Today was a desk day spent re-scanning old negatives on the Nikon Coolscan V ED scanner. The picture below was meh when scanned with the Epson Perfection V200 but is pleasing to me now.
Although the focus is off, I love this picture.
P and I had just checked in to our room at the Waldorf Hilton in London, and as she always does, P jumped on the bed and used the remote to browse the TV channels. It is memorable because it was taken at the end of a death march week at work in April 2010. I remember starting this holiday weekend all stressed and P being extremely supportive and trying her best to give us a good time.
I’m using up my remaining holidays for 2024, taking every Monday off until Christmas so that I have long weekends to enjoy for the rest of the year. Unfortunately, the weather hasn’t been great, which has ruined our plans for hiking. On Saturday and Sunday, we actually had Storm Darragh sequestering us at home, and the weekends before, we had Storm Conall and Storm Bert.
Our last walk, going up Caesar’s Camp from Claycart Bottom, seems a distant memory now. The climb was difficult for P, but we still enjoyed the view from the summit. I took pictures on our way up and down. We were greeted by a beautiful view of the sun beaming through the colourful trees at Claycart Bottom, so I am hoping that the pictures from my film camera come out good. But I have to wait until I can finish the roll of film to develop it and see the results.
I installed Nikon Scan software to replace VueScan and was very pleasantly surprised by the quality of the scans. Right off the scanner, the colours are good and require little correction. Here are some images from one of our walks along Basingstoke Canal.
We started today’s walk at Basingstoke Canal in Mytchett and progressed to Pirbright where we crossed Curzon Bridge into the MOD managed land to head back to our starting point.
Along the way, we stopped at Frimley Lodge Park for pictures and for feeding the birds. P had a lot of fun throwing bread scraps at them and having them follow her up and down the towpath. We then continued to Pirbright, stopping at a few locks along the way, including the one where this picture was taken. We came across a lovely cottage, which seemed abandoned and got P fancying about cottage living.
The walk through the MOD managed land was a workout, the ground going up and down. It didn’t help that a mist came down and we increased our pace to avoid the rain. With more time, we would have gone through the woods instead of following the sandy paths, which didn’t present much to photograph. P and I joked at the insane number of portaloos we came across in seemingly middle of nowhere. I think they’re put there for soldiers to use during breaks in their training, but they could also have been used by people who manage the woodland.
The end of the hike was disappointing as we walked through an area where people bring their dogs and allow them to foul the ground. I think the next time we do this walk, we’ll avoid the last bit of woodland and take the roadside instead. Going that way will not be as picturesque, but it will spare us the nastiness.
It’s this time of the year when the sun sets before 5 p.m. Every afternoon walk becomes a race, as we try to get back to the car before it turns dark. The shorter days make it more difficult to take pictures, but at least there are the autumn colours to be thankful for.
These are the “you lose some” from a roll of Fomapan 200 exposed with a Nikon FM2.
What happened here is that I opened the camera back with the window of the Shirley Wellard film cassette still open. The winding lever was sticking every few frames, and so I rewound the film and opened the back of the camera to check what was wrong without first closing the window. A moment passed as I stared at the exposed film through the gap, wondering why I was seeing film when I wasn’t supposed to. It was unfortunate for these two frames, which were at the beginning of the roll and, therefore, most affected.
I don’t know what was wrong with the winding, and I have yet to test the Nikon FM2 with a normal factory cassette. Still, the rest of the roll was okay and these three pictures were the “you win some”.
My copy of the Shirley Wellard came with the original case and instructions leaflet.The screw at the bottom of the film cassette can be used to adjust its fit in the camera film chamber.The top cap of the film cassette can be removed by unscrewing.The window is opened after the film is fitted into the camera and the back closed in order for the film to advance freely.The top cap of the film cassette can be removed to access the spool.The film cassette is made up a metal case, with a revolving window, a spool, and the screwing top cap.After the film is loaded in darkness, the window of the cassette is closed (in darkness).Bottom view of the Shirley Wellard loaded with film. With the window closed, the cassette can be manipulated in daylight.During loading, the window of the Shirley Wellard is kept shut. Once the back of the camera is closed, the window can be rotated to the open position.The rewind handle sits proud when a Shirley Wellard cassette is loaded.
This year’s Farnborough International Airshow pictures were shot on film with a Nikon FM2 and a Nikon FE2. The lens was a Nikon AF-S 300mm f/4. Both colour film and black-and-white film were used, although only the colour pictures are shown here.
First, there were the fast and loud.
The F-15QA showed its maneuverability during the Farnborough International Airshow 2024.The Royal Danish Air Force flew one of their F-16 at FIA 2024. It was probably the loudest of all the jet fighters.
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Then came the fat and slow.
The demonstrations of the Airbus jetliners always impress me during the airshow. Their quick take-off, steep climb, and tight slow turn contradict my intuition about the maneuverability of such massive aircraft.
The first two pictures below make it seem like I am at the same height as the A321, but they are optical illusions created by the acute banking angle of the plane in its sharp turn above me.
The Airbus A321 flying demo was impressive.The photo makes it look like the airplane is horizontal, whereas it is flying at an acute angle in a very tight turn.The Airbus passenger jet airplanes have the most impressive demos at FIA 2024.
The Shirley Wellard Universal film cassette was too much attractive vintage photography equipment to pass on. I bought two of them on eBay and successfully used one today with my Nikon FM2.
The Shirley Wellard’s beautiful design and solid build are not my only reasons for buying them. In fact, having recently started shooting with black-and-white film and wanting to cut costs, I bought a bulk roll of Fomapan 200 film, and as I had run out of used factory cassettes on which to load it and the metal reloadable cassettes ordered from AliExpress will not arrive for a couple of weeks, I was interested in experimenting with the Shirley Wellard.
The Shirley Wellard Universal reloadable cassette is a well-constructed vintage piece from the 1950s.
The Shirley Wellard Universal cassette does not fit in a Minolta X300 camera, which makes it not so universal after all. But to be fair, the instructions leaflet bundled with it lists compatible cameras, all of which came out before the Minolta X300.
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Black-and-white film development is rather curious. Instead of a single process, like C-41 for print films, there are multitudes of processes with various developers (including coffee-based concoctions), chemistry dilution ratios, and development times. Many photographers rejoice in exploring all these possibilities. But I am not one of them—at least, not yet. For now, as long as I can get lost for an hour or two in taking pictures and developing film, I am a happy photographer.
Nikon D200 digital SLRItems of different colours used to test the tonality of Kentmere 400 filmTesting tonality of film with hourglasses filled with “sand” of different colours
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I also bought a new changing bag. The previous one, which I’ve had since 2009, was leaking light and causing films to fog as I loaded them onto development reels, because its inner rubber lining had broken down. The new bag is bigger and more spaceous, thus easing blind handling of equipment inside.
The improvement in quality of the developed negatives after using the new bag brought out the faults in older negatives, which had been cloudy and milky and produced scans with low contrast.
What to do with old solar garden lights and their chargers? Throw the lights into a corner of the garden and stake the chargers in the ground in a mishmash.This window has been broken for a few years now. Only now, I think of using perspex glass to replace it.
