Auld (R)Age

Morning folks - hope everyone is well.

The Winter is starting to draw in with a great rapidity that I never like, though this year I am determined to embrace it more and not be so bothered that it is getting dark at 3.30PM!

Anyway, without further ado, I have recently been using a couple of truly old . . well, older than me . . . photographic devices - it's been fun and is the pure antithesis of today's 'do everything' cameras. 

No, they're not LF cameras either, nor is it the Mamiya Press (which is kind of like using a LF camera, but with a handle - you go through similar processes and checklists before every exposure . . and after too!) No these were different from the point of view of snapability.

Take a bow please, a Canon L2/35mm f3.5 Nikkor and a Rollei Old Standard. The former from 1958/1951 and the latter from 1934/35.

They've been fun to use and like anything older, required a wee bit of tweaking from me to get results I was happy with.

In the Canon/Nikkor case, that was fitting a lens hood (I ended up using my 5cm FISON - you would think it would vignette, but it doesn't, and it clamps like a champ!) and not being too radical with my choice of shutter speeds. Whether it is because of all the gripping and scraping I have been doing as DIY or an age thing, or possibly even the weight of the camera - it is very light - I found that it is quite sensible, where possible, to decide on 1/30th as my slowest shutter speed.

It does rather limit your choices, but what can you do . . if you want to explore fun in an ancient style, then maximise your potential.

The Old Standard was a bit different, in that you can sort of use your body and a wall as a tripod whilst gently pulling down on the neck strap - it is a surprisingly stable way of doing things, even with a camera as light as the Rollei. 

And it is a light Rollei - certainly lighter than my T. 

It makes the likes of a Mamiya C330 look and feel like a house brick from a black hole!

The Tessar is also of a different quality to the Tessar on my T. 

Bruce would call this UB (Unsubstantiated Bollocks) but to my eyes it is true. 

The T's Tessar is a single coated lens; the early Tessar on the Standard is uncoated and therein lies its magic - in much the same way that early Leitz Elmars have that glowy look to them (more UB?) the same can be said of the Old Standard. 

I can only imagine what it would be like with its proper hood.

Anyway, here's some photies . . . oh and I forgot to say that using such ancient machinery may well result in the likes of the following comment (which I loved):

"That's an affie auld camera!"

Probably my favourite carpark picture - everything fell into place and, despite the sun falling on the plexiglass window, the dark splendours of the concrete cathedral have been revealed. The 35mm f3.5 Nikkor is a fine lens - I feel very priviledged to be able to use it.

This is printed on Ilford MGRC at Grade 4. Film was HP5 at EI 200 developed in HC110 (Dilution B) for a total of 8 minutes (I stood it from 6) - a nice combo and the inherent mild contrastiness of HC helped to contribute to the lack of contrast in the scene.

Sadly the 'waterfall' has since gone.

These are the Old Standard - I like them both.

The first was printed at Grade 4.5 on some very old MGRC - I can go no higher using the DeVere's colour wheels! The photograph, is pretty much exactly how I saw it, and the Tessar has rendered the scene beautifully softly.

The second was printed at Grade 4'5 too. 

One wonders how it is possible to go, in a print, from really soft (the building with the Paper (white) Sun behind it to incredibly hard (the woman's feet and the bright pavement). 

There was no split grading involved and I can only assume the camera has contributed. 

There's an enormous amount of detail in there too - not too shabby for a nearly 90 year old lens.

Film was the combo of out of date (2009!) Pan F and Fomadon R09 at 1+50. 

VERY GENTLE agitation to 10 minutes and then let it stand to 12.

I'm not normally a 'street' person, but I like this a great deal - it looks old despite the modern bus shelter.

The older I get the more I realise that Rodinal can be used almost universally for most subjects - a wonderful developer and if I only had to have one, then it would probably be it.

And that's it - short and sweet.

The two old 'uns are currently having a natter about the state of the world over a cup of Darjeeling and a couple of hobnobs.

Until the next time, over and oot and keep taking the pills.

H xx

Sheephouse Meets T.O.D. (Again)

Morning folks - hope everyone is well and finally getting to enjoy some Summer. Over here we've had the coolest Spring I can ever remember and also what seemed like weeks of grey skies courtesy of unusually cold sea temperatures.

Anyway, it seems to be lifting now and yer Sheepy has once again been let out of his pen to experience a wee adventure . . . so without further ado . . . 

You know the more I think about it, this country of ours must be dotted with places like I am about to show you. 

They are obvious out in the mountains and glens - you can spot dereliction a mile off (though thankfully some of these old [200+ years!] buildings have been given new leases of life by intrepid renovators).

This being said, stuff can slip through the net, or can literally be too far gone to even think about. Sadly there are plenty of places like that around - one needs only to check the Buildings At Risk Register to find them, and then when you factor in the costs of getting anything done properly (and especially with care and conservation in mind) well, astronomical becomes a word you'll often find used. 

There are people out there who can do it, but the demands on them are heavy (and you'd better be ready to sell your kidneys).

Anyway, our subject today is definitely in the too-far-gone/bleeding-millions/would-it-be-worth-it-to-sort-out? bracket.

Sadly 60-odd years of neglect has made up our minds for us.

And thus it was, a short tale unfolded. 

My friend Bruce from The Online Darkroom dutifully picked me up (he likes driving  . . ) and took me to a place I'd heard of and read about, yet had strangely never visited.

Just as a short aside, I can't even begin to describe how nice it is when someone wants to meet up with you photographically. 

This is the second time we've done it and to say it felt like the most natural thing in the world is an understatement.

All my snapping life I've been a 'lone' photographer.

You'll recognise the archetype - they talk to themselves a lot: 

Muttering away about f-stops. 

Why is that person bothering me when it is obvious that I am very busy and have a tripod set up. 

If that couple crosses my field of view again I'll f-ing murder them.

 

Yeah, that sort of thing!

So to be able to say:

Oops, sorry, I'll get out of your way!

and 

Hold on, I'll get that barbed wire fence!

and even 

Right, I've got it composed, could you clap your hands and scare the crows!

is something as much of a revelation as it is 'nice'. 

We chat on the same level. 

No one wonders what the hell we're on about with raised 'blimey, not again' eyebrows.

Jings I even got to relax and handle his Mamiya Universal Press (Double Yum) and his Rollei SL66SE (Double Triple YUM). 

He got to have a look through the weird and squinty-woo world of a Hasselblad SWC/M finder and admire the heft of a Gitzo Series 3 with Arca Ballhead. 

It was great. 

We even showed each other our prints (no euphemism intended). 

Fantastic.

Anyway, there we were again, chatting and laughing about all sorts, and then, on a back road, he saw a sign saying:

Private Road

(obviously he knew where he was going) so he turned in there and further on there was a sign saying:

Private Road, No Turning, No Parking

 

He just shrugged his shoulders, said he'd done it before and eventually parked up in a woody enclave, next to a fence with a sign on it which said:

Danger Of Death, Keep Out

Blimey I thought, what if the rozzers nab us? 

Fortunately that wasn't to happen, neither were we beset by angry locals wielding pitchforks demanding our immediate evacuation.

Instead we took our time. 

We looked in awe at a house, beautifully made, but on the wrong side of collapse.

We gently squeezed ourselves through barbed wire and sheep wire.

We got to sip the sad atmosphere of impending house doom. 

It must have been extraordinary when originally built. 

Quirky detailing; gothic beauty; battlements; grandeur beyond the ken of the common man - all in the most peaceful setting you could imagine. 

It has apparently been unoccupied since the late-60's and I found it really incredible what nigh-on 60 years of neglect and weather can do to a place.

We took our photos, listened to the crows, and I think both of us left with heavier hearts because of the obvious end of the house. 

Granted a lot of the wall work will last more than a few hundred years, but the detailing will soften and decay. 

Frost and seedlings will do their worst, and the recognisable will ultimately just become a pile.

It is really sad, not just from the point of view that a place so beautiful will be lost, but also for the sheer effort, quality of building skills and indeed the spirit of place (that it must have been imbued with when someone called it home) that will all slowly fade into the encroaching countryside. 

Standing there, listening to the harsh carcks from the roost and feeling the atmosphere of the place, well, it was almost like a metaphor for life.

I used the Hasselblad SWC/M on a tripod. 

Film was Pan-F (fresh) rated at EI 25 and, unusually for me, processed in 1+3 Perceptol. 

The grain is smoother than a bald man's pate.

Prints are on MGRC pearl and are printed at Grade 4 (4.5 for the one with the two pillars and 'Mich'). Again this was an unusual move for me, but the soft lighting and soft developer made things a little too soft. 

Also the paper is of an unknown age, but has (I think) lost a bit of speed, so Grade 4 gives it back some sparkle without losing the atmosphere. 

I printed them quite dark deliberately to complement the mood of the place - it was a grey sky day - little in the way of shadows and you could feel the ghosts clinging on as best they could. 

I think the film/developer/grade worked as a nice combo though - I shall definitely be using it again.

I hope in my taking and printing that I have treated the place with some respect. 

One likes to think so.

And that's it - briefer than that shrunken pair of 1970's mustard yellow Y-Fronts you're still hanging on to.

Hope you enjoyed it - thanks for reading as always.

TTFN

H xxx

Sheephouse Meets T.O.D.
I'm the one on the left.

It's An Affie Bonnie Day Fer Takin' Some Fotees

Morning folks - you'll have to get yer heed around the epithet of this one.

Y'know, for years I have railed against being 'Dundonian'. 

I don't know why . . . well I do actually, it is because I always wanted to get back to the country and I think that denying that I was actually settled here would, in some weird way, get me back where I belonged . . . wading through soggy vegetation, shouting at cows, listening to rivers etc etc . . you get the drift. 

But it never happened, and I think now is probably more or less unlikely to - the river of life runs its course and it isn't always the course you expected; however that course can be something far sweeter. 

That does make me a wee bit sad, however, never being one to dwell on things too much, I have accepted (and also been called such . . by 'locals' no more, no less) that I am now a proud Dundonian.

Proud?

Yep, you heard that right.

I had a really long wander this morning, from the part of the Hawkhill that used to be called 'Witch Knowe' up and along Annfield Road, onto Blackness Road (strangely [for what used to be a bit of a shithole] now morphing into one of the most culturally diverse streets you could imagine) and up to beautiful Balgay Park; thence the heavy climb up to Mills Observatory, then down, crossing the bridge and into Balgay Cemetery. 

All the way, I was looking at the light, and I realised, that the light here can be quite different to other places. 

It is often silvern, and I put that down to its sunny aspect (sunniest city in Scotland!) and the reflection of said sunshine off a mile wide chunk of river - the Tay.

My old mentor Joseph McKenzie, always said the light was different here, but it has only been in recent years that I have come to appreciate the profound truth of that statement. 

Sure it can be utterly grey for weeks on end, but when you get a morning like this morning, well, it is wonderful. 

But more to the point, excellent for taking photographs. 

With my new enforced leisure status, I am able to really appreciate the ebb and flow of morning light; at this time of the year the shadows are just beginning to climb back to brightness, so at times you have deep, deep shadow, and piercing sunlight. Overlay this with the moisture content coming in off the estuary and you have, at times, an effect quite akin to early, uncoated lenses.

It was this combo that I experienced last week, using an unfamiliar film and focal length, but a familiar subject. 

The film was Pan F.

It had officially 'died' in November 2009, but seeing as I now have 7 rolls of it (gifted by a friend - thanks Alan!) I thought it best to let it get up and get busy! 

The lens was the 250mm Hasselblad Sonnar - a lens I have used a few times, but still not gelled with, which is daft really as I often have wished for more distance-closing power at times. 

The subject was one of the most (to my eyes) beautiful pieces of monumental sculpture I've ever seen (and I've visited a few museums, believe me). I've photographed her before and you'll recognise her, but I felt she deserved the full portrait.

To directly quote the Zeiss literature for the lens:

Even at full aperture the 250 mm Sonnar@ T* f/5.6 lens features such excellent image quality that stopping down is not required. Despite its long focal length and remarkable telephoto effect, this lens is compact and allows hand-held photography.

The 250 mm Sonnar@ T* f/5.6 lens is used tor portraiture, long-range, press, sports and stage photography. In outdoor portraiture, the shallow depth-of-field range can be used to advantage to separate the model from an unsteady background.

So with this in mind I went and whiled away a happy couple of hours.

Despite the widely held internet belief that Pan F and HC110 are a complete no-no, things turned out fine, which was fortunate, because I had mis-metered two of the exposures (as I'll show you below) placing the shadows on Zone III . . . however I obviously read the wrong part of the scene. 

Fortunately I'd made more exposures with placing the 'skin' tones of the stone on Zone VI and it was from these negatives I managed to print (after wasting a couple of sheets of paper trying to print from the Z III ones.)

The results were printed on some handed-on Ilford MGRC, Pearl. I printed them at Grade 3 and toned them in Selenium. 

I was thinking far more contrasty in my head when I took them, but after weighing up the options, chose to print them more muted.

They were exposed at f8. The Sonnar is a f5.6 and I find it remarkable that you can quite clearly see cobwebs in the prints only one stop down from maximum.

I rated the film at EI50 simply because of its age and, as I said, developed them in HC110.

I used Dilution H simply because of the extreme contrast range of the day and it worked pretty well.

As you can see from the snippet from the contact print, I really ballsed-up two exposures - there is a lot of image on the negatives, but they are just too beyond-the-pale to get anything out of them. 

Anyway, here are the prints - direct scans from the print as per usual:

Contact Print Snippet

So I took my photos, and that was that.

I packed up, moved on and further along the way encountered a really cheery bloke, about my age, who said in pure Dundonian:

"Mornin'! It's an affie bonnie day fer takin' some fotees eh!"

And I couldn't have agreed with him more. 

He was dead friendly. 

I can't quite believe I am typing this, but it's that sort of place.

It's changing, in a big way for the better, but in another way sadly for the loss of some character - the proper Dundee auld wifies who used to troll about the town are dying off; the dialect is lessening.

Such is the way of the world.

Anyway, till next time, as always, thanks for reading, take care and keep on fighting the good fight.

H xx