Black and White

Barcelona Dark VI

Nighttime Street Photography in Barcelona on Film
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Continuing the series of night-time street photographs in Barcelona. This time I have tried using a 28mm lens, which has proven very difficult. You might expect that the wider angle would mean needing a lower shutter speed, but in practise if you try to get closer to the subject to compensate for the wider field-of-view there is no real advantage. Add to this the practical limitation that my 28mm is a stop slower than my usual lenses, and it is very hard to catch images successfully. With the typical light […]

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Black and White

Barcelona Dark III

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A short set of new images in the Barcelona Dark series. I am gradually managing to tame the processing and also gradually migrating away from 50mm to 35mm for the shots – largely because the 35mm is noticeably easier to focus and hand-hold. Some of this might just be psychological, but fear of failing to get rapid and accurate focus with a 50mm means that I seem to have more close-up images of subjects with the wider lens. These are also somewhat more randomly framed than usual. Not sure if […]

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Black and White

Back to film?

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The M7 is now back from its latest repair attempt in Leica, and I have shot a couple of test films to re-check the focus calibration and metering. So far, it looks promising. The metering is now usable at ISO 400, and ISO 1600 looks ok down to about 1/8th second (a huge improvement from before, where it was failing at 1/125th). But…

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Black and White

Day Shine

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A short set of street images, this time exploring the use of a diffusion filter in bright sunlight. This is a slightly weaker filter than was used for Night Mist, and I prefer the results better. When shot in diffuse daylight the effect is an almost imperceptible loss of contrast, so these shots were specifically shot with as much light and contrast as possible…

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Black and White

Barcelona at Night

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A set of five images shot on film at night in Barcelona. These were shot with 400TX and Delta 400, pushed two stops in DD-X 1+4 as part of a test to get a feel for how the films compare in low light. Overall, the results are very similar (can you tell them apart?) – the Tri-X appears to have slightly better exposure latitude, while the Delta looks finer grained. On balance I prefer the slightly grittier Tri-X, and will try to shoot a series using this next year.

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Black and White

Barcelona Street – Week 1

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This is the first of five weekly posts featuring street images take in Barcelona. The idea is to try to improve my street photography my methodologically trying different approaches and subjects. Each week will feature images shot using a  specific camera and lens, with the intention of really deciding what style, medium, focal length and way of shooting seems to work best. At the end I will write a summary of what techniques were used and some of the pros-and-cons. For this week, all the images were shot with the […]

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Black and White

Sun and Rain

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A short set of recent street images shot on black and white film with the M7 in Barcelona. It has been a very unsettled spring, with alternating spells of torrential rain and blazing sun. Somehow these are coordinating with the calendar to land all the worst weather at the weekend! Shot on the Leica M7 with a mix of 35mm and 50mm lenses on Ilford Delta 400.

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