superia Archives - Martin W Smith

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.

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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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A Day In My Life Through Pictures

Martin Smith — Mon, 03 Aug 2015 08:01:06 +0000

While my wife and children were away for a few days visiting my in-laws I wanted to do a short photo project to try something different.

The Project

The project I decided on was a day in my life through pictures, the brief I set myself for this project was to use my Olympus XA loaded with a fresh roll of Superia 400 and take photos through out my day from the time I got up until the time I went to bed. Once developed I would scan and upload all the images unedited.

The Results

Below are the results of the project. I’m not sure what I expected from the little project, but what I think I’ve ended up with is just a collection of random terrible, blurry and out of focus photos. I think a better photographer wouldn’t show them at all, but I want to show them anyway, not all projects are going to be winners.

Here are all 36 frames taken through out Friday 24th July 2015.

A Day In My Life

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