Showing posts with label Leica M2. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Leica M2. Show all posts

Friday, May 12, 2023

Light Relief

Morning folks - how are you doing these days?
 
Y'know, I've been prepping an epic on using outdated film, and it has taken so long that I've lost all enthusiasm for it, so, in the interests of modernity, here's a mainly text-free Fogblog. 
Oh yes, we move with the times up here.


It's Grim Up North


I've been having fun with the Leica recently and, a new revelation, 24 exposure rolls!
You know I've always hated trying to finish 36 exposures, so with 24 I am finding that I can take the whole roll with a measure of delight.

The whole thing has been a success (to me) so without further ado, the players are:

Leica M2
Letiz 90mm f4 Elmar-M (wouldn't it be fun if Leitz was actually spelled Letiz)
Canon 28mm f3.5

Of both lenses I like the Canon best, but then I am wider than I am taller if you know what I mean!

This being said the lowly Elmar-M (around £100 on current UK prices) has a renditioning all its own and can actually be incredibly sharp if you take into account the following:

You'll need to keep it really steady
Or use a small tripod
Or work in bright light.

Anyway, stuff the guff, here they are:


Leica M2, Letiz 90mm Elmar
HP5, Fomadon R09 1+25


Leica M2, Canon 28mm F3.5
HP5, Fomadon R09 1+25


Leica M2, Canon 28mm F3.5
HP5, Fomadon R09 1+25


Leica M2, Canon 28mm F3.5
HP5, Fomadon R09 1+25


Leica M2, Letiz 90mm Elmar 
HP5, Fomadon R09 1+25


Leica M2, Letiz 90mm Elmar 
HP5, Fomadon R09 1+25


They're all straight scans off the prints.

The whole lot were printed quite hard - mostly Grade 4 - but this is because I think the paper I am using is quite old and "has lost a modicum of ooompapa" (an old, technical, printer's expression from the days of yore). 

They're on 11½ x 8 ¼" a size I've never used, but is very good for 35mm. 
Oh, and it is Ilford MGRC Pearl finish by the way, developed in Adox/Agfa Neutol NE and selenium toned.

And that is it - have fun and watch out for the normal people.
H xx

Tuesday, November 09, 2021

Split

(Started in August 2021, and please beware, because it is probably controversial, daft, thick, thought-provoking [?], polemic, opinionated, wrong, true, interesting and dull all at once. It is also a long read, so be prepared with provisions and a rescue team just in case)

Morning folks - hope you are all a rootin' and a tootin'!
This post is an interesting one, because as I start typing I have no idea where I am going, and no idea what (if any) conclusion or usefulness will come out of it; however as is often the case, I find the keyboard to be as valuable as a psychiatrist's couch, so please bear with me whilst I set the slurry lorry on flick and get spattering all that lovely watery cowy goodness out the back whilst pootering along this particular field.

Putt, Putt Putt . . .
Splat, Splat, Splat . . .


© Phil Rogers Dundee,Leica M2,35mm f3.5 Summaron
Battling Glare, Darkness, Spotlights, 
Full Aperture And A Handheld One Second Exposure, 
The M2/Summaron  Combo Delivers The Goods . . . 
Weirdly.
Proudly Unchimped.


Me and t'missus settled down to watch something we'd recorded off BBC 4 a while back:
Rankine's Photography Challenge. 
I was excited; it isn't often photography is featured on TV, so this was somewhat of an event. 
I munched my Lidl's Digestive and sipped my cup of really rather strong coffee and was genuinely waiting to be wowed. 
Cooo!
Here were the candidates, all fresh faced and toting really not inconsiderably expensive cameras. 
There was a young lad describing how he'd sleep in carparks in order to catch a sunrise; an older bloke with PTSD who said that wildlife photography had saved his life.
I noticed there were others; a healthy mix of all genders, very woke and PC, but to be honest by this stage I'd mentally switched off. 
Why?
Well amongst the pontificating of:

"That's The ONE!" 

"I'd be proud of that!!"

"Get down on the ground and shoot it from there!!!"
 
"Coo, you don't get many of those to the pound!"

(Made that last one up actually) something in me had begun to feel really rather sick. 

There were about a billion shutter activations in the first fifteen minutes. 
Studio flashes like miniature atomic space battles
People 'chimping' left right and centre.
Kids putting themselves in shutterly inappropriate positions - the way people mishandle handguns in films (you know, loose wrist, pointed sideways) - camera as an extension of forearm.
It was snappy, overloaded and packed to the gunwhales with jaunty camera angles and semi-shouty presentation to make it look interesting, and sadly, like two Cokes plus a kilo of candy-floss plus several spins on The Sickener, this fairground ride made me feel the way I always feel at fairs:

Queasy with a capital Q.

So I turned to the missus and said:

'Can we watch something else?'

And that was a shame, it really was, because these people were buzzing with photography
They were truly enthused.
To coin a certain Mancunian phrase from decades ago, they were:

Mad For It.

I wished them well, bade them good luck and with a heavy heart and a sick bucket, switched to something else.

The "something else" was a program which is still in my head.
It was a BBC documentary about Lee Miller
What an extraordinary life, however it was her contact prints from the liberation of Dachau and Buchenwald which left a mark. Though not shown closely, what she said in the frames taken with her Rolleiflex said oceans more than a million digital spray jobs. 
And then, the fact that said experience made her pack away all her negatives and prints and not talk about it for years, speaks volumes about how much of herself she put into taking those photographs.
And also how much those photographs took out of her.
You can find out more about her here.

The following night, just because, we watched a documentary about Ansel
To say the guy was driven, would be a slight. 
These days you'd probably say he had OCD.
It came as no surprise that the huge channeling of human spirit, energy and sheer effort that went into the taking of every negative and the making of every print, came about as a result of methodical obsession
I believe this could only ever have been achieved with film and paper. 
He would never have been able to internally and externally transition the piece from "score to orchestra"' (negative to print) with some photoshop moves and an inkjet printer. 
Absolutely no way José.
To watch him dodging and burning was like watching the poetry of great dance or, dare I say it, football. 
It was transfixing, assured and magical all at once. 
A master class in craft skills and second nature.
It was definitely not the nurdling around of a mouse and cursor and ordering some 1's and 0's to: 
"Do THAT!"
It was not some old geezer checking his screen after every shot.

I thought about it and was so stunned by the apparent dissolve between these masters and what passes for photography in this digital age that I had to investigate further.

It will come as no surprise that You Tube is a tremendous source of old photographic documentaries.
Name the crafts-person (gotta be PC y'know) from a bygone age and you'll probably find something about them on there in some form.
From the classic Parkie-style interview, to decent overviews. 
And it is weird because you'll see the overlaps too - great photographers who have gone over to the Light (room) side like it means little to them.
Yet I truly feel something has been lost, and in that loss lies a blackhole that is at the centre of current photography:

The photographer as printmaker.

Bill Brandt (BBC Master Photographers) was a revelation to me. 
I only really knew Bill from a handful of photographs, but in this programme there were countless great images - so stylistic and austere, yet better than anything I have seen produced in 'modern' times.
To paraphrase a conversation in the programme:

Interviewer: "Mr. Brandt, you always do your own printing don't you?"
BB: "Oh yes."
Interviewer: "It is very important to do one's own printing?"
BB: "Yes, definitely, very important, yes . . . because I change pictures completely in the darkroom . . . most of the work is done in the darkroom . . . "


© Bill Brandt Estate


André Kertész? The poet who wasn't technical enough for the American Photography Scene (apparently).
Whilst enamoured with polaroids (technically geeky I suppose) at the end of his life, he produced numerous beautiful images which were all the more perfect for their imperfections. 
I couldn't imagine him chimping at his Canon's screen - he knew exactly what the photograph he had taken would look like. How's that for confidence and skill? 
The post-digital world of perfect, everything in focus from 3" to infinity and then HDR'd to the hilt, would I think have left him cold.
Look at this.


© André Kertész Estate



It truly is exquisite in colour, composition and form. 
A simple sculpture and mirror in his apartment and a piece of Polaroid film.
OK, the smelly wet stage of printmaking was taken away (although remember the 'orrible caustic stuff you use to get with Polaroids . . hmmm) but it is still a print and besides, he'd earned his stripes for decades.
The colours on the Polaroid are ageing in a way like the patina on a piece of Bronze Age metalwork - it is beautiful.

Delving deeper and randomly, I came across a documentary about the British photojournalist Tim Page.
A young man, leaves home at 17; travelling he picks up a camera and gets somehow caught up in Vietnam! 
It is an old BBC Arena called "Tim Page - Mentioned In Despatches"
Unlike other war photographers I have seen, who have dealt with the aftermath in more stoic ways, Tim (in the documentary) seemed to be that same young man fresh from combat, frozen in time, back in civi-street, recovering from debilitating war injuries, trying hard to find something to hold onto to keep him from drowning in the downright ordinariness of 'normal' life. 
He finds some solace in photographing an RAF camp filled with Vietnamese Boat People - there he truly looks at home. 
In his local Charrington pub, quaffing a pint of Charrington's Best Bitter (or so it looked) and smoking a fag, he looked pensive, evaluative; to be frank, out of sorts as they say.
In the documentary he replies to a question (in a Q&A session) about carrying a gun, and explains, that he never really did because guns are heavy, especially when you are carrying 4 cameras, 6 lenses and 50 rolls of film.
50 rolls - 12 or 1800 images as if your life depended on it. 
Finite. 
They had better count.


© Tim Page
© Tim Page


And man did they count. 
Look at the above - one image that sums up the human cost of war. No corpses, but the young man's demenour says more than anything I have ever seen.
If it were digital, there'd be screeds of images, the scene would have been sprayed, broadcast live to a news feed, looked at once and probably forgotten.
And yet here, Tim's skill and eye have rendered the cost, visible on one perfect frame of film; one perfect print.
That's photography. 
He took pictures like he was never sure whether he'd be coming back; fearless. 
Negatives, slides.
I found his images incredibly hard to look at, and yet, to paraphrase him:

". . . there is a lot of Asian softness in them."

You should watch it.
His website is here.

I could go on about the documentaries, but I won't - you owe it to yourself to find them.
It isn't hard.
The above is the merest skirting of the subject though - get looking and thinking.

Dipping on further and looking at my small collection of books, I came to the conclusion that it is the finite quality of traditional photography which defines it

You take a picture, process it, print it, file it. 
It is a one-off artefact - even manipulated via multiple negatives (a la, say, Julius Shulman's astonishingly beautiful architectural photographs) and all the work done in a darkroom to bring it to completion.
If you have never encoutered Shulman and you love black and white (and buildings) you owe it to yourself to seek them out - they're really fantastic.


© Julius Shulman Estate


This was apparently a composite of three negatives, nevertheless it is wonderful. 
The skill involved at all stages to get to the final print is breathtakingly complex.
The printer's skill has not been outsourced to a computer.

The print becomes the full stop on the image. 

The image defines the moment.

Yet I don't think it's really like that anymore.
You might well disagree with me, but to my mind it really isn't.

Have a break - have a Kit Kat.


Aaah, that's better!

I understand there are many concerned and committed photographers out there taking important pictures and I have nothing but respect for them, but the digital rendering is to my mind just convenience. 
It is the 'norm'. 
Everybody else is doing it so why don't we?
You possibly even have little choice with editors and picture people on your back wanting something yesterday.
You can whizz that important image around the world in nano-seconds. 
There is no waiting whilst you send your films back to an ever-awake processing department.
There is no wait whilst you close the door on your darkroom and sweat.
The screen has become the pseudo-print, but rather than that print being put aside in a pile, or brandished in a breathless run to show someone, your image is now a collection of part-remembered photons in your mind's eye. 
Scrolled by contemporaries . . .
In the words of Alex Harvey:

"N. E. X. T. . . Neeeeexxxt!"

And it isn't just to do with how your precious image is stored and presented either; film and digital, obviously they are both utterly different, but to tie things in with my original ride on The Sickener from the top of this 'ere page, it's the sheer ease with which everything can be done.

There used to be an expression 'kicking against the pricks' - whilst the usual interpretation is about authority, I have always thought of it as something that ties in with art. 
Art is struggle.
Photography used to be a struggle.

To my mind though, in ALL creative pursuits, struggle can be beneficial

You strive to do better.

I remember once walking for miles, taking many (so I believed) fine photographs, only for said photographs to be rendered null and void by expired developer. 
It is a thing you only do once. 
It informed me. 
It made me a more careful craftsman.

With digital, you no longer have that. 
You check every single bloody image
Make sure it is perfect on the spot. Just watch the news!
You delete those that you don't like and yet, to quote Tim Page:

"Every day is an assignment. Every picture you shoot, even be it an idle snap; I'm using the word snap, in a sorta very loose context.       
The snap is gonna be valuable."

Snaps are gone with digital - eradicated by the monkey-move and the editorial thumb.

You could argue that the plethora of idle phone pointing that goes on, is the snap.
Well yes, I can see how you come to that, except they're not really, simply because they only exist on a screen. 
They will never  be gripped and looked at again; beery, smoky, greasy fingers will no longer leave their mark. Spitty crumbs of laughter will not mar their perfection.
(As an aside I'll draw your attention to The Anonymous Project - a laudable collection of old slides - their like will never be seen again.)
In my family, we still sometimes drag out prints and snaps from decades ago and laugh and talk and reminisce - it is a wonderful, unexpected and oft overlooked aspect of being a (semi-modern) human.
Who would have thought, when photography was first being developed and people had prints made for relatives, as keep-sakes, records of their lives, that those simple (yet vastly complex) pieces of time would come to define their lives?
Identity was established; some kind of social grace was incurred - all dolled up in your Sunday Best, and thence on to the snap, the wonderful delineation of humankind in all its incredible variety.





Look at at the above - a chance physical find whilst doing some tidying. 
That's me in a photo-booth 40 years ago! 
A close relative to Kertész' polaroids, technology wise. 
It exists in the world. 
It isn't a collection of data lost on some hard-drive, or more likely, deleted as no longer relevant.


Can you see where I am going?
Far from furthering an art-form I love; far from moving it forward, I feel that creatively and archaeologically, digital has pretty much killed 'photography' (as I know it) stone dead.
Cuddle up with that phone and scroll through all those pictures - oh can I see that one with the rubber chicken? 
Oh shit, where the heck is it? 
Och God I can't be arsed . . . . 

But then maybe that is just me. 
A rank amateur living on the East coast of a very small country - what do I know? 
I'll bet most people disagree with me. 
But I look around (a lot); I trust my eyes and my observation of quality and bog-standard snappery from ages past, and I see little now that surprises or impresses or pleases me.
What a feckin' B.O.F. eh!

And then there was a pause during which yer author rubbed his chin and thunked.

Re-reading the above a month or two later, I decided I was being too polemical, too pontificating and too downright opionionated, so I decided to put some distance between me and 'it' and see how I felt a while later.

So, a month or so later:

I feel that what I wrote makes me sound like an arse.
What right have I to pass judgement on one of the world's most popular hobbies?
How can I stand here and say that truth is no longer what it used to be? 
You could argue that photographically truth was never what it was.
I can totally see where you are coming from. 
And yet, I can't quite put the way I am feeling about the current state of photography into words. 
Maybe it has always been thus. 
Millions of images, with maybe one in hundreds of thousands that makes you go:

'OH!'

There currently seems to be no end to the massed ranks of clamour; of images made for pleasure, purpose, or mostly, so it seems, just because you can
The digital image knows no boundaries, and I don't mean in the creative sense, I mean it in the sense that it is an ever-expanding frontier of data assembled into pictures. 
There is no physical limit simply because you don't really need to think like that anymore. 
You are not going into a combat situation with 50 rolls of film. 
You are not limited by the physical length of a roll.
The sky is the limit, and even then  . . .

Even the most careful digi-photographers I know complain endlessly about the sheer amount of stuff they have. 
It is archived and filed and amassed on hard drives or clouds, and it sits there by the myriad, consuming energy in a pointless waste of storage, because nothing will ever happen to photo #15 of the 300 you took of your children playing ball. 
You really won't make that nice picture of a daisy (in macro-mode) into a nice picture for your partner. 
IT IS FACT - YOU SIMPLY WON'T.

They say that traditional photography was environmentally unfriendly in its use of chemicals and resources, but I conject that digital photography is far more unfriendly simply in its power usage. 
Not only that but the traditional photograph impacts environment relatively quickly: a release of noxious chemicals, the results filed away and delved into occasionally; but that is it, the results are yours. Of course you have to factor in the silver mining and plastic production, but counter that with rare earth metals in every camera battery, the plastics in every SD card. 
And you've got to think about the trillions of digital images stored on servers; all drawing energy for their storage whether viewed or not, usually not. 
Some are printed, but they're still stored on physically ultimately fragile devices like hard drives or flash media or SD cards - future landfill.
Of course on the other hand they could also (unwisely) only be stored on cloud storage, where they are entirely at the behest (unpaid, or peppercorn-rent guests as it were) of digital flop-houses. 
An uncertain future! For should owners of said digital flop-houses maybe start charging considerably more, because of power costs, because of hunger for more dosh, for whatever reason, what then happens to a visual history of the latter half of the twentieth, early part of the twenty-first century? 

Yep: 

"Oh that old picture, nah, not going to pay for that." 

"I've got another 30 of the kids, forget about that one." 

Look how truly fragile this digital world really is.

I know we could sit and argue this till the cows come home - maybe you should come around sometime and we could head to the pub.
All of the above reads like it was written by someone who at a certain time of life has become thoroughly entrenched in their thinking and has no wish to look over the parapet. 
Strangely, I wouldn't blame you for thinking so, but also, I wouldn't count myself as one of those.
I am open to argument, but I also know what I like and what I think, and if you are from 'the other side' as it were, my salutations to you - I am not taking a pop, just providing a different slant on what you'll see elsewhere. Hopefully it will make you think about the physical/un-physical fragility of the modern world.

To be honest, my bias towards so-called 'traditional' photography is as firmly entrenched as an old wellie in a huge pool of cow shit. 

You might be able to extract me, but it would be incredibly messy for both of us

Best let entrenched boots lie, eh?





To round things off, the above is a perfect example of why, like Tim Page says, the snap matters.
This was a 'snap' with a Hasselblad SWC/M.
The light was sort of like that - heavy cloud cover and a brief bit of liquid sunshine hitting the path making the stones really stand out. 
I did print the sides down slightly (in a poor fashion) but on the whole it was pretty much like that.
It has sat as a scrap in my darkroom for a year or so. I never ditched it, just used it for setting print borders.
Now I come to look at it properly, I like it.
Had it been digital I would probably have deleted it at the time.
Not saying, just saying . . . .

As I finish, I'd like to say that really, I know none of you, however if you are a printmaker, I tip my tifter to you - you're keeping something vital alive, and if you don't run a darkroom but get other people to make prints from your negatives, I tip my hat to you too, because you're producing something physical.

If you're a squirter (sorry - that's my own nomenclature) well at least you are printing, but as far as I am concerned, it really isn't the same. The skill set is vastly different. 
This being said it doesn't NOT make you a photographer, it's just a shame that the world of modern photography has been skewed away from something that was always its beating heart - THE DARKROOM.

If all you ever view is screens, think again - it is worth the effort to try and change that. Buy a modern Polaroid camera and go and have fun - it will transform the way you feel about making images, and the Polaroids will probably outlast you as well - something for future times. A present from the past.

That's it - thank you for reading once again.
Take care, be safe and watch out for the normal people.







Wednesday, October 13, 2021

Flotsam

Hi folks, yes I know, slapped legs and so on - I HAVE been remiss, but maybe time off can be quite a good thing.

FB has always been an 'occasional' as they used to call magazine-type things back in ye anciente dayes of printing - albeit this year it has been very much so.

The reasons for my tardiness were detailed in earlier posts, but hey, look, I haven't stopped; I still look at who is reading this and whilst riddled with guilt and wringing my hands, think:

"Ooooh - I must get some more FB done."

So there, I am slowly moving forward, with the emphasis on slowly.




© Phil Rogers Dundee,Hasselblad 500 C/M,Hasselblad 150mm CF Sonnar,
Aftermath Of A Winter's Storm



Anyway, I surprised myself recently and actually spent a whole afternoon (wet and windy, with squall and some sun) printing

It was sheer heaven actually. 

Just 5x7" RC prints, all popped in the newly-gifted Leitz easel - a thing of great joy and comfort for reasons I don't understand - a Beard is better - but that being said it is so darn simple just to plop a bit or paper in there and go. 

It's beautifully made too; a little bit corroded in places, but is solid. 

It holds the paper well - none of this lifting of the border edge setters, or paper slipping underneath them as often happens with the Beard - it's just slide it in and go.


I was printing some results from recent walks.


"Wot? We fort you hadn't been takin' no fotograffs?!"


Well, I haven't, at least not seriously (as in going out to actively seek them) however, I will, these days, load a 35mm camera (in this case the M2 with 35mm Summaron) and just carry it with me on weekend constitutionals with t'missus. 


As my Dad used to say:


"The things you see when you haven't got your gun."


It applies to cameras too.


So there we were, a strollin' along, looking at fings and generally having a very nice time, when I noticed something.

This was probably one of the lowest tides I'd ever seen on the Tay, and really if I'd been paying attention I'd have spotted earlier that there seems to be a newish Dundee ritual of chucking what look like perfectly good bikes in the river.

We'd passed at least another two before I started noticing them - it took time for my brain to process things - I'd never make a good sports photographer.

So here's two of them - they'd probably make a really nice series, but remember if you're here and start doing them, I've got first dibs, right?




© Phil Rogers Dundee,Leica M2,Leitz 35mm f3.5 Summaron,
Bike 1


© Phil Rogers Dundee,Leica M2,Leitz 35mm f3.5 Summaron,
Bike 2


I was struck by the yucky, seaweedy, muddy contrast against the hard angularity of the bikes and it brought to mind a picture I had taken about 4 or 5 years back in the aftermath of an incredible Winter's storm in the Grampians.



© Phil Rogers Dundee,Hasselblad 500 C/M,Hasselblad 150mm CF Sonnar,
Aftermath Of A Winter's Storm



Understandably, this just looks like a pile of wood and stones, but to understand how it became so sculptural, one has to get the lie of the land right. 
This was taken at the point where a tributary of the Whitewater runs into it. 
To get to this point, the waters gather themselves from a mountainous plateau of peat bog and hard rock and gullies.
The height of the plateau averages around 2500-3000 feet above sea level; it is a vast, mostly featureless water-gathering area.
The rains saturate the land; it is a place of storm, sun, wind, but rarely if ever 'low' water levels.
Everything then descends: both underground and overground.
It falls through deep-cut gullies and channels; it runs beneath the moss and hillsides, giving the traveler on a clear and sunny day the feeling that the earth is forever in motion and life cannot end.
Here and there the run-offs join and co-join and force their amassings into deeper gullies of rock and boulder, Scot's Pine and impenetrable brush. 
And then, by pool and bend, the gathering puts a brake on itself and becomes a feeder, neither loch nor burn but something inbetween, where a deep pool forms and becomes the final point of exit into the river. 
It was at this final point that I took this photograph.

The weirdest thing about this is that about 150 metres upstream there's a stalker's bridge.
It is so old and rickety, that it would be easy for the burn that runs underneath to destroy it utterly and without thought, were it in spate. 
The flotsam here though had not come from the gullies above that bridge - there was too much and it was all too big; so I can only surmise that we're looking at such a force of rain falling, concentrated into the space of about 150 metres, that it was strong enough to bring this lower stretch to some form of extremis.
Strong enough to move considerable quantities of trees and rocks and deposit them as if they were nothing.
Such is the power of our planet. 
Respect it.

The photograph was taken with the Hasselblad 500C/M and the humble 150mm Sonnar - a truly remarkable lens and your cheapest option with Hassie lenses. 
It is the out of focus qualities coupled with the incredible detail that I like best about this photograph. 
And it is also easy to see why a 150mm Sonnar is probably the best Hasselblad lens for portraiture - I think the aperture was about f5.6.
Film was Ilford FP4 (developed in Pyrocat-HD) and I was on a tripod - no, not me, the camera.

And that's it folks - briefer than a tight-fitting pair of Y-Fronts.


Nature eh - who'd have thought it.


Take care and till next time, remember:


Pease Pudding Hot

Pease Pudding Cold

Pease Pudding In The Pot

Ugh!


Actually, this being said, I haven't had Pease Pudding since about 1973 whilst staying at my Grans. I bet I'd love it these days.

Keep taking the pills.

H.




Monday, April 20, 2020

Small Worlds On Small Bits Of Paper

Morning folks . . . bored yet
Well, you shouldn't be.
For all that this strange period is getting extended, and I grant you it isn't financially easy, all the same, to be going off your nut whilst being given the gift of time, seems to me to be strangely sinful.

Been taking many photographs on your daily ration of getting oot and aboot? 
Erm, well, no nether have I, BUT, I have been printing, albeit in a small way. 
I can and should be printing more, however working from home means that this desk-style workstation is always manned.

Allied to this, making this 'ere Blog became harder earlier this year, courtesy of Apple who removed all support for 32-bit programs from their current OS, Catalina. And what did that mean in photographic terms? well, it meant I could no longer easily use my ancient Epson scanner. Yes, I could buy third-party software, but it isn't cheap . . it isn't really even reasonably priced, especially considering I've effectively already bought Epson's own in the first place. 
So where did that leave me? 
Well, in the land of work-around
Out came Alec Turnip's old laptop; out came endless hours of getting it right and up to speed again, and finally, out came the scanner sun again. 
So basically, I am scanning with the Epson V300, saving them to a Windows 10 laptop, then transferring them over to this Mac, my main machine. 
It is, as they say around these parts, a total scutter.
Anyway, we got there eventually. 

Where's 'ere Sheepy?

Well, small worlds on small bits of paper.


Coats Please

At this point, Bruce will get confused, so don't mind him as he crouches in the corner clutching his head, but y'see, despite my insisting that I'd been printing 6x4" prints, I've just checked the box and it says 5x7". Oh I know, what's a couple of inches between friends . . but all the same, what an assumption to make. 
Fool that I am.
Anyway, the paper is Tetenal TT Vario RC. yet another of my collection of photographic dinosaur bones, and you know what, as a RC paper goes, it was probably one of the best.
That's a hell of a statement to make, so why? 
Well, unlike the likes of Multigrade RC, you didn't have to print a Grade up with it. 
I don't know about you, but with MGRC I generally always have to print on Grade 3. Grade 2 just doesn't have that slight snap that I like, whereas with the Tetenal, I get snappy on Grade 2.
I've no doubt right now there'll be someone droning on about them being effectively the same emulsion . . . well, not to my eyes or experience matey. They look different.
Anyway, taking that course is like philosophers arguing about the existence of angel's breath, as in, it's a fairly pointless exercise. Like most everything else from the photographic cull of the mid 2000's, Tetenal's TT Vario is as dead as a dodo.
But I've still got some 5x7" so why not use it.

Photographically, this was like cheese and cheese.
Two cameras: 
Leica M2 with the old Canon/Serenar 28mm f3.5
Nikon F with the pre-Ai 24mm f2.8

Film and developer both times was Delta 400 at EI 200 and it was developed in Pyrocat-HD.
They both look pretty different.
I also am wondering whether there's a light leak or something going on with the Nikon, as there's some extra sprocket density which doesn't seem to be apparent on the Leica frames. 
It could of course be occurring when I am printing - I'm using a filed-out carrier on the DeVere so that I can print full-frame. And yes, before you ask, I've used some blacking to get rid of any reflections from the edges of the carrier.
Anyway, it is really hard to say and I suppose I should dedicate some time to finding out what is going on . . . it is very annoying to say the least. 
But anyway, rather than trying to retouch it softwarily, I'll just let it be. 
See what you think.
If you've any thoughts, please chime in. 
Opinions are always welcome around here.

Ok, first up a few from a really tiddly day with a camera - scrounged around the town a bit, hit the pub about 12 had a lovely lunch and got home about 7 - great fun and all exposures guessed.
The camera was the Leica M2/Canon 28mm combo.


Abandoned Car At The Bird House

Lost Building At The Back Of The Murraygate

Coats Please

Sadly no pub pictures were added, because I didn't print them with this session, but here's some hairy scans from the rest of the film.
I suppose they don't look too bad considering.


Tiddly 1

Tiddly 2

Mennies - Quiet Afternoon

Wellcome Foundation Building

Weird Light - Murraygate, Dundee

And now we're onto the Nikon film - I was more careful with this, metering every shot as best I could given the extreme cutting sunshine at a relatively early hour and what with the Big Yellow Thing being closer to the horizon and all that.
Again, these are all prints on Tetenal TT (ta-ta!).


Unknown Location

A Nifty In The V&A

Dundee/Moscow

Hurt

Another Lost Lane

OK - unfortunately this is where the shiitake mushrooms hit the fan, because, in the words of our sponsors:

 "The surge is strong with these Luke!"


Seabraes Bridge

Not That F'ing Thing AGAIN

Dundee Waterfront Trials For Re-Creation Of Led Zeppelin's Presence

Abandoned Lifeboat


Shame eh - I love the light on the Bridge and Presence and the Lifeboat.
Now I suppose most photographic blogs wouldn't wash their dirty pants in public, 

A: because it is pretty gross

and 

B: because they want to prove they're invincible

but not here, oh no - these are Shurgetastic Mate . . . see what I mean.
Weird isn't it.
I've no idea because there doesn't seem to be any extra density on the negatives.

AT THIS POINT YOUR FEARLESS AUTHOR ARGUED HIMSELF INTO SUBMISSION AND:

Anyway, as I was writing this and everything was in one place as it were, I thought, why not check it now and it IS being created in the printing process, as I have just scanned some of the negatives of the above prints and the density is definitely not there.

Och well . . . have to be more careful with my masking . . . not so easy - might have to do some precision taping over the top of the glassless carrier, or use the sliding masks though I always feel you get a sort of penumbra of less density from those. If you have any thoughts on negative masking with printing full frame (and especially on a DeVere) please speak!

Well, I guess that's it really. Nothing much else to report, though I will say I have done something recently photographically which I have never done before, and, you know that stuff they tell you about exposed film needing to be processed as soon as possible? Watch this space.

Take care, stay safe and keep taking the beers. 
Don't know about you, but this whole thing is making me drink more . . at least, that's my excuse.