documentary | The 35mm Project

Jun 17 2020

Fuji Velvia 50 Cross Processed

Hey there!

In 2013 I bought 2 rolls of Fuji Velvia 50. I shot the first roll pretty quickly on a trip to New York City…to my surprise i’ve not uploaded that roll to the blog so at a later date will go back and rescan the negative for you all to see. Fast forward to 2020 and i’m shocked it took me 7 years to shoot the other roll (London Pride 2019)…I remember thinking it’s because Velvia is an E6 process. Which for the colour noobies out there E6 is a film processing technique using a different variation of chemicals and timings. The end results is a positive image instead of a negative image created with C-41.

E6 film is usually very fine grain, pin sharp image quality and vivid colours. However it doesn’t have the exposure latitude of C-41 colour negatives so your shots need to be perfectly exposed each time! For more information on the differences between E6 and C-41 check out this blog post from The Darkroom

As I don’t own E6 chemicals and wasn’t going to invest in any for 1 roll of film I decided to cross process with Tetenal C-41. Cross Processing is where you develop a roll of E6 > C-41 or C-41 with E6. For E6 > C-41 process you will usually get strong contrast and a lot of colour cast. For C-41 > E6 you’d normally see a flatter image with muted colours.

For my process I have a very prominent green colour cast.

Changing settings in Silverfast to compensate for Green Colour Cast.

You can see from the images below the highlights are blown out and the contrast is really high in places but overall i’m happy with the results!

Tagged Canon, colour, colour cast, Contrast, cross process, documentary, film, London, pride london

Jan 31 2014

1 Comment

Foma, Fomapan 400

Fomapan 400

Hi everyone

So much has happened over the past month, where do i begin! Okay, firstly i would like to wish all of you a huge Happy New Year (I know i’m a bit late). I hope you had a fantastic time eating too much over Christmas and drinking too much on New Years. I was being a model student and stayed in studying, i am now reaping the rewards of finishing my dissertation a month early which has freed up quite a bit of time, however i am back at University at full steam ahead with my final semester of my final year Advanced Major Project, eek!

At the beginning of January I had my Pride Exhibition at Gallery 1885 in Kennington, you can see back to some older posts where there are some more details on how the Exhibition went and the process involved, needless to say i thoroughly enjoyed the experience and i’m eager to get another one on the go!

Probably a blessing in disguise this month was loosing my job, at the time didn’t realise how much time working for my previous employer was being taken out of my week from enhancing my own photography business and developing my personal projects. Now with the free time i have managed to search and apply for many areas of photography and retouching services as well as develop my own business, update my websites and finally finish the roll of film i had loaded into my camera.

The black and white film from Fomapan has a relatively good grain for 400ISO. Although in comparison to Kodak who over the years have mastered fine grain at a higher ISO, leaves Fomapan lagging behind. There is also a lacking crispness to the photos, leaving them softer than others i have used on The 35mm Project, even the Ilford Delta 3200 pushed to 12,800 appears to have a sharper finish than the Fomapan.

The softness of the film however does not leave me unimpressed, in fact, i am quite impressed with Fomapan, especially as the softness benefits the photographs of the fog covering the houses and the people walking through tunnels. This film leaves me wanting more out of the softness, in future i will shoot using purposefully out of focus settings to create a collection of photographs much like a ghost on the image. There is photographer who’s images i can see in my head but name escapes me, when i remember i will add his name to this post as it enhances what i am talking about.

Tagged Contrast, documentary, Grain, portrait, self portrait, still life

Jun 17 2013

Ilford Delta 3200

I couldn’t wait to shoot another DP3200. I absolutely adore this film and feel that it will appear frequently during this project albeit using different pushed/pulled settings and exposures over the next year.

This time i visited Bank as well as the subways of Elephant & Castle and Cafe’s in Wardour Street i’ve also included a self portrait, an unsuspecting fellow traveller on The Underground and EDF Energy’s mascot Zingy! I used the Sigma 50mm f/1.4 and Canon 24-70 f/2.8L Mk II for this film. It has been great using the zoom lens, especially when photographing in smaller spaces. Over the coming weeks i’ll start pushing and pulling film to see how this affects the contrasts and tonal range. I’m also interested to see how pushing affects grain properties.

The grain and tonal range is as i would expect, beautiful. There is a huge amount of data that can be pulled from the highlights. Unfortunately the emulsion mustn’t of covered properly as there was considerable damage to a couple of the photographs which had to be retouched.

After shooting this film i looked for some more 3200ISO and was astonished to see that it was unavailable from any other manufacturer. There is the option of pushing slower ISO film however a lot of films start to become considerably contrasty when pushed more than 2 stops, although sometimes this is a desired effect.

In light of this I had eventually found and ordered some Kodak P3200TMAX which was unsurprisingly discontinued in 2012 however i managed to find some online!

My friend Ameila Hallsworth appears in this film a few times, Amelia is a fantastic up and coming Photographer that has a love for everything coffee and cake! Make sure to check out Amelia’s blog www.ameliahallsworth.com and her Twitter @AHallsworth

Tagged Black and White, cafe, coffee, documentary, still life

Apr 24 2013

4 Comments

Ilford, Ilford Pan

Ilford Pan 400

My negative scanner has arrived and i’ve been playing with a mixture of settings. So far I only have 2 rolls of film that have been developed. Strangely one film had hardly any photographs on it! What a waste!

Anyway, the images that I have started with are quite old, some dating back a few years up until early last year.

To note I never liked this film type very much however my tutor loved it when i was at college and supplied countless rolls however i felt that it lacked the qualities of other film types offered from Ilford.

I vaguely remember trying to use this film up so i could get other old rolls used up (still being developed).