Photography – Timothy Whittlesea

Category: Photography

Review: Canon Sureshot A1 (Autoboy D5)

March 7, 2021March 17, 2021
by twhittlesea

TLDR: Its a waterproof point and shoot that works very nicely

I bought two Canon Sureshot cameras. The first has a broken battery door and a non-functioning mode select switch (it is permanently on auto). The second one is working perfectly, came with its original case and strap, and has already had a few rolls of film put through it without any issues. I ended up with two because I thought the first was a bargain (even if I did have to tape the battery door closed). It was a bargain, until I found the second which actually ended up costing me a little less than the first. The joy of online auctions. What this does mean is that I have a spare, and this is no bad thing if repairs ever rear their ugly head.

The motivation to pick up an A1 is discussed here – I basically wanted something that I didn’t need to be worried about taking out in the glorious British weather, and whilst the Ricoh LX-33w did successfully fulfill the weatherproof requirement, the pictures it took were far from wonderful.

When new, the camera cost 42000 yen (about £280 apparently), so no cheap and cheerful holiday shooter. It is fully waterproof (rather than just weatherproof), and multiple sources state that it was ‘the world’s smallest and lightest underwater camera’ back in 1994. None of these sources state where this assertion came from, but given how few fully waterproof cameras were about in 1994, it is not hard to believe.

The camera puts 25 to 3200 iso film (DX coded) behind a 32mm f/3.5 lens, picking an appropriate shutter speed from 1/250 up to 2 seconds. Settings are minimal, with an auto mode, flash always on, flash always off, and the mode that is marked on the dial with a little fish icon. ‘Fish mode’ is actually a macro mode for things that fall into the 0.45 to 1 meter away from you category. Presumably this works as well on land as sea, but its clearly designed with taking pictures of fish in mind.

Autofocus is quick, even in challenging conditions. Canon gives numbers for both land (0.45m to infinity) and underwater (1m to 3m); Macro: 1.5ft. to 3.3ft./0.45m to 1m. This is the first indication that Canon didn’t take a similar approach to Ricoh, and just take a regular point and shoot out of their Sureshot line, and add enough plastic and rubber to make it waterproof. There are a couple of other obvious clues: The body has chunkier ergonomics than most cameras, with a nice ridge on the right hand side to ensure you have a solid grip and it is beige, with red highlights, I guess so that if you drop if in the ocean you can retrieve it. The last, and for me biggest thing is the viewfinder. It is a big, bright viewfinder that you can use at a fair distance – Canon reckon the:

Albada viewfinder has a long eye relief, making it easy to view even with a underwater face mask or ski goggles.

It hadn’t even occurred to me that waterproof means snow safe, but the camera will definitely be coming skiing with me in the future. What the viewfinder means for me is that even on the dull, rainy days I want the camera for, it is still easy to compose an image. It compares favorably even to larger SLRs, even if it does have a big red surround.

It has been said elsewhere, but the way this camera looks could be a positive or a negative for you. It is not understated, looks fairly toy-like (though far less so than the yellow Minolta cameras that form the rest of the waterproof 35mm offer), and its unlikely that too many people are going to be taking you too seriously if you pull this out of your camera bag. But, for street photography, which, with its quick auto-focus, this camera isn’t the worst choice for, its out-there appearance may help to put you into the ‘ridiculous tourist’ category that sometimes unlocks some great shots. I actually kind of the like the way it looks, but this is probably because it looks like something I would have wanted to use when I was eight (which was how old I was when it was released.

The A1 does exactly what I want it to do – allow me to take photos of some sort of quality in bad weather.

Photography

Review: Ricoh LX-33w

March 4, 2021
by twhittlesea

TLDR: Its not wonderful, but its very cheap

I wanted to pick up a camera with waterproofing, or at least weatherproofing. There were a couple of reasons for this. The first is that high humidity environments are the quick route to fungus infested lenses and rusty pieces of exposed metal, and one of the things I find most anxiety inducing is thinking about a steamed up camera going back into a bag or case. The second, perhaps less cerebral reason, is that it rains (on average), on over 100 of our 365 days in a year here in London, and I was getting frustrated with losing a third of my shooting days to weather – especially given that if (/when) it is going to rain here, you can guarantee it will be on the weekend.

What is interesting is that whilst pretty much all higher end digital cameras released in the last few years have featured at least some degree of ‘ingress protection’, weatherproofing is far from widespread in the world of film. Options are pretty limited to super niche cameras designed for divers or disposable style things meant for kids to take in the pool on holiday. The former, meant for taking pictures of fish and shipwrecks were over-priced and over-kill for taking some pictures in the rain. They also look ridiculous (almost all are yellow). With promises of plastic lenses and pre-loaded unidentified film, the latter also didn’t inspire much confidence.

Between these two ends of the weatherproof camera spectrum sit just a few other cameras, I bought two of them, and I think with that I am pretty much in a position to say I own a pretty large percentage of the offer in this space. First up is the Ricoh LX-33w.

The W (which stands for weather resistant) is tacked onto the end of the model designation in the much the same way as the weatherproof itself is to the camera – the LX-33w is very much operating in the ‘take something cheap and functional, and stick on some rubber gaskets’ space. The camera takes 100 or 400 film (dx coded), puts it behind a f4.5 lens and automatically selects a shutter speed of 1/50 or 1/100 depending how it feels, and that is about it.

It is a fixed focus camera, so there is really very little else going on when you take a shot, and this does mean that it does things very quickly. I reckon the chances of anything closer than about two meters being in focus are fairly low, and anything beyond that I wouldn’t put at the sharp end of the spectrum either. However, in good light, I did manage to take some ok pictures. I had a lot of issues with camera shake though, especially at the lower shutter speed.

The biggest cause of this camera shake? Firing the shutter. This involves pushing a big, foamy feeling button. That is as about as unsatisfying as it sounds, and you have to push it hard enough that if shooting one handed you are liable to destabilize the whole camera as you do so.

Two hands required then. However, for holiday pictures in sunlight the camera would definitely have a place in my pocket. And this is clearly where Ricoh felt like the camera was heading too, with a textbook example of a ‘put two black bars on my picture’ approach to a useless ‘panorama mode’, and a prominent red-eye reduction button. The sliding lens cover is its one killer feature as far as I am concerned, meaning it really can be thrown in a bag with no concerns for its safety. It is a camera for snap-shots, and at this it does well in the right conditions.

The problem is, I bought the camera in the hope of using it in the wrong conditions – I’m not currently taking pictures of friends posing on some sun-drenched Roman ruins before heading to the beach – I wanted something for rainy days and misty walks, exactly the gloomy conditions the camera seems to hate.

But then, perhaps I am expecting too much. I paid very little for the camera and as such, because I can see the day when I will take it out with me somewhere in our future, I don’t think its the worst value for money. Though plastic, the weight is confidence inspiring, it has the standard, exceptionally loud Ricoh carriage sound, and the lens is just about serviceable (and it has that cover). Pick one up if you see it for anything close to nothing, but just don’t expect to use it on a rainy day.

Photography

Goodbye Ricoh GR1 (or, why you shouldn’t buy one)

January 26, 2021February 6, 2021
by twhittlesea

TLDR: My GR1 broke one too many times, learn from my mistake.

I bought my GR1 specifically with the aim of having a small camera I could take anywhere, to take full-frame 35mm pictures with. It was amazing, I bought one got it repaired and took it on holiday – then wrote a review about how much I loved it.

I sold what I am calling its ‘corpse’ a few weeks ago. The story of its demise is a good reminder of the dangers of buying old cameras – especially electric point and shoot cameras.

So what went wrong? Well the critical part of the first paragraph here is ‘got it repaired’. As noted in my first review, its almost impossible to get hold of a fully working GR1, and that you should factor repair into the cost of purchase. I paid a fair amount to get the LCD and film advance mechanism on my camera repaired, and thought I was good at that point. What I wish I had done is asked myself one question before I bought: Ricoh isn’t making these cameras anymore, they are not repairing these cameras anymore, so where do the parts come from?

The only answer, which now seems completely logical, but which I completely missed in the excitement of a new toy, is that the parts come from other broken GR1s. Repairs of this, and most other old cameras, are always going to rely on an ever decreasing set of parts cannibalized from other cameras. This is why these repairs are so costly, because you are paying for a small chunk of another camera.

I am far from the first person to have this issue – especially with a camera like the GR1, prone to issues with small electrical parts, the rotation of working/repairable/repair donor cameras is more noticeable than with most.

With my camera, it was working as well as could be expected (LCD semi-working, everything else good). I put it away for about six months whilst a global pandemic took hold (which was actually a prompt to take out my big EOS 5), and when I took it back out of the cupboard again, the shutter would no longer fire, and it semi-frequently didn’t turn on. No knocks, no dropping, no slow decline, just a few attempts to replace the battery to make sure, then acceptance that it wasn’t working.

I had a choice, did I accept another expensive repair, which is the route I would have taken if I had not read about other peoples similar repair experiences, or did I let it go. And off it went into the ether of ebay for someone else to (probably) take apart and use to repair their own GR1.

So I was basically back to square one, and looking for a replacement. I knew that whatever happens I am accepting that by buying an old camera, reliability is never going to be as good as if I was getting something new – but I did have a few options in terms of approach:

Accept repairs: I have painted a slightly bleak picture of the repair options with these cameras. But its important to note that this really applies to these small electrical cameras. For larger SLRs, there are far more parts around, and once you get into the really rarefied air of Leicas etc. the costs of repairs are nominal compared to value of the camera. So option one was to go with another GR1 or similar, accepting that I’d have to set aside some money for repairs down the line, and enjoy whatever I bought whilst it lasted.

Buy your own donors: The next option is to do a bit of research on price points for working/non-working cameras. With the GR1, where there are a couple of things that consistently go wrong, prices of broken cameras are still pretty high, but for some cameras you can pick up a good example for a fair price, and then pick up a broken camera for next to nothing. Here, if you find something with a broken lens (for instance), but working electrics, you can be confident that you can reduce the cost of any future repairs with your donor camera – always useful to have that insurance policy in your cupboard.

Compromise: As noted, these repair issues are much less prevalent with fully manual cameras without the delicate electronics. These cameras also tend to be larger SLR cameras which are so common that repairs are much more affordable, or even (given that you can change your lens) replaceable for less.

The money from the GR1 ultimately stretched to not one, but three replacement cameras (another reason to reconsider a GR1 purchase, they might be slightly over priced at this point). There was one overarching thing that tied these purchases together – a lot of research. The main thing I wanted to do was make sure I didn’t buy anything without first knowing what I was getting into in terms of reliability, usability, build, longevity.

This meant not just reading reviews from when the camera was new, but also the (probably) ten to fifteen years of other peoples experiences with the camera. I have said this before, but it is worth reiterating – one of the best things about film photography is that very little is completely ‘new’, and even for the least widely used stuff, there is usually at least a few people talking on forums about their experiences. I paid attention to these this time, and I hope, ended up with some good stuff.

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Test strippin’ – dark-room gadgets for lazy people?

March 23, 2019February 2, 2021
by twhittlesea

TLDR: Neither of these test strip makers are worth buying.

Dark-room processes – given that they have been around for basically forever you’d think that every possible innovation must long ago have been made. To find out if this is true, in this post I’ll be exploring two (not especially) new innovations that might make the whole process simpler. Is a new era of efficiency upon us, or should all just accept that life in the dark-room will never change and make like Ansel Adams it for the rest of our lives?

This all began when I came across a couple of tools designed to make that most critical of dark-room processes a little simpler – they are ‘test-strip makers’ – little gadgets designed to help make the process of making test strips a bit more precise.

The first of these promises to really turn the whole process on its head. It’s a little piece of translucent plastic with a graded pie on it, it is pretty self-explanatory:

With its grandiose promises of saving me ‘time, money AND chemistry’, I picked one up and headed to the darkroom. Diligently following instructions, I exposed for a minute:

So apparently all I needed to do now was choose the piece of the pie that I thought looked best, and expose for the length of time suggested.

It wasn’t entirely successful – in theory the section of the pie I chose, and the final image should match. I actually chose the 32 second exposure, even though this ‘felt’ like it was going to be too long. Those suspicions were confirmed, and the resulting image came out darker even than the 48 second segment. I was fairly confident that I had been diligent about the rest of the process, making sure that the only thing that was changing was my exposure times. There were some issues with the negative I was using for this experiment, (which you can read about here), and I wanted to give the tool a fair shout, so I had a few more tries, and ended up with the same problem each time, massively over exposed images.

I think the degree of over exposure was consistent, I think it may be possible to spend some time with it and re-calibrate the suggested times down to where they might work properly. However, given that I was promised time saving, this didn’t seem like something I wanted to do.

As for the other two claims, that it would save me chemistry and money, I don’t really understand how this would work, given that I still need to process my exposed ‘pie’ sheet in exactly the same way that I would a test-strip. Equally, the size of the test exposure is bigger, meaning that more paper is used, actually costing more money. But for these claims of time/money/chemistry savings I could almost forgive the ‘test-strip maker’ it’s questionable performance if it was sold as something that might help you get around having a really accurate exposure timer, or even as something to help people who might struggle with making a traditional test-strip for whatever reason.

And so, I moved on to the second test-strip making tool I had bought along to the dark-room – the ‘Paterson Test Strip Printer’.

I slightly take issue with the use of the term ‘printer’ in that whilst this thing aims to help create a regular test strip in a slightly more controlled way, but it certainly doesn’t ‘print’ it for you. The instructions do a pretty good job of explaining how it is used:

As you can see, it’s potentially a nice way to get a good even test strip without having to move a piece of card. However, you will still have to put your strip though the same chemistry as usual, and you’ll still have to stand around flipping down those flippy things every three seconds, so it’s not really going to save you any time. That said, Paterson don’t make any claims about this thing – it is sold as a test-strip printer, that’s all it claims to do!

In use the Paterson Test Strip Printer is a bit of a nightmare. The first issue is that you have to have a very specifically sized piece of paper, which fits into its ‘grooves’. Anything too big bows up in the middle, and anything smaller doesn’t stay in place.

The other issues relate to getting your image in focus on the test strip. Unless you work out some sort of system to hold the thing in place under the enlarger (I am thinking blue tack) it is going to move around a bit as you flip down its flippers. Likewise, it raises your test-strip paper up slightly, meaning that unless it is exactly the same size as your easel, you are going to have to re-focus the image when you are done making the test-strip and have moved the tool out of the way. Obviously, it is not critical that your test-strip is super sharp, but it’s important that it is clear enough for you to determine the correct exposure time. My attempt looked like this:

In conclusion, neither of my wonder-tools for test-strip making turned out to either save me time, or make a better product than I would have got using an old piece of card. Neither were they any more fun/intuitive/easy to use than the old piece of card method either.

This is not to trash the companies that make these products for trying, and there might even be a place for them for some photographers process, but it has become clear throughout my experimentation that these innovations fall very much into the category of ‘if it aint broke’. I know there are some cool dark-room innovations out there, which I will definitely be exploring in the future, but most of them seem like were developed home-brew style to solve creative problems, rather than trying to refine a process that is already pretty tight. Sticking with the cardboard method yields acceptable results.

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Accidentally over exposing Lumography Lady Grey by four stops

January 16, 2019February 2, 2021
by twhittlesea

TLDR: I over exposed a film by a huge amount, but it turned out ok.

Whenever possible, I get my film supplies from Parallax in Brixton – they are wonderful, knowledgeable, and the pricing is competitive. They are also not open over the holidays. So, with precious few days remaining before jetting (metaphorically, in reality we drove) off to sunny Cornwall for a few days, I needed to find somewhere else to get a few rolls of film.

I ventured out with no particular place in mind, but aware that if all was lost I could stop at snappy-snaps and pay £8 for a roll of HP5. On my journey I walked past the Lumography store in Soho and wandered in. I have never considered purchasing anything from lumo (I am not sure about spending that much money on a camera made of plastic that makes your film look like an Instagram filter). I ended up purchasing three rolls of ‘Lady Grey’ for what I believed to be the not completely unreasonable price of £16. Some internet searching later reveals that Lumography Lady Grey is re-labelled Fomapan 400, so £16 is completely unreasonable. Thoughts about the plastic camera shop confirmed.

The story really begins with the realisation that Lady Grey is not DX coded, no surprises there given that the Foma isn’t either, although it is beyond me as to why anyone is making film without DX coding. My camera assumed an ISO of 100 for non-dx coded film, so loading the 400 ISO should simply have involved setting the exposure compensation down two stops to make sure everything was going to work correctly.

However, holiday over excitement led to me doing the exact opposite, and accidently setting the exposure compensation to +2. Now my camera was not only exposing for a 100 ISO film, it was adding another two stops of exposure. I didn’t notice anything amiss until I got towards the end of the film and the day began to become darker – then the noticeable amount of time the shutter was open for each shot became apparent. By this time though I only had a couple more frames to shoot, so I left everything as it was and decided to see what happened when I developed the film.

The result really should be massively over exposed images. Developing the film normally would be an extremely risky strategy – pulling a couple of stops, no problem, but pulling so many that I am not actually sure what ISO the camera was shooting for (something less than 25?) would require a different approach. As the developing time for 400 films is relatively short anyway, reducing this didn’t seem viable, so I decided to do a stand development with a reduced amount of developer. So I mixed up a 1/100 dilution of Rodinol then left the film swimming for about half an hour. This was entirely unscientifically based on dividing the 120 minutes that ISO 400 would take at 1/100 by four.

Amazingly, it worked. My negatives are not perfect, there are a couple of frames where I think the developer has given up, they are quite flat and the pictures I took in the middle of the day are still, definitely, over exposed.

This gallery has some examples with no post processing.

[Show slideshow]

What is kind of amazing though is the tolerance the film has to over exposure, and even with a completely experimental development process, how forgiving the film has been. There are at least a few frames of perfectly usable images – I took the whole roll to the darkroom yesterday and there is still more than enough detail left to make some nice prints. What is perhaps helpful is that some of my favourite images were shot in some lovely hazy weather, into some ‘sort of’ sunshine. Perhaps the print I got from the frame below isn’t perfect, but it is certainly evocative. You can buy a copy if you like.

In conclusion – Lady Gray – it’s an ok film in an emergency, though it costs more per roll than Foma 400. Check your camera settings carefully before you start shooting. Don’t give up hope on something that hasn’t been shot as it should be, it’s a perfect opportunity to try out something new in the development process.

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Review: Ricoh GR1

December 15, 2018March 17, 2021
by twhittlesea

TLDR: The GR1 is almost perfect, but you’ll need deep pockets to find one in working order.

Update: I sold the GR1

In the process of selling all of my digital gear, it became apparent that I needed a 35mm camera to replace my old Olympus Pen, which was small enough to fit in a pocket, light enough to go anywhere, and took great pictures.

The only way I was going to get down to the sort of size I needed was with a compact camera, and with an eye to lens quality, it had to be a fixed length premium compact camera – of which only a few really exist.

I was looking at the Leica Minilux, the Contax T3, or the Ricoh GR1 that I eventually bought. The T3 was way out of my price range, and I am not about to join the red dot brigade with a Minilux (I am waiting for the lottery win, so I can go with something really stupidly overpriced).

Before we even get to what the camera is like to use, we need to address the biggest issue you’ll experience with the GR1: it is (nearly) impossible to get hold of one in fully working condition. I had to accept that whatever I was are paying, I’d have to probably double it in repairs.

This is for two reasons, the first is that no one sells mint condition GR1s, because no one wants to part with them, and second, because the notoriously fragile LCD display will be broken on any one you buy. All the screen does is tell you how many shots you have left on the roll, and which shooting mode you are in, but it won’t work, and you’ll have to pay to get it replaced.

The camera I eventually bought was sold as ‘in perfect condition’ which in reality meant that everything worked except the LCD, and the motor, which sounded like a motorbike revving up every-time I took a shot, and the lens sometimes didn’t extend. These things may be possible to solve with a trip to the repair shop (and are apparently so common that people are fully set up on ebay just to do these specific repairs if you trust sending your camera off to the unknown). If they are solvable, they are not cheap.

However, a broken LCD, and apparently even the nosiest motor in the world had precisely zero impact on my use of the camera I bought. I shot three rolls with it in this condition, and all came out perfectly. I had no idea how many shots I had left, and I couldn’t touch the mode dial, but the lens on this camera is so good that as long as you can (no matter how noisily) get some film behind it, good photographs emerge.

In terms of negatives, there are really only a couple more to mention: The viewfinder is tiny (but then so is the camera). It only sets ISO with DX, (if you care that much buy the next model up, or save yourself some money and get some DX labels).

So on to the positives. Remember how I said I had still got great results out of the GR1 even without the LCD screen working? This is because since I have had the camera I have touched the ‘mode’ button about once. It’s a fixed length 28mm lens, so there really isn’t a great deal that a mode button can do. One mode sets the focus to infinity for pictures of far-away things, another sets the focus to pretty close, for pictures of things that are close. You get the picture. I have used absolutely none of these, mostly because the focus is extremely fast and accurate anyway, but also because with a 28mm lens, you’d be hard pressed to get anything that is more than a few meters away from you out of focus.

The second positive is that it’s the smallest camera I have ever held, smaller even than most disposable 35mm cameras. There is absolutely no way you’d ever get a digital camera with a full frame sensor this size, even with the latest technology. It fits in a pocket with room to spare and is light enough that you can easily forget that you are even carrying it. It has stayed in my bag since I have got it, and never once thought ‘I am going to save some weight and leave that out’. Its size means it’s always with you and never a burden. If the best camera really is the one you have with you, then it’s the best camera is probably the GR1.

The final positive is really why people like this camera so much – it has a small but sharp fixed focal length lens that outperforms some cheaper prime lenses. It is wide, but doesn’t distort at the edges, and opens right up to 2.8 without anything too dramatic going on. Generally, all there is to say about this lens is that if you told me it was twice the size I’d still be saying it takes good photographs. Aperture can be left alone in programme mode, but for those that want to there is the option to set from 2.8 up to 22. The camera does a great job with exposure but that little dial does mean you have a good deal of flexibility at your fingertips.

Given its diminutive size, you’d be forgiven for thinking that you were not getting much for your (not inconsiderable amounts of) money with the GR1, but in reality you are getting a brilliant little photo-machine, that you’ll want to carry with you all the time.

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The Bathroom 35mm Developing Kit Shopping List

September 24, 2018February 4, 2021
by twhittlesea

When I started using film I knew I wanted to develop it myself, but I also wanted to avoid spending a great deal of money on equipment that I might only use a couple of times. I have also always quite liked the DIY ethic of putting a developing kit together for as little money as possible. Fast forward a few years, and through a mixture of ebay, freecycle and other people being generous with their old kit, I basically have a pretty great home development setup. However I still get asked fairly regularly what I use, and if it is expensive.

So I put together ‘The Bathroom 35mm Developing Kit Shopping List’. Full disclosure, I put this together a couple of years ago, but I think all of the prices are still pretty much accurate. What the list does is outlines everything you’d need to develop black and white film at home in your bathroom. There are three parts – one column gives you everything you could possibly need (the total is £141), another gives you some cheaper/free alternatives if you want to get started for as little money as possible. This comes out at £56.60 – not bad if you are on a budget. Finally, the last column gives an overview of what the item is/is for.

You can download the list as a PDF here: The Bathroom 35mm Developing Kit Shopping List

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Selling all my digital gear

September 10, 2018February 4, 2021
by twhittlesea

TLDR: I like film more than digital

Initially, using 35mm was a fun experiment – something that felt a bit more involved and thoughtful than digital. Then, I started to use 35mm more extensively, bought different cameras, and acquired everything I needed to develop film at home. After this I also gained access to a dark room and learned how to print my pictures, slowly realising that I was taking pictures that were absolutely on par, in terms of how much I liked to look at them, as those I was taking with my digital camera.

At this point I would say I was using film about half of the time, but digital was reserved for holidays, when I felt like I would be taking a lot of pictures. Then came an experiment in Scotland, where I took nothing but an old, fully manual 35mm camera, and three 36 exposure rolls for a one-week trip. After this I decided, I didn’t feel like digital was adding a great deal to my life.

There are a number of more pragmatic reasons for this. I have acquired a Ricoh GR1, which I will write about after using it a little more, which is absolutely tiny (far tinier than any remotely capable digital camera), and is still full frame though. Equally, after my Scotland holiday I picked out some of my favourite images, did absolutely zero post-processing, and put them in a book. They were covered in dust where I had left them for a couple of weeks before scanning them, and on one of the rolls I had used a lens hood meant for a longer lens – so they have a big vignette. They look like something that could have been shot on an Arctic expedition. This was the first time I had done anything at all with pictures taken on holiday, and it was purely because I had shot them on film.

But more than all of this, the most important reason to own and use a film camera, is simply because it is more fun. Taking a picture on 35mm film is a mechanical, chemical process – you create a tangible, irreversible change that, if treated well, will last for the rest of your life. You are limited by the amount of film you want to carry, and so you think about what you want to record. And finally, developing and printing your pictures is like magic. You’ll never get the thrill of pulling a roll out of the developing tank, or seeing your image appear in the dark room by plugging in your USB cable and clicking through your images.

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End Points: Half way thoughts

September 3, 2018February 2, 2021
by twhittlesea

If this blog is a little incoherent, it is because I am writing it on the train home from Upminster, the station at the East end of the District line.

I travelled to Upminster as part of End Points – a project to take pictures at the ends of all of the London underground lines. It is as much about the journey as the photographs – I wanted to get out into the bits of London (and beyond) that I would have no real reason to go to otherwise, discover new places, and wander around them for a few hours taking pictures (and usually getting something to eat). It is not explicitly an ethnographic study, but the places that we live are interesting, and I like to explore. Importantly, it has never been the aim to ‘capture’ these places in a photograph, or boil them down in some way to a few images – the project is all about my responses to the places I visit, and then, hopefully, getting some nice pictures.

Upminster is significant because it marks the half way point of the project – I have been heading to stations in no particular order, this one just happens to be the one I picked today. However, I thought, as we’re half way there, it might be a good time to reflect on the project, and what I have learned so far.

Learning 1: What is interesting?

What I hadn’t banked on is that I’d have to drastically re-evaluate what makes an interesting picture. Some of the places I have visited so far with End Points have been, subjectively, boring! I started the project with Chesham – ‘village like’, green, cute, nice graveyard, then Brixton – vibrant, graffiti’d, busy and exciting. After these, Morden seems lifeless. There is no graffiti in Morden, the streets are quiet on a Sunday morning and you only need walk for five minutes and you are into roads with seemingly identical houses for miles.

However, if (and it is an if) miles and miles of suburban houses really is all that Morden is, then this is what I should have been taking pictures of – just because I have thought pictures of people, markets and shops, trees and gravestones are cool elsewhere, this isn’t what makes a picture interesting, and it is certainly not what captures my responses to Morden.

Learning 2: It is important to wander

One of my favourite pictures from Morden is a set of tumbledown lock up garages. I liked it because it could be anywhere – the overgrown road feels like it is in some rural village. The picture was taken almost directly behind the train station, down a tiny alleyway with a sign asking people not to use it as a toilet, and past some kids hanging out of a window asking what I was taking pictures of. I didn’t have to wander far, but I did have to leave the high-street and venture down an unpromising looking alleyway to discover the picture.

I have not set any rules for myself about wandering – keeping vaguely close to the station is important, but some of the places I have visited are so small that finding 36 interesting photographs could be quite a challenge without walking a fair distance to see what I discover.

Learning 3: Prepare to be unprepared

Most of the places I have visited have taken a fairly significant amount of time to get to, more than enough time to do a little preparation – perhaps look up some significant buildings, see what the locals recommend, maybe even decide where to get some food. However, I didn’t do this with my first station, and I have decided I won’t do it for any of them. Somehow, being completely unprepared feels right. Sure, I might be missing some amazing photographs, I am sure that I have been just one more turn away from something special. But the project is about experiencing a place as it is – not through the lens of trip-advisor, yelp or Instagram. As a consequence, the pictures are representative of my time in that place, rather than someone else’s – and what I thought was interesting was what I came across on that day.

Learning 4: How many ends are ends?

I set out my end points at the start of the project. The issue was with lines that have more than one branch, so, technically, have more than one end point. In this situation I have chosen to travel to the station at the end of the furthest point from central London. As I see how significant the differences are across all of the places I have visited though, I am beginning to think this might do a disservice to the branch lines, and the stations at the end of them. It would be a much larger undertaking (I’d be perhaps a quarter of the way through now, rather than half) to visit the end of every line on the over-ground network (which I have assumed is one single line) and the DLR, however, it might be what makes the project feel like something that is really complete.

For now, I think I am going to finish the initial list – then I will make a decision about where to head next.

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Photography

Film Comparison: Kentmere 400 Vs Fomapan 400

August 27, 2018February 27, 2021
by twhittlesea

TLDR: Differences are minimal, both are cheap, Kentmere very very slightly better.

I have been using Kentmere 400 for years now, primarily because its comes in at the cheaper (cheapest?) end of the spectrum compared to Ilford and Kodak offerings, but also because I think it performs better than its price point. I guess that having used it for so long is also a factor, but I have a lot of confidence in Kentmere 400.

I decided to give Fomapan 400 a try after discovering that it is exactly the same price as Kentmere 400. Why experiment with something new when I am comfortable with Kentmere? Well because as Neil deGrasse Tyson says, ‘Exploration is what you do when you don’t know what you are doing”.

The experiment started by shooting a roll of Kentmere 400 and a roll of Fomapan 400. The only concession I made to scientific method was shooting them both on the same day, so there were similar lighting conditions. But, as might have become evident at this point, my film choices are not exactly highly informed, I wasn’t about to shoot test targets or anything ridiculous like that – I just used both films as I usually would, then developed them according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Some have noted that the foma offering doesn’t perform well at box speed, whereas there seems to be a fair amount of confidence in the Kentmere film working at 400. I shot both films at box speed, and didn’t experience any issues.

Lets talk grain. I developed both films with rodinol, so a good deal of grain was to be expected. I chose the images below specifically because they have some big chunks of sky.

Fomapan 400

Kentmere 400

Excuse the scanner artefacts – looking directly at the negatives, there is perhaps a very small difference in the darker areas of the sky, but this is marginal, so marginal in fact that I am not really sure you can call a winner.

I am interested in contrast in less than optimal conditions, and the detail we’re able to pull out of specifically the darker areas of the image. Both of the images below are lower contrast than anything I’d ever print, but as you can see, whilst we still have some detail in the shadows on the Kentmere image, our Fomapan has some pretty fine detail right across the image. It is nice to know that detail is there, especially if I was thinking of taking this negative to the dark room and might want to pull it out in some of those areas:

Fomapan 400

Kentmere 400

I take most of my photos outside in standard British weather, and I need a film that can be under or over exposed occasionally and still give results that I can get acceptable images from. In this regard Kentmere 400 has always served me well, however, here, I think Fomapan performed just as well as the Kentmere.

Now we have a dilemma, my one roll experiment seems to be telling me that the Fomapan 400 is not a bad film for my taste – the issue comes that reviews of this film are absolutely all over the place. Some people love it, some hate it. This really seems to centre around people getting very variable results in different developers, the sense that you’ll get excessive grain (especially in Rodinol), and that the film doesn’t shoot well at box speed.

So which is the better film? I can definitely see that whereas the Kentmere 400 is tried and tested, seems to give consistent results, as I have personally found, and is generally quite well respected as a cheaper 400 film, the Fomapan 400 is divisive. It is a bit of a marmite film that gives some very different results depending on the use case.

I absolutely understand that for someone looking for a lower grain and more of a modern look the Fomapan emulsion isn’t going to work, but then, I am not really sure that the Kentmere 400 would meet this requirement either – neither of these films wins in that department. Personally though, as someone who accepts, even likes grain, and isn’t averse to the look that you’ll get out of both of these films in Rodinol I am definitely thinking that the Fomapan offering will get a few more chances to impress.

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