Issue 3 Â June 2018
Sea Light (2018) Stavenisse, NL. Bronica ETRSi with 50mm and expired Fuji Superia 100. Rotary processed at home.
Welcome to the third issue of Filmdiaries Photozine, a magazine dedicated to film photography. I invite you to discover the work of Sherry Christensen and Ed Worthington. It has been fun putting this issue together.The next issue will be available from August 1st as I decided to make the magazine bimonthly. I believe doing so will improve the overall quality and content. One of the things I want to bring to the reader’s attention is the incredible richness of techniques and cameras the some 190 years of photography history has given us. Most of them are still available. They offer so many creative possibilities. Think palladium, gum bichromate, … We are still looking for contributors and welcome inquiries. Thank you for your time and I hope you’ll enjoy this 3rd issue of Filmdiaries Photozine. As always we value your feedback. Silvery greetings, Stephan
Hi, my name is Sherry Christensen and I am from a small farming community in east central Alberta Canada. I will be honest with you, I hate writing about myself. I am also not very good at it! Being in such a small rural community there are no classes to learn photography, so I am entirely selftaught using online education and books. In 2011 I began looking at “good cameras” and was completely shocked at the prices! Photography had always fascinated me, what the heck, give it a try and see what happens. My first DSLR camera, a pretty red Nikon P500 which I outgrew within a year and also wasn’t a full DSLR! Next came a little education… and a used Nikon D90, classes at The Photography Institute completing my Diploma of Photography, Landscape & Travel Photography module and Certificate of Perfect Portraiture in 2013. In 2016 it was time to learn to shoot film, so another online class was in the works… I was hooked… big time! Now days there are cameras all over the house and fridge full of film… but hey, the gear isn’t as expensive! I enjoy shooting vintage cameras, the oldest I have used was a Kodak Jiffy 616 from the 1920’s and have been known to shoot pretty much anything in 35mm and 120 format. Film photography is where my voice and passion lie. If you are still reading this… thank you! If you want to see more of my work you can visit: https://rr1photography.com or follow my blog Adventures in Analog: https://rr1photography.com/blog/
Working with expired film
Kodak Pro 400 Use before: 4/20/1991 the box says. The date was Sept 3 2017 and I was loading this film into a Bronica C that I just purchased. I don’t know if the camera works properly, it seems like it does and I don’t know if the “cold stored” Kodak Pro 400 was any good. I rated the film at 100 +2 and used the sunny 16 rule (forgot my meter at home again, whoops!) The Nikkor lens focuses smoothly, the shutter like any Bronica is a noisy slap and the camera handles well. But how about this old expired film? I’m guessing it is good, but I had never heard of this Kodak Pro 400 before, a true experiment.
Ektachrome E6 is not my strong point, but I am not giving up. I will master this. I have some Ektachrome expired in 2003, some I discover is damaged by humidity, but it has been cold stored. The first roll I tried metering and messed up, noticing that I had bumped the ASA or ISO dial on my Rolleiflex when I finished the roll. But I had metered and shot for a completely different setting! Upon asking a few more experienced friends what to do I ended up pushing 2 stops with true E6 processing and the roll was salvageable, but with noticeable colour shifts. The water damage is visible and you can see the numbers from the backing paper have bled through over time. It is also why it is super important to have good communication with your lab, total save here! Note to self, use the unwrapped film rolls for personal work, not portraits!
The second roll I tried in a Zeiss Nettar 515 rangefinder, rating it ASA or ISO 50 and using sunny 16. Cross processing brought me beautiful results! Still used Sunny 16 since the Nettar has a shutter speed of 50, should be perfect right? Had a bit of shake in a couple frames‌ but I enjoyed this super small compact medium format camera.
My First Roll Of Film It is May 2016 and I have done something scary (for me anyway) I have signed up for an online workshop to learn how to shoot film. Ok, it’s not my first roll ever shot, but the point and shoots from the 80’s don’t count! I had picked up a Nikon FE kit at a garage sale a couple years ago because I wanted the lenses for the digital Nikon I was shooting, but I just was not brave enough to just pop a roll of film inside. I had problems finding a processing lab… nobody local does film anymore, I was even having problems finding a lab in Western Canada! Also I noticed finding film was quite expensive and took a long time to arrive. I have since found better (cheaper) suppliers and a super lab, Canadian Film Lab! Anyway, back to my story, week one was Black and White. I have never shot B&W… ever! It was a challenge, since I had chosen Ilford Delta 100, the fastest lens I had was the 50mm f/2 and it was an overcast week. I also did not own a light meter, so had to guess with the in camera light meter, which wasn’t super accurate. Some photos were out of focus as well, but I was happy with most of them.
My name is Ed Worthington although I go by the pseudonym "The 6 Million P Man" online and for the vast majority of my work, and I am photographer from Wales in the UK. I started shooting film around 3 and a half years ago and have been completely non digital in photography since the beginning of this year, not because I don't like using a digital camera but more because I just haven't felt the need to shoot anything other than with film. I have a pretty large, and still growing, collection of cameras but I tend to shoot mostly with the same ones. Those are an Olympus OMÂ1, Canon AEÂ1 Programme, Nikon F301, Yashica D and a Zenza Bronica S2A. I have also recently purchased a Polaroid Originals One Step 2 which has been getting some serious usage. All of the images that are here are shot with the Bronica S2A on various Ilford film stocks. I can be found online on Instagram at @The6millionpman, Twitter at @6millionpphotos or my blog/website.
Internet Photography Titbits I found these articles interesting and like to share them with you. This does not implicate I agree with the views and opinions expressed. You can look at the internet as some kind of living organism. New websites are created, others deleted. Today. Tomorrow. Every day. There is no way I can guarantee the links provided here are still active tomorrow, or in a month. Picturesque Poverty: Contemporary Photography’s Ugly Game The poor are easy to photograph. They make for good pictures, because they wear an expression of their many hardships literally on their sleeves. Unlike the welloff, poor people often lack an awareness of what a camera might do, specifically might do to them. And crucially, the poor don’t end up as patrons of the kinds of institutions that constitute large parts of photoland. In other words, they’re excluded economically, and they remain excluded symbolically as well, the frequent noises by fine art photographers expressing concern about their plight notwithstanding. The Secret Photographs of Stanley Kubrick Before becoming a great filmmaker, the director of ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ and ‘A Clockwork Orange’ was a photographer for Look magazine. Reconsidering the Political Detachment of Eggleston’s Images Los Alamos, a set of William Eggleston’s color photographs developed from negatives made between 1965 and 1974, reminds me of the tagline from the 1969 film Easy Rider: “A man went looking for America, and couldn’t find it anywhere … ”
Biography: 19th Century Architecture photographer Francis Frith Francis Frith (1822 – 1898) was an English photographer of the Middle East and many towns in the United Kingdom. Francis Frith came from a Quaker family, Edward Fox being a frequent visitor to their home, and was a deeply religious man, a preacher and writer of prose and verse in his spare time. As was to be expected he was a devoted family man, and often took his family with him on his photographic tours in Britain. The party usually included his wife, six children, two servants and four photographic assistants.
Nikon F – The Camera That Changed Everything If there’s one camera that’s been a constant presence throughout my years as a photographer and writer, it’s the Nikon F. Nearly every research trail or trip to the camera show somehow ends with the F, and for good reason – it’s the granddaddy of 35mm SLRs. I’ve long known that the Nikon F is a great camera, but when James asked me to pen a retrospective on it, I had to wonder; is the F really that special?
Top 10 Inspiring MustReads For Passionate Pinholists What have you been up to for World Pinhole Photography Day? If the idea mill is going dry, allow us to amuse you with some interviews with passionate pinhole photographers, quirky and creative DIY pinhole cameras and informative analysis on the state of pinhole photography in the digital age.
