Behind the scenes during filming of Endeavour 7 | FILM 3 in Merton college, Oxford at the end of October, 2019. These shots are from two different days that the crew spent in Merton College making good use of the lovely grounds and some of the rooms (second unit also filmed a brief scene on Merton Street). Fortunately we had nice weather the whole time, dry but very cold.
[Tech info:] Rolleiflex 2.8F, Zeiss Planar, Fuji 400H (expired), Noritsu scans.
First test roll with a 40mm wide-angle lens I recently picked up for my Bronica SQ-A. I’ve had the lens for a while but I needed some dry weather during my lunch break to test it out. The lens is very wide and allows close focusing which I like. The interior shot of Worcester College chapel was an 8 second exposure which is the slowest shutter speed on the camera. I can see that being very useful in some situations. The roll of Ilford Pan F I used expired in 2007 so I rated it at ISO 25. Even though slow films are meant to lose sensitivity over time slower than faster emulsions Pan F tends to suffer quite badly for a film with a box speed of ISO 50. Not a problem on this occasion because I wanted to use the 40mm lens fairly wide open. I’m pleased with the results from this lens and it’s a keeper.
[Tech info:] Bronica SQ-A, 40mm Zenzanon lens, Ilford Pan F (expired), developed in XTOL 1+1.
Behind the scenes during filming of Endeavour 7 | FILM 3 in Merton College, Oxford. More pictures to follow after UK broadcast – no spoilers here.
[Tech info:] Rolleiflex 2.8F, Zeiss Planar, Fuji 400H (expired), Noritsu scans.
Some behind the scenes photography during filming of Endeavour 6 | FILM 4 in Oxford, October 2018. After filming some scenes in the main quad of Teddy Hall the action moved out to New College Lane. This was late in the afternoon with rapidly fading light as I recall. The light seemed to suit the mood of the scene.
[Tech info:] Rolleiflex 2.8F Zeiss Planar, Ilford HP5 film.
Behind the scenes photography during filming of Endeavour 6, FILM 3 – CONFECTION. The location for the day was the Oxford Union – these pictures are from the William Morris room which is decorated in beautiful Willam Morris wallpaper. I have photographed inside this room many times because the OUABC team use it to warm up in for the Town vs Gown boxing competition. The Endeavour art department did a wonderful job of transforming this room and I’ll post more detailed pictures soon.
[Tech info:] Rolleiflex 2.8F, Zeiss Planar, Kodak Portra 400 film. Noritsu scans.
Here are some portraits I made at a WWII re-enactment event in Mapledurham back in the summer. The weather was overcast which was perfect for the colour palette and colour negative film I was using. These shots are all from the same roll of film through my Rolleiflex 2.8F. Part 1 of my portraits can be found here, made with the same camera but different film. More to come.
[Tech info:] Rolleiflex 2.8F, Portra 160VC film (expired).
There has been quite a flurry of filming activity on the streets of Oxford recently and I’ve photographed some of it. The scorching temperatures have slowed down the amount of photography I’ve been doing lately but I braved the heat when a certain crew rolled into town to film the next instalments of Oxford’s best loved detective. No spoilers.
[Tech info]: Rolleiflex 2.8F, Fuji 400H (expired), Fuji Frontier scans.
Here are some portraits I made at a WWII re-enactment event at Mapledurham recently. The weather was overcast which was perfect for the colour palette and colour negative film I was using. After much deliberation on which gear to take I settled on two 6×6 medium format cameras – Rolleiflex 2.8F and Pentacon Six TL – because I mostly wanted to concentrate on portraits and I like the balance of the 6×6 format. Shots from the Pentacon will follow.
[Tech info:] Rolleiflex 2.8F, Fuji Pro 400H film (expired).
For a while now I’ve been meaning to use my Bronica SQA but either the weather or other things kept conspiring against me. Last week I finally managed to do it and here’s a set of pictures from the roll I shot during my lunch break photo walk. The shots of the drainpipe and the painted house number sign were made using a +1 close-up filter that I wanted to test and the last three shots were made with a red filter – the Radcliffe Camera shot had a polarising filter as well.
[Tech info:] Bronica SQA, 80/2.8, Ilford Delta 100 developed in Tetenal Ultrafin T-Plus.
For the past few years I’ve have had a lens sitting around that I wanted to make use of but never quite got around to it, until now. The lens originally came off of the Polaroid 110B Land Camera that I had modified to a 5×4 large format camera and I didn’t see much point in mounting it to a lens board to use on a different 5×4 camera so it’s been sitting around doing nothing. I wanted to adapt it to work on my Rolleiflex SL66 but the only place I knew of that made an adapter was asking around $80 which is more than I wanted to pay but fortunately a friend mentioned RAF Camera where an adapter cost just under half the price.
After modifying the adapter slightly (two small holes need to be drilled so that small screws on the back of the lens can stop it from twisting) it was ready for testing. Below are some test shots from the first roll. A few things to mention are firstly the focal length is a surprise if you’re mostly used to using the 80mm standard lens as I am and I frequently found myself taking a few steps back from where I thought I would need to stand to a given composition. Secondly, the depth of focus is extremely shallow even at f8 and because the image through the viewfinder gets darker as you stop down it’s difficult to get precise focus without a bright focussing screen in your camera – something that affected my hit rate of sharp shots on this roll. I’ll use a tripod for the next roll I use with this setup to see the difference. All shots made during my lunch break.
[Tech info:] Rolleiflex SL66, Enna Werk München 127mm f4.7 lens, Ilford Delta 100 (expired), developed in Tetenal Ultrafin T-Plus.
Behind the scenes during filming of Endeavour 5, FILM 5 in Brasenose college, Oxford. These shots are all from the same roll of film through my Rolleiflex. The scenes filmed on this day take place before the scenes filmed on the previous day in Radcliffe Square but it all matched up well in the final edit. Whenever I get the chance I try to photograph SA’s (supporting artiste’s) because I like the outfits from the 1960’s. You may recognise the college don below from various different Endeavour episodes and maybe even some other tv shows and movies.
[Tech info:] Rolleiflex 2.8F Zeiss Planar, Ilford HP5 developed in Kodak HC-110 1+31.
Behind the scenes photography from the filming of Endeavour series 5, FILM 4 in Oxford. It was mid-August when the picnic scene was filmed in Oxford’s Botanic Gardens and what was meant to be a nice summer’s evening ended up looking more like drizzly October. That’s when the magic of a large light ended up transforming the scene to look like the sun had broken through the heavy overcast sky – I shot some wider shots to show how dark the sky was. The last frame is from the next setup which was a nice scene that didn’t make the final edit. This was the last frame on this roll, more from that scene will follow in a future blog post.
[Tech info:] Rolleiflex 2.8F, Zeiss planar, Ilford HP5 film @ ISO 1600, developed in Kodak HC-110.
