I have shot quite a bit of Rollei film and have not been disappointed with any of the results. My main goto is RPX 400 or Retro 400 due to their versatility so as it was a pretty bright day I loaded up some Retro 80S in my old Nikon EM for a change and went out for a little walk in my usual locations. Even though it was pretty bright I only managed to get up to f8 a few times with most of the images shot at f2.8 to f5.6 which goes to show how sharp this film stock is. The contrast is really nice and the film grain is very smooth. I developed it in ilford DD-X which suited the film. This is the ..read more

I have been shooting ilford Kentmere film stock quite a bit recently and it has really impressed me with how it performs especially as it is a very affordable film in this day and age. I wanted to see how it looked when pushed compared to HP5 which I really love when pushed one or 2 stops. I loaded my Minolta XG9 and set the camera to 800 and went for a little walk, it was really overcast so 800 was ideal. I developed it in ilford DD-X and scanned using my Epson v600. The images were great, no problem with the exposure and even though the grain was pretty noticeable it didn’t spoil the look an ..read more

I loaded my trusty Olympus OM1 with some Lomo CN400 way back at the beginning of June and even though I took it with me most of the time I only managed to finish it last week. As luck would have it I had bought the Cinestill 2 bath C41 kit to try so this was the first roll in it. The whole process was pretty easy compared to the usual Tetenal multi bath kit that I have used previously and the results were fine. It has been ages since I last developed colour negatives and I forgot what a pain it is to spot out and colour correct as I have been sending my C41 stuff to Filmdev lab. It will be in ..read more

I have a few rolls of Kosmo film in my fridge and until recently I have not got around to trying it out for one reason or another. So a few weeks back I was going through my film stash looking for something to try and get my shooting mojo back and came across a roll of Kosmo Foto Mono in 120 and as it was a pretty bright day I thought it was about time that I tried it out. I loaded my Mamiya 645 for a change as it gives me 15 frames to play with and popped out for a nice walk. When I goto back I looked up a few different developing options and went for Rodinal 1+25 dilution for 3 and a half mi ..read more

A few weeks ago I bought my first camera this year from a Twitter friend … I have wanted an Olympus XA ever since using my Olympus XA1. The XA1 is very limiting with very little control over the camera other than point and shoot which is still fun and I am not knocking it but being able to have a pocketable little camera that has full control of all of the variables was very tempting. As most people who read this blog probably know that film cameras have sky rocketed over the last few years especially the better more sought after models like the XA so I didn’t buy one until I was offered this ..read more

The last roll of RPX 400 in 120 that I shot a while back had some weird artefacts and strange grain, it was expired I grant you but I have never had that problem with this stock before. I bought a few rolls of fresh film after this problem and got around to shooting some last weekend. Suffice to say it worked fine, I really like the look of this film in medium format. It has a great range of tones, nice and sharp with minimal grain. I shot it using my Mamiya 645 & 80mm f2.8 developed in ilfotecHC 1+15 dilution. The only thing that I don’t like about this stock is that it is a bit curly so ..read more

Ages ago I bought quite a bit of expired film from MrCad which comprised of mainly Kodak Portra VC in 160 and 400 in both 35mm and 120 format. I have used the 400 speed quite a bit and had great results so I decided to give the 160 a go in my Yashicamat 124g as it was a particularly sunny day a few weeks back. I metered with the Yashicamat as I forgot my light meter and I rated the film at 100. The film was developed and scanned by Filmdev. The images were lovely and warm with good contrast … very similar to my previous blog post when I tried the new kodak Gold 200 but a bit sharper and almost ..read more

When I heard that Kodak were producing Gold in 120 format I was pretty excited .. not because it was Gold as I haven’t really shot too much of it in the past and to be totally honest I had to look on the internet for samples just to see what it was really like .. I was excited because I shoot film 95% of the time I was happy that there was another film stock on the market. I pre ordered a 5 pack from the brilliant https://analoguewonderland.co.uk/ and eagerly waited for it to arrive which wasn’t all that long to be fair. As it was a 200 iso film I didn’t want to rush out and just shoot the fil ..read more

I have been making my own zines for a few years now and find the whole process very enjoyable especially when you get a finished copy of your work in your hands. “I don’t take portraits” is my latest offering and is a slightly misleading title as it only features portraits that I have sort of unknowingly shot over the past few years. What I mean is I never intentionally go to shoot portraits but I have seemed to have accumulated at least one frame from most of the rolls of film I have shot either as a way of testing the film/lens/camera combination or just to start/finish a roll. Last month I ..read more

A slightly misleading title but it is something that I did believe until I was going through my archive of images a couple of months back looking for an older image to print for someone. More often or not I seem to take at least one image per roll of film especially on 35mm either deliberately or as a test for the film if I have not used that film/camera/lens combination before or as a last shot off the roll. Anyway they all seem to build up when you go back through the numerous folders/years in my Lightroom catalog. I have taken peoples portraits when asked or if I am doing some sort of proje ..read more