ChrisR's One Camera, One Lens, One Film exercise

[ChrisR]

Glad someone liked that last post! Anyway, to film 8

8-1) Scottish coast. Quite a lot of these I had real problems with the relatively wide field of the 40mm lens, ie the subject that appeared so strong in life was small and isated in the image. This perhaps one of the better ones.



8-2) That bridge. The cyclists were just there so I took advantage of them!



8-3) Bit of brutalism in one of the "pends" just off the Royal Mile...



8-4) Poet on the Royal Mile: Robert Fergusson, inspiration for Robert Burns?



Hope you like them...

 

[ChrisR]

Onwards. This film was shot in the Edinburgh Royal Mile, or the pends and alleys immediately off it, straight after film 8. It's a very rewarding area, although sometimes quite hard because of the confined spaces. I thought the 40mm lens did quite well here, and TriX handled a wide dynamic range in-shot very well. I was trying to expose for the shadows, although the CL is centre-weighted so it's imprecise.

9-1) Lower third of the Royal Mile, with that interesting clock thing (ETA: @desf points out this is the Tollbooth, thanks)



9-2) Steps by John Knox house. I liked the contrast between the carved heraldic device on the wall and the modern lady with her earphones, which would probably have inspired Knox to write another "Monstrous Trumpet" (misquote via Ian Rankin)



9-3) A pend (ETA: @desf says this is Chessels Court_)leading into an interesting paved courtyard; this fellow pushed past me into the pend and I thought I should make use of him!



9-4) Trying to take these folk when they were a lot closer, but struggled (failed) to get a meter reading in time! Should just have shot earlier and recovered in post...



9-5) Entryway to another courtyard



9-6) Close leading down from the upper part of the Royal Mile



Hope you like them...

 

[steveo_mcg]

These have turned out well especially considering the lens and how tight it is down there.

I like to have a setting in my head, premeasured or preguesed sunny 11 that I can quickly set when I need to be quick and then trust to latitude.

 

[ChrisR]

Thanks Steven. I think all of these were cropped at 5*4, I remember something from the original OCOLOFOY idea saying print un-cropped, but that just seems silly to me!

ETA... one thing I have learned is that I can preset the exposure a lot better than I used to be able to, then just use the meter to fine tune...

 

[desf]

Good stuff Chris, I think you have done a great job with the Royal Mile set. Gives a good impression of the place.

Btw the building with the clock is the Tolbooth.

Edit: 9-3 is Chessels Court. My ex girlfriend did her thesis on it in the early 1980s and I did the photos for it.

 

[ChrisR]

Last of the current films, also in and around Edinburgh. There are some other nice-ish ones that I've held back for possible POTYness...

10-1) Railing that caught my eye...



10-2) Workmen abseiling down the face of a school in Newington. I liked the oblique light on the stone, and the oddness of the scene, then the bloke turned to look at me (I think his mate shouted at him), which I think makes it.



10-3) Preparing the crab pots at North Berwick pier, this bloke wasn't so happy...



10-4) The crab boat against the pier, I liked the really flat water here. Not sure the composition works?



Now, I've got most of the bits for home devving, question is am I brave enough (and how hard will SWMBO put her foot down against it)? Needs to be a film I don't mind completely losing...

 

[ChrisR]

So, I have a bit of a dilemma now. Last week I bought a Bessa R3A, with the intention of using it to replace the CL. I took the CL+40mm+TriX and the Bessa body along to the Stratford film meet, and @RaglanSurf lent me a 50mm f/1.5 lens for the duration of the meet, so I loaded the Bessa with TriX, added the 50mm, and set it on A. I finished the film in the CL, then swapped for the Bessa. It was a gas! I really enjoyed it. Shot one and a half films with the Bessa plus 50, then finished that second film with the 40 (forgetting to change the frame lines of course).

I'm counting the two films with the Bessa on A as NOT being part of the OCOLOF. However, I think I have a difficult choice now. Do I put the Bessa away and continue with the CL until I'm happy to declare the OCOLOF finished (the right and true way, but hard), or do I swap to the Bessa, but take it off the A setting and go completely manual? The Bessa just feels a lot nicer, and a lovely big bright viewfinder, which might be helpful...

One factor is metering. It's more awkward and difficult with the CL, and that's not helpful. But the meter for the CL shows an analogue needle (up for under-exposed, down for over-exposed, a bit counter-intuitive), while the Bessa meter shows red shutter speeds (I haven't tried manual yet, but the guide says it shows your chosen shutter speed and their "recommended" speed blinking, or something). (I learned again that no visible shutter speeds probably means the lens cap is still on, d'uh, 3 shots wasted there!) But I was wondering if the analogue needle was more helpful in giving an idea of how far out the exposure is, compared to seeing the shutter speeds? Bit like an analogue clock gives you a better idea how close the time is to the appointed hour, than a digital watch...

Comments welcome...

 

[ChrisR]

The second part of film 11 is the Stratford meet, but the first part was miscellaneous shots around Kenilworth, many of which were not very successful. This is with the Leitz-Minolta CL and M-Rokkor lens.

11-1) I quite like this one, where I was testing the depth of field I could get with the 40mm M-Rokkor lens set at a hyperfocal distance:



11-2) This one you may have already seen, a moment of madness to take a black and white rainbow. It's not great but worked better than I expected. (The shot however is straight out of the bedroom window, worth precisely nothing.)

[Not worth repeating]

11-3) Cafe table in Stratford



11-4) Window with wisteria, no 1



11-5) Window with wisteria and wildlife, no 2



11-6) Wisteria stems, no 3

 

[ChrisR]

I'm discounting the two next films (EDIT: taken after film 11, above), taken with the Bessa R3A and the 50mm lens I borrowed from @RaglanSurf at the Stratford film meet. However, I did decide to carry on using the Bessa rather than the CL, so in one sense I've abandoned the OCOLOF approach. But, it's still a rangefinder, it's still the M-Rokkor 40mm lens (since I gave Nick his lens back), and it's still TriX, so I think the spirit is still there. The Bessa is just a bit bigger, has a grip and has metering that is MUCH easier to use. Actually the "bit bigger" part is a PITA as it's much harder to put in my coat pocket; the little Leitz Minolta CL was brilliant for that!

(EDIT: this film was the second that I developed myself with the Agfa Rondinax, using Ilfosol 3 and Ilford Rapid Fixer. Not too many water marks on this one... TriX shot at 200 I think, processed normally, bit of a contrast boost in Aperture.)

12-1) This film, number 12, was started as I walked back from Stratford to the fisherman's car park. I've walked the riverside path dozens of times, as we always park there and walk in beside the river. I've not often done it on my own, with a camera, in a picture-taking mood. I took several of this little boat house on the other side, and liked this one best.



12-2) A bend in the path, looking back, sun through young horse chestnut leaves. In real life, the curve in the path seems stronger, and the light through the leaves is more seductive. I'm having difficulty visualising the black and white effects, just have to keep trying.



12-3) A few days later, entrance to Kenilworth Castle. The 40mm lens works really well here. BTW, I've taken to cropping at 5*4 ratio, in quite a lot of cases; I'm finding I do like that ratio. Not sure if it's entirely consistent with the OCOLOF idea, as it lets me have another go at framing after the fact, but anyway, that's what's happening.



12-4) Not only is this a 4*5 crop, it's a portrait crop from a landscape shot! It's actually quite difficult to make this fountain in the absurdly expensive reimagined Elizabethan garden work. I didn't see the portrait shot at the time, but later thought it would work well.



12-5) Yellow-flowered tree (I should know its name), blowing in the wind, try to get the background out of focus...



12-6) Door that I see often. Bright red door, blue-flowered tree, green fern above right of the door. Very appealing visually, but again not working out at all how I'd imagined it. (Yellow filter, BTW)



12-7) And finally, as they say, a pond a bit out in the country that I like a lot. I think this one has worked for me, anyway! But I'm still really struggling with young green leaves!

 

[ChrisR]

Film 13, back in Edinburgh. TriX of course, shot possibly at 250, processed as normal. Quite a few water marks on some frames, although not the shots I've picked here. This is mostly a wander on one day from Newington through the Meadows to George Square (EDIT and back to Newington).

13-1) Installation on the Summer Hall arts building. A bit weird, and hard to get an angle; I think this is a reasonable crop.



13-2) Not a good shot but included as illustrating one of my continuing problems, dealing with fresh green leaves (in this case growing from this felled log).

[No longer available]

13-3) This alley I've shot before (I really liked @steveo_mcg 's treatment at night in the wet, and might try to replicate one suitable day, if I ever stay off the grape juice long enough!). It could have made a candidate for the new and old challenge, if it had been in the archives rather than freshly shot! BTW I tried a 5*4 crop on this but decided it needed all that expanse of wall on the right to emphasise its curviness. Opinions?



13-4) Edinburgh Business School, just off George Square. I tried several shots of this striking building from different angles. Several were spoiled by water marks, but I liked the brutal angles of this. Perhaps better in LF with a bit of adjustment to get the verticals all straight? EDIT: and thinking about it, something in that foreground as well; I think the shot needs that much foreground, but needs something in it.



13-5) Clump of trees in the middle of George Square Gardens. Fantastic angular shapes, visual contrast with those fresh leaves. Maybe I should have taken the yellow filter on [off?], but once again the leaves have defeated me.



13-6) Path in the corner of George Square Gardens. My eye saw this path as a much stronger lead.



13-7) House on the corner of West Cross Causeway. I really liked this scene and was hanging over the gate trying to frame and focus when the ladies arrived and walked past me. Rude not to, I thought.



13-8) And directly opposite the street, this gated pend with an idyllic garden scene behind also appealed.



Nearly up to date folks... except another film finished today (actually the one I "used" for the POTY flora and fauna round, and later decided had never been properly loaded, so I guess there's a chance of some interestingly weird double exposures on it!).

 

[steveo_mcg]

Nice set Chris. For the foliage I'd try a green filter, it might help separate the greens from each other.

13-1) I think you've got a good angle on this, I've passed it a few times but never managed to find a decent way to photograph this.
13-3) You're right it does need the curves of both the walls to frame it, I must have walked back and fore it a few times before I was happy enough.
13-4) This is a great shot of a dull building, might be worth revisiting it for YV's summer challenge. I'm also tempted to schlep along one Sunday morning with the 54 and have a pop at it. You've don't a good job with the verticals just the same.
13-5) I like this, separating the greens might help, the much brighter leaves give a good backdrop for the dark gnarled trees.
13-7) A mate of mine used to live here! The people help here, I think it might have been a bit dull.

 

[ChrisR]

Thanks Steven. I quite liked that Business School building, particularly for the contrast with so much of Edinburgh architecture, and the rest of Buccleuch St (although the shots from there didn't work so well). However, I'm not sure it could be called "mundane"!

It appears that green is the one filter colour I don't have, after a long search through all the various nooks and crannies they have got into over the past couple of years.

I think you're right about the ladies in 13-7. I cropped it a bit closer as a result. I rather hoped the one on the right would look back over her shoulder, but given my "indecisive moment" approach I'd certainly have missed it!

 

[ChrisR]

So, film 14 is a bit of a mixed bag. Again the Bessa R3A with M-Rokkor 40mm f/2 and TriX, around and about Kenilworth. This time I tried rating the TriX at 400, and found I actually preferred the result compared to rating it at 250 or so. Can't quite do a fair comparison as I was also using a slight curve in Vuescan; I decided that adjusting contrast in Vuescan with the 16 bit image in memory was preferable to saving a flat image in JPEG and then adjusting contrast in Aperture. I know I should be using 16 bit TIFFs, but I'm quite concerned about the disk space taken up by my library, and most of my images don't seem to suffer too much from the JPEG treatment (in comparison to the technical and compositional problems!).

14-1) A really windy day, I was walking on a path through this field of barley, trying to get a shot that gave some idea of the intensity of the wind. I completely failed on one where I got low down and tried to use a wide aperture to get the nearer barley heads in focus (basically went too wide, so almost nothing is in focus ). This is the best of them...



14-2) Yellow flag irises by a pond, just opening. The dark treatment was a bit accidental in PP but I quite like it.



14-3) Post box with shadows again. Handheld as usual (the grip on the Bessa does not have a tripod thread, sadly, so if I want to use the tripod I have to take the grip off, and then one end of the strap is still attached to the grip, aaarrrgggghhh. ). It does seem easy to handhold the rangefinder though.



14-4) OK it's just some steps but I like the shapes and the way they work together. This one has to be 3:2 to work.



14-5) Walking through Crackley Woods, experimenting with wide aperture, close up to defocus the background. Kind of worked, though I have no idea what that vertical line is (the horizontal line is a scratch on the neg, I think).



14-6) Spanish Chestnut leaves straight into the sun.



14-7) And this is maybe mad, but I liked this heart-shaped space in an ornamental tree in the local park.

 

[ChrisR]

13-9) This shot was on the end of film 13, one of a few that I took for POTY15. Got me 5th out of 6 film entries, good illustration of @TheBigYin 's point that DFL is better than DNE!



I took a whole additional film of this set, with minor adjustments, and while one of my snails took a tour around. Sadly I rewound the film into the canister without noticing, and couldn't get the end out until after the deadline. The I convinced myself that I had not wound the film onto the takeup spool properly, so I reloaded it and shot another whole film. When I devved it, there were offset double exposures throughout, so I ruined both! Aaaaarrrrgggg again.

 

[ChrisR]

Just a note to say I plan to get this moved to the new Personal Projects and Themes subsection (as @steveo_mcg did with his Edinburgh Late set), probably tomorrow. It'll need a bit of editing in the first post, but it could be interesting. Also to note that I switched back to the CL, so that I can get the R3A rangefinder adjusted. Interesting; it's nicer to hold, the shutter sound is nicer, and the analogue needle metering works better for me (but the whole meter-in-landscape-only thing doesn't). Also have a couple more films to make selections from and upload...

 

[ChrisR]

Thankyou mods for moving this from Photos from Film...

 

[ChrisR]

Film 15. I'm finding there needs to be a delay after taking and processing a film before I can make a selection and upload them, in this case a couple of weeks. This film is a bit of a mixed bag. The whole point of this is learning how to see and take better black and white shots again (the first four years or so of my photographic life were exclusively black and white, no meter, no AF, no rangefinder, no SLR, just zone focus). So it's maybe a bit different from some of the projects here, oriented towards books and exhibitions. Anyway, the process includes selecting a half dozen or so shots from each film, and printing or displaying them for any critical thinking.

15-1) Local park, foliage textures and shapes.



15-2) Another park shot, similar aims...



15-3) This one a bit more experimental, trying to see if I can make visual sense in black and white of a wild rose...



15-4) Completely different subject, a boat on the local Kenilworth Millennium Trail, which told the story of the Pleasance on the Lake nearby, where parties of revellers would go clubbing in Elizabethan times. There was a poem inscribed on the thwarts, now rotted away. Bit of a metaphor in itself...



15-5) The other direction, the Godiva statue in Coventry, trying to get a framing that would work with the 40mm lens...



15-6) And finally, a candidate shot for the POTY Faces round, decided on something completely different instead.



Does look a bit grab bag, I know. But to some extent, that is the point...

 

[ChrisR]

OK, film 16. Just to recap, all these are on TriX, using the M-Rokkor 40mm lens. This film is the last on the Bessa R3A before the drift on the rangefinder got too bad. It's currently in for CLA.

1) The market in Sodding Chipbury. We were only there for half an hour; I'm not sure if there is ever a time with no cars!



2) The Wye near Tintern



3) Wooden cross out side the Moravian Church at Brockweir on the Wye. No, I'd never heard of a Moravian Church either!



4) Old building in Brockweir. I'd have liked to lose the white from the next building, but nothing's vertical, and I'd have lost the barrel too. Cropped!



5) Tintern Abbey



6) Part of Tintern Abbey



Getting near the end

 

[ChrisR]

I realised that I still had one film taken for this project, back in July, still not uploaded. For completeness I have gone back to see what was there. This is film 17, still TriX and still the Minolta M-Rokkor 40mm lens. However, the Bessa had developed a slight misalignment of its rangefinder and gone for an adjustment, so I reverted to the Leica CL for this film.

17-1) Fisherow Harbour, east of Edinburgh, at low tide.



17-2) Abstract?



17-3) Gormley selfie, in the "Land" series, at Lowsonford



17-4) Gormley statue again



After this film, I went back to using my Pentax MX cameras, and started experimenting with other films, including Delta 400, and, shock horror, a colour film (the first was Vista 400, a rebranded Fuji Superia 400X AFAIK).

I will try to put some thoughts on this exercise together shortly.