A Year In Photos -- Week Fourteen

A hugely exciting week coming up both on the new-picture and picture-capturing fronts. This past week the Ilford P4 performed extremely well and there are a number of nice shots to share. In terms of capturing new shots, this week sees five new films being used, including at least one that I will never shoot again because it hasn't been made since World War II. In fact, I'm not 100% certain I'll get any shots from it because it's somewhat brittle. I managed to get it out of its old spool (that isn't compatible with modern 35mm cameras) and into a new spool, then into my Nikon F3. However, the leader kept cracking and breaking apart. But, how that the film is loaded, it may yield results. Don't hope for too much -- it's 14 DIN rated, meaning 20 ISO. Ultra-slow speeds like that have a theoretical shelf life of eternity if properly stored, but I have no way of knowing if this was properly stored. We'll find out next week.

This past week yielded solid results. The Ilford P4 is a superb film. So I bought another spool of it. I'd rather never run out, but someday, in about 115 rolls, I will. But the P4 ought to last me a few years at least. In addition, some new film coming up in the next few weeks will include Kodak Vision 3 motion picture film. I picked up two types for a net HALF-MILE of film for less than a single spool of TMax 400. But we'll wait a few weeks to get into those.

In the interim, here's a preview of what's coming this week:













For this coming week, here's the lineup:

Monday: Balda Juwella (732130), Fuji Velvia 50. The Juwella is a 6X9 folding camera. It's always been decent with monochrome, but I've never shot slide or color film with it. So this will be a chance to shoot eight very large slide shots with a very nice film. This is the same film I used the other week for this post.

Tuesday: In keeping with the Fuji Velvia theme, Minolta SRT 102 (2042109), Tamron 28-70 (9003019), and Fuji Velvia 50. This is a new lens I picked up for less than $20 on Saturday at a thrift store. It's in pristine shape. Also, it's an Adaptall II, so with a few adapters it may appear at some point on my Pentax or Nikon cameras.

Wednesday: Nikon F3 (1635441), Nikkor-S 50mm (818328), Agfa 15 DIN. The 15 DIN film is about 20 ISO -- hyper slow. Because it expired in 1948, I'm going to shoot four shots at ISO 12 and four at ISO 20. That increases the odds that something will turn out. This will be the slowest film I have ever shot, and because of its age it may return no results. But it's worth trying anyway.

Thursday: Zeiss Contina Matic II (T81756), Ilford 50. You may have detected a trend by now: very slow films this week. Nothing exceeding 50 ISO. That wasn't an accident.

Friday: Pentax K2 (7084574), Pentax-M 50mm (3007577), Kodak Vision 3 50D. This is a motion picture film, 50 ISO, daylight balanced. It will give the Velvia a solid run for its money on which returns the best 50 ISO color images.