Month: February 2021

Throwback Thursday… London!

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Warren Street StationWarren Street Station
Fujifilm X20, Fujinon Super EBC 7.1-28.4mm f2~2.8 at 13mm, 1/40s, f8, ISO 100

What was I photographing on this day in previous years?

Six years ago it was London during a day out riding the rails with Dad. From memory we were only in London for an hour and a half between trains but I had time for a brief wander out of Euston station and down to West End Cameras then located on Tottenham Court Road.

BT Tower reflectionBT Tower reflection
Fujifilm X20, Fujinon Super EBC 7.1-28.4mm f2~2.8 at 16mm, 1/350s, f8, ISO 100

I couldn’t resist photographing the BT Tower, reflected in the University College Hospitals Education Centre, especially when a London bus sneaked into shot!

Monochrome Monday… Quando, quando, quando*

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East Mill, BelperEast Mill, Belper
Camera unrecorded – Ilford FP4 Plus

The ease with which I can digitise negatives using the excellent pixl-latr has encouraged me to delve into the pit that is my unlabled/unprinted negative folder(s) to try and make some sense of it all…

It’s not going well…

Take the roll this image is from. I’ve no clue as to when any of the 35 frames were exposed. None. I can’t even hazard a guess as to the year!

Is this sort of shambles common in other photographers?

Digitised using Nikon D5500 & AF-S Micro-NIKKOR 40mm f/2.8, pixl-latr and Negative Lab Pro plugin with minimal cropping and tweaking in Lightroom Classic CC.

* Engelbert Humperdinck singing “tell me quando, quando, quando” sounded quite exotic to me as a youngster… “tell me when, when, when” sounds much less so…

A stack of pancakes for Pancake Day!

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Pancake stackA stack of pancakes
Nikon D5500, AF-S NIKKOR 35mm f/1.8G DX, 0.6s, f11, ISO 100

Physically thin, short barrelled lenses for single-lens reflex and mirrorless cameras are colloquially known as ‘Pancake’ lenses… for obvious reasons!

My collection is pictured above, from top to bottom we have the Minolta MD 45mm f/2, the Canon EF 40mm f/2.8 STM, the NIKKOR 45mm f/2.8P and the NIKKOR 50mm f/1.8 AI-S.

I rather like the slightly wider view offered by the 40/45mm lenses and as can be seen in the image below (comparing the ‘pancake’ NIKKOR 50mm with the ‘standard’ NIKKOR 50mm) such lenses tend to be smaller and quite pocketable.

Nikkor 50mm lensesNikkor 50mm lenses
Nikon D5500, AF-S NIKKOR 35mm f/1.8G DX, 1.3s, f11, ISO 100

Over the years I’ve used others… the Contax Tessar T* 45mm f/2.8, the Panasonic Lumix G 20mm f/1.7 and the Fujinon XF 27mm f/2.8 but the ‘holy grail’ of such optics is definitely the Olympus Zuiko Auto-S 40mm f/2 for the OM system… I’d love to get my hands on one of those!

Monochrome Monday… Experimenting with bellows…

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BobbinBobbin
Yashica FX-D Quartz, Yashica ML 50mm f/1.9, f16; – Kentmere Pan 400
Developed in Ilford DDX at 1:4, 11½ mins at 20°c.

I’ve recently been experimenting macro photography using a set of bellows between a Yashica FX-D Quartz and a standard 50mm lens… it’s not the easiest setup to use, if getting the camera in the right place is difficult then keeping it still is nigh on impossible!

This cotton bobbin is roughly 25mm in diameter and only a slight crop has been applied to the image. The bellows were set to give 40mm of extension which gives (according to my calculations) a magnification of 1.1x, slightly larger than life-size.

More experimentation and practice is definitely needed…

Digitised using Nikon D5500 & AF-S Micro-NIKKOR 40mm f/2.8, pixl-latr and Negative Lab Pro plugin with minimal cropping and tweaking in Lightroom Classic CC.

Single frame… ‘When the red, red robin comes bob-bob bobbin’ along…’

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Robin (Erithacus rubecula)Robin (Erithacus rubecula)
Nikon D5500, Tamron SP 70-300mm f/4-5.6 Di VC USD at 300mm, 1/125s, f8, ISO 140

I’m not really a ‘twitcher’ (although I have just joined the RSPB) but photographing birds whilst out and about is proving to be very enjoyable and the acquisition of a Tamron SP 70-300mm lens for my wife’s Nikon D5500 has made doing so much easier…

Granted, so far a lot of my images are of Robins (Erithacus rubecula) but the UK’s favourite bird is incredibly numerous and not at all shy, making the capturing of images a breeze!