We had quite a lot of fog over the Christmas holidays, so here I am, finally having time to do some exploring, but there was almost no light to be found. At least not the great kind of light that I usually prefer. But I wanted to get out, partly because I started developing film myself, and I needed more material to work (read practice!) with. I had a roll of Kodak Colorplus 200, film I actually ordered to practice loading film on the real of the development tank, but it arrived too late for that. In other words, I had no idea what to expect from this film, but decided to try it on the beach of Scheveningen to generate some practice material for my developing skills. But I quite like the results anyway, although they are very different from my usual morning-sun-through-the-trees kind of photos…
I seem to have trouble lately exposing for foggy skies, I have several photos (also from other mornings) with very grainy skies as in the photo above due to overexposure. The negatives look quite dark, that’s how I know that it wasn’t under-exposed. But after getting used to the look and colors I actually found the result quite interesting. Due to the cold and fog the beach was very empty, there was hardly anyone there. And the pier, from which I took most photos, was not really open yet, there was just a small opening in the gate for the garbage collectors etc. And now I feel like the muted colors and grainy texture fit this deserted and cold place quite well.
Apart from a few grainy skies the photos look pretty alright to me. I still don’t really know how to evaluate this film, as this light is so weird. I read that Colorplus is supposed to give fairly saturated colors, I guess you would need a bit of sunlight to achieve that! But since this is one of the first rolls I developed at home, and scanned myself, I feel quite happy with it. It is still new to me, but I actually love being able to shoot, develop, and scan an entire roll of film within one or two days. Here are some more photos from this morning:
All photos were taken with the Leica M2 and Summilux 1.4/50mm, on Kodak Colorplus 200. Developed and scanned by me.
Thanks for reading!
Wow, you sell yourself short, this set is fantastic!
Great work on the dev and scan too.
Thanks, Michael, that means a lot to me!
It can be difficult to look at my photos when the result is different than I expected or what I am used to. So my first reaction is: this is wrong. After a little while I think that it’s actually kind of cool, and after that I start to question my own judgement. You know, maybe I just like them because I enjoyed shooting them. Which of course is fine for my own amusement, but then I am not sure about sharing. Anyway, we probably all get insecure about our own work, right?
I don’t know the film or the conditions but I would say these images are very characterful. I think the one location, one film, once camera approach works really well as a blog post too, it just looks right.
Did you do this in a home C41 kit? I do my own B+W but never tried colour at home.
I did it with the Rollei Colorchem C41 kit. It was pretty straightforward, just takes a bit of time to get to the right temperature (I did it at 38 degrees, but it can be done at 25 deg too, just takes longer). My concern is how to recognise when the chemicals are bad, I don’t shoot that often, and according to the manual it is only good for two weeks after opening, but I see people online using it for much longer. What scares me about that is that you can’t redo the development, so you have to know/guess before if it still ok to use. But we will see how that works.
Maybe I will just shoot more film to finish the chemicals on time 😉 . I am considering (just a little) of doing something like a 52 project, because I like this format too…
I love the look however it arrived. Reminds me of Gaf 500 film from the 70’s at a time when 64 asa was fast for colour!
I used to pay for my photography by buying bulk film and selling it process paid to my school friends then bulk processing it in my fathers garage. You can be quite caviler with developing monochrome film but the temperature and times of the colour development are more critical and worth thinking about. Are you using a water bath to maintain the temperature, it is winter…?
Thanks Coline!
I have seen people mention bulk-loaded film, but I don’t really know how that works and if that is something I should consider, I don’t know any film-shooters in my direct environment.
I made a water bath in a bucket in my kitchen, where it is 20 degrees. I keep the bottles with chemicals in the bucket for approximately an hour to get close to the 38. After that I make the water about 40-42, and let it drop to 38, then I assume the chemicals are 38 too (I think I am going to buy a thermometer that fits in the bottle to make it more precise). I noticed that the water bath stays within 0.5 degrees for at least 5 minutes, which is enough, as the development step at 38 deg is only 3.15 min.
I realise you might have mentioned this already in another post (sorry if I missed it), but which software are you using to get the colour balance sorted, and how long does it take for each frame? The results are really very nice.
Great photos too, as usual.
Thanks, you are too kind!
For scanning I use Silverfast software (Ai Studio 8) with the Epson V800, and I use the auto color correct function that comes with it. For some of the photos above I did some color tweaking in Lightroom, but most of them were fine after that.
Thanks, I really need to give that combination a go. The time and complexity involved in the way I’ve been scanning colour negatives (shooting them with a digital camera and inverting them) made shooting colour too hard. I’ll have to try and borrow my Dad’s V750…
Btw, I wrote a guest post about my scanning process which was just published: http://www.35mmc.com/08/02/2017/scanning-colour-negatives-epson-v800-guest-post-aukje/