Busy days in the Snow

Back home again, just in time to get the first real and serious snowfall straight in my lap. I was really busy enough without having to use a lot of hours getting rid of that stuff as well to be honest. 
I'm on the move, as you might remember. Moving up to the tiny island to hopefully dig myself down inside the darkroom to produce some prints, or at least waste some of the darkroom paper which seem to keep on adding up in piles. 
I just turned the milestone of 50, if you didn't know. Since no one would ever think I needed a new enlarger for my darkroom, I had to go buy one myself. Which I did. 
Huge thing, don't you know. 4"x5" Durst Laborator 1000 sort of a beast. OK, I've seen them bigger, but at least it will take a small large format neg if presented on the neg carrier. Which might just as well happen some day soon. 

Sure, from the Island where I'm soon to be living. This stuff is all over the place, so one can only try to do the best out of the situation. This one's from one of the Mamiyas snapped on Ilford FP4+

I had this telephone call coming my way a few weeks back. The Big Boss of the library in town asked me if I would consider to produce a few photos to hang on their wall for a month or so. My initial thought was "no way", which I also told her... but then she started talking me into it, and now I need to come up with something really bright before summer ends. 
The Wall inside the library is brand new. Or, The Wall is not new as such but the idea of using it as an exhibition area for photographs is brand new. She's a bit into photography, the new Boss of the library. Got a great collection of nice books on the subject, and everything they do.
Enough about that. I decided to go for something else this time. Or at least I want to try to go for something else. I just made a couple of (what I think might be) rather wide angled pinhole cameras, and hope to give the locals a totally new view of their home town. 
4"x5" Foma Retropan 320 and Fomapan 100 film is on order and expected arriving tomorrow, and with the cameras also in place I hope to run a few tests with paper soon before I load some film into them and start the mission towards glory, fame and fortune. 
I'll do everything myself, of course. From the camera making to the prints themselves. I'll make sure I post whatever might come out of it.
If everything fails I can always put together something else. At least that's what I keep on telling myself.

I don't know. Some sort of road sign crash... snapped up with the Rolleiflex a few months back when there was still some sort of daylight present. Right now it's like the dark ages over here, but there will be light again some day. I'm quite sure.

And by the way, I got a few prints hanging on exhibition right now inside the old factory thing. I had them all printed inside the darkroom and everything, then some bright dude decided to print them on dead paper with ink instead... via some computer?! I found myself gasping. Loudly!
Anyway, the prints are there for folks to grab should they feel the need. Which they probably will not. 
On the upside I'll get rid of a few of the original darkroom prints, since there's people around wanting them for Christmas. Which in turn means that these sheets of ART300 paper were not wasted, for a change.

Nice lens mounted on that old Rolleiflex!

I was here just a few weeks ago, at the Fitjar island a bit down south and western part of the country of Norway. I always seem to find myself somewhere along the coast line by the way. This time we were laid up with the ship for about a week in between a couple of jobs. It was somewhat boring, to tell the truth. Got a couple of snaps done with the Rolleiflex though, so that would still mean it was good for something. 

I sort of like the one with the collection of abandoned road signs for some reason, to be honest. I might even find out why some day for all we know. 

 A tiny jungle of roadsigns leaned towards a steel wall. Looking at them now I can see a couple of them fitting rather well inside the engine room of the ship. I'm glad I didn't see that possibility that day, after all :))

We had a couple of other ships laid up alongside the same quay at the time. They've been there for a while, I think. Bad times for the industry, you know. 
As we were parked here for a bit of time my engine crew was appointed to take a good daily inspection round on board the two other ships as well, just to act as a support for the guys who usually have to drive for a couple of hours to get the rather small job done. 
The outer one of the two ships were a breeze to go through. The inner one not so. Not at all, as it happens. You will not believe me if I started to talk about it anyway, so I leave it be. 
Let's just say you're never completely all alone on board that one... Freaky thing, it was for sure!

A couple of snaps taken with the Rolleiflex, obviously with the aperture thing more or less fully open just to add some separation inside the frames. Seems like I missed the exposure a bit. I think the faster shutter times on that thing is a bit slow to be honest, but I've never got it checked or anything. At least it's getting a tiny bit better when adding a yellow filter as I did here. 

Too big for the scanner!

Getting rather close to midnight over here, and I'm just out of the darkroom. Seven prints done, where at least four of them will be on my list of prints heading for the jury deciding which ones are going to hang on the walls over at Devold towards Christmas. 
Having a quick look at things I would say I'll get a bit disappointed if not two of them will reach the wall, to be honest. To tell you the truth I'll also get a bit disappointed if one rather special one will not get sold at some point through the exhibition. 

Sorry for the pixels and everything, but the end product is as analogue as it possibly can get. 

Oh, and I also got rid of one of the blacksmith prints this evening. The man himself bought it, and I just realized I had another quite good neg lingering inside my archive so I printed that one as well. Turned out to produce a fairly nice print it did, so I might send that one off to the exhibition jury instead of the first one. I have to think about it, of course. As one does, sometimes. 
He's doing a blacksmith course this weekend, so I hope to be able to get there to maybe snap a few with one of the Mamiya's, or something. I might even just bring the Rolleiflex, for all we know. If I'll go I bring the print as well, of course. At least if I can find the time to have it selenium toned, dried and spot checked before Sunday afternoon. 

Oh... and they don't fit inside my tiny scanner, I'm afraid. That's why I only can bring you lousy snaps from my telephone thing, as most people do these days anyway...

A legend in swedish photography

I just felt I had to show you this thing.
It's a brand new documentary sort of film about the legendary photographer and darkroom printer, Jean Hermanson.
Born 1938, died in 2012 with a huge amount of negs archived and a massive printing job still undone. It's a bit hard to take in the fact that such an important and fantastic and productive photographer died rather poor, without enough funds to even buy the paper and chemicals needed to keep on working through his projects.

I just had a lot of stuff written about the film, but it all went south just because of my own stupidity with computers... I know, it's my own damn fault!
Anyway. You'll find a quite photographer, and a man truly not speaking too load about himself. You'll find passion, poetry inside pictures, and you'll find empathy. Bucket loads of empathy.

Following the death of the photographer, the maker of this documentary is being given his huge archive of negatives and prints. He decides to try to track down some of the persons in the portraits from back in the days, and actually succeeds in finding some of them who then gets to see their portraits taken decades ago for the first time.
There's also a few minutes dedicated to a series of photos of the late Swedish Grand Man Mr. Olof Palme some years before he became the Prime Minister himself. A truly remarkable series, and nothing like anything you could get on a few frames of Ilford FP4 today no matter what politician we're talking about.
The happy ending of the film is when a museum finally decides to take all the negs into their custody, and to agree to make a permanent exhibition showing this fantastic material to the people. It's about time, I would say, after so many years having been hidden away from the public.

Oh... and another one of my swedish photography idols is in the film as well. Mr. Micke Berg (who's blog you can find right here, should you wish to have a look...) was invited to say a few words about old Jean Hermanson, as he knew the old master very well. He is also seen when printing one or two of Jean's negs inside the darkroom, showing off his old printing skills even though he has not been printing inside a darkroom for years.
He is still doing a few photography workshops every now and then, old Micke Berg. I have been thinking about joining one or two of them if time and money is to be found somewhere. I hope I will, before it's too late.

A few new prints

Been rather busy, as you all should know by now. And things are getting worse the next few days, just saying. Going out to do some sort of payed photo shoot tomorrow, and I'm not exactly looking forward to it. It's going to be digital stuff, as most folks do today. I'm probably going to bring a couple of film cameras anyway, but don't tell anyone. 

Anyway. I was just dropping by to show you a small series of three snaps from the ballerina show I went to last week. Not that there's much more to show from that event, to be honest... but I sort of liked these. 
I don't know who she is to be honest, but she might either be A Prisoner of the Night, or maybe even some sort of Dancing Queen... for all I know.  

All three prints done on Ilford FB Warmtone paper, snapped on the Mamiya RZ67 using a rather slow wide angle 50mm lens on Ilford FP4+ film. All good stuff, as you all know. 

After a few days inside the darkroom

I've been working a bit inside what I call my "darkroom" here at home in our house for the last few days. Some of you will know already that I'm actually referring to the family bathroom... but that's just how it is. I was planning to build a real darkroom last year, but plans to sell the house started to materialize, and my plans were abandoned. No need to build something great for no one to use after the house has been sold off.
So, I'm just using the bathroom.
There's this exhibition event coming up closer to Christmas, where my photo club will show pictures from the old Devold Wool Factory. I've been there a few times before, as you might remember.
We just had a session snapping ballet dancers for a few hours. That was great fun, I must say. Very tricky lightwise, but I decided to throw any wish for sharp snaps out the doors and try my best to make something stick to the film anyway. I brought a few rolls of FP4+ and HP5+ plus a couple of Mamiya RZ67 cameras... while others were playing with high ISO pixel collecting sensors. I say nothing more about that fact. 
Oh, and I brought rangefinders... and a couple of films for those as well.
We were all having a good time though, and a couple of the negs might be worth taking a bit further. I've even made a few test prints inside the previously mentioned "darkroom", and they look promising... I think. I'll give you a couple just to give you a taste. And please don't mind the dust and the light leaking into the blacks... it's a scanner issue, not bad darkroom work this time. 

A couple of test prints from the ballerina sessions @ Devold, Langevåg. Snapped using the RZ67 handheld in a sideways and strange manner to be able to shoot through some very dusty and dirty windows installed inside this building. I would have brought the prism finder if I knew this could become an issue, but I didn't. It weighs a quarter of a tonne, and I certainly prefere to work with the waist level finder, even if it means I have to look even more stupid than usual to get what I want.
Printed on Ilford ART 300 paper, snapped on Ilford FP4+ on rather longish shuttertimes. 

I also went to Ona last week. We were celebrating the 150 years anniversary of the lighthouse, and it was a grand party for sure. Lots of interesting stuff to listen to, but nothing much to snap, I'm afraid. There is of course a few pictures from that event as well, but nothing much has yet materialized into prints. Nothing much will be either, but there is three or four I plan to print. One is already partly decided to go to the family now living in the lighthouse keepers house, as a gift for arranging the whole anniversary thing. It's a detail from inside their house... and it looks smashing when printed on some ART300 paper. At least the print itself is looking good. The scan of the print is not up to standards, I know. It's me and my totally useless scanning skills again, plus the laziness of not cleaning the scanner glass before I start...

The lower part of the stairs leading up to the upper floor of the lighthouse keeper's house out on the island. I might print it bigger as a gift, but we'll see. This is a scan from a print of 5"x7" size on Ilford ART 300 again. Snapped with a RZ67, 1/2 sec. in rather bad lighting on Ilford FP4 film.

I've been developing films as well. At least twelve of 120 size, and three or four 135 films. Still got four or five 135 films to get done, but I'll get there. I developed all of them in Paranol S from Tetenal, a to me rather new thing. Bought it over in England this summer, and it's not a bad developer at all. I really like the result when developing FP4+ with this stuff, anyway.

The plan for the week to come is to take a trip up to where my parents live. The wife is joining some sort of conference not too far from there, so we'll use their house as a base for that thing. There's work to be done up there as well I heard, so I better bring a few tools and some elbow grease. Might come in handy, you know.
I'll bring cameras, of course... but I don't know to which extent I'll get the chance to use them.

Oh... and I finally got around to print a series of three prints for the living room wall. They are already hanging there, looking good. From the Yorkshire coast, they are.
This sums up the last week, at least. And nope... no time for scanning any of all the new negs I'm afraid. Which means you have to be patient for a while if you like to see a few more of the ballerina snaps or anything. I'll post them as soon as the scanning is done.

This Blog might be in danger!

First of all I'm very sorry for the huge hole in the blog. It was nothing I wanted, just saying! 
Some bright minded person in the IT dept. of my company have found out that google (and everything attached to it... which is a lot, I can tell you) just has to be taken away from the list of stuff we may have access to when at work at sea. Serious amounts of 0's and 1's are being downloaded, you see, without any of us knowing it. 
In short terms this means I'm no longer allowed to log on to my google account, which also takes away my possibility of posting anything on my blog, check my mail, google anything I might like to find on the web... well, a lot of the fun stuff disappears as you might see.
I got no idea how to overcome this obstacle right here and now, but I'm open to suggestions and advice of course.

Something we stumbled over when moving all over the southern english countryside this summer. A nice tiny little home for a few people, I guess. I think this frame came out of one of the german rangefinders, but I'm not at all sure about it. 

I'm more or less just out of the darkroom. As you might remember I blew the bulb on my enlarger the last time I was in there, and had a real hard time finding a new one. Ended up buying a piece with a bit different specks than the old one, but everything seems to work fine enough with this bulb as well. I might just as well buy another 10 of that bulb, since it was a cheap solution compared to the original bulb. I guess you never know when the next one going south... or, in fact it will of course go black with some sort of bad timing. Murphy's law, you know. 

Anyway, I was in the darkroom and made four prints 30x40 size. The wife have been asking for them for some time now, so couldn't wait for much longer. It was good, I can tell you, to be inside the dark place again printing for a few hours. 

There was quite a few White Horses to see when traveling around the countryside. This one's from a town, though. Oxford, as it happens... And I know about the lack of sharpness and all that, but the exposure was fine though, don't you think? It was not a place known for it's great light conditions, to put it that way...

More news! You've obviously heard a lot about Ona on this blog, the tiny little skerry in the ocean where we got this tiny little place we use to stay every now and then in weekends and stuff. 
Well, this tiny little place is now going to sort of be our home for the next few years. My wife applied for a job up there not too long ago, and she got it. She will have to use the ferry to get to work every day, but that's not a bad thing compared to what she's going through every day in her current job sitting in the traffic jam in and out of town. There's no such thing as a traffic jam out there, with only a very small handful of people living there. 
It's going to be nice to finally get the chance to stay there a lot more for a period of time. I say a period of time, because the job she got is in the administration for the small county up there, as the head of school and cultural dept. 
The small county is going to be merged into a bigger unit in a couple of years time, which means she will probably get a choice at some point to either stay put up there to do her work, or move to a bit more central place to do her job. We will see... but as for now we're moving up there. From new year, that is. 
We're going up there this weekend, by the way. Friday afternoon at 16.54 it's the 150 years anniversary for the lighthouse up there. Of course there was a building period prior to this, but at least that was the exact time the light shone from the tower for the first time. So it's party time, of course. A little bit of partying, but also a bunch of what I'm hoping to be very interesting lectures about both the lighthouse history and other stories from back in the days. I've seen the program for the weekend, and it looks great. So we decided to join in to celebrate the old iron tower for a couple of days, and we're looking forward to it. 
I'm also bringing a few bits and pieces up there. I got this darkroom out on Ona, as you might know. Probably one of, if not the most remote darkroom in Norway. OK, I know there's a small one in Longyearbyen on Svalbard too, but that's in a different league I guess. Almost on the north pole, and everything. 

From one of my walks on the quayside around The Clyde, Glasgow and Scotland. Oh well... I guess it speaks for itself, to be honest. Nikon FM2, or maybe one of them rangefinders. I know I carried both sorts this day...

Well, I think I need to run. I promised this guy that he could borrow one of my Mamiya RZ67 cameras for a while, so I need to pack the thing down and ship it away. Need to decide what lenses to ship along as well, since I certainly need a few of them myself as well the next few days going to Ona and everything. I'm also joining the camera club for a shooting on Tuesday next week, and my plan was to bring one of them beasts with a good lens or two. We'll see. 

I don't know how many of you are still here to check the blog, but hopefully there's still a couple of you around. 

The Darkroom Cookbook

I've heard words spoken and written about it for years, the Darkroom Cookbook. Written by Stephen G. Anchell, published 1994 it seems. It's more or less full of weird recipies for more or less anything photography related. Developers, fixers, toners and stuff nice to have inside the darkroom. In other words there seems to be some interesting reading in there, as I'm now the owner of an example of this book. There's a few general darkroom chapters in there as well, as far as I can see without starting searching for my glasses and such.
You see my cousin once used to be a quite promising(ish) darkroom scientist, but at some point he just gave it all up. The pixelating age, a bunch of kids, a house and a million things to do... you know the story.
He got rid of most of his equipment, but somehow managed to find a bunch of darkroom paper (Agfa RC) in addition to The Darkroom Cookbook hidden way down in between the layers of things having added up down in his basement over the years.

A half-frame snap from the Olympus PEN. Nothing too interesting, perhaps, but there might be something for the right kind of person. Not sure about the film, but it could be Kentmere 400 or maybe something else. Ilford PAN 400 or something, maybe.

Long story a bit shorter he decided to donate the Cookbook and the paper, and will continue to dig for more interesting stuff down in that basement. I was trying to give him a hand during the searching for the Cookbook, and to be honest I think he'll be better off bringing in a (rather large) team of archeologists to go through that basement.
It's going to take some time. Let's just simply put it that way...

Half-frame snap from sludge delivery and provision carrying in Peterhead harbor last trip at work. I was working with the sludge while a bunch of the rest carried the provision. I snapped them with the Olympus PEN. It's a small and great camera to carry on deck inside a pocket.

There's going to be chemicals needed to get anywhere with the recipes, of course. Luckily the same cousin is very different to most of us, and would (don't ask me how and why) be able to supply whatever you may need in that respect. I might try one or two of the toners or something like that, but don't think I'm going to be making my own developer and such. Maybe...?!
I will read the book though! I'm putting it inside my bag right here and now, as I just got the message I'll be leaving for work tomorrow. That's two days early even though I got home one day late, which means three weeks and a few days at home. Too short a time off, just saying!

One of the piers on The Clyde, Glasgow. Half-frame again.

Offshore stuff, again

Another rather quick post, I'm afraid. 
I'm just out of the darkroom after a rather frustrating session in there. You see there's four or five pieces the wife has picked out for one of the walls, and I thought I'd just get them done. This night seemed to be as good as any other to get it done, so I went for it. The medium format neg was a tricky one, so I might have to alter the settings a bit I think. I'll let it dry and have a good look at it in the daylight, but I suppose it's not up to standard. 
But OK, it was a print, at least. 

Brent A. The only steel legged platform on this field consisting of Brent A, B, C and D (the latter now partly removed, see next picture). The Brent field has been producing oil and gas since late 1976. The oil is fed through a pipeline to Sullom Voe oil terminal in northern Shetland, while the gas goes to St. Fergus in northern Scotland. The field is very close to the norwegian border, and you can easily see what's going on over the border at the Statfjord field.

Then there were a series of four 135 negs on the to do list. Had to switch to the other enlarger as the bigger one is not very well suited to do 30x40 enlargements from small negs. Ping... and the damn bulb went dark as in really dark and no hope for any further work for either today or tomorrow. And before you ask, nope I did not have a spare one in stock. 
I'll put in an order for a new one, or three. 

Brent D, or at least what's left of it these days. 

I got no particular clue what exactly our mission this close to them old legs were, but I'm sure we had important stuff to do. We always seem to have, if you ask the right person. See that thing up there on that left leg? Every second day or so a helicopter will land on top of the leg, and some dude will come out of it and walk over to have it checked sort of carefully. I suppose they would soon find out if anything's wrong from hundreds of miles away, since it's some sort of navigation beacon or similar, but they still have to check it of course. It's probably written in some sort of procedure somewhere. At least they know how to spend a fair amount of money in places like these... 

The snaps for today is from a film I wasted about a month ago when at work. Leica M3 camera with Summicron glass 50 and/or 35mm lenses attached, Ilford FP4+ film developed in Paranol S. 

Ah... the little steel drum with yellow cable spooled on. We picked it up right here, on the bank of the River Clyde up in Glasgow, you know. Put the whole thing on the back deck, and off we went to drop all the yellow stuff into the sea west of Ireland somewhere. We were careful not to drop the drum as well, so no harm done. I got no idea what the yellow cable will do once they decide to power everything up, but they told us it was rather expensive and important. 

Nothing new, in other words.

365 - ongoing series

Three more from The Project this year. The 365@50 thing, you know. 

I have posted the notes from my book on the snaps lately, but since we were out there on the tiny little island of Ona and had to leave in a hurry about a week ago, the little black book is still out there.  Just had to leave both the book and a bunch of cameras, but I'll get out there to pick them up some day soon I hope. 

Anyway, I know what they are, the snaps. So I'm able to tell you what I think was most likely noted.

#068 - The Crane repair man traveled down the coast in a boat. They stopped in my home town, so I went for a chat and a snap.

#069 - The Cat, as it usually looks when I get home. Time for food, she seems to think.

#070 - Chain Saw Day. A lot of work done, but things look better in that area now. 

#068

#069

#070

Another Nikon EM arrived

Just done the way to boring scanning job of the last batch of films I developed when I came back from work. I just wish I were able to do more printing and less scanning, just like Michael of the North Liberties. Well, it's out of the question at the moment, so I just have to keep on doing it the way I do for now. Things might change some day though.

It's been the very worst of weeks this last one, so I have not been able to do anything involving using the brain at all to tell you the truth. I know I have been trying to get the daily snap done, but I'm quite sure there are holes or doubles somewhere. But OK... there are more important things in life than having the daily photo done, after all.
Everything works way much better now, and the world can slowly start turning again. I even managed to find energy to haul the hoover around the house for a short while, and to clear away some tools and stuff I had left in the hallway a couple of weeks back. Not bad at all, actually...

Probably an old shipyard or something. They used to build ships and stuff along the river Clyde back in the days, as you might know very well. Seems like there's not too much of that sorts going on anymore, which is a real shame I think. The good thing is that it's probably a lot healthier environment for the river itself these days, but then again the world has changed a bit in the last 50 years as we know. 

The second Nikon EM I just bought arrived yesterday. The one with the 50mm E-series lens attached which I got for next to nothing. It sort of pleased me to find out that I had to change batteries on this one, and to find this body to be in a lot more used state than the other one arriving with the 35mm lens. Also it didn't work properly. The light meter, which is absolutely essential on this type of camera being a fully automatic exposure sort of thing, didn't show any reading at all when I first fired it up. After some fiddling and thinking and doing, I finally found the problem. The ring on the camera front following the aperture ring on the lens didn't make good contact with the inner parts of the camera, so we were talking about a mechanical/electrical issue. That's the kind of stuff I know a couple of bits about, so now it works like a dream. A very tiny spray of contact cleaner and some excessive movements of said ring, and it seems to have done the trick. At least it works for now, so we'll see how the test roll comes out some time in the future.
As a matter of fact I'm sort of shooting the first test roll as we speak, because in addition to a 50mm lens with the original UV filter attached, and the original (and very good, mind you) carrying strap, the camera also came with a partly shot film sitting inside. The ASA wheel was set to 200, so I guess there might be a Kodak Gold 200 or something similar in there somewhere. We will see when I remove it some day soon. If it's a negative color film, which I'm about 99% sure it is, it will still take some time yet before I get it developed. It might be a good idea to buy a set of C-41 chemicals soon anyway, as I got a few of my own rolls to develop as well. Stuff that has been waiting a long time now, for sure.
The lens, which was the reason I bought it in the first place, looks absolutely great and was just what I was after. Small and light weight, and hopefully a great performer.

Old slipways and signs of times long gone. The buildings in the background seems to be in use though, so the area is still good for something obviously. I would think the rest of the area will turn out useful as well, some day.

I'm sort of trying to put together this series of snaps from the banks of the River Clyde. I've been posting a few on Instagram lately, and there's also a few in my last post here on the blog, to hopefully get some sort of feedback and feel for it. I'm not too confident about this thing, but it might grow on me a bit. Or maybe not.
All three snaps posted today is part of the same series, and there might be a few more to come. All taken from the same roll, but I might take away a few and maybe even add a few taken from another couple of rolls snapped in the same area. The plan is to get a few of them printed as well.
I really liked this place to be honest, and sort of hoping to be able to go back some day and have a walk on the river bank itself instead of steaming down the river on a ship. There's quite a few opportunities lost that way, just saying. 

Seems to be some sort of abandoned old industrial building, but I'm not too sure about what it is to tell the truth. Looks like it's sitting in the middle of an old and obsolete shipyard or ship base area with quays and warehouses. 

Kentmere 400

I bought a ten-pack of Kentmere 400 a while ago. Got it from over in the UK somewhere, I think. I also bought a tenner of Kentmere 100 as well, but I'll leave that one for another day. I never liked the K400 too much, and think I've mentioned it before as well around this place somewhere.
Anyway, by the time of leaving Glasgow heading for west of Ireland a few weeks ago I grabbed a roll of K400 as I thought I would give it another go, and threw it inside the Nikon FM2 as it was a rather typical scottish day. Gray and grainy, if you like.

A real old fashion scrapyard with a lovely looking old crane to really make the scene worth snapping. I think I got a hundred or so of this scene snapped during the days in Glasgow not too long ago, but what the heck... you need to explore the surrounding area, don't you? At least that's what you have to do when you got no chance of going anywhere further than just around the ship. Nikon FM2 with the absolutely fantastic Nikkor 105mm f/2.5 lens I've had for something like 25 years or so. And Kentmere 400 film, developed in Paranol S 1:25

Previous attempts have been giving me all sorts of not so good results, but this time I really feel I somehow got the looks I've been aiming for all the time with this film. It was snapped with the Nikon FM2, and I had a battery inside and used the light meter quite a lot through the roll just to try having things a bit under control for once. The whole thing was set up to box speed, as I usually tend to do with most films if I'm not pushing it a step or two. This time it was definitely not pushed as I usually would go for a HP5+, Tri-X  or even PAN400 for those sort of things.

Same scene, same camera and film. Damn seagull had to fly just a couple of meters too low, but I was not going to wait for it to take another round to position itself exactly where I wanted it...

Anyway, as we went away down the river Clyde out from Glasgow I snapped into more or less any direction and forgot about the whole film until just a few days ago when I finally got my stuff together and started developing my rolls.
As I've been out of decent developers for a while I just recently had some stuff bought over in England. A bottle of Kodak HC-110 just because I like it and because it's way too expensive over here in Norway, and then I also brought with me a couple of small bottles of Paranol S by Tetenal, just because AG Photographic was out of Rodinal (or Adonal, as it's not actually called Rodinal anymore... as we know) when I payed them a visit.

Old warehouses or whatever, at the bank of the River Clyde in Glasgow. This made me want to play a bit with lines and stuff, but I had to work way too quickly as the ship moved rather fast down the river. Crazy folks on the bridge and things, as usual. 

So, back home and ready to start developing a bunch of rolls, I went for the Paranol S just to see what it looked like. I've never tried this mierda before, so I was a bit excited about it to tell the truth. Not because I thought I would notice too much of a difference compared to Rodinal and similar developers, but more because of the fact that I've never tried this particular developer before. I found it to be a rather nice one, truth be told, so I might try it with a few other films as well. But then again I just have to, since I got a couple of bottles of the stuff. 
I've tested it with both FP4+ and now also Kenmore 400, and I must say I'm very pleased with the results this far. The Kentmere roll seems to have come out better than any earlier attempt, I must say. Makes me wonder about how HP5+ will look when washed in this stuff. We will find out soon. Maybe even tomorrow by the looks of the weather right now.
Anyway... more to come a bit later. 

Same warehouses from the other side. As I said, I had to work very quick to hopefully get what I wanted. Luckily I didn't have to run inside and down to the engine room during the trip down the river. 

Still scanning

I'm still scanning film, and I also still got a few rolls yet to develop. I'll get there though, so just keep cool and wait for it. Not that I'm sure it's anything there to really wait for, but then again your guess is just as good as mine in that respect. 

I suddenly found myself well away inside the fences dividing a bunch of these beasts from direct contact with the tourists venturing the paths on top of The White Cliffs. By the time I discovered the fence was there for a reason it was way to late to get away from it all, and I just had to trust they were used to people and not of the wildest type of things. They were not luckily, and I even managed to get a few snaps from too close a distance even for my 35mm lens attached to the old M3 rangefinder which I carried at the time. The one without a light meter, and with no frame lines for the wider lens, you know. Ilford FP4+ by the way... dunked in Paranol S 1+25 mix. 

Here's a couple more anyway, from the last batch of rolls going through the developing tanks. This time washed in a to me new developer, the "Paranol S" from Tetenal. Just because they were out of Rodinal in my shop over in England, and also a bit out of curiosity. 
They had a lot of stuff over there in England, but I could not find any lith developer anywhere. Well, I guess I just have to wait a bit more and get it ordered to be sent by mail over here. 
Lith developer, and some bleach. I want to check that out as well on a few of my prints, and I can't find anything like that over here in Norway. Guess I have to start import and selling dark room chemicals, film and other things nice to have. On the other hand it might turn out to be a very quiet business over here. 
Would have been nice to be your own supplier though...

He, or was this a she maybe? was watching the higher grounds of the fields around The White Cliffs of Dover this day. Turned out he was not too afraid of either the rangefinder or the norwegian carrier of the old thing. Made all sorts of strange movements as well it did, the beast. I'm not too fond of this type of animal to tell the truth, but this one was a nice enough chap... or chapette(?!)

The weather have been absolutely fantastic since I returned back home from work. Nearly two weeks now, for those who count days and things like that. Very nice indeed, until about an hour ago. Now the old wind is howling around the corners again and the rain is hammering onto the roof and windows like crazy. It was great as long as it lasted though, the nice weather. Now we can't do anything but wish for a nice winter and a very happy return of the sunny days some time around May 2018, I'm afraid. 
OK, with some luck we might get a nice day or two before that, but you never know. At least we've learned by experience not to hold our breath...

A couple of new Nikons

I was looking around for a couple of lightweight lenses a couple of weeks ago as you might remember. The old Nikon E series glass are known to be good performers, light weight and used to be Nikons cheaper series of lenses.
I got a couple of E-series lenses from earlier, but the focal lengths is a bit on the odd side to my liking, and zooms are not exactly my cup of tea even though I have a few in boxes around the house. I don't use them much, as a lot of you know by now, but I've been thinking about wiping the dust off a couple of them some time this week. Just to give them a tiny chance, you know. If I can even find them, that is. It's a bit cluttered in the lens department, to be honest. In addition there are quite a few of them out on loan as well... but I have to collect them soon, I think. 

A nice find just outside the Dartmoor area a few weeks back, during our summer drive around the southern parts of England. A beautiful classic Rolls Royce is not exactly a common sight on this side of the North Sea these days. This one was strategically parked in the center of Tavistock, where we went for a nice walk since it seemed to be a fitting place for a stop. Leica M3 on Ilford FP4 film. 

So I managed to get a 35mm and a 50mm E-series lens, of which I wrote about a few days ago, from two different norwegian guys. Both lenses also contained a camera, meaning I'm also getting two Nikon EM cameras.
One of them is already here, and the other one should be in the house monday if the mailman still can be trusted these days.
The 35mm lens and the first Nikon EM has already been tested and seems to work perfectly. Seems like neither the lens nor the camera have been used a lot up through the years to be honest. Looks brand new to me, and there's even a strap on the camera and a UV filter on the lens... I mean how much luck can one man have when buying a camera for next to nothing?
On the back side, I should hasten to tell, everything smells a lot of old tobacco smoke. I mean to an extent that it's been hanging outdoors since they arrived. Oh, and there was also this old Tamron zoom lens following the same deal as well. All in all a good deal, as the prices for these E-series lenses seems to be a bit on the unrealistic side these days.
Nice to see then, that a good camera deal can still be done... on a good day.

England again. This time far south and west, in the St. Ives Bay area. Not too busy here on this side of the bay, meaning it was possible to get a snap containing only two tourists out running on the beach. It was a too hot day for any running if you ask me, but you don't. Leica M3, Ilford FP4+

I think I'll just give the two cameras away to someone eager to test film photography for the first time. After all I can't see them getting into much use in my hands anyway, and I can't say I feel too connected to them either. I mean it's always a bit different with things having been handed down to you from somebody, because that happens at times as well when people have decided you're a camera collector. If you didn't consider yourself one in the beginning, you soon will no matter what the original plan was.
There's one of them old and rather worthless cameras out on loan right now, to a girl with a set of very good eyes. I still think that's an OK thing to do, as long as there are people interested in taking them out for a short while to waste a roll of film or two just for fun, or in a bit more serious way. Usually there will be a couple of really nice frames in between a couple of rubbish ones... as with most of us.
Hopefully, some day, I'll get another person interested enough to be able to use this pile of equipment a lot better than myself. Both on the developing and printing side of things, and not at least when it comes to the snapping bit of things. Seeing the right moment, choosing the right angles and framing stuff in the right way.
At least in their own eyes.

An ever so slightly overexposed street scene from St. Ives itself. Busy old place, as you might know, but nice nonetheless. The old man to the left standing outside his front door having his morning smoke without even noticing a single tourist sort of said a lot about the locals and what they have to go through during a few months in the summer. Leica M3, Ilford FP4+. All three frames are from the same film, by the way...

The Fun and a Few Failures of the Half Format

The Sludge-tanker dude meeting a couple of pals on the quayside while taking on board stuff from our tanks into his own tank. He'll get it disposed off in the best way possible.

Better just face it. It's a lot more fun than actually a photographic tool, the half format cameras. 
My only experience with half formats up to this date is the more or less totally useless Diana Mini, but then I found this rather nice looking and not too badly priced Olympus PEN EE-3 when over in England this summer. For the few pounds they wanted for the thing I just had to give it a go. 
OK, it's not like the Diana Mini is useless as such, as it's still a thing to go for to capture that right sorts of moments and blurred scenes, but the Olympus is different. If nothing else it looks as a real camera made out of the right type of materials, and it's a tad more sophisticated than the Diana will ever be. 
I mean you can even adjust stuff on it, and how great is that to find when the going gets tough... well, it's great since you ask. 
Don't you get head over heels to get one though, as it's still a simple camera by all standards we're used to look for these days. You basically adjust the ASA on the film, and that's more or less it. Fully automatic with a rather distinct selenium cell light meter situated around the nice little 28mm lens on the front. 

Sea-fastening of heavy things on deck, West of Ireland, summer of 2017. Olympus PEN-EE3

I didn't plan to make any full review of the thing right here and now, as I've hardly used it long enough to do so. It's just that I've been fireing three or four rolls of film through the thing to find the answer of a couple of simple questions like if the tiny camera was even close to light tight, and if the light meter seems to work well enough for any practical use. 

Both initial questions now ticked off with a positive, meaning the camera has been put into the pile of useable stuff to bring along inside the bag of cameras I usually seem to carry. 

Luckily this camera is a tiny an lightweight sort of thing, making it possible to fit inside the cramped area of that old greenish web bag. 

Another couple of West of Ireland snaps, even though they could have been anywhere in the world obviously.

Since we're talking about a rather old and fully automatic, fixed focus type of camera, the negs might look a bit on the strange side at times. Add to this also the fact we're dealing with a half format machine, the negs are... well, grainy! Or Grainy, with a capital G to be more precise. 

If you can live with that in certain situations, it seems to be a rather decent camera. 

Still, if you have been living long enough to have grown up with one of these cameras in the house, you might think the negs are not at all that kind of small and grainy anyway. 50% of a 135 neg is still a bit bigger than the odd, and for some reason once quite popular 110 format. And hey, you'll easily get 72 exposures on one film. Since this camera seems to have a quite nice film transport and wind on mechanism I seem to manage to get close to 80 frames on one film. 

Still quantity does not always trump quality, but used for what it is and for wasting some film in the hope of getting a few fun series on a film it's as good as it gets. 

Because that's what I think I'll use it for. Having some good old fun. 

Which works for me... 

Playing with the half format... a bit tricky to do this thing, but looks decent enough for a first time test. Olympus PEN-EE3.

Back home, again :)

Back home again, which is a very good feeling indeed. A long trip it was as my new tickets meant I had to change planes three times, and a bit of waiting in between as well of course. 
Well, I was inside the house an hour or so past midnight which was good enough in the end. 

Another one from the Rolleiflex a bit earlier this summer. Late night shot on either 1/2s or 1s shutter time. No tripod, but I think I might supported the old thing in my lap or something. 

Just thought it was about time to check my undeveloped films. Find them from all the places I've put them and get ready to get them all done. 16 rolls 135 film and 7 rolls 120 film is going to take me some time to come through I'm afraid. 
I'll try my best folks, so keep coming back to this place and I hopefully will have something new some day soon. 

The Things that Happens

I just learned that "Fotografiska" of Stockholm, Sweden, is going to open another one of their "museums" some time during 2018. This time in London. Nothing much wrong with that as it seems to be a company of both knowledge and nice exhibitions, but I must say I have always had a bad feeling about them calling themselves a museum. It's a privatly owned company, after all, and probably not actually a museum.
I've never payed them any visit though, as for yet anyway. It's quite far away from my parts of Norway over to Stockholm, so even though we have been talking about going there some time it has yet to happen.
If I ever go there I will probably pay the ticket to get inside and have a look anyway. People seems to like the place, after all.
Anyway, now it seems I can just as easy go to London to have a look at what they have to offer. It's a bit easier than going to Stockholm after all.
I would really like to see the snaps of Anders Petersen some day, if I could. I know there's been an exhibition in Fotografiska, Stockholm with his pictures. They may come to London some day as well for all we know.

A square from the stairs inside the old house where my local photo club having their meetings and such. It's a nice building over there, at the other side of the road. A nice place to go to see a play or whatever. It's another one of them Rolleiflex snaps by the look of it.

Oh well. Last day at work for now, it seems. It's been an interesting trip in many ways, but usually that also means a few hickups here and there. A couple of days ago we had an issue with lub oil entering a very, very hot surface... Luckily no fire, but the potential was at a scary level. Managed to stop the engine and repair the broken stuff, so no particular harm done to anyone or anything. Which is good!

Don't know when I snapped this one, to be honest... Could have been a year ago, or something like that. Another square, so I know where it comes from, but that's about it. I don't even know if it's any cool or not.

Now I just can't wait to getting home, get my films developed, take a few walks in whatever weather we get, go visiting my parents and stuff like that. It's going to be great, I'm sure.
The grandson will come for a visit to our place, and the daughter want to have a short but good lection on pinhole cameras... so I will get a few things to do, it seems. Which is good, of course.
But first we need to get ashore and away from Peterhead heading for Aberdeen and from there find our flight over the North Sea and things like that.
Looks like the ship will return over to Norway in a couple of weeks, so I might sign on somewhere closer to home the next time I go on board. We will see!