Bill Smith's Photography

Surprise, a colour shot. I do like shooting colour once in a while, Alex and Charlotte came out to visit last Saturday morning. I can't believe how much my niece has changed. I think she is starting to be a bit of a ham like her older brother Marcus. I used my Nikkormat Ftn with a Nikkor 50/2 lens and Fuji Superia 400 C-41 film.

I love neutral density filters, there is no way I can take the below photographs with out them. I was using my Nikon F Photomic Tn with my latest favourite combo Kodak Tri-x@ ISO 200 and processed in Rodinal 1+50. I can slow things down even in bright sunlight and get great results with the water. I took both waterfall shots at Spencer Gorge last Sunday on an Oakville Camera Club outing.

The last two from the weekend printing session. Printed on Kentmere VC Select Finelustre RC paper with Dektol 1+3 with a Devere 504 enlarger with Nikkor 50/2.8 lens. The photos are along the Trimble branch of the Bruce Trail which takes you from Forks of the Credit Road to the Befountain Conservation Area. I used my Nikkormat Ftn and Kodak Tri-X with these two photos.

Results from a printing session last weekend, all these photographs were taken along Oakville's waterfront in the past two weeks. The top photo printed from a negative that was my last roll of Classicpan 400 I shot in my Nikon F3HP. The bottom two photos were printed from Tri-x pulled to 200 ISO and processed in Rodinal 1+50. Prints were made on Kentmere paper developed in Dektol 1+3.

So Tri-x being a very versatile film, you can get different looks with different developers. In the previous post I showed a couple of examples of Tri-x processed in ID-11/D76 1+1. This post I show what happens when you process Kodak Tri-x pulled to 200 ISO and processed in Rodinal at 1:50 (one part Rodinal and 50 parts water). I used an Asahi Pentax SV with Super Takumar lens system. Again if I was truly anal I would be running this through one camera but regardless if it's Rokkor, Takumar, Zuiko or Nikkor you are going to get some really nice results. I printed on Kentmere RC Fine lustre paper with a Devere 504 enalarger with a 50/2.8 enlarging lens. I like this look, I would not use it all the time, I think this developer/film combination has it's applications and lends itself to the right subject matter. The shots below were taken around Oakville.

The two classic black and white films with a long pedigree on the world market is Kodak Tri-x and Ilford's HP5, both are traditional emulsion 400 ISO films that have tons of latitude. Photographers everywhere will stick by one or the other to the death. The top two were taken with my Nikkormat with Tri-x up at Belfountain and the bottom two were taken with HP5 with my Olympus OM-1. For purposes of comparison, I shot with both films and processed in ID-11 (Ilford's clone of Kodak D76) at a 1+1 dilution. I printed on Kentmere RC Fine lustre paper with a Devere 504 Enlarger with a Nikkor 50/2.8 enlarging lens. Ok, if I was really going to be anal and do a proper blind comparison I should have shot with the same camera. I think though you get a good idea the personalities of HP5 and Tri-x. To be honest both have a home in my film pile as go-to 400 ISO black and white films, I am very comfortable processing with both to a point I can make a really good negative to print from. So Tr...