Winter walk with the Canon F1 and Canon FD 24/2.8

Oh my! It has been 2 years since my last post on my blog. I REALLY need to do better and hope to this year. Things have been really busy with side projects, hustles and business. I will divulge more later. But first, I am going to talk about the mighty Canon F1 and the Canon FD 24/2.8 as a landscape kit. Note, I had a cheapo off brand zoom with me two, very compact 28-70 macro (vivitar?) that also came in handy for the walk out to my destination.

So I acquired the Canon F1 from a local auction maybe 4-5 years ago and save a roll or two, I haven’t shot it much. In fact, I have rarely picked up any Canon save my EOS 7ne (for film) or the 5dmkii for digital. For film, I seem to be picking up the many Nikons I have or one of my Leicas. Not to hate on the canons in stockpile and the lenses I have, they just haven’t been getting a workout for no reason than I have too many cameras and tend to grab the last camera I shot with. The other reason I chose the fd 24/2.8 as my lens of choice on this date was that I have owned it for more than a decade but used it once. The filter ring was dented and I use color filters generally when I shoot B&W. I bought one of those filter ring fix it tools off Amazon and low and behold, I was able to fix the filter ring! So off we were on a day that got a light snow. Film of choice was Ilford Delta 400. Why? It was what I had rolled off a 100′ bulk roll so here it was, ready to shoot. Where to? One of my favorite places for a late afternoon shoot with hopefully a bit of snow left. Stone Door at Savage Gulf State Park (formerly part of the South Cumberland State Park system). Note that this walk happened this winter sometime back in January of 2023.

The walks in the woods with a camera are always very therapeutic for me, especially shooting film. I can completely immerse myself into the setting as I get no feedback until weeks later when I develop and then scan. I am just one with the experience. Today, I was hopeful for some new or differing compositions as well as revisiting some older scenes to see how they have changed since last season. Do they? Certainly which makes it even more exciting. Two old trees are succumbing to nature and I was going to use them or what was left in two compositions. Anyways, I was very pleased with the days outing. Nothing was to extraordinary but nonetheless, I was pleased.

Now for some images!

And a few from the zoom lens on my walk out to the overlooks.

I hope you enjoy these and I hope that maybe some different content will follow soon.

Ilford’s Delta 400

So I have been at a loss as of what to write on this blog for quite sometime, spending my time elsewhere on other projects as well blogging on another site which has little to no similarities to this blog. For the time being, I am going to try to keep this photo related but who knows, I may change that down the road and add differing content.

Recently, I picked up a couple rolls of Ilford’s Delta 400. This is a film I shot relatively little of and none in at least 5 years. In fact, I have shot very little T or Delta grain film in 400 speed, usually reserving that for Delta 100 or to a lesser degree, TMX/Tmax 100. In 400 speed black and white, I have always liked the traditional grained films with a lot of HP5+, TriX and Kentmere 400. I love the smoothness of TriX and the bite (if that makes any sense) of Hp5+. Kentmere is a fine budget film.

I have a couple rolls of Kodak TMY2 sitting around and I figured I would compare it to Ilford’s Delta 400 to see how I liked it. I have a bulk roll of TriX waiting to get used but after that, I was contemplating moving towards either Delta 400 or TMY2. So this led me to pick up a couple rolls of Delta 400 to compare with TMY2. I have yet to shoot Kodak’s t-grain 400 speed film recently (in the past) but plan on using those 2 rolls on next week’s National Park trip. I recently developed the delta 400 in my soup of choice, d76, and was pleasantly surprised. So much so I decided to write about it and post some images.

Initially, my impression is that the film has great range and tones. Very desirable and easily can be a substitute for traditional 100 speed film in 35mm format regarding grain size when needing a faster film. I have always found TriX grain very minimal, but the resolution suffers compared to 100 speed film. Ilfords Delta 400 seems comparable to any of the traditional grain 100 speed films, albeit with less contrast making it a better choice in contrasty natural light.

Camera and lenses on these two rolls are as follows: roll 1 was shot on a Minolta srt 102 with a rokkor 50/1.7 with and without an orange filter. Roll 2 was shot through a Nikon n90s with either a nikon 20/2.8 w/ orange filter and a nikon 28-80 zoom with yellow filter. I will post some results, first 3 images with the first roll and 2nd group of images with the 2nd roll. You be the judge.

Roll 2

So I will let the images and your eyes be the judge. Next up, in a couple weeks, will be the TMY2 images. Stay tuned…