Trying Out a New Film

Thanks to my friend Bill Smith I tried Cinestill 50D film recently. This film is Kodak Movie stock, but with the black anti-halation backing removed, to make it easy and safe to process using standard C-41 chemistry. Both these images were taken at Harbourfront with my Nikon F2 SLR and 28mm/2.8 Nikkor lens.

Murphys Law Hassy LM400021
Murphys Law Hassy LM400028

Bluffer’s Park Beach 1: The Water

Yesterday morning I went out early to the beach in Bluffer’s Park in Scarborough, Ontario. I was shooting on a low speed film (Rollei RPX 25), so everything was on a tripod with slow shutter speeds. The combination of the slow shutter speed and a decent onshore breeze (making for active waves) made for an interesting effect on the water.

Bluffers Beach HB RPX25018

Hasselblad 500C/M, 80mm/2.8 Planar lens
Rollei RP 25 film, developed in Rodinal

At Night

I tend to not do a lot of night photography, and I really have to change that! It is a real gap in my work. I did do a night shoot the other evening with fellow photographer friend Bill Smith: I love the night time look of the Murphy’s Law pub in Toronto at Queen St / Kingston Road. We set up our cameras on tripods across the street an shot during gaps in the traffic.

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Hasselblad 500C/M, 80mm/2.8 Planar lens
Lomography 400 C-41 film

End of a Roll

If you’re a 35mm film shooter you’ve been here: you have a couple of blank frames on a roll of film, and you don’t want to waste them so you look for something, anything to shoot to finish the roll. That was the case for this image: I wanted to see the other shots on the roll, had a few shots left, so on a day where the sun shone brightly onto a table in our sunroom, I got the idea of putting a mask in the sunlight and shooting it with my 55mm Micro-Nikkor macro lens. Very happy with the results!

OPen Streets F4 UN54 002

Nikon F4S, 55mm/3.5 Micro-Nikkor lens
Orwo UN54 film developed in Tmax Developer

The Accidental Story

OK, one FINAL shot from the White Water Walk 🙂 What I like about this image is the fact it got accidentally photo-bombed by the young girl in the lower left hand corner, and originally when working with this image I cropped her out. As I looked at the image again though, I liked the sense of story created by having her in the image, looking down the trail.

St James hassy RPX400 011-2

Hasselblad 500C/M, 50mm/4 Distagon lens
Rollei RPX 400 film stand developed in Rodinal
1+100, 1 hour

Two Solitudes – Another Take

After a fun Nikkormat – themed photowalk with my friend Bill Smith, we ducked into a pub for a beer. From our table facing the front of the restaurant I couldn’t help but notice a couple who seemed oblivious to each other, and were glued to their phones. I couldn’t resist the image, so I picked up the Nikkormat  with a 105mm/2.5 lens, and shot a few frames wide open at 1/60th of a second, guessing on the exposure (since the camera did not have a functioning meter) and hoping  I could get one frame of Tri-X sufficiently sharp. I got lucky.

W. Bill NKMT TX MicX  005