This Holga photo was taken in Swansea Marina on a cold, early spring day. I was experimenting with using the bulb setting on the Holga. This frame was the one from the roll that stood out, most of the rest were a blurry mess. This one is still blurry but is at least recognisable for what it is. I like this shot because the rope holes and opening on the bow form a kind of surprised face.
Taken on the Holga in Bathurst Basin, a triangular dock area to the east of Spike Island. You can see the general Hospital building to the right.
I love the dappled light under the trees. I think the Holga has handled the scene well.
This is an area of Bristol that I know well and I still enjoy visiting, especially with a Holga.
One of the things that I love about the Holga camera is it's ability to surprise you. This photo has such a painterly feel to it. I remember when I took it not feeling very hopeful about the frame. However with the Holga camera you need to keep shooting, even if you are not feeling great about the roll.
When I processed the film and looked at the negatives this one jumped out.
The photograph was taken in Pill, near Bristol. The name "Pill" comes from the Welsh word Pîl which denotes a tidal inlet or harbour. My maternal Grandparents lived in Pill until the 1980s, when they moved to South Gloucestershire.
My Mums cousin operated the Pill Ferry from Pill to Shirehampton when I was a kid. His name was Robert. These boats reminded me of those days.
For this blog post I have converted a roll of Harman Phoenix 200 to redscale. Harman technology sell their own version of this as Harman Red 125. Given that this film is officially available as a redscale film, the only other one on the market is Lomography Redscale XR, I was excited to se what this emulsion could do in the redscale space.
Harman Phoenix is supplied in a red box and isn't a general colour film in the same vein as Kodak Gold, for example. Harman have described Phoenix as the initial steps on their colour journey and Harman are inviting photographers to get involved in that journey. Phoenix is a limited run film.
Harman own the Ilford brand and manufacture some really excellent black and white emulsions in HP5 Plus and FP4 Plus. They are not known for colour film. To create a colour film from scratch is a costly business and without the might of a corporation like Kodak behind them, then the research and development of a new emulsion might prove too expensive to even try. Harman came up with a strategy that they have been completely upfront about.
The Westonbirt Festival of Wood was held during the 2000s until 2011, when it changed into the Festival of the Tree. I attended in 2003 and took the family Canon Sure Shot TeleMax camera loaded with a roll of Ilford HP5 Plus.
I thought that the negatives had been lost to time as house moves took place over the years that followed.
However recently I opened a box that had been sealed when I moved house last year and I found some negatives all filed in sleeves but not in a file. Some negatives from my trip to Egypt and some from Tunisia. In the middle of the negatives and filed between a set of Egypt negatives and a set of Tunisia negatives, were the set of black and white negatives from the Festival of Wood. Half of them in the Sharm El Sheikh negative file sheet and half in the Hammamet sheet. quite why I did this is a mystery now.
These are significant because they are a document of me getting into black and white photography and using the family compact camera. I'd forgotten about the day out and that I'd bought a roll of HP5 Plus from the local camera shop. The negatives have a numbered sticker at one end and so I must have got the camera shop to process the film. So these are really first steps for me. I've rescanned the negatives and cropped some of them, the pictures aren't half bad, considering they were taken on a compact camera.
Recently I wrote a blog about the joys of compact cameras.
The compact camera is a great carry around camera and sometimes the thought of carting around a heavy bag full of lenses, camera bodies and all that jazz, it just a bit much. My 35mm film compact camera of choice at the moment is a Lomo LC-A. It's definitely not perfect but it produces images that are not dreadful. This is a very low bar, I know.
The internet influencers would have you believe that a Yashica T4, Olympus Mju II, Contax T2 or Ricoh GR1S are the best compact cameras for 35mm film and so they may be, but now that the cat is out of the bag the prices match the hype that the influencers create. And that serves no one well, least of all those of us who are on a budget.
The LC-A isn't hyped by anyone, apart from the Lomography people - because they sell them, but that doesn't mean it's no good. Mine is from the early 1980s and is a genuine Soviet built one. You can pick them up for a decent price if you exercise some patience and avoid instant gratification syndrome. I used the camera for a walk around one of Somersets' prettiest towns Frome a couple of days ago. Here are the photographs.
It seems like it never really happened now. 2020, the year that Boris Johnson asked everyone in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to stay at home in order to mitigate the spread of Covid-19. During the period where we all stayed at home, I found myself getting a bit bored. I'm sure I wasn't the only one.
Anyhow, I had some adapters that would allow 35mm film to be shot in a medium format camera. Sprocket hole photography. There was an article that I found where you had to create a leader for your 35mm film from a scrap length of 120 backing paper. Then you wouldn't loose any frames when the film was loaded.
