More from my Zorki

I've just developed the second black and white film from my Zorki 35mm camera and am really finding it very satisfying to see the results appear as if by magic after development. I've now got the scanner functioning and have to say that the results for a flatbed scanner are pretty good. Once we get back next time from the boat I plan to send a few negatives for printing the old fashioned way to see what difference there is compared to an inkjet.

I was so pleased with the results that I have splashed out on a quite expensive lens for the Zorki, a 28mm wide angle lens, well, it is my birthday in a couple of days time....

 I did find that only having a 50mm focal length was a little restrictive so thought I'd try a wide angle lens. As the camera is a rangefinder you do not view the scene through the lens so having a different focal length also meant getting another viewfinder for the camera. This fits in the shoe on the top of the camera and you can swivel the turret round to get different focal lengths. I tried the lens on my digital pen this morning and the image looks really clean and crisp although as everything is manual the focusing on the Pen is tricky as one only has the rear screen to use and theres no way of enlarging the image as there is on the dedicated lenses.

Anyway here's a couple of photos from my latest roll of film.

The first from our last trip on the boat at bridge 40 Leicester Arm of the Grand Union Canal:

Trying still life again with the torches, a little trickier with the Zorki as there's no preview!

Some trees on Bungay Marshes at the back of the golf course:

Famous images

In an odd few minutes I've been surfing the net to look at some icon images of past photographs and thought that as a project it would be good fun and a great exercise to try to copy/emulate a few of them.

My first is an image by Andres Kertesz (1894 - 1985) There's plenty of examples of his work scattered around the web.

The Fork, or La Fourchette, was taken in 1928 and is one of Kertész's most famous works from this period.

So here it is and my interpretation.

It was interesting to recreate what is seemingly a simple composition but when you come to it it take more care and thought than might be imagined.

I'll let you decided who's is who's!

Water, water everywhere

There is a great article in this weeks Amateur Photographer about photographing water droplets and given the weather was very wet I thought I'd have a go.

The set up is simple really just a container with water in, the camera on a tripod and a flash unit, preferably off camera. The difficult part is timing the flash to go off at the moment of impact. In the AP article the photographer had all sorts of solenoids and electrical contacts. I tried trial and error! Well, the results are below from about 297 shots. The colours come from a yellow lever arch file standing behind the bowl, sometimes with a blue towel under the bowl and sometimes with white balance on tungsten. 

Have a go yourselves and see what you can come up with. Any more info you would like, drop me a line.

The wettest drought on record!

It was good to see the sun yesterday but back to miserable conditions today but for some reason I seemed to manage to capture a couple of atmospheric shots. These are on my Olympus Pen.

I've just finished another roll of B & W on the 35mm Zorki and will be processing it myself. I've managed to get most of the equipment together from e-bay (its all going very cheaply these days) and when the rain eases will be popping out to buy the chemicals. Then as soon as the changing bag I've just bought arrives I'll have a go at the developing. It must be over 50 years since I last did it but I don't suppose its changed that much, in principle anyway.