Hi, everyone!
A BW Slide shooter here, seemingly happy to find a spot to land.
My photography story? Dad was an amateur photographer in his time, but he stopped shooting all of a sudden, and it's impossible to ask him why, although I have an idea when I ask this myself. A couple of ideas: fire in an attic where he had his darkroom, started by my brother and... The last pictures of our family together are that of a funeral... That tragedy probably killed it, and our childhood atrocities didn't help either: "Oooh, a lens in this strange machine, must take it out and let's burn something with it", so me and my brother probably destroyed a Soviet enlarger... The same all those childhood BW pics we're made with, probably... Film got fixed in my blood I guess, but nobody to say Thank You for that. Alas, wisdom and the howling regret comes only with age.
Sooo, in 90s I toyed with a plastic point and shoot, shot some color negatives (cars on the streetside, lol), but couldn't find my subject of interest (thus: have nothing to say) in my boring rural town, and photography was put aside.
Fast forward to ~2008 and you can see me exploring abandoned sites and documenting my adventures with Nokia 6630, and a tad later - with Samsung digital point and shoot that was given to me. But it expired on me, the harsh and dusty environments got the better of it. I was unemployed when it died on me, so I was without a camera for a while. Soon enough I happened to find an abandoned ФЭД-2 at a place I was staying - a beautiful, purely mechanical Soviet rangefinder / Leica copy in its beautiful brown leather case... So I took the liberty to take it for myself. Had no income, but I could probably put some cash aside for a roll of film, the thinking was.
No money, but all the time in the world! So I took the camera and started to explore it, and teaching myself photography via luminous landscape forums, essays and tutorials - free of charge at the time! First - with unloaded camera just to get the feel of it, to understand the principles of exposure before I waste even a frame. Later - with loaded, of course. A great teacher it was - both the forums and the mechanical camera!
Sooo, during my adventures at abandoned places I stumbled upon discarded slides and just couldn't leave them there for a certain destruction. So I took them, and over time a small collection appeared.
"Take only pictures, leave only footprints" - the utopia of an idea, - the more I think of it, the more backwards and stupid it seems to me. Explorers are explorers, not security, if it's abandoned, it's abandoned and it's not my place in this world to give a shit about it...
Over time a small slide collection appeared, and I needed a slide projector now! A quick search yielded a cheap, well used Peleng 500AF slide projector. Bought, disassembled, cleaned and was golden! Now I could experience those abandoned slides on the big screen, and it was unbelievably awesome, reminded instantly those slide evenings I had as a child in sanatoriums, where static cartoons with text in Russian we're shown - google Диафильм
Now I had a film camera, projector and a screen I took from an abandoned Fallout shelter in Rīga, from the industrial complex of Rīgas Radio Rūpnīca, a Soviet Hi-Fi audio producer. In the cover of the night, of course. But... Are they still making slide film these days? And make they did - started to shoot slides right when Fuji started to kill their beautiful slide films. I timed my arrival well - arrived just in time for another funeral of sorts, lol.
Shit was expensive AF, and I dreamed about BW slides for some years - it seemed a lost art to me - something I can project from the Soviet times, but have no idea how to do it myself. Until I finally found info on how to do this - Ilford Reversal Processing guide, and that's what I'm doing today!
Learned to do it with Ilford Delta 100, continued with random cheap BW films. But these days I'm exploring BW films with clear base exclusively, and it turns out there are some: Rollei makes a few, Adox has a couple, Foma has one, some Russian Silberra films sport it too, and JCH Streetpan 400 has one - the common being that they all have a technical pedigree - surveillance, aerial films and such.
I reverse my slides with the mentioned Ilford recipe and permanganate bleach, and still
am using the same projector - modified for focusing smoothness and precision, and decided to land here, to explore what you have going on here on this platform besides the thread of the awesome Exif Notes app. To talk film, reversal, scanning, philosophy and such. To exchange ideas and find new ones, because you can only do so much alone.
Things I'm into currently: Infrared, Clear Bases, Abandonments, and learning film photography, lighting, composition and shooting people.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/ivo_stunga/
Happy shooting and regards,
Ivo
A BW Slide shooter here, seemingly happy to find a spot to land.
My photography story? Dad was an amateur photographer in his time, but he stopped shooting all of a sudden, and it's impossible to ask him why, although I have an idea when I ask this myself. A couple of ideas: fire in an attic where he had his darkroom, started by my brother and... The last pictures of our family together are that of a funeral... That tragedy probably killed it, and our childhood atrocities didn't help either: "Oooh, a lens in this strange machine, must take it out and let's burn something with it", so me and my brother probably destroyed a Soviet enlarger... The same all those childhood BW pics we're made with, probably... Film got fixed in my blood I guess, but nobody to say Thank You for that. Alas, wisdom and the howling regret comes only with age.
Sooo, in 90s I toyed with a plastic point and shoot, shot some color negatives (cars on the streetside, lol), but couldn't find my subject of interest (thus: have nothing to say) in my boring rural town, and photography was put aside.
Fast forward to ~2008 and you can see me exploring abandoned sites and documenting my adventures with Nokia 6630, and a tad later - with Samsung digital point and shoot that was given to me. But it expired on me, the harsh and dusty environments got the better of it. I was unemployed when it died on me, so I was without a camera for a while. Soon enough I happened to find an abandoned ФЭД-2 at a place I was staying - a beautiful, purely mechanical Soviet rangefinder / Leica copy in its beautiful brown leather case... So I took the liberty to take it for myself. Had no income, but I could probably put some cash aside for a roll of film, the thinking was.
No money, but all the time in the world! So I took the camera and started to explore it, and teaching myself photography via luminous landscape forums, essays and tutorials - free of charge at the time! First - with unloaded camera just to get the feel of it, to understand the principles of exposure before I waste even a frame. Later - with loaded, of course. A great teacher it was - both the forums and the mechanical camera!
Sooo, during my adventures at abandoned places I stumbled upon discarded slides and just couldn't leave them there for a certain destruction. So I took them, and over time a small collection appeared.
"Take only pictures, leave only footprints" - the utopia of an idea, - the more I think of it, the more backwards and stupid it seems to me. Explorers are explorers, not security, if it's abandoned, it's abandoned and it's not my place in this world to give a shit about it...
Over time a small slide collection appeared, and I needed a slide projector now! A quick search yielded a cheap, well used Peleng 500AF slide projector. Bought, disassembled, cleaned and was golden! Now I could experience those abandoned slides on the big screen, and it was unbelievably awesome, reminded instantly those slide evenings I had as a child in sanatoriums, where static cartoons with text in Russian we're shown - google Диафильм
Now I had a film camera, projector and a screen I took from an abandoned Fallout shelter in Rīga, from the industrial complex of Rīgas Radio Rūpnīca, a Soviet Hi-Fi audio producer. In the cover of the night, of course. But... Are they still making slide film these days? And make they did - started to shoot slides right when Fuji started to kill their beautiful slide films. I timed my arrival well - arrived just in time for another funeral of sorts, lol.
Shit was expensive AF, and I dreamed about BW slides for some years - it seemed a lost art to me - something I can project from the Soviet times, but have no idea how to do it myself. Until I finally found info on how to do this - Ilford Reversal Processing guide, and that's what I'm doing today!
Learned to do it with Ilford Delta 100, continued with random cheap BW films. But these days I'm exploring BW films with clear base exclusively, and it turns out there are some: Rollei makes a few, Adox has a couple, Foma has one, some Russian Silberra films sport it too, and JCH Streetpan 400 has one - the common being that they all have a technical pedigree - surveillance, aerial films and such.
I reverse my slides with the mentioned Ilford recipe and permanganate bleach, and still
am using the same projector - modified for focusing smoothness and precision, and decided to land here, to explore what you have going on here on this platform besides the thread of the awesome Exif Notes app. To talk film, reversal, scanning, philosophy and such. To exchange ideas and find new ones, because you can only do so much alone.
Things I'm into currently: Infrared, Clear Bases, Abandonments, and learning film photography, lighting, composition and shooting people.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/ivo_stunga/
Happy shooting and regards,
Ivo
