Fashion Shoot - Shot On Film

 I was really Looking forward to shooting this fashion shoot, I bought loads of film for it, the idea was to shoot everything on film ( Kodak Tri X rated at 400 asa ) and shoot some back-up with digital and since we had the Canon 5d's with us, we'd also shoot some moving image.

When I arrived at the studio, I found out that we had 10 outfits to shoot, which is a lot, I was expecting 6 max, so I reluctantly decided that the only way to get through this lot on time was to shoot digitally but the good news is - I did manage to fit in 3 rolls of film and now have loads of film left over for my next shoot : )

Here's some of the images that I did shoot on film. ( click on the photo to see larger  versions )

So I dusted down the Hasselblads for the shoot, it was nice to give them an airing again. The studio was really small so I had to shoot on a standard lens, normally I would use a 150mm for this kind of work. I shot these photos using available daylight in the studio and ended up having to shoot at a shutter speed of a 15th as it was a dull day and not much light around.  A 15th isn't great for shooting fashion especially with a hasselblad with that big mirror clunking away in every shot, It might have been better to use my Rollei since it doesn't have a mirror, although in saying that, I'm happy with the results and like the softness and the movement in some of the shots : )

These are my Hasselblads that I used for the shoot 501 el/m and a 501.

 Here's some shots of the film in the wash, coming out of the developing tank and into the dryer, I'll try to video some of the stages in future for those of you interested in getting into film.

And here are 3 contact sheets from the film.

Water Tower - using old out of date film

This could almost be a lesson on what not to do, especially if you're shooting an important project. I bought a half box of film - Ilford delta 400 from ebay, well that's what it was suppose to be, turns out it had a mixture of different types of film in the box, ho hum! - you take your chances - so thanks a bunch! - bloke in Greece for the mish mash out of date blotchy film!

I don't mind that the film was all marked and out of date, after all I only paid about £6 for it ( the marks on the negatives almost add something to the shot on this occasion ), luckily I was only testing my old Voigtlander Avus 9x12cm camera on it's first outing. A brilliant old camera BTW if your looking for a cheap way to get into large format photography and the camera is pretty light compaired to some of my cameras. Considering this camera is from the 1920's the shutter speeds all sound perfect, good old German workmanship and now that I have tested it, I can start to shoot more serious projects with it.


You can click on the images to see them larger.

 Voigtlander Avus camera.

This is the Jobo Multitank2 together with the 2509n spiral / film holder that I use for developing 9x12cm and 5x4" sheet film.

So here's the negative spots and all : )

And here's the final scanned negative to positive. It almost looks like there's white dust coming out of a chimney. I might do a silver print of this later to see how it prints. Now that I'm doing a blog on film photography, I'll start to take different photographs at different stages of all the processes for people looking to start their own film developing.

Click image for a larger version

B&W Portrait - shot on Kodak TRI X film

I shot this photograph just over a year ago, so hadn't started this blog at that stage, so I thought it would be good to share with you a black and white portrait that I shot on film of the beautiful artist Legacy Russell the photo was originally shot for the American magazine Felix which is a luxury lifestyle magazine serving Chicago, New York and Los Angeles. The photograph was also used in Componere Magazine which is a London based Fashion and Lifestyle magazine.

I've added some behind the scene photographs to give you an idea of how I go about my portraits and fashion shoots on location, in this case a carpark.

Just thought I'd mention - I have a lovely fashion shoot coming up in a few weeks time ( if you want to check back ) that will be shot on b&W film in a studio in London.

Shot Details:
The main photograph / portrait below was taken on my Hasselblad 500 EL/M with Kodak Tri X film rated at 400asa developed in ID 11 as normal and then printed on Ilford Mutigrade paper, other than some burning in around the edges of the print, the photograph didn't need any further work.

 To see the images larger please click on the photographs.

Six Pear Tryptic - paper negative / calotype / talbotype

This photograph / still life is a tryptic made up of 3 individual paper negatives to make one image.

This has given me an insight into what Henry Fox Talbot may have gone through in order to capture an image, ( although - I dare say it was a lot more difficult back then with a proper Talbotype ).

I set this photograph up thinking it would be a nice easy simple study of six pears, haha, little did I know. It took me almost a day to shoot this, although, if the weather had been better and more steady i.e. totally cloudy or just blue sky, then it would have made my job easier. It was one of these days - constantly changing from cloudy to blue sky and back again.

I gave the Ilford Multigrade paper a one second flash under an enlarger at f22 at 3' high in order to give me more tones in the paper and to prevent the highlights burning out too much. Doing this also changed the papers ASA / ISO from 1asa to roughly 6.4asa.

I decided to shoot this image as 3 separate negatives because it gives me a larger image size and I like the idea of making the image with 3 negs to give the image a bit more tension and of course interest - I'm shooting a whole project like this just now.

Each paper negative was shot at f16 with an old Carl Zeiss Jena 15cm lens ( which I believe they used to shoot movies and stills in Hollywood ) on my wooden vageeswari camera.

The lens has no shutter so I had to use my hand over the lens as a shutter. Each paper negative was exposed for between 16 mins and 30 mins and then there was the running back and forth to the darkroom to see if the negative had the same tones as the previous negative in order to try an get them all to look similar in tone, so you can imagine how the light kept changing with roughly 30 mins in between each shot taken, loading up the next neg and getting it ready for exposure, the ones that didn't work and had to do it again etc etc, so yes, almost a full day for this one image.

The photo that I've posted here is just a scan of the 3 paper negatives and joined together in photoshop but the final photograph will be printed as a salt print or an albumen print.

To see the photograph in a larger size please click on the image.

Calotype / Talbotype

I've started this blog in order to share my images and techniques for film photography, I've always been passionate about film / analogue photography and this is my blog to share. I've been a professional photographer for over 30 years and have decided to go back to my roots and shoot all of my own personal work on film.

This first post is a test shot taken with an old wooden vageeswari half plate camera which is roughly 5x7 inches, shot through an equally old Petzval lens ( which I picked up  over 30 years ago at an auction ). This image was shot using photographic paper and hopefully a good enough study of a Calotype / Talbotype photograph i.e. a paper negative. The talbotype was Invented by  Henry Fox Talbot in the 1800's. These paper negs are a modern day equivalent using modern photographic paper.

Below is the finished photo along with a photo of the set up and paper negative sitting in the fixer bath.

Click on the image to see a larger version.