Black and White

35mm

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Spain’s massive COVID spike not withstanding, it is now at least possible, if not necessarily advisable, to go out and photograph on the streets again. These are some of the images from the initial attempts to resume the Barcelona Dark project. In fact, getting back to photographing at night again is proving somewhat challenging. Having moved home more or less during the worst of the pandemic earlier this year, the surrounding area is different and needs a different approach to photography. I also feel like I have lost a lot […]

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Black and White

Dark

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A set of test images shot at night in Italy, to gauge whether or not a digital camera would be a reasonable replacement for film in the Barcelona Dark series. The bottom line is probably not. It is very hard to emulate the “glow” around lights that get with film (caused by back-scattering of light from the film base). Shooting with a diffusion filter gets someway towards the look of film, but the fall-off with distance from the light is never quite right – although it is a nice effect […]

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Black and White

First shots with the Leica M-A

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This is a short look the Leica M-A film camera, from the perspective of someone used to shooting the technically much more advanced M7. The M7 has been my main film camera for more than five years now. What started as an experiment to reduce the size and weight of camera equipment has ultimately led a growing reliance on Leica M series rangefinders for most of my photography. A key advantage being the ability to keep the same lenses and basic shooting experience in both digital and 35mm film media.

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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 Nights II

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The second set of night-time street images taken in Barcelona and shot on high-ISO film. These are images of an illegal street market late at night (around 10pm) at the Rambla del Mar, at the harbour. The sellers are usually illegal immigrants, and most of the goods are fake clones of branded handbags, shoes, sunglasses and Barcelona FC shirts. All images taken with the Leica M7 and Zeiss ZM 1,5/50 with Ilford Delta 3200 metered at EI3200 and processed in ID-11 as if shot at EI6400.

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Black and White

Barcelona Nights I

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The first of two sets of night-time street images taken in Barcelona shot on high-ISO film. The intention was to capture something of the night-time in Barcelona with a vintage-look. Away from the main streets it can be very dark in Barcelona.      All images taken with the Leica M7 and Zeiss ZM 1,5/50 with Ilford Delta 3200 metered at EI1600 and processed in ID-11. The lens was shot wide-open, partly because shutter speed was a problem even at EI1600, but mostly because I really like the glow around […]

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Photography

Barceloneta by Night

Night-time photograph along the beach front in Barceloneta. Taken with the Canon 5D Mark III and Sigma 35mm f1.4 Art.
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Just to completely break any consistency with the previous uploads, here is a set of colour images taken around 8pm along the beach-front from Barceloneta to Port Olímpic in Barcelona. The lighting here is an impossible mess of different colour temperatures. Setting white balance for anything realistic is almost impossible, so I have settled for something surrealistic. Curiously, the saturation is not boosted – the main edits in Lightroom are to drive up the contrast and add vignetting. I used the DSLR for these to avoid carrying a tripod. All the […]

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