M6 TTL Archives - Martin W Smith

A Day in the City – Amsterdam Part 1

Martin Smith — Mon, 26 Jun 2017 20:37:14 +0000

Introduction

I’m lucky enough to live within a 15 minute drive of London Gatwick Airport, the second busiest airport in the UK. Which means I can get to many places in Europe pretty quickly. This is something I have not really made good enough use of. I do most of my photography in either London or Brighton, 2 fantastic places to photograph. Sometimes however it’s nice to photograph somewhere new, so for some time I’ve been thinking it would be a good idea to get cheap flights to European cities, an early flight in the morning and the last flight the same evening back home. As is often the case with such ideas I’ve done nothing about it. However, a couple of weeks ago it was my birthday and one of the presents from my lovely wife was return flights to Amsterdam for the following Saturday. Not for both of us, just for me, so I can take photos. I’m a very lucky man.

This blog post is about my day in Amsterdam and he photos I took. Please note these aren’t necessarily the best photos ever taken. A full gallery will be added soon. I am hoping that this will be the first of a series of blog posts about a single day in a new city. I am already thinking about where I can go next.

Preparations

The night before my flight I packed my camera bag with 12 rolls of film, my Leica M6 TTL with Voigtlander 35mm and Zeiss 50mm lenses and a Nikon FM2n with 50mm lens. The film I decided to take were 4 x Lomography Color 400 and 800, 2 x Kodak Ektar 100, a couple of other rolls I had lying about. I also booked a taxi to take me to Gatwick for 5.30am and set my alarm for 5am.

When my alarm went off all I had to do was get up and get ready and have a quick cup of coffee before my taxi arrived. My taxi was a few minutes early which is always good, so I was at Gatwick by 5.45am. I had checked in online the day before and had no hold luggage so I just went straight through security. My flight was due to board at 6.45am with take off at 7.20am, I had plenty of time so I got myself a toastie and another coffee before my flight.

Boarding and take off all happened on time, the flight itself is only 50 minutes. It felt like we’d just taken off when we were told to prepare for landing at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam. Disembarking and getting through security were as painless as at Gatwick, the day was going well so far. From the airport I needed to get the train to the city centre, there were large queues at the ticket machines. This mostly seemed down to the fact tourists couldn’t work out what ticket to buy, I could see a lot of furrowed brows as they tried multiple times to purchase the correct ticket. When it was my eventually my turn I couldn’t work out what was causing the confusion as it all seemed quite straight forward. I bought my ticket and went looking for the train to Amsterdam Centraal.

This is when I had my first and only hiccup of the day, there were no direct trains running to Amsterdam Centraal today because of maintenance. I had to get a train to Sloterdijk and change there for Amsterdam Centraal. This wasn’t really much of an issue, it added a small delay only.

A Day in the City of Amsterdam

Arrival in Amsterdam

I arrived in Amsterdam Centraal at about 11am local time (10am UK time) and exited to the rear of the station. I found a bench where I could load my cameras. The skies were quite overcast when I arrived, so I loaded Lomography Color 800 in the M6 with 35mm lens and Ektar in the FM2n with 50mm lens. My idea was to shoot “street” type shots with the M6 at f8 and detail shots with the Nikon. I’d bought a guide book a few days earlier which had a map in the front, so I had a vague idea how the city was laid out. Instead of mapping out a specific route, I left the guide book in my bag and just started walking. I wanted to see where my legs would take me.

Leica M6 TTL, Lomography Color 800

I came out to the north of the station where there is a large river, I turned left and walked a long the river bank a short way. I came across an underpass that would take me to the front of the station and allow me to walk in to the city proper. I walked generally south zig zagging about when I saw things down roads that looked interesting. After only 10 minutes I found a really nice camera shop(Fotoprofessional), that sold both new and old cameras, including Leica. The staff were really friendly and I ended up talking to another customer who happened to be an American who also had an M6 like myself. I managed to restrain myself and left the shop without purchasing anything.

Leica M6 TTL, Lomography Color 800

Nikon FM2n, Kodak Ektar

Leica M6 TTL, Lomography Color 800

After leaving the shop I carried on going roughly south, I found Dam Square and noticed the Madame Tussauds and Ripley’s Believe It or Not, reminding me very much of London. Walking further I found the Flower Market with the brightly coloured flowers and packets of seeds. Walking still further south I came upon the Museum District and the Rijksmuseum with the “I Amsterdam” sign out front. By this point I had already shot 2 rolls of film and loaded my third. I decided not to go in any of the museums, this would have sucked up too much time, but I will go back to Amsterdam at some point and visit the museums then.

Nikon FM2n, Kodak Ektar

I walked on down past the Banksy and the Van Gogh museums, then turned to the north west to go to Vondelpark. By the time I got to Vendelpark, I’d been walking for nearly 2 hours. I thought it was time for a bit of lunch and a drink. I bought a hot dog and a can of diet coke from a vendor in the park and ate it on a bench over looking a lake. Also at this time the clouds had started to part and the sun was out and getting hot.

Leica M6 TTL, Lomography Color 400

Leica M6 TTL, Lomography Color 800

Nikon FM2n, Kodak Ektar

After eating my hot dog I had a little walk around the park then headed back into the city. I walked up a road that seemed to be Amsterdam’s equivalent of Bond Street. There were lots of designer name stores here as well as sports cars lining the streets and well dressed people walking around. I saw a group of what looked like photography students dashing about with their DSLRs.

Leica M6 TTL, Lomography Color 400

I walked on, north and towards the east, eventually ending up back at Dam Square. This time I walked eastwards and ended up walking in to the red light district. With the sex shops, peep shows and little red windows with prostitutes hoping to catch an eye. This was about 3pm too. I’ve been to Amsterdam once before about 14 years ago with my wife for a weekend. The red light district was somewhere we had to go and see. Even though I’d seen it before I was still surprised by the brazenness of it, like London’s Soho, but more so.

Leica M6 TTL, Lomography Color 400

The smell of weed coming from the “coffee” shops was strong around here. I needed a coffee, but not in ones of those establishments. I found a normal coffee shop nearby and sat outside in the sunshine with a double espresso. While drinking my espresso, I saw a man, probably in his sixties cycle past looking in one of the red windows. From where I sat I couldn’t see what he was looking at, but I could guess. He rode off, then a couple of minutes later he came back and looked in the window again. This fascinated me for some reason. A part of me wanted to see him go in. He cycled off again and came back, this happened about 3 times. On the final time he spoke to someone behind the window, I thought he was going to go in, but he didn’t. He rode off around the corner and I didn’t see him again.

Nikon FM2n, Kodak Ektar

Stand by for Part 2 coming soon.

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.

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

Green Stone Bench

Martin Smith — Mon, 04 Jul 2016 07:00:23 +0000

Taken in Gran Canaria with Leica M6 TTL and Agfa Vista 200.

Green Stone Bench, Agfa Vista 200

Bench & Graffiti

Martin Smith — Sun, 03 Jul 2016 08:00:50 +0000

Taken in Gran Canaria with Leica M6 TTL and Agfa Vista 200.

Bench & Graffiti, Agfa Vista 200, Leica M6 TTL

Brighton Street Photography Workshop with Paul Russell

Martin Smith — Fri, 20 May 2016 17:38:09 +0000

On 14th May I attended the Brighton Street Photography Workshop with Paul Russell, member of iN-PUBLiC, the street photography collective. Paul is probably best known for his street photography around Britain’s seaside towns that are often amusing. This is my second street photography workshop, my first was with Matt Stuart which I wrote about here. Despite Paul urging me to bring my X100S, I instead brought my Leica M6 TTL, Voigtlander 35mm f2.5 and 6 rolls of Fujifilm Superia 400 colour negative film.

This was a half day workshop starting at 12pm and going on until 5pm, myself and the other 4 participants met Paul outside the Brighton train station entrance, I didn’t know what Paul looked like but I found myself looking out for someone with a big yellow Zippy head (you’ll understand what I mean if you’ve seen his Twitter avatar).

The day started with Paul taking is to a part of Brighton that I hadn’t been to before that he thought would be quiet so we could get warmed up taking “non peopled” shots. The area was a square in front of St Bartholomew’s Church which actually turned out to be a lot busier than he expected. It was a great place to take shots both with and without people, you have the church, graffiti, a table tennis table and alley ways. After giving some us some pointers we were sent off to take some pictures without people and get warmed up.

Brighton Street Photography Workshop

After spending some time in the square we moved on to London Road, walking up and down it and into the market to take some people pictures this time, Brighton is full of interesting people and colourful backdrops, a great place for street photography. It was during this time I realised there was something wrong with my lens, the front barrel was all loose, I hadn’t brought another lens with me so I had no choice but to carry on and hope it didn’t affect the photos.

Following our time on London Road we walked back towards the Laines to take some photos in the more crowded area. We then picked up a late lunch from a local Tesco to eat in Pavilion Gardens and chat about street photography and more tips.

After lunch we walked to North Street for more photos before it was time for me to leave. I learnt some useful tips from Paul and found the workshop very useful, I’m glad I did it. I was a bit worried that none of the photos would come out because of my lens, but there seems to have been no ill effects. As is often the case when you go out with a group I didn’t take any photos that I think are particularly good, but I thought I’d share some anyway.

Brighton Street Photography Images

All images shot with my Leica M6 TTL and Fujifilm Superia 400 colour negative film shot at EI 800, developed by AG Photo Lab and scanned on my Epson V550 with Silverfast 8.

[easymedia-carousel med=”651″]

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.

[easymedia-carousel med=”632″]

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.

[easymedia-carousel med=”598″]