Search results for: 'reliable'

Silver halide has been used in photographic film and paper for over 150 years and remains a vital ingredient found in all high-quality products. Silver halide crystals in gelatin form part of an emulsion which is used to coat the paper or film. On exposure to light (i.e. in a camera or darkroom), the crystals react turning into silver and forming the image. Silver halide prints There are many ways to produce black & white prints with options varying in quality. Traditional black & white silver ha...

An appreciation of Ilford FP4 The greatest pleasures can be taken from the simplest of things. An appreciation of something old that gets passed by while everyone tries to keep up with the crowd or the relentless progression of technology.  For me Ilford’s FP4 is one of those little pleasures. The RAF I was a photographer in the Royal Air Force from 1986 -1995.  At my RAF unit we had little choice of film stock.  It was FP4 and HP5 for black and white. Being stationed at a headquarters unit mean...

Taking the plunge I'd had this roll of Ilford HP4 for a good few months and was hesitant to put it through a camera. The fact that it was so pristine in it's condition made me feel that whatever I used it for had to be significant. I had to wait for the right opportunity. As the weeks passed,  I began putting unnecessary pressure on myself to plan a shoot around this one film. It was sitting on a shelf, judging me. At this point I decided to stop procrastinating and just shoot the roll, regardless of w...

An experiment in chemical possibilities When I took up a camera after a few years’ hiatus in 1990, I was surprised to discover that I could no longer get a black & white film developed through the nearest camera shop, never mind through the local pharmacy.  If memory serves, I was told it would cost $40 for a single film. Naturally, I returned to processing my own film just I had done when I first took up a camera in the early 1970s. The world had moved on, and colour film was the default medium f...

Road Trip In October of last year, I sold most of what I owned at that time and went on a 10,000-mile road trip across the American West, capturing all of it on film. Among the few possessions I brought with me, my reliable medium format camera Bronica SQ-Ai and 100 rolls of ILFORD HP5+. Along the way, I photographed the tallest trees on Earth, the coastal Redwoods in Northern California; the volcanoes of the Cascades in the Pacific Northwest; the oldest trees in the world, the Bristlecone Pines in t...

The Outlaw Project shooting portraits with a large format camera The Outlaw Project, was inspired by Edward Sheriff Curtis, the 19th Century photographer, known for his portraits of native Americans, shot with a large format camera. In 2011, Peter acquired a giant copy camera, made by Sidney R. Littlejohn Co., in the East end of London circa 1926. The camera, though having been used heavily in the newspaper industry for copying documents, was generally in working condition. With its inner mechanical str...

Towards the end of 2018 I was reviewing some of my Autumn film photography and feeling put off by the results. I've been working with film for some now in an effort to take advantage of the superior dynamic range. And, when shooting in strongly backlit scenes to move away from silhouettes and ambiguity and towards a more controlled journalistic style. Shades of Autumn I found that because of the diffused cloudy conditions in London I was struggling with my exposures and the overall look of my images. T...

Image: Double exposure portrait series Technical info Film Used: ILFORD XP2 Format: 35mm film Camera: NIKON F3T Lens: 50mm NIKOR-S 1.4 Exposure time: 1/60 Aperture: 5.6 Other equipment: - Location: Kyiv, Ukraine Firstly, tell us the story behind this image. What inspired you to shoot it? I was attracted for a long time to the visual capabilities of multiple exposures. But I had no concept of how I could go beyond the simple multiple overlapping of frames, until I visited Marcel Ducham...

It's week 25 in our In Focus interview series and this time we set our questions to Arkadiy Shlein who was nominated by Lina Bessonova back in August. Arkadiy is a Russian large format photographer and analog printer with a classical style. BACKGROUND SHARE YOUR FAVOURITE IMAGE / PRINT SHOT ON ILFORD FILM AND TELL US WHAT IT MEANS TO YOU? I’ve got so many favourite photographs that I don’t have a single one hanging at home (yes, couldn’t decide :). This is one of them. I photographed this beech gla...

Nominated originally by Keith Moss back in November of last year. David Collyer is the 31st interview in this series.  A documentary photographer who chooses to shoot around themes or projects. David's is probably best known for one of his recent projects All in a Day's Work which received international recognition. Section 1 - Background SHARE YOUR FAVOURITE IMAGE / PRINT SHOT ON ILFORD FILM AND TELL US WHAT IT MEANS TO YOU? Blimey! That’s like being asked to choose your favourite child and then expl...