polaroid

...now browsing by tag

 
 

Oxford: Skateboard pro’s at the OWP skatepark

Sunday, July 12th, 2015

The Globe EU Trippin skateboard tour made a stop at the Oxford Wheels Project skatepark last week and I went along to do some photography. I had no idea who the professional skateboarders were and I didn’t expect there to be so many people but it was a fantastic atmosphere and great to see such a capacity crowd. Photography was difficult because of the amount of people and very little space to manoeuvre but I did manage these two shots on my Polaroid 190 Land Camera (from the 1960’s).

[Tech info:] Polaroid 190 Land Camera, Fuji FP-100C instant pack film (bleached neg).

 

Oxford: New College on large format

Monday, February 9th, 2015

Yesterday I taught a landscape photography workshop at New College with Anthony (the current Oxford University Photographic Society President) and after a classroom session we all went out into the New College grounds to do some photography. The sky was very clear which made for quite contrasty light with nice shadows. I decided to take my Polaroid 110B to do some large format photography on Kodak Plus-X Aerographic film to test out how it handled contrast. Overall I think the film handled the contrast very well, especially in this first image below. I only took six sheets of film with me and to save time I bracketed the first two shots and then used my last two on Anthony (we couldn’t decide on jacket on or off so we shot both).

[Tech info:] Polaroid 110B, Kodak Plus-X Aerographic film, processed in Kodak HC110 (1+31) for 5 mins.

Behind-the-scenes – film drying in the darkroom

Oxford: Lunchtime session – Tori

Monday, January 19th, 2015

Today was a glorious sunny winters day here in Oxford and I made good use of it by doing some photography with Tori during my lunch break. I had three different film cameras with me today and here are two shots from the Polaroid Land Camera I took (the b&w shots are drying in the darkroom overnight so they’ll follow at a later time). There’s something really nice about winter sunshine and how it can make colours pop, it can also be very harsh and contrasty so it’s a nice challenge to look at how the light is falling on your subject and how the smallest of movements can mean the difference between nice and not so nice. Tori was incredibly easy to photograph and I hope we can do some more photography with different cameras and film. There is zero retouching on these two images, no Photoshop fakery, no filters, no plugins, just straight scans from the film.

These two shots were made on Fuji FP100-C instant pack film that expired 9 years ago. When you store it carefully and pay attention to how you expose it it’s capable of creating some fantastic results. I tend to underexpose it by a stop which results in a darker print but a nice negative that can be recovered with bleaching the black carbon layer off. The negatives are much sharper than the prints and you also get 2 stops of more detail in the shadows compared to the print.

[Tech info:] Polaroid Land Camera 190, Fuji FP100-C (expired), recovered neg.

Oxford: large format lunch-break photography

Tuesday, November 25th, 2014

Recently I managed to pick up a roll of quite unique film and these are some of my first test shots with it. The roll is 350ft long and 5 inches wide so it’s perfect for being cut down to 5×4 inch sheets to use for large format photography. The film is Kodak Plus-X Aero film that was developed for aerial photography – this is stock used by the M.O.D. and expired in 2000. During my lunch break yesterday I went into town hoping to make some test portraits because the tonal range in this film is more like what you find in wet plate photography and I wanted to know if it was going to be usable for portraits. I’m very happy with the results which look very smooth tonally and the grain is almost non existent.

[Tech info:] Polaroid 110B (modified for 5×4), Kodak Plus-X 2402 Aero film, ISO 100, processed in Rodinal 1:50 for 14 mins.

Here’s the camera I used (shown below with a roll film back). Modified by Randy at HolgaMods.com

Oxford: Lunchtime Fujiroids of the Oxford Tailor’s

Wednesday, April 16th, 2014

Despite the harsh lunch time sun today I managed to find somewhere with some nice light to make these portraits of Hugo and Jason, Oxford Tailor’s from Clements & Church. These guys are always dressed up looking smart and ready for a portrait.

[Tech info:] Polaroid 110B, Fuji FP-100C instant pack film.

Polaroid flash test with the Oxford tailor’s

Tuesday, March 11th, 2014

It’s been a while since I’ve done any photography of the Oxford tailor’s at Clements & Church because of all the wet weather we’ve had but at the moment we seem to be having a dry spell so I decided to do a couple of test shots with using a flash connected to one of my Polaroid Land camera’s which I’ve never done before. Despite it being an overcast day it was difficult to overpower the ambient light because the flash sync speed on this camera is only 1/60 but overall I like the look. My first test shot with Hugo looked a little over-exposed so I stopped the lens down 1 stop for  Ian’s shot – you can see a slight difference in the depth of field of the background.

[Tech info:] Polaroid 190 Land camera, Nikon SB800 speedlight, Fuji FP-100C instant pack film (expired).

hugo

ian

Oxford: lunchtime fujiroids

Tuesday, January 28th, 2014

These two portraits were made during my lunch break today, I wanted to test out a Polaroid 110B camera that I recently bought. This one has been converted to use instant pack film just like the Fujiroids that I enjoy using so much. This camera has a rangefinder for focussing which I’m not a big fan of  but that’s how it is. I wanted to see if the rangefinder and lens were calibrated so I needed some test subjects and fortunately for me Amber and Freddie (who I’ve photographed before) came along. To eliminate camera shake I decided to set the camera on a tripod and I used a cable release to trip the shutter. So far so good, everything seems to be working. The interesting thing about these two shots is the exposure used is exactly the same (1/125th F4.7) with the lens wide open, the only thing that changed is the lens to subject distance. Look at the difference in depth of field when I focussed closer on Amber than I did Freddie.

[Tech info:] Polaroid Pathfinder 110B camera, Enna Werk Munchen Ennit 127mm/f4.7 lens, Fuji FP-100C pack film (expired 2007).

Oxford: backstage at the Ashmolean Dress Up event

Wednesday, September 11th, 2013

The Ashmolean Museum had a fashion themed event a couple of weeks ago and I went along to do some backstage photography for Clements & Church, the awesome tailor’s on Little Clarendon Street. The schedule didn’t allow much time for photography before the models had to head off to the catwalk but I did manage to make some portraits on Fuji instant pack film with a Polaroid passport camera that I’m beginning to really like – here are a few of them. Others to follow. It was nice to see some familiar faces at the show from previous Oxford Fashion Show events, you might recognise some of them from my blog. Please note that as this film expired in 2006 the colours are not 100% accurate.

[Tech info:] Polaroid passport camera, expired Fuji FP-100C instant pack film (bleached negative).

Photo shoot: Industry magazine

Sunday, June 9th, 2013

These Fujiroids (aka Polaroid) are from a photo shoot I did a few weeks ago for Industry magazine. The magazine is out now so I can finally share these. Whenever I shoot digital images for a publication I usually take along some film to shoot for myself. We had the perfect location and perfect evening light on this day and I’m really pleased with how these turned out. In a few of the shots that were in the shade I added in a speedlight with an orange gel to mimic late afternoon sunlight. The top right shot was to demonstrate with and without. My thanks go to the models for being so patient while standing in the cold lake and to the rest of the team for organising everything.

Here’s a short video from the shoot.

[Tech info:] Mamiya RB67, 90mm and 180mm lenses, Fuji FP-100C (expired) instand pack film in a sliding Polaroid back.

Oxford: Fuji instant pack film

Friday, May 31st, 2013

Here are some shots I made today at two different photo shoots. My first shoot was with Sarah who I first met during Oxford Fashion Week 2012. It’s only taken 6 months to find a day where we were both free and the weather was dry. It was a great shoot and I really like how these shots turned out and hopefully there will be more collaborations to come.

My second shoot was with Helen who has also been very busy so we haven’t shot much together so far this year. I ended up underexposing a couple of the shots because the slowest shutter speed on the camera I was using for these is 1/30th and there wasn’t enough light. I know that the negative (once I bleach it) will have another 2 stops of detail in the shadows so it’s not a big deal. I also shot some black & white film at both of these photo shoots and they will follow at a later time.

[Tech info:] Speed Graphic 5×4 camera with a variety of lenses (Dallmeyer 12inch, Pentac f2.9 and Kodak Ektar 203mm) on Fuji FP100-C (similar to Polaroid).

 

Experiments with Passport cameras

Sunday, March 10th, 2013

Here are some of my experiments with Polaroid passport cameras. I’ve got two and four lens versions which allow you to either have all of the images on the print be the same or you can make them all different. Something I didn’t realise until peeling these prints was that the lenses are fixed to a focussing distance of 1.2m and even though there is a switch on the four lens version to set it to 1.92m it doesn’t actually move the lenses, you’re meant to attach additional lenses (which I don’t have) to the front if you expect to achieve in focus shots. Now I know! You should be seeing some in focus shots sometime in the future.

Top two shots are with flash, bottom two are without.

The shot on the left was with an additional lens from a 403R but it has no markings. Shot at 1.2m.

 

Photo shoot: Sylvia

Saturday, March 2nd, 2013

Here’s a Fujiroid from a recent lunch hour photo shoot I had with Sylvia. I also shot some colour film but that has been sent to a lab that I’m trying out so those shots will follow at a later date. You may recognise the location from some of my other shoots and that’s because it’s close to my office and very convenient to walk to. I’ve been trying not to repeat the same shots at this location so it’s a bit of a challenge but I like that.

[Tech info:] Mamiya RB67, 180mm/f4.5 lens. Fuji FP100-C instant pack film loaded into a sliding Polaroid back.