Film Archives - Martin W Smith

Little Devil

Martin Smith — Thu, 01 Sep 2016 12:21:52 +0000

Little Devil, taken with Leica M6 TTL and Agfa Precisa CT100 slide film, developed by AG Photo Lab and scanned by me on Epson V550 with Silverfast SE.

Red Chair

Martin Smith — Sun, 17 Jul 2016 08:00:04 +0000

Shot of a red chair taken with Leica M6 TTL and Agfa CT100 slide film. Even though this is not a very well composed shot I still like it because of the all the red, there’s the red cushion on the chair, Read More ...

Flag Poster

Martin Smith — Sat, 16 Jul 2016 20:18:57 +0000

Shot of a flag poster in the window of a shop taken with Leica M6 TTL and Agfa CT100 slide film.

FP-100C Pack Fail

Martin Smith — Wed, 06 Jul 2016 18:17:05 +0000

Shot of more London Bikes taken with Polaroid 350 Land Camera on Fujifilm FP-100C colour pack film. While pulling it from the camera it got stuck and didn’t develop correctly, but I think it looks kind of cool anyway.

FP-100C Pack Fail, London

Red Bicycles

Martin Smith — Tue, 05 Jul 2016 18:05:31 +0000

Taken in London with Leica M6 TTL and Agfa Precisa CT 100 Slide Film.

Red Bicycles, Agfa Precisa CT 100

Pan F+ Black & White Film

Martin Smith — Fri, 20 May 2016 07:51:29 +0000

In an effort to save a bit of money on film, I recently purchased a bulk loader from eBay for the princely sum of £19.99 plus delivery. The bulk loader came with some used cassettes that I could reload and a 7.5m reel of Pan F+. You can purchase the bulk loader with different film stocks, I chose Pan F+ as it was a film I hadn’t shot before and I wanted to try it. I managed to load 5 cassettes with 25 exposures and 1 further cassette with 15, I shot with the 15 exposure roll first so I could check that I had done it correctly and hadn’t accidentally exposed it during the loading process. I will leave writing anything further about the bulk loader itself for a future post for now I just want to write about the film it came with, Pan F+.

This black and white film is rated at 50 ISO, which is a lot slower than I’m used to, so I rated the first roll at EI 100. I loaded it up into my Leica M6 TTL and took it down to the Worth Way near my house, it wasn’t the brightest of days and the trees over the track made for probably less than great light conditions for the film. I shot all 15 frames on my walk and developed it as soon as I got home.

I developed the roll in HC-110, my developer of choice these days for 5 minutes at 22°C. Once dried I scanned them in, the first frame had a fully exposed left edge where I hadn’t given enough space for the leader, but other than that, there were no scratches or any other signs that I had made any mistakes loading the film using the bulk loader. The pictures themselves however were nothing special, this is not the fault of the film, they were just bad photos. Out of that first roll I only got one picture that was ok, this was of a tree stump. The detail and fine grain of the photo were lovely, so I do think that if shot correctly and with the right subjects, this is a really nice film. Now that I’m thinking about it I may try some portraits with it in the future maybe with flash.

I’ve since shot 2 more rolls in London, both at EI 50 and again the light wasn’t as good as it could have been and the pictures aren’t great. The sample section is a little light on the ground as most of the pictures I took with the film were horrible, but once again that’s down to me and not the film itself. I still have 3 rolls left to shoot and when I do use them I need to think about how I use them more carefully.

Pan F+ Samples

All sample images were taken with my Leica M6 TTL, developed at home in Kodak HC-110 dilution B and scanned with my Epson V550 flatbed scanner and Silverfast 8 SE.

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Fujifilm Superia 400 X-Tra

Martin Smith — Tue, 26 Apr 2016 15:00:15 +0000

Fujifilm Superia 400 X-Tra is a relatively cheap colour negative film, that in the UK can be found fairly easily in places like Boots. Because it’s so cheap it was the first roll of film I shot and developed at home. I developed it in B&W chemicals as a test before attempting to develop more expensive film. I used Rodinal to develop the film and it actually produced quite good results with very fine grain. This is also the film I use for my colour street work in the summer. I have even pushed the film to EI 1600 and it still gives great results.

Superia Samples

All images shot with Leica M6 TTL. All except the B&W shots were developed by AG Photolab. The B&W shots were developed by me in Rodinal and scanned on the Epson V550 scanner, using Silverfast 8 scanning software.

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Ilford HP5+ 400 ISO Film

Martin Smith — Fri, 08 Apr 2016 13:00:34 +0000

Ilford HP5+ is one of the first films I tried when starting to shoot film again a couple of years ago, it is readily available in places like Boots in the UK. I’ve tried all sorts of films since, but I keep coming back to HP5, I think this is due to it’s versatility, it can be shot at box speed or pushed a couple of stops with very pleasing results. Below are just a few examples using this film.

Ilford HP5+ Samples

Photos shot with either the Leica M6 TTL or Nikkormat FT3, some shots were developed by a lab, but more recent ones were home developed in either Rodinol, D76 or HC110 and scanned with Epson V550 scanner and Silverfast 8 scanning software.

London

Reigate

London

Reigate

London

Crawley

Reigate

Instant Photography

Martin Smith — Tue, 05 Apr 2016 18:43:39 +0000

I love instant film! There I said it and it’s true, at the press of a shutter you have in your hands a physical print in seconds or minutes (depending on which instant film it is), that’s amazing isn’t it? As it is now #InstantApril which I believe to be the brain child of @KristenWithACamera over on Twitter, I thought I’d do a little blog post about my experiences with instant photography. My history with instant photography has been relatively short, I bought my first instant camera, the Fujifilm Instax Mini 8 back in May 2014, I really liked those little instax, but the camera didn’t offer much control and the flash was over powering. I then backed the Kickstarter campaign for the Lomography Lomo Instant and was one of the first people to get one in the UK, I was even featured as a Lomo Amigo.

It wasn’t long before I wanted to try a real Polaroid camera so early in 2015 I purchased a Polaroid 626. To be honest I didn’t like the 626 that much again, it didn’t seem to give you much control and you couldn’t turn off the flash. I wasn’t finished with Polaroid though as I bought a Polaroid Spectra SE, this was much better, it has autofocus and the flash can be turned off. Film for these Polaroid cameras is now only produced by The Impossible Project, I particularly like their Black & White Gen 2.0 film for the Spectra.

Impossible B&W, Polaroid Spectra SE

Impossible Colour, Polaroid Spectra SE

Having read quite a bit about Polaroid cameras I wanted to try out a Land Camera that uses the peel apart film. I found out that my step dad had one that he’d never used. I borrowed his Polaroid Land 100 and attempted to convert it to AAA batteries, but the wiring was too far gone and you needed a special tool to get the grip off and on again, so I gave up. Luckily James Fox Davies whom I had met last year at LNDNWLK had a Polaroid 250 that was already converted and fully working that he was willing to lend me. I tried both FB-3000B (B&W) and FP-100C (colour) and loved them both the quality of these films is amazing. After shooting a few packs of film I bought my own Polaroid 350, which I’ve successfully converted to use AAA batteries. Unfortunately recently not long after buying the camera Fujifilm announced they were discontinuing production of FP-100C, the only film that was still being produced for these cameras, FP-3000B had already been discontinued some time ago. Both types of film can still be found, but at a steep price and mostly expired. I still have a few packs of film in the fridge, but I’m going to have to ration its usage. There are people out there trying to save this film, I don’t know if it’s possible but if there’s any chance it’s worth going to savepackfilm.net and signing the petition anyway.

Fujifilm FP-100C, Polaroid Land 250

Fujifilm FP-3000B, Polaroid Land 250

Fujifilm FP-100C, Polaroid Land 250

Kentmere 400 ISO 35mm Film

Martin Smith — Fri, 01 Apr 2016 14:00:42 +0000

I recently bought a couple of rolls of Kentmere 400 35mm film from Silverprint before they moved out of their London store. This film is a relatively cheap black and white negative film made by Harman Technology, who also make the Ilford films. It can be picked up for less than £4 for 36 exposures, which if you’re on a budget is pretty good value. Unfortunately out of the two rolls I shot there are only a couple that I think are ok, this is not just down to the film of course, sometimes you just don’t get the shots. I personally don’t think I will be buying any more of this film, I’m not sure what it is about it, there’s just something I don’t like, I prefer Ilford HP5+ over this.

Kentmere 400 Samples

Images shot with Leica M6 TTL, developed in Kodak HC-110 and scanned on an Epson V550 flatbed scanner with Silverfast 8 scanning software.

Kentmere 400, London