Black and White – simple

Our lurcher. Pentax ME Super. SMC Pentax-M 50mm f/1.7. Ilford HP5 Plus 35mm film. Developed in ID11.

I’ve not posted on this subject before.  Strange really, considering the majority of my photography over the past year has been monochrome, or black and white, grey scale, grey tones, b&w, b/w, call it what you like.  I quite like the term argent at least with reference to er… black n’ white …. captured initially on a film coated with an emulsion of silver salts.  Argent.

Bugger, I’ll continue this into a future post or two.  For now, a photograph of me that Anita took yesterday.  Using a box camera.  In argent of course.

Kodak Brownie Flash III box camera. Foma Fomapan creative 200 film. Developed in Firstcall R09. Scanned film on Epson V500.

In Search of the Cheapest Film Photography

The Singer. Cheap colour (color) 35mm film developed in b&w chemicals. Olympus Trip 35 and flash. AgfaPhoto Vista Plus film from Poundland, home developed in Ilford ID-11.

I got this idea from the Flick Group COLOR Films developed in B/W.  Pretty much what it says on the cover.  It turns out that I can save money on expensive monochrome film, by using my cheapskate Poundland colour film, and then developing it using my b&w chemicals.  That’s AgfaPhoto Vista Plus 200 35 mm for a quid a time.  I exposed a Vista film in an Olympus Trip 35 camera.

Unfortunately I haven’t found any developing time guides for this, so simply guessed at 1:1 water to Ilford ID-11 stock, at 20 C for 13 minutes – 10 seconds agitation per minute.  The developed negatives don’t look pretty.  My Epson Perfection V500 software couldn’t see images at first, but a little tweaking and they came out just fine.

So there we are.  If I should choose to do so, I can load a 50p camera with £1 film, and develop it for a few quid.  Who said that film photography is too expensive?

Pick this! Budget colour film developed with b&w chemicals. Olympus Trip 35 camera. AgfaPhoto Vista Plus 200 35mm film from Poundland, home developed in Ilford ID-11

 

Down at the Trailer Park and Medium Format negative film scanning

Down at the Trailer Park. Lubitel 166B medium format TLR camera. Ilford FP4 Plus 125 120 b&w roll film. Scanned negative.

Who says that budget photography can’t be classy?  Unfortunately I couldn’t get the Staffy to pose with them.  Taken with the Lubitel 166B, a twin lens reflex camera, built in the Soviet Lomo factory during the early 1980s.  A medium format film camera that takes 120 roll film, and produces 6 x 6 frames.  It cost me two quid (GBP £2.00) on a car boot sale and I love it.  I’m just having problem resourcing an affordable digital scanner, that will work with my OS, and is capable of scanning 120 film negatives.  I bought a Canoscan 8400f on Ebay, but either 1) I can’t get drivers/software to function correctly on Windows 7 64 bit, or 2) it came without negative masks, so I made my own – but they are somehow causing an issue (I did base it on an image of the orginal mask), or 3) the top lamp is fooked.  I suspect that it’s Number 3.  Pissed off as I feel I’ve wasted money.

So for now I rely on low res scans from my local photo processing shop.  If it wasn’t for this block, I’d really like to move more onto medium format film, starting with my low budget Lubitel.