp, it just works.

@ChrisR the colour on the newly painted post box against the rather drab telephone kiosk pops and the texture is interesting, like this. Really like the doorway though, it just leads you on and on and the rich tones seem somehow to suit.

@Crtm The second one is excellent - nostalgia encapsulated.
 
Well done folks ...some really nice photo's there...David I specially like the beach shot, Chris the post box and the tower, Carol's car boot, and Paul's derelict building.

I didn't renegue on taking some...but my scanner is just not rendering them at all well to upload on to here...I should have had them put on to disc....never mind I will try next year...you haven't missed anything too amazing :)
 
My agfa one was a bit of a bust. It only took 15 shots.

Several had light leaks from using the flash as well. Not impressed with it. Shame though as the actual film itself inside was loads better then the Max Spielman ones I've used before.

Cute kitty in the leaves:

Scan-141002-0004 by srichgtr, on Flickr

Sunshine in the leaves:

Scan-141002-0006 by srichgtr, on Flickr
 
Some real great shots from everyone... it was lots of fun to use one of these I know what to do next time though.
 
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YAY!! I finally managed to escape the shackles to collect mine.

All are taken with a Kodak, not out of date or anything and asa400 and in quite good light, so I am actually quite disappointed about how noisy they are. Also very annoyed at my local snappy snaps, who have buggered up the scanning by having a scanner full of crap which is on the digital versions [the negs are fine, so its the scanner at fault] and I know I can clean them up either in ps or get them rescanned. I am going to have a play with some of the ones I like, I can live happily with the noise but don't like the crap, but these are of course exactly as they have come back to, only resized for web by lightroom.
2 cameras used over the two weeks, some locally, some on my trip to Norfolkshire. The lens distortion is obvious in a few, but sort of adds to the charm imo.

Here are a few and there are several more in this Flickr Album

1 - down a mews in High Barnet
Disposable camera challenge by Yvonne White - WhiteGoldImages, on Flickr

2 - my boatyard owning mate
Disposable camera challenge by Yvonne White - WhiteGoldImages, on Flickr

3 - Another Barnet local business
Disposable camera challenge by Yvonne White - WhiteGoldImages, on Flickr

4 - WAIT!
Disposable camera challenge by Yvonne White - WhiteGoldImages, on Flickr

5 - Litter, a BMW and an Audi seems to fit the bill ;)
Disposable camera challenge by Yvonne White - WhiteGoldImages, on Flickr

6 - It's boatyard man again
Disposable camera challenge by Yvonne White - WhiteGoldImages, on Flickr

7 - a place to rest your butt
Disposable camera challenge by Yvonne White - WhiteGoldImages, on Flickr

8 - yes, this is how I felt about the photos :LOL:
Disposable camera challenge by Yvonne White - WhiteGoldImages, on Flickr
 
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Hey! Even mods get double posts sometime!

I really like the first one, I have a feeling that aged couple are about to break into a song and dance routine! Lovely lines and balance, and don't you get deep DoF for a full-frame camera!
I also like your boatyard-owning mate, particularly the first one, although he does look rather hooked on his fags!
 
The competition thread will run until Friday when I am going to close it to entries and start the poll. There are some really great photos in there and unless we have some late entries I think I have made my mind up ;)

@Tintin124 Those remind me of all the old family snaps in my big basket upstairs, apart from the cat, my dad would never let us have one and I have been making up for that ever since!
 
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