Pig Sty Avenue

Here, I was trying to get compression from the AF 70-210mm lens, and I think that worked with regard to the block of flats on the right hand background. Mostly I wanted to get the steam (it's from the brewery) closer into the background, but that hasn't really worked. To get that white steam to be more prominent I'd want a really dark sky to contrast with it, and this was a yucky-light day, so it's white steam over off-white sky. There's a bit of unexpected vignetting on both sides of the frame, which is perhaps why zooms are less than ideal.  I like ol' big-'ead as a subject. He'll be better in Winter with less foliage, and a heavy dark grey sky, and I must try harder with that steam. I love this Kentmere 400: surprisingly unobtrusive grain, contrast and tone just right for the necropolis. Overall, not a bad photo, though nowhere near good enough to print. 4/10.  I'll go back, with the 50mm f1.4 next time. 

 I got the negative scanned in, eventually. And then got it from the phone to the MacBook, and then opened in ON1, and then worked out how to invert the negative. I did a tiny bit of editing, just to say I had post-processed it, kind of. And here we are.  This was shot a few weeks ago on an awful light day, (overcast, around midday) at the Eastern Necropolis. I was using the F4 with Kentmere 400. Just nicely grainy, which was a surprise because I saw a YouTube video about the F4 coincidentally shooting with KM which showed really excessive grain - I wondered if the photographer had pushed it to 800 or something? He didn't mention it.  More of this at the weekend. I shot two rolls of 24 exposures. NB: I started this post yesterday, it's taken a lot of effort just getting the photo inserted. The problem was mostly Google: I had to download Chrome, and then painfully realise it doesn't work with TIFFs. I don't know: has tech taken a great leap forward, and left me behind? ...

 ...At last, we're getting someplace. The light box for camera-phone scanning arrived.  There was an early set-back: pressing the On/Off button made the light flash on for a second or so, then off again. I tried plugging the USB for the power source into a different socket, and hey-presto! it went on and stayed on. The trickiest part was setting up the "magic arm" to hold the iPhone - really fiddly to get the phone in the right place above the light box. But I got there, kind of, and managed to get a negative from the roll I shot with Molly at the Necropolis.  I opened this up in ON1 Photo Raw, remembering the olden days when I (and almost every photographer I knew) used PhotoShop, the "invert" button was easy to find. Not so in ON1, now... So I've had to resort to the 2026 equivalent of reading the manual: beginning a series of video tutorials. On the one hand, it's all very complicated and is going to take a lot of learning. On the other, wow, it can b...

This photo was taken years ago, with the Ilford Sporti, on Fomapan dev'd in Rodinal. I really like the contrast and tones. I've been looking at a few other examples of Fomapan w/Rodinal and, any shortcomings in composition aside, they're just what I want in black and white.  Fomapan has come back to my mind today because I've got 24 exposures back from Boots: an Orangemen parade on an unusual kind of Kodak color film, "Kodak Max 400", (NOT T-Max, just "Max") and I got it because I like the way it looked on Flickr , and, well, it was cheap (£12.47 for four rolls. Every single exposure is severely over exposed to a very uniform extent. Muddy. I had a quick play around with the levels in ON1, and it seems unlikely anything can be done. I was horrified that there might be something wrong with the F4. But, probably, something is wrong with the film, out-of-date, bought on eBay. I'm thinking, maybe it's been through an x-ray machine at an airport. ...

From a forum on Photrio: Newbie DIY C-41 Recipe/Formula/Process | Page 2 | Photrio.com Photography Forums My note of recipe from Jacobson et al, 1988 Developer Water to make                  1l  Calgon                                                                 2g Sodium sulphite anhydrous              2.2g   [already have] Potassium bromide              1.5g  [already have] Potassium carbonate (anhydrous?)      37.5g Hydroxylamine sulphate              2g  CD-4  (“add 6 hours before use”?)      4.75g [ Axel Color   £12.70 + £29.60 (!) P&P] ...

 It doesn't work on Bitmaps. Until this afternoon, I hadn't thought of BMPs for at least a decade. I took the photo below (I think) in People's Sq, Shanghai, and found it on a CD where the "Lomography" shop in the French Concession loaded it after dev'ing, (if I remember correctly). The light leak and overall impression suggest I was using a box camera, maybe the Gevabox? Anyway, I like the way it somehow invokes the mugginess of Shanghai.  Anyhoo: Da Vinci doesn't work with bitmaps. More importantly, it doesn't work with Nikon's own RAW files, NEFs and I've just bought an elderly d50 (£30) to use as a scanner. Heigh ho. Luminar Neo instead, maybe?