Last year I bought a random lot of cameras at auction and among them was a waterproof Nikon compact film camera. Keen to test it out I waited for some very wet weather and in October we got some so I went out during my lunch hour to shoot the first test roll through it and here are some of the results.
[Tech info:] Nikon AW compact camera loaded with Ilford XP2 film, processed and scanned at ASDA in Swindon.
Happy New Year to everyone that visits my blog. December was a bit slow in terms of new posts and activity because of various things that were taking up my time but I still have a backlog of shots from 2013 that I haven’t had time to post so there’s no shortage of new images to come. Usually I try to group the shots in my posts together so they make sense but that’s also led to delays so I think what I might do more of is just concentrate on posting whatever images are on a particular roll of film which sometimes is spread over a wide time period when I’ve used a camera for a day or two but then haven’t come back to it until weeks later because I’ve been using other cameras.
Here we have some behind the scenes shots from some filming of Endeavour (episode 2 of the forthcoming season), there was a night scene outside the cinema on Jeune Street (that’s the make-up crew on the bench) and also some shots of the major roadworks that were going on along St Aldates for 5 weeks which was a real pain. There’s also a shot of the new entrance to the Radcliffe Camera being built which I believe was to allow wheelchair access.
[Tech info:] Nikon FM2, 50/1.4D lens, loaded with Fuji Press 400 film, processed and scanned by ASDA in Swindon.
These shots were made on the end of my roll of Cinestill motion picture film that I had used during the Chicago dress rehearsal. As it’s a tungsten balanced film I thought it would be useful for using inside Clements & Church on Little Clarendon Street because the interior of the shop is lit with tungsten spot lights. I think these turned out really well. I rated this film at ISO 500 but my exposure time was a little on the slow side to handle hold the camera so I used a tripod for all of these. Thank you Jason and Hugo for being so patient and for standing very still.
[Tech info:] Nikon F100, 50/1.4 lens, loaded with Cinestill 500T film, dev & scanned at ASDA in Swindon (thanks Simon for the wonderful service).
All of these shots are from the same roll of Kodak Colorplus 200 film that has been sitting in my fridge for many months since I shot it. I’m not sure when these images are from, my best guess is April or May this year. Kodak Colorplus is the first film that I saw stocked in Poundland Oxford when it first opened in the Westgate shopping centre and I was so excited to see it for £1 a roll that I cleared the shelf. It didn’t seem to be stocked for long and was replaced by Agfa Vista 200. I like the look of this Colorplus film and have had nice results from processing it myself. Some things have changed since I shot these pictures, the motorbike window display was in Shepherd & Woodward, Aubin & Wills are no longer on the High Street and Richard has moved from the Oxford branch of Clements & Church to the Leamington Spa branch.
[Tech info:] Nikon F90, 50/1.4 lens (shots of Tailor’s Richard & Nick with 28mm/2.8), Kodak Colorplus film, dev & scan by ASDA in Swindon.
The Endeavour film crew are back in town to film episode 2 of series 2 and I was fortunate enough to do some behind-the-scenes photography on what turned out to be an incredibly wet Sunday. There was a break in the rain when I arrived at the first location and I was optimistic that it might last but unfortunately that wasn’t the case. I had had just enough time to photograph some of the extras before heading for shelter in the Covered Market. A pleasant surprise was when Shaun Evans arrived on set, he greeted a bunch of the crew and then came over to me to tell me that he liked the pictures that I had posted from the scene they shot in Brasenose Lane a few weeks back. What a nice guy! If only all actors were as down to earth. You can see those pictures here.
The pictures below are all from my 35mm camera, I did shoot some black & white in my Rolleiflex TLR but I haven’t had a chance to develop those yet so they’ll follow at a later time. On this occasion I didn’t get a chance to photograph any of my main actors but I don’t mind because there are so many people involved in the making of this tv show and I’d like my behind-the-scenes pictures to document them as well. It rained so much that I got a chance to speak with some of the crew while we sheltered from the rain. They all seem like a nice bunch and have worked on a huge range of different tv shows. It was a long day but incredibly interesting and I hope to get a chance to do some more photography as filming continues.
[Tech info:] Nikon FM2, Zeiss 50/1.4 lens, Kodak Hawkeye traffic surveillance film, dev and scanned at ASDA in Swindon. My thanks go to Simon at ASDA for his excellent service and speedy turnaround on these.
