Wednesday, September 21, 2016

Ogden's Not Gone Flake

Morning folks - this is a brief one, rather like those undies you used to wear when you were young . .. sigh, oh so different to the rubber-lined buckets that are required with old age . . . not wearing those?

Oh lucky person.

I was actually a fan of 'commando' for most of my early life . . . yes I can hear the titters around the world; initially it was a comfort thing, but come the big world of work, you try working with a shrink-wrap machine in a stockroom with no windows and no ventilation in 95° Farenheit of dry, plastic-debris filled heat. It was no fun (as well as being exceptionally detrimental to my health - thank you Virgin Records) and add to the mix tight stretch jeans (now commonplace on the UK High Street, but in my day, special order jobs from the States no less) and you have a recipe for some of the worst heat-rash known to man . . . so . . . 'commando' it was.

Anyway, you'll be pleased to hear I am still alive after another Summer of DIY and (sadly) very little printing.
Some photographic things have changed.
The Canon EOS has gone. It was a nice camera and all that, but to be honest, was little used and I just couldn't get on with the lens - no character.
So what did I do with my £260? (A little aside, that was a loss of around £90 in under a year . . . good old technology)
More didge I am afraid - this time the little Sony A6000. Steve and I had a conversation in which he said that even though it hadn't arrived (at the time) I'd end up hating it . . . by the end of the convo I had sold it to him in advance for a fiver . . oh how we larfed!
And the reason for this madness? well as you're no doubt aware, there's a plethora of adapters available for the Sony E mount, so I got a Metabones one for my most numerous of lenses, the Nikon F mount. Why Metabones when I could have bought a £10 one from ebay? Build and binding. The Metabones is brass and stainless steel, it won't bind to lens or camera - if you've ever had a brown-trouser moment from trying to get an aluminium filter off the front of an expensive lens and failing, then you'll realise how important brass is to camera screwy things.

You'll know my feelings about Nikons of course - ever reliable and useable.
I had the choice in my armoury of the 28mm f3.5 Nikkor, or one of my 35mm's (a f2 'O' and a f2.8 'K' Series). In a few brief trials, the 35mm 'O' won out and that is what is now mounted to it (with its front protected by a 1960's Nikon Skylight filter).
It's approximately equivalent to 46mm in old money, in other words slightly short of yer trad 'standard' lens.
Having only ever used these pre-Ai Nikkors in monochrome and with film I have to say it has been a total joy to see their character revealed in living Technicolor.
I am rather pleased actually, and whilst this line-up will never replace any film camera, you know what (whisper it) as modern cameras go, the Sony is surprisingly well thought out and more of a photographer's camera than a thing you stare at, look at the offending menu and say to yourself "What the feck did I just do?" (as was the case with the Canon).
In other words, whilst the options are there in spades, they can quickly be smashed out of the way to allow you to use the camera more like an film SLR from the 1990's.
Everything just works(ish).
So, here's some examples of ancient glass at work in a modern environment  - they won't win photographer of the year, but I like them.






































See what I mean - yes there's flare and all the wonderful messy shite people seem to spend half their life trying to eliminate these days, but they have character and are not at all tardy for a lens from about 1971.

If only my pants from that time still delivered these results . . . sadly they've gone to the great skidmark in the sky . . . farewell my famous old Jockey yellow and brown (trimmed, not stained) Y-fronts.

And that's it folks - just a quickie. I've got lots of other traditionally-themed stuff lined up, but I just need to get my act together.
I am sure I will - Scotland is now quickly adopting an Autumnal hue - it's dark when I get up . . where did the Summer go?
TTFN and remember, mony a mickle maks a muckle.











Friday, July 08, 2016

Stepping Up To The Mark

Morning folks - it has been a long time hasn't it, and my apologies, but well, this is Scotland, you have to make the most of the daylight and sunshine when it comes, or else rickets and S.A.D. is the order of the day!
I have had some very exciting times photographically over the past couple of months, what with new developers being tried, holidays and travails that resulted in some unexpected results, and, the realisation that whilst I own a vast array of 35mm camera lenses, I have never owned the right one . . that is until now.

Coo, that's exciting isn't it!
 
Well, I note the trace of irony and scepticism in your sneering, lip-curl, and one man's meat and all that, but for my humble purposes, what I have said seems to fit the bill, so, step up to the mark, Herr Brille . . . my new (very old), beautiful, best damn 35mm lens I have ever owned . . . a 1958 Leitz 35mm f/3.5 Summaron.





There he is, and he looks lovely don't you think?
But before we get into the nitty gritty of why I am expounding, I'll preface this with some hunting and research.

I don't know about you, but I look at a lot of photographs, a lot. And when you expose yourself to such vast quantities and start thinking about things, one thing comes clear with regard to photography, we might have got sharper, we might well be able to control flare and boost contrast, but you know what, I don't think lens design is quite what it was.
The strange thing is, that the numerous 'vintage' Japanese lenses I have (1959-ish Canon 28mm f3.5 LTM, 1960-ish Canon 50mm f2.8 LTM, lots of Nikon SLR lenses [running the gamut from a 55mm auto-compensating Micro-Nikkor through to an early 80's 28mm f.3.5]; even my journey into Pentax K-Mount resulting in the excellent 50mm f/.1.4 SMC) all look remarkably similar - they're contrasty, and in a way that stands parallel with a lot of modern lenses too. Obviously there are exceptions - the one that stands out in my collection is the 28mm LTM f3.5 Canon, but even that is sharp and quite contrasty, not ott contrasty, but enough to make me feel that it just isn't quite there for 'the look'.

'The Look' Sheepy - wot dat den?

Well that's a hard thing to define really, but it is sharp and soft and mildly-contrasty, but not overly soot and whitewash, just a sort of overall cream that is defined.
There, that's the look old son, and good luck trying to find it, but the thing is you can if you look hard enough And I did, so . . . enter the Summaron.
Now looking around out there you'll find a lot of mention of the 35mm f2.8 Summaron, Rockwell and all these guys saying it's the dog's danglers, and whilst it might be for a lot of people, for me, it is just a tad too contrasty, and reading through some Leica literature, it becomes obvious why . . they changed the glass!
The f3.5 and f2.8 Summarons are optically identical as far as I can make out, with the exception that the f2.8 was made possible by using newer and more effective glass, but what that glass has done apart from adding the extra stop, is made things more contrasty, and that was just a step too far.
Now, just reviewing that, it is like it's some new revelation - so please bear in mind this happened a long time ago, when old Sheephouse was nothing more than a speck in the eye of God. It's old knowledge, but a quote from Kisselbach's Leica Handbook book states it clearly:

"35mm. Summaron f/2.8

This is a six-lens Gauss type.
The introduction of new types of glass has made it possible to increase the speed of the well-tried 35mm Summaron to f/2.8. It's colour correction has also been improved."

f/2.8 Summaron


f/3.5 Summaron (sorry for the poor quality!)


There are tiny differences if you look hard at it (a slight sphericity to part of the rear inner element on the 2.8; less air gap on the 2.8 and a lesser proportion of spherical to the front inner group on the 2.8) but one wonders whether that could just be down to differentiations with illustrators - who knows (last minute editorial add-on: actually, I found another diagram of the f/.2.8 in the Focal Press classic "Photographic Optics" by Arthur Cox, and it is identical to the 3.5 . . . !)
It looks pretty damn similar though doesn't it, so unless you need that extra stop and contrast, why buy the f2.8 when you can get the f3.5 instead!

The full specs are here:

f/.2.8   http://www.l-camera-forum.com/leica-wiki.en/index.php/Summaron_f%3D_3.5_cm_1:2.8

f/.3.5   http://www.l-camera-forum.com/leica-wiki.en/index.php/Summaron_f%3D_3.5_cm_1:3.5

Show Wotsh It Loik en Sheepsh, eh? Wotsh It Loik?

Sorre - oiv jus red Riddley Walker by Russel Hoban . . yewd need to reed it to no wot im on abowt, it hav alot in comon wiv Down Wiv Skool.

Anyway, what's it like?
Ah, this is where I go all gooey-eyed . . .
It's like peaches and cream; like fish and chips; like pasta and tomatoes. In other words it's the perfect compliment to my dreams! I know this all sounds rather flowery, so please let me qualify it.

I'm not a 35mm camera user really as I have always been inclined to the larger things in life like plates of food, shoes, hats, guitar collections and so on, but this being said I seem to have acquired rather too many 35mm cameras (about 12 at last count)!
It's kind of mad actually, so much so, that at the start of the year I said to myself, I am going to sell everything except for my trusty Nikon F.
Now obviously that would have meant a massive clearout, and it might still get done, however included in my list of 'have to go' things, was, dare I say it, the Leica M2!
I know!! 
But I felt there was enough money tied up in it and the differing lenses, to enable me to maybe get another lens for the Hasselblad, or, a CF tripod.
I felt sad, but also thought, well, you know, it's a devil of a lot of money tied up in the whole system and maybe it would suit some other person and go on giving them a lovely photographic experience in the same way it had me.
Then a dichotomy weighed in, because you see I was also enamoured with the LTM Canon 28mm!
I liked the slightly wider viewpoint,  and so to that end (and thinking I'd just be Nikons from there in) I purchased a 'K-Series'** 28mm f3.5 Nikkor for the F. It was very reasonably priced and I used it on a trip to Moffat and thoroughly enjoyed it - here's an example of what it can do if used carefully!


            


Now I think that is actually a fine photo - the graffiti on the plexiglass really stands out on the print, but for all my enjoyment of the lens I felt that something was missing and I couldn't place it, so, after reviewing some ancient prints I nagged myself into thinking that the best lens I'd ever used on the F was the old and venerable 35mm f2 "O" Nikkor . . . which was (and is) great.

But still something nagged and from that, I thought well how about other 35mm lenses for other systems? The f2 is a great lens for the Nikon, but I found myself seriously contemplating Canon SLRs, Leicaflex and Minolta and Olympus and then I found myself drawn to old books of monochrome photos, and also my old (M5 era) Leica Manual.

Mary Ellen Mark and Bill Pierce had all contributed photos to the Manual that I admired (though they were probably using Summicrons, however, I think possibly not given the contrast of a Summicron . . anyway . . I am wittering) and sadly for my pocket that made me think, that there really was something about the late-'50's and 1960's Leitz 35mm focal length that had something.
It was a look I loved.
Sharp, not too contrasty, but perhaps best of all, the most incredible skin tones, so, suitably having talked myself into it, I raided my piggy-bank and Alec Turnip's Uni fund and bought one.

























Now the one thing I will say about these is that as well as the obvious attributes of the lens, there's been a bit of secret-squirelling too . . . Pyrocat-HD!
But that's a different story which I will write up - it has been a process of discovery and revelation and one I am enjoying very much . . and, unusually for me, these ARE ALL NEGATIVE SCANS. That's right - not prints, though you'd think they could well be - but nope they're all from the super-crumby, base-metal Epson Photo Perfection V300 flatbed - imagine what you could get with a dedicated film scanner! To be honest, I've never had such consistent and beautiful negatives before with any developer, and some 120 negatives I've also developed with Pyrocat, print beautifully.


But anyway, onwards with the Summaron.
It's wonderful to me, but does fall (slightly) short in a few areas, and especially so if you are comparing to a more 'modern' lens:

1. Basically any strong light source that is even remotely near the front element will cause that lovely veil of flare. Now my lens is clean, totally clean, but even with the requisite (and feckingly stupidly expensive) correct lens hood, you'll still get it, so urge your subjects to move so you can have the sun at your back . . luckily this is Scotland, so there's little sun and it is in overcast conditions that this really comes to life.

2. The aperture selection bit is quite difficult to use, and even more so with a correct lens hood on! But you get used to it, learn to anticipate and take things from there.

3. If you are using the M3 be-spectacled version on anything other than an M3, I think you'll find that there is enough play (and I mean tiny) to put your rangefinder out vertically. It still focuses with ultra-accuracy normally and horizontally - that's fine - but you will notice that the there's a slight differentiation along the top edge of the rangefinder window. It didn't affect the image making in any way whatsoever. But of course that might just be with my camera . . .

4./ Nothing!

I feel it's as near a perfect fit (for me) as I could ever wish for (as evidenced by the photographs above).
OK, the first three exhibit that flare, but the rest . . well you get the idea!

Good mate Bruce of The Online Darkroom reckoned they had a James Ravilious look to them, so that is fine by me. You're not quite getting that super-low contrast you'll get with really early Leitz lenses, but you are getting some of it . . but that's OK - learn to live with it because it is giving you more, much more: crisp micro-contrast and detail, smooth oofa, and just a lovely vintage look.

At this moment in time, comparing Herr Brille with all the other 35mm lenses I have, I'll nail my trousers to the flagpole and say, this is the one I'll keep above all others.
There.
You can't be more definite than that.

So, there y'go, a new member of the family!
It's fun this photograhy stuff ain't it!

TTFN, thanks for reading and remember, chips. No, not C.H.I.P.S., that was a terrible show . . . no . . .chips.


** K-Series Nikkors were Nikkors made at the end of the pre-Ai period - optically similar to the new super-tooty Ai Series. They certainly seem to have attracted attention in recent years as being optically similar yet sharper than what preceded them and in some cases what came after - they're identifiable by serial numbers.










Thursday, May 12, 2016

(D)Evolution Of The Leica Snapshot

Howdy folks - today we're going to approach something that was so much of a scene, so hep it never became popular!
It was out there but it never came back.
So strim yer goatee, dig out your snappy duds, put on some sides . . .
Dig?
And let's get going!

Any of you out there with Theo Kisselbach's "Leica Handbook" will no doubt have had a chortle at the photograph of The Cat (actually not just any old cat, but a German one, looking cool, and it's hard to be cool when there's no bread and the Communists and the Capitalists are talking about dividing your country) taking what became known as a Leica Snapshot.
Wot's a Leica Snapshot then Sheepy?
Well, technically it isn't a Leica Snapshot as Kisselbach describes it as a "walking snapshot", but you'll know what it is . . . camera held at a low, hip level (dig? man that's groovy) vertically or horizontally in your hand, your focus and shutter speed pre-set and your big old (but totally groovin') thumb on the shutter release. 
Then all you do is slide man . . . 
And . . .
Snap!
There y'go, outta sight, you've a groovy masterpiece forever y'dig.
Like you get a note in there between C and C# and that's its own sound y'know. I mean, you can't call it C because it isn't . . . that's like dig.
Dig means Dig.
If it doesn't hang you up, it doesn't make it as a thing.

You must excuse the hip speak baby (and its nothing to do with Fecking Austin Feckin' Powers either) no man, we're in Germany in the early 60's with a Leica M2, neat threads, and some crazy side someone got in the American Zone.
I am of course alluding to one of the greatest albums of all time by two loose wigs - namely Del Close and John Brent.


Try and find a copy, sit back and laugh.
Dig yourself baby, you've got a way to go.
Once you get used to it, insanity can be the most normal thing in the world . . .

And somewhere near approaching insanity is what the walking snapshot has done to me.
Sorry, but I couldn't be bothered to separate the two 'covert' techniques photos, so both are detailed below, but it's the Cat (left hand figure in left hand photo in case your sexing radar is a bit off today) and the bit near the bottom (last paragraph of the text) that we're interested in.
Man . . . modern life.
So here he is, a young Cat, in the park, sliding, digging the scene, impressing his admiring Fräulein Chick with his stone-cold skills, and she too is juiced, impressing him with her similarly boss covert stance - all she needs is some rain-threads and she could be that Walker Evans cat on the New York Subway in the 1930's:

"Look - stop moaning baby, I've set it to 1/500th and f16 dig?"


The book states the following:




So, the "walking snapshot" - it's a hip scene isn't it?
Isn't it?
Well, er . . NO!
Baby, it's as difficult a technique to master as becoming a Shaolin monk.
It's so hard, man, it fried people's minds, it chewed the carpet, it split the juice, it . . .
OK . . .I'll stop now.
Indeed, it is so bloody hard that it has largely fallen out of favour, because it is just simpler to go up to people and shove your camera in their face.
So just what is so difficult about it then?
Well, what Herr Kisselbach doesn't mention is that it entirely depends on three things that have to be absolutely right, namely:

Aim 
Momentum
and  
Timing

 . . . but you've been there man. You're a hep cat, you know the scene, you've sacrificed a roll or two to practice, but you blew your wig, you chewed the rug when you realised that for every shot that worked, you had ten that don't.
 
I've tried this technique a number of times now and whilst it certainly beats lifting the camera to your eye, that little frame of film is entirely at the apex of a vastly complex physical equation involving:

Speed
Time
Momentum
Energy
 . . oh and . . .
Random chance

It's like the whole of chaos theory wrapped up into that one tiny moment of time as you pick your moment, and Click! your finger digs the scene!

Of course you can do things to mitigate the whole thing, like being super-careful, not jabbing at the shutter release, suspending your body motion and poising for a brief moment and being totally aware of everything as it is happening, but it still doesn't seem to work.
In fact, with a bit of scouring around it seems close to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle (just don't quote me on it)


But how does this relate to evolution?
Well, simply put, despite being a very small and sereptitious camera, the Leica in all its variations still looks like a camera, and it is big for such operations.
My thinking led me to the thoughts that if I don't mind a fixed focus lens I could use one of the smaller pre-noughties compacts and try it that way. The only problem with that, was that if using say an Olympus MjU, you've got that total bane of shutter lag, so I stripped that back and tried it with my lovely old Olympus Trip.

It was almost  a good camera for it - being that bit smaller. But it is still very much obviously a camera . . and not only that it has that stupid red flag that comes up every bloody time you have an interesting picture coming up, so you might be well-prepped and itching to go but at the last moment the camera decides "Nope - you're not wasting film on that!" and the shutter refuses to fire.
So I gave that up as a bad-show, and then happenstance and a kind gift from Bruce Robbins of Online Darkroom fame moved things along.
The gift?
A lovely Olympus XA2 in really lovely condition
In much the same way that the original Olympus XA was an evolutionary move on from the Trip, so, the humble XA2 was a move on from the XA, in that, there's simply nothing to complicate things.
It's simple.
Zone focus - you get a choice of three, close heads, heads and torsos, and mountains.
Automatic - set the EI/ASA and the camera does the rest for you, both aperture and shutter speed.
And it doesn't have anything that stops you from taking a photograph apart from a light in the viewfinder which tells you if things are getting iffy.
And then there's the main thing:  down low at hip height, held in your hand, it could look like a phone and no one pays a blind bit of notice of them do they?
Sounds ideal doesn't it!
Here's the tech specs:

    Lens D.Zuiko 35mm 1:3.5-22 (4 elements in 3 groups)
    Focal range 1.3m to infinity in 3 zones
    Shutter speeds 2s-1/750th aperture-priority automatic

Ally this with a super quite, super sensitive shutter (with NO shutter lag) and a wonderful wheel advance that is easily and discreetly moved by a few flicks of your thumb and you have a camera which is the ultimate in stealth!
I loaded it up and set off to work, winding and snapping like a good 'un. I couldn't even hear the shutter as I was moving, it being a focal plane/between lens elements job. Marvey!
It was a revelation to use - no one noticed, and I thought I had some stonking frames on my film.
And in came the wonder of film too, because unlike everything (or seemingly everything in life at the moment) this wasn't instantaneous gratification, nope, I had to wait . . to finish that long 36 exposure film and then the processing, and even then there was still no guarantee I had got anything at all worth using . .
But you know me - I can be obverse . . I love that aspect of photography where you see something good, take a photograph but just don't know whether it will be any good or not!
I suppose it is a form of oo! yah!, lay off with the split cane will you . . . masochism.
So where did all that waiting get us?
Shitesville, that's where!



Oops



Ditto



Bad Timing



Ditto



There's Something Perversely Pleasing About This One



Ditto - That's A Dog At The Left BTW



Pretty Boring  - But It Shows What Can Be Done With Care



Pick Up Thy Camera (To Eye-Level) And Snap



A Pretty Damn Good Little Lens Though - Shame About The Photographer


Y'see, the XA2's lens is fine, really fine, but you can't really tweak anything at all, the camera decides everything for you once you've set the focus and wound on, I mean you might well be able to get 1/750th at f3.5, but what use is that when you are trying to get a fair amount within the zone of focus? Sadly, for anything other than bright sunshine (this is Scotland - c'mon!) the XA2 and the "walking snapshot" don't really cog.
It's sad actually, because if you could just set it in stone and shoot, you'd have a very capable little machine, however if you live in sunnier climes, you might well find the XA2 to be a very capable little machine indeed.

So, I chewed some carpet, spat my spaghetti at the wall, dug what that crazy Gibson cat said and retired to my secret pad, to see if I could get the thing.
After much ruminating, goatee scratching, and bashing my brains against the lampstand, the lampstand came on, and I dug. I really did. 
It was crazy daddio, but first I needed to tweak the knobs.

If you've read FB for long enough (and if you haven't why not, it's a whole scene playing out in front of your eyes - a lot of people get it, some people even dig it) you'll realise there's nothing I like more than a bit of a tweak.
Pretty much the ultimate tweak for this sort of thing is a box-speed 400 ASA film, and a camera set at 1/125th of a second and f16. 
You've got to zone-focus baby, because, the zone is where it's at. 
Develop your masterpiece in some really aggressive developer (just in case) and let the film's latitude deal with any bad decisions and poor exposure. 
Oh and pray
Pray to Bird, or Monk, or Trane or Miles. 
Those cats are watching you. 
You'd better do them justice.

So I put the XA2 away, packed the crazy 1960 M2, but this time with the late '50's Canon 28mm f3.5 attached.
Sigh . . . here we go again . . .


Wides are cool. They dig the scene better than anything else, but you have to move those cats in close, closer than talc or else everything is too far out.
I dug what Ralph had said. 
I even dug where Sheephouse had excavated his technique and shoved it on a plate of loose beans in front of the modern world. 
Education man. 
Yeah, crazy.
Education. 
Helping others - that's a crazy scene.
So before setting out, I decided on mixing a bit of Ralph Gibson Experiment (Tri-X - 400 ASA, 1/125th of a second, f16 in sunny conditions, developed in Rodinal) with a bit of Zone focus magic. 
And what did I have
I had a thing.
A crazy, complex, small, simple and quiet Leica Snapshot Machine
The rain came out to play and so did I.


That's the edge of my threads . . . and Ali's nose



Ok - This Was A 'Proper' Photograph - But Dig That Krazy Kanon Glow!


This Chick Looked Fierce, But She Had A Collection Of Cakes In A Bag, So She Must Have Been Alright.


A Scene Going Down - We Vamoosed

She Was Concentrating On Pushing So Much, She Nearly Ran Me Down


They Were Concentrating On Their Destination Of Starbucks, They Nearly Ran Me Down.


But it never came off.
Sady The Uncertainty Principle caught me up in its complexity - you see what I mean, Shitesville City and all it's satellite towns too!
For all my care and even with a fixed fixed shutter speed and a bit more poise, I still found it utterly impossible to take what I would call a decent photograph.

This being said, I kind of like some of these in a crazy way.

There's a perverse sense that someday . . . maybe someday . . . something will turn out right and I'll get there.
But till then . . .
If you fancy having a go, by all means do . . . 

Just don't come blowing my horn when you're 2 rolls down and cracking your nut.

Monday, April 18, 2016

Stumbling Into The Light

You know there's that thing called a Preternatural Glow that can precede dawn (so long as it isn't overcast)?
Well, as a long-time very early riser, I can confirm that there is - it's my favourite time of day too and often brings to mind the best photograph I've ever seen in my life.
Well, at least it might have been the best photograph I've ever seen in my life, had I had
a/ a small tripod
and
b/ a loaded camera!


My Dad used to have this great saying: 

The Things You See When You Haven't Got Your Gun 

It's a great saying and in my case could easily have been applied to my photographic unpreparedness.
I was driving along near The Caterthuns in Angus - they're two iron Age hillforts outside Brechin and my goodness the view from the top is astonishing. Anyway, it was pre-dawn, really dark, and I was bumbling along a lane in my old Nissan Micra and there before me (outwith the reach of my headlight beams) was a spread of land that opened out from the high country I was in, for miles and miles downwards to the Eastern horizon and the North Sea.
It was like the land had been cut away for my pleasure and wonder and I had this downward slope of immense landscape to bask in; and there, huddled together in the field beside the road, was a smallish herd of cows.
I like cows - you know where you stand with a cow, anyway, this lot were all lying down, cudding away, and to a cow, were watching the dawn coming on in the same way I was.
The light was so faint it only lit them gently, but they all had a look of utter peace on their faces.
Cows appreciate the unusual and art - did you know that? It's true - whenever my Mum used to hang washing on our whirlygig washing line, it always attracted a herd of interested moos who would stand and watch for ages until they'd eaten all the grass nearby in the adjacent field and then wander off murmuring appreciatively. .
Anyway, I digress - I stopped the car on the tight verge, switched off the engine, rolled down the window and listened. There was a massive silence gently filled with warm cow sounds (no not that Jenkins . . . report to the headmaster immediately) and a sense of all not only being right with the world, but also a sense of peace which literally did pass all understanding.
It was incredible and had I a camera that could have frozen the moment, I would have done so and astonished people, but sadly, that was not the case, and so the scene is forever only imprinted in my memory until I shuffle off to the immortal skip . . .
But that was the glow, the preternatural glow. It softened and made so very beautiful the faces of the cows and draped itself so gently over the world that it turned the astonishingly ordinary into something otherworldly and timeless.
It was a herald of good portents for the day and lifted my spirit to soar upon the morning breeze (yes you've got to feed the inner caveman sometimes) and this is what it did.


Photographic, Silver Gelatin prints can have that glow too. 
It's a rare thing but does seems to be do-able. 
I've seen it in real prints from the masters at exhibitions, I've seen it in a wonderful book on the Maggie's Centre in Dundee, by Peter Goldsmith and I've also seen it in some incredibly early Photogravures from the pages of Camera Work. 
Incredibly to me, I've even sometimes seen it in my own prints . . . but it's rarer than rocking-horse shit, however sometimes you just stumble upon a combination that works.
In my case, it was FP4 rated at EI 80 developed in 1+50 Rodinal (well, R09) at 20C. 
The resulting negatives were printed on ancient, long-expired Agfa MCC at Grade 4 (100 Magenta on my DeVere head) - I've had to use this equivalent grade to bring the paper back to life - anything less and the paper is mud - my goodness though, I wish I had a dozen or so boxes of it.  
The prints were developed very ordinarily in Fotospeed developer, Kodak stop and Ilford fix and given standard Selenium toning for archival purposes. And that was it! Incredibly exposure was standardised at 16 seconds at f22 on my Vivitar lens, with a tiny (and I mean tiny) bit of burning judiciously applied here and there. 
There was no Split-Grade Faffing, no Wizard-Cape Theatricals, no Snake Oil - just straight printing
I often wonder with the screeds of books written about the darkroom dark arts, how much of it is snake oil. Get the exposure right in the camera, and printing should just come down to either expansion or contraction of contrast and a modicum of artistic license in the form of dodging and burning. To me, printing should be like that marvelous recipe your Grandmother passed down to your Mother - simple; any amount of tarting up just takes away from the utter simplicity of the original thing.
Anyway, scans below. Of course scanning can never duplicate the physical presence of a print, but you can get an idea - believe me, they do, on the whole, glow.































Please feel  free to comment - I am quite proud of these - they're printed about 8.5" x 8.5" on 9.5" x 12" paper and obviously I've cut the borders off to accomodate the image area in scanning . . . . 
Bruce Robbins reckons the look comes from a combination of light, surroundings and circumstance, and he could well be right. I'd set out to photograph some shoreline, but this being Scotland, it started pouring and I ended up getting stuck in the underpass bit of a certain well-known road bridge near me. It was really chucking outside, but inside it was weird and reflecty and damp and photographic! 
And yes, I know the third one has rendered me as a Brass Rubbing . . I quite like it. 
And I also know there's a bit of squintyness in the form of converging verticals - it was pretty dark in there.
Film as mentioned was FP4 - I like the look of it so much I am thinking it would be good to standardise on it - a truly great film.
And that's it really - I had a fantastic time photographing these and an even better time printing them.

TTFN and remember, pease pudding hot, pease pudding cold, pease pudding in the pot, nine days old.

Wednesday, February 24, 2016

Stretch Your Brain, Stretch Your Waistband, But Don't Forget To Stretch Your Negatives

Morning playmates - my apologies for not getting back to you before this, but, well, life can be an adventure at times can't it! Over a month has gone by and I've done precious little in the way of photography, but I will explain . . .  
The source of my adventure? the dreaded unsupported-ness of Windows XP . . . 
Yes I know it should have been ditched years ago, but I've had far more prioritorial things to spend my hard-earned ackers on and a new computer wasn't one of them (though hopefully that will be changing soon)!
Anyway, around Christmas it occured to me that using XP was no longer really sensible - the world was getting slower and slower, browsers were taking forever to load and to be honest the sheer amount of time I wasted on keeping this machine running smoothly and securely was getting beyond the pale. I call myself the IT Department here at home, simply because I was spending a large proportion of every day just footering around and trying to get things right. But that was my position - a new computer wasn't possible, so, what was a man to do? Well it occured to me there was something that could help me out of a fix without costing the earth . . . well, without costing anything actually . . . it was something I had been contemplating for a while:

the weirdly techy world of Linux! 

Oh yes, I thought, a free operating system that can help me out of a fix! So, suitably determined, I backed up all my important files on an external drive, burned several discs of different Linux Distros (their word for variations in Operating Systems) slapped one in the drive, restarted, hit the BIOS settings of my machine, set it to boot off a CDRom, restarted and joined the world of the labcoat brigade.
Let's get this straight - my machine is ANCIENT as in 10 years old, tiny memory, small HDD, it was a low-level Tesco (but Philips built) machine designed as a package to get the average home user using. But it worked. That is until the world decided it was no longer fit for purpose and demanded bigger, faster! So, where did that leave your unfortunate hero? Up a bleeding gum-tree, that's where.
The thing is, maybe leaving the coat-tails of something you've been familiar with for years is a daunting prospect - I know it was for me. I've been a Windows user ever since we first got 'proper' computers in work back in about 1992 (and prior to that everything was done with catalogues and an Amstrad home computer). We used Windows 92 and then when XP came along everything changed - here was something that was useful, worked and was fun too and when the net came to work, well, when most of your day is spent researching new releases and reissues, then obviously it had its advantages!
So yes, making the big leap from unsecure and slow (in 2016) XP, was to say the least daunting.
But you know what, like a terrible landlord, once you've got past the onscreen "Oh you fecking idiot, you know you're going to completely evict 10 years worth of XP schtuff!" and "Help, No! We've nowhere to go!" then a real cavalier devil-may-care attitude overtakes you and before you know it, you're uninstalling and installing Linux Distros with gay abandon!
And that's the state I am in now. So here's a boring list of everything that did and didn't work - as you can see, I've been busy:

Ubuntu (doesnt work on my old machine).
Lubuntu (does work, but updates and then fails)
Xubuntu (does work)
Mint (does work but weird onscreen sizing made it unusable - I have a CRT monitor too!)
Debian (works well, but why breeze through something when you can spend an hour or two doing the same thing)
Elementary (the most user-friendly, but again onscreen sizing made it unusable)
Zorin (works, but can I get it to talk to my Epson scanner? can I feck**)

** In fact it was this thorny problem that stopped me using all of the above that worked. Linux does have a scanner system called SANE, but to be honest if you have an Epson machine you'll be hard pressed to get it functioning. I've downloaded goodness knows how many times the drivers from Epson; I've unzipped, unpacked, installed, un-installed, followed onscreen instructions from everywhere, used command line, used everything until I didn't know whether I was coming or going and to a man, they all failed . . apart from one.

At the moment I am using Q4 OS - it's a variation on Debian and is fairly user-friendly and actually looks and acts a little bit like Windows, except it isn't.
As I described it to my father-in-law, Windows and Mac OS is a bit like a lovely shop window and shop - you see something you want in the window, go in and take it to the counter and buy it - you then take it home and it works.
In Linux (any of them) you don't always see what you want in the window, but it is the correct shop, so you go in, walk up to the counter, ask if they have it in stock, get a part number and bin number and then go through to the stockroom and pick it yourself; then you take it home, plug it in and it might well work, but then again . . .

The thing is Linux is a fine concept, but as a community it is incredibly split-apart - now if ALL of the programmers got togeher in one great brain-mash and said look, this is this, that is that - they're both great (and believe me, a lot of Linux stuff is truly great) how about if we made it this way?
If a UNIFIED FRONT were applied, Linux (per se) would be an OS that an entire world could enjoy with ease.

Anyway, enough of that, I got my scanner working (thank heavens) though now, this morning the fecking prtiner has decided it doesn't want to work again! Schiiiiiite!!

You know, I read something funny along the lines of "Linux is only free if you don't value your time" and I am slightly of a mind to agree with that.

Anyway, enough, your toast is getting cold -

Photography Here


You know when you can't get a full-frame 6x6 print through a letter box, because letter boxes aren't square and the print is?
Yeah, it's quite a problem, so what do you do? That's right, you slice bits off of the top and the bottom so the print resembles a letterbox shape, that's better - it pops through nicely!

What am I talking about?
Well, it's that little known and very rare, but rather handy 6x3 Hasselblad panoramic adapter!

Back when  I bought Victor, I tried to accumulate a bunch of accessories too and this was one of them - it'll come in handy I thought - I rather like that stretchy panoramic look and allied to this, all the Hasselblad panoramic photos I had seen all had that nifty little marque of THE TWO V's - but the thing was and little did I realise at the time, that it apparently DOES NOT work with a 500 CM.
I exhaled a loud "Oh Shite!" when I read that.
Admittedly, I should have known -  it didn't fit in the customary Hasselblad way - but it did sort of.
For those of you who haven't a scooby about what I am on about, the adapter is an approx 6x6cm piece of metal with a precision cut (approx) 6x3cm slit in it - if you were to saw one in half, it would look like one of those squared-off bracket thingies you have to the left of the Enter Key on a standard keyboard!
You stuff it in the square opening by the light curtains on the back of a 'Blad and then mount your film back onto the camera. There's a plastic mask (ostensibly clear, well it is for the image bit, but then surrounded by a weird dimply/spotty bit, showing you what will and won't be masked) which  you pop onto the focus screen and then fit your weapon of viewing choice on top of it..
So where was this weirdness getting me?
I know, I really do - it's anathema isn't it - you get a 6x6 frame and then you waste approximately half of it!
But that isn't the point, and anyway, why should you care it doesn't fit the damn camera? It's my camera and my film, I'll do what I like.
Well, whisper it . . . actually . . . if you can find one, buy it now. It fits the 500CM.
OK, it doesn't sit in the space exactly properly - though it will actually, just not snug:


Correct way - might work:

[  Camera Body

Incorrect way - but it does work

Film Back ]

if you can make sense of that!

So, anyway, suitably armed and with a roll of 5 years past it's Use By Date Neopan 400, I set off on a dark and dismal day to see what would happen . . . oh, and I was under the cosh with regards to time - Dad Taxi waits for no man . . .

It was strangely easy getting used to using the cropped viewfinder - I'd had this before on the Rollei whereby I'd used the 645 adapter and this was much the same. Composing was (relatively) a cinch - just had to be careful of verticals (which I wasn't ).

Now these were all taken with the 60mm Distagon, but can you imagine using it with a 40mm Distagon?
It looks really wide already, and using a slow film and a non-grainy developer, you might well get some results that would make you think of larger or more famous Panoramic cameras or backs.
I could have got a Pano back for the 5x4 Wista, but you know what I am struggling to focus that these days - this is just so much more convenient (and not to say more stable in very windy conditions)






Stretch 1 - Crop
Yes I Know I've Got Converging Verticals.
Paper As Below.




Stretch 1 - Actual Work Print- Really Bad Scan
The Perils Of Scanning Resin Coated Paper.
Marks Are From Resin/Scanner Contact Point
Paper Is Ancient Fotospeed, Hence A Bit Lacking In Contrast.




Stretch 2 - Crop
The Perils Of Using Unfamiliar Software . . .
This Is XnView - I Am Used To Irfanview.
Paper As Above




Stretch 3 - Crop
A Bit Squinty, But A Bit Better . . .
Random Puddle At Dundee Uni.
Paper As Above


Well, they're pretty crap prints aren't they, but never mind, it was an experiment - I see where I went wrong and won't do it again (promise) - I reckon in the landscape with a good vista, they might be fine - also, naturally the film plane on the 'Blad is rock solid, so you've no problems with curves or anything - take it from me, the frames are pin-straight.

I'll take more care next time.

Anyway, I s'pose the whole point of this is that if you have to, you can change things and think outside the box. I've made something work that wasn't supposed to work, and with regard to my computer I am having to relearn new software just to replace my old stuff.

XnView and Gimp seem pretty decent replacements for Irfanview and T'P'shop (CS2) respectively. No doubt if I had had more time I could have used Gimp more effectively, but the scanner problems were such a total nightmare that time shot out of the window never to return!

So until I win the lottery or something, this will have to be this - who'd have thought getting a Blog up and before your eyes could take such an amount of effort . . and was it worth it!

Anyway, till next time, one potato, two potato, three potato, four, five potato, six potato, seven potato, more.
 

Wednesday, January 06, 2016

Amateur Hour


Morning folks and greetings from the land of night.
Tayside has, for nearly a week now, been caught in a repeat system of low pressure and the sun hasn't really shone at all - in fact it has been a week of unrelenting rain and dreichness the like of which I can't ever remember. So on that note, I thought I'd cheer us all up with a trip back in time!

About 30-odd years ago, after my father had died and I had moved away to the all too distant environs of Dundee, my Mother (a woman of great resources and proper Blitz Spirit) battled on valiantly in our little cottage in the middle of nowhere.
I've written a lot about that place because it still means so much to me, however for her it was a rural solitude too far. She did try, but eventually succumbed to the intense loneliness, and, typical of her nature, decided she had to do something about it. So, aided and abetted by my Sister she decided she would like to move back to my Father's birthplace, Lincolnshire. She got a map, stuck a pin in it (literally) and looked at properties in the environs of the pin, ending up in a wonderful wee village about 20 miles from Boston, called South Kyme.
At the time I thought she was mad, truly barking, but after I visited her I realised that she'd made exactly the right choice. South Kyme had (at the time) a pub and a shop/post office and one of the strongest community spirits one could ever wish for. Community spirit isn't for everyone mind, but for Mum is was perfect and exactly the sort of elixir a sorrow and silence-hardened spirit could wish for. They welcomed her with open arms and she, in her typically ebullient nature, made friends quickly.
Her cottage was a semi-detached farm worker's cottage, it was small, cosy, had no front door (because of the prevailing winds), had an inside and outside toilet, an old pig-shed and a wonderfully overgrown garden that needed licking into shape. For Mum it was a panacea. The wonderful sandy soils of Lincolnshire meant she could grow wonderful veg, and everything she touched seemed to turn to green abundance. It was a little oasis of peace and happiness and very much a place of her making.
Ali and I visited it together before we were married (obviously I'd visited it before that too) and then at semi-regular intervals thereafter. When Alex Turnips came along we took him too and he loved the garden, my Mum's cooking and her slightly dotty happiness. The cottage only had two bedrooms - Mum's was at the front, and the guest room was at the rear. This initially had 2 single beds in it, but eventually this was changed to an enormous double on the bottom, double on the top, bunk affair, which took up the majority of the room, but was fun and comfortable.

Yes OK Sheepy, very interesting, but wot has it got to do with us?

OK - nothing actually, but it sort of does, because whilst staying in South Kyme I was fortunate enough to have several really good photographic adventures, so I am going to detail one of them and explain why I have decided to re-print the negatives.
At the time life was photographically very simple for me - I had a couple of cameras, but really all I ever used was my 1965 Rolleiflex T (called Ollie) and a rather spindly but functional Slik tabletop tripod. Metering was done by the ever-present Gossen Lunasix 3S, and apart from a cable release, that as they say was shallot. Incredibly simple really - I had a 16-on conversion kit for Ollie, but I rarely used it. Obviously though, as is so typical of our hobby, I hungered for better gear.
It is so typical isn't it - you always think the grass is greener and the better image is over the next horizon/new camera and life goes onwards till there really isn't much further to go and I've done that.
LF? Yep - TWO 5x4 cameras . . . no 10x8 though, that always seemed a bridge too far from the lugging around point of view. 
Good 35mm? Yep - got a Leica, got a full range of Nikon F stuff too. 
120? Well, yeah apart from the aforementioned Ollie, I also have a really nice old Minolta Autocord with an astonishingly good lens; I've also got the Koni-Omega rapid with the 90mm Super Omegon - again a truly wonderful lens, and really I have taken my 120 leanings to their nadir with the Hasselblad and the 60mm Distagon which is without doubt worthy of its reputation and the best lens I own . . . so where do I go now?
Well it's kind of perverse and in rather the same way that purchasing a Paul Reed Smith customised Custom 24 back in the early 90's (ordered from the factory no less) made me feel that I didn't ever need to struggle with guitar playing and subsequently meant I virtually never played another note on a guitar, so, buying the Hasselblad has all but deflated my photographic sails for the moment. 
I haven't wanted to buy a single thing since buying it, because where do you go? 
And more importantly WHY?
I love using the Hasselblad so much I feel that maybe I should cut-out everything else and just use it but then I know that won't do and I'll want to move into other formats at other points of time . . . and although this is an aside, it was this feeling about using my old cameras that made me think about my friend Ollie The Rollei again and realise that what I had with him was a very special relationship. 
So I started re-examining the several hundred rolls of film I'd taken with him and that led me to remembering photographic journeys and that led me to thinking about my Mum's hoose and hence this blog! 
You see, being a Sheephouse isn't all random stuff - there are sometimes thought processes involved and sometimes they work out fine!
So you've got the setting and the camera - how about film?
At the time I was using a combination of TMAX 100 and HP5+, but what I had forgotten from the notes was that I used Ilford's incredible Perceptol exclusively. 
I think that was Barry Thornton’s influence - I seem to remember him going on about it in "Edge of Darkness" - a great book by the way and well worth reading. In my notes I have written that I used it at a Dilution of 1:3 and at around 24° Centigrade, which seems way too hot, but that's what I have written.

Oh yeah, here's another aside:
Speaking to Bruce and people at Scottish Photographers meetings it seems like organisation of photographic media is something virtually non-existent
Why? 
It is easy and about a billion-times worth doing in that you can find things easily. For this blog, I went to my notebooks (which I have kept since film number 28) had a quick trawl through to 2004, scanned the notes, got the film numbers, found the negatives (all numerically organised per format) got the contact prints, again numerically organised and stored in boxes per format and went to the darkroom. The whole exercise took under 5 minutes. 
There was no 
"Oh schhhhhit, where the feck are those fecking negs? I knew I had them here, but they've gone OH SCCCCCHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHIT!" 
Nope, I tra-la-la'd and skipped all the way to the darkroom from my study (a skip of albeit two skips, but all the same). I did the printing and filed everything back where it belongs. 
A Piece of Piddle.
So all I can say to you, is that, if you haven't got your negatives and contacts organised, please spend some time and do so - doesn't take long, can be as simple or not as you like (I like 66/1, 66/2, 66/3 . . or 35/1, 35/2, 35/3, or 54/1 . . . get my drift?) but is so worth doing I shouldn't even be telling you.


Right, onwards with the printing (at last they cry, at last) and here to welcome you to her lovely hoose is my old Mum, Lillian Mary Ellen Rogers - be sure to get some fresh welshcakes and butter too whilst you're on your tenth cup of tea!



Lillian Rogers

Actually, this is from the same bunch of films the prints for the article are from. That one was made on Kodak TMX 100 and developed in dilute Perceptol.
It was made on Ollie the Rollei at f5.6. No idea of the shutter speed though. It was handheld too and demonstrates why Rolleis are probably the ultimate portrait-making tools.
It has captured my Mum perfectly and of a lifetime of photos, I think this is my favourite.
The print of Mum is an older print, on Ilford Grade 2 Galerie - it is untoned, and I made it about 4 years ago. I haven't needed to change any contrast or brightness whilst scanning - it is, as is.

Right, the prints below are all reprints.
I had had a go printing them all back in 2004 when the negatives were made but I always felt the prints made then lacked that certain something and were a bit heavy-handed as it were - you'll know what I mean if you print much - things were either too contrasty or too dark or the balance was off a bit, or I'd just not got things spot on . . . you know the sort of thing.
These reprints were all printed on that ancient Agfa MCC fibre I have been trying to use up, and because of base-fog, they've all been printed at the equivalent of Grade 4 (I dialled in 100 units of Magenta on the DeVere's colour head).
Despite its obvious age, the Agfa is still an extraordinary paper and I fell whilst the scans below are OK, they haven't done any justice to the prints physical qualities - there's an air of the wonderful fenland liquid light visible in the paper which doesn't translate very well to the screen. Och well, that's life I suppose - you could maybe pop over some time and have a cup o' tea and I'll show them to you . . .
The prints are all developed in Fotospeed developer, stopped in Kodak Indicator and fixed in Ilford Rapid and then toned in Kodak Selenium and air dried by hanging from a line in my darkroom using plastic clothes pegs - why plastic? Wooden ones actually transfer splinters to the print! I had to use a little PotFerry on print 3 just to aid the atmosphere, this was thoroughly washed under running water before the selenium - if you don't you end up with mysterious staining.
Oh, and that curious curve to the rebate at the top of every frame? It's the curve of the film as the photographs were taken - these negatives were held in the glass carrier on my DeVere (and were thus utterly flatter than a piece of paper, steam-rollered and then placed under a 20 ton weight - in other words FLAT) and whilst I always do that old photo-journalist trick of braking the feeder spool (with my thumb - thus increasing film tension) as I am loading the take-up spool on Ollie (and indeed any camera that uses 120 film) it has done nothing to take away the horizontal curve across the film's horizontality (as it were) . . . see me afterwards for a more thorough explanation!
See what you think though and I'll detail the wee adventure after . . . just going to go and put the kettle on.



Kyme Fen 1





Kyme Fen 2





Kyme Fen 3




 
Kyme Fen 4 



The adventure unfolds:

Now, if you can imagine . . . it doesn't happen very often in this world these days, but I was awoken by a cock crowing! I guess a lot of people would call it annoying, but I think my farm boy genetic roots didn't mind at all - a new day was dawning, so it was up and at 'em!
The light was just greying into life and I left Ali and Joe soundly asleep in the bunks, hauled my 'outdoor' clothes on, grabbed the camera and tripod and crept downstairs and out into the mild and mystical dawn. Dawn, especially in Spring and Summer is my favourite time of day - the air just smells right and there's no noisy cars around, though this being rural Lincolnshire there was a fair bit of haulage going on - farm produce and livestock - that sort of thing.
The Kyme Eau (which is what it is called) will give you an idea of the areas deep roots, and though that is a Norman name, in reality this little piece of heaven was undrained Fenland occupied by fishers and farmers right back into the Neolithic.
There was a fantastic book about SK by Margaret Newton - it was called "South Kyme - The History Of A Fenland Village" (ISBN 0952481804) . . . good luck finding a copy if you're interested!
Anyway, luckily for me, even though the area is 'proper' working farmland and has been worked and worked for centuries, somehow the light which must have shone over those olden Fens has been retained and there is an air of stepping back in time (despite the telegraph poles in KF 2 and rubbish like the MacDonald’s carton in KF 4).
On that morning that light existed.
It is watery and soft and translates beautifully into silvery greys in prints. Honest, it is so transaparent and fresh and quite unlike anywhere else. The skies are big too around that part of the world due to the flatness of the land and this lends a vast airiness to the overall scene.
As I stepped out along The High Street (actually just a road through the village - if you want to see it - Google Maps - put in the postcode LN4 4AD) I could feel an atmosphere gathering. As I often do when setting out to seriously make photographs, the combined weight of all the old 'tog ghosts lands upon my shoulders willing me on to make the most of it.
I turned left and heading towards the Church following the metalled road and then climbed a gate to access the path that runs along the river. The Church is beautiful and was visited a number of times by Henry VIII - it still retains that air of a place cut-off from the world and it really was like stepping back in time.
The fields shimmered with a really heavy dew and my feet and trousers were utterly soaked in a few steps, but what did that matter to me! The dawn chorus was full-on, spiders webs dripped with dew and light and I can truly say that life doesn't really get much better.
Aware of just how fleeting the dawn was, I shot quickly with the Rollei T mounted on my trusty, Bambi-legged Slik tripod and an old Prontor cable release pressed into action.
I surprised myself, getting more soaked as I strode boldly across wet fields. No wellies for me - pah!
Here are the notes I made at the time:



Please excuse the scrawl, but I can read it . . .
And then the sun arose properly bathing me in warmth and light and making my trousers steam! I knew that that was it, I could take no more, but with a little luck I had got what I wanted to get.
The proof though would be in the developing.
I slowly wandered back to Mum's house breathing the fresh air and listening to the sounds of a world awakening.
I let myself in, quietly climbed the incredibly narrow and steep staircase, snecked the latch on the bedroom door, got undressed and slipped back into bed beside a warm wife and (despite the cock still crowing) went back to sleep for another couple of hours.
We got up to my Mum's clatter and her usual "just-to-get-you-going" mega-feast of breakfast and another day of our holiday.


Now that Mum is dead I can look back on those holidays we had there with great fondness for all the laughter and fun and talk.
Ansel Adams once said someone described Edward Weston's Carmel house as "the little house with the big mood" . . . I think I can say the same about South Kyme.


And on a final note:
 
I know most of you probably think it is a faff, however time and again I've found making notes about every film you expose to be revelatory and totally useful at later dates! My original notes were made in a small Tesco notebook, however these days, my notebook of preference is a nice little ruled Moleskine - they're well-made, have acid free paper and the little band to hold the pages together lasts and lasts. I usually detail everything like exposure, lighting conditions, film, film number, developer, temperature, agitation as well as small details of the trip - here's a recent trip:




They really do come to life, especially after a few months have gone and you've forgotten everything you did to make a certain picture. As far as I am concerned, make notes - it's a no-brainer.

TTFN and remember to phone your Mum.