An old roll of Klick film.

Remember Klick?  Are they still on the go?  Turns out they are, only now owned by Max Speilmann which is owned in turn by Timpson which in turn, it appears, is about to be sucked into the gargantuan folds of Tesco.  Such is the wonderful world of choice promised by free market capitalism.

Stuffed away in a box in the garage I found a few old rolls of Klick's own brand 35mm film which I'm now putting through the Rollei 35B.  Although I sent my negs away to Peak Imaging for processing and printing (good, speedy service by the way) the whole process took me back to when I first started and would get my films developed on the high street.  Having to pay for each roll of film then pay for it to be processed meant that it cost far more to take a picture back then than it does today.  Not having much money, this is probably how I ended up developing my painfully slow shooting habit.  A habit, which despite having shot on digital for the last ten years, I'm just beginning to break, or rather evolve.

I don't consider my style to be slow in the way that fine art photographers spend hours working on every minute visual and technical detail.  I spend my time looking for emotional connections to my subject matter.  The actual taking of the photograph I often do in a very fast photojournalistic manner - shoot and move on.  But I like to spend time around the people or places I'm photographing, either physically or mentally.  Then once I've ever so slowly found that emotional resonance, snap and the photo's done.

Zeiss Ikon Nettar + Ilford Pan F Plus test shots

I got these shots back from the Ilford lab a few weeks ago but have been so busy I've not had time to do anything with them.  Overall I'm pretty impressed.  I struggled with the focusing on several of the close up shots and portraits so must get onto eBay and see if I can find a suitable rangefinder.  The portraits were also all shot indoors in really gloomy lighting - not the best for a 50 ISO film such as this, so my guess if that at least some of the blurriness is down to movement.  The group shot was done with my Ziess tripod and a modern cable release.  The tripod was fine once I got it on the carpet but a slippery devil on the laminate floor.

My scanner was having trouble recognising the medium format negatives so these shots are scanned from Ilford's prints.  No editing other than cropping and rotating has been done.

Eduardo Paolozzi sculpture at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park

Family portrait

Canal, Wakefield

Dad painting a bird table

Coming soon....Ektar 100 colour negs

That's my first roll of Pan F Plus in about 10 years off to Ilford for processing.  Freshly loaded in the Nettar is a roll of Ektar 100 colour negative film from Kodak.  Looking forward to seeing what I can achieve with "the world's finest grain color negative film".