Storm Warning

Stormy beach scene, Masnou.

A set of stormy beach scenes, shot along the coast from Badalona to el Masnou, north of Barcelona. These were part of a film shot as part of a processing test for Delta 400 exposed at EI1600 and processed in DD-X 1+4 as if shot at EI 3200. The resulting grain is quite harsh, but also quite fine compared to faster films. The film was scanned using an E-M1.2 with a macro lens, which tends to de-emphasise the grain compared to standalone (non-flatbed) film scanners.

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Stormy Times

A short set of images taken along the seafront in Barcelona shortly after a storm had passed, These were shot with a Minolta X700 and a Tokina 28-70mm objective as part of some tests to select a lens for a future project. I bought the Tokina while a student, thirty years ago, and never really liked the image quality. Wide open it is just soft across the frame and without any real character – it needs to be stopped down to at least f8 to get decent results. Despite this, […]

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Review: The Minolta MD 16mm f2.8 Fish-eye Lens

This is a short user-review of the Minolta MD 16mm f2.8 Fisheye lens, with a selection of images taken using both Minolta film and also Leica digital cameras. This is the first time that I have used a fish-eye lens, with its immense barrel distortion creating unusually distorted images. This particular lens completely fills the full 35mm rectangular frame, with the image diagonal spanning a full 180 degree field of view.

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