I love London Pride and i’m sad to see that this year it has been cancelled due to COVID-19. This will be the first time since the first pride march in 1972 that there wont be a march. It’s very sad and feels like the right time to post this roll of film which I shot last year at London Pride 2019 and then a few frames after at the London Wetland Centre.
No pushing or pulling, shot straight out of the box. With a little bit of love.
Ilford XP2 Super 400 is the second film I shot at London Pride 2014. The streets were once again alive and buzzing, by this time of the day i’d had a fair bit to drink and was definitely enjoying the evening!
I have said this a lot over the past year but Ilford always performs well. This film has an excellent tonal range and really bites in the shadows whilst holding on to details. The highlights are given a glow by the grain softening them.
The 400 speed SP2 has a much larger and higher grain value compared to other 400 speed films such as Kodak TMAX or BW400CN that boast a super fine grain at high speed. That being said, the ‘rugged’, grainy look is something that I love about Ilford.
After the success of last years London Pride, I decided this year I would walk the streets in the Parade/March. Of course bringing my camera along as it’s also around the ‘anniversary’ of me starting this blog.
For most of the march I stayed alongside some of the members of my boxing club that also walked this year. Braving the rain throughout the day we started at Baker Street and finished at Whitehall.
It looks like my negative scanner is on the fritz as it’s starting to develop some lines across the images (upon closer inspection) and colour casts, nothing overly drastic, but a little frustrating and adds processing time to the photographs. Quite possibly this may also be a result of the developer used, so is something I must look into.
The Agfa Vista has quite a lot of grain for a lower iso film. Out of the box delivers average results from an average class film. Personally I don’t rate it very highly, there are other colour films out there that give much more interesting results.
That being said I haven’t pushed or pulled this film yet so I can only pass comment on the selection of images that i’ve produced and not for the entire production line of Agfa Vista.
This is the third post in a series of four rolls of film shot over London Pride 2013. Please take the time to look back through the previous post’s to fully appreciate the event and various film types used throughout the course of the evening.
The previous posts are Kodak Ektar 100 and AgfaPhoto APX 100
By this point in the evening i was getting quite drunk, i had great friends around me and the streets were alive with thousands of people celebrating Pride. The city had an energy surging through it. It was exciting to scan and see the results of the 400CN as i couldn’t remember some of the shots i had taken (oh dear).
This film delivers excellent deep contrasts and tones with a very desirable fine grain considering the ISO. Skin has come out clear and the highlights are giving a gorgeous glow.
I will shoot the next roll pushed as i am eager to see the results first hand as i feel it will not be able to handle a massive push due to it already being quite a contrasty look, however i could be wrong as processing will play an important factor.
Leading me on to some important news! I have signed up for Kennington Camera Club, which is only a stone’s throw away from me. I can now use the studio for larger shoots and i will also be using their darkroom to develop my own film.
Every year in London on the 29th June the streets are filled with a giant party atmosphere celebrating gay right movements and various sexualities coming together to express themselves in one of the city’s more colourful events. Pride.
This is the first time i have been to pride since 2011 as i had got bored of it, for years London pride had been neglected and was usually pouring with rain for at least a few hours, however this year it seems to have been given a complete overhaul, whether people dug deeper in their pockets or maybe it was just organised better but this years pride was, fantastic! One of the best ones i have been to in years.
It was great to see the streets filled with people enjoying themselves, the weather was perfect, not a cloud in the sky. Music was playing on every street corner from Trafalgar Square to Oxford Circus. The city was alive.
I was already a few frames in to the Ektar 100 loaded in my camera, the previous day’s weather had been terrible and i only managed to get a few frames off around Covent Garden. I was determined to get some shots over pride, i wanted to use this colour film to my full advantage. I brought 3 spare rolls of film with me and went on my merry way into central to meet some friends at one of my favourite bar’s in Soho, Ku Bar.
For this event i wanted my equipment to be as light as possible, i opted for my Sigma 50mm f/1.4 prime for the shallow aperture and it being much lighter than my 24-70. I stuck around f/2 – f/5.6 rarely going any higher.
Annoyingly retouching has taken longer with this film, there were considerable dust and scratches and also water stains on the film which i am not impressed about, the film processing seems to have not been very thorough this time and has left me with a few frames that required more work on them which could of been avoided.
The colours of this film are so saturated and fairly contrasty, Ektar was once likened by my tutor at University for sharing similar properties to Kodachrome however i feel Kodachrome had a warmer more contrasty feel to the final photographs which Ektar misses.
The grain is very desirable and fine not impeding on the quality of the photograph, i would like to see the results of Ektar pulled to 64 and then adding some contrast in photoshop how much it may resemble Kodachrome. Although as i previously stated it is not going to be identical. Dare i say it but i prefer the result of Ektar 100 over Portra 800, even though Portra is a gorgeous film type it lacks the punchiness and saturation of Ektar.
The 35mm Project 