52 Rolls Week 9: Canon Ixus APS - Beer festival with the lads / July 2, 2016 by Jacqui Booth

Hasselblad owners please look away now. The following content may be disturbing.

Steps to quality photography:

1) Be given a 40 exposure APS film – a type I’d never seen before – by my neighbours.
2) Head to eBay for a 2nd hand camera.
3) Make the local Lofi group look a bit perplexed about suitable film dev reels. They need to be smaller reels as the film is narrower than 35mm.
4) Talk to a mate about the horrors of scanning APS film. It lives in its tiny reel post exposure so is as curly as you like.
5) Send the lot off to Photo Express in Hull to be developed.
6) Experience the joy of receiving photos through the post like the olden days. Okay, they were on a CD, but you know…

Ah yes – there’s the middle bit – the taking photos. For this level of technical photographic excellence I needed a Beer Festival in the Polish Club on the terribly inappropriately named True Lovers Walk in Loughborough and some really old drinking buddies. In fact, I’m not entirely sure I’ve spent more than a few hours with this lot sober in the 20+ years I’ve known them. Ahem. As beer was clearly the priority here, the camera was put on the table, like a disposable camera at a wedding, and we did our worst…

I felt a bit bad about ambushing this poor man, but hey – he’s behind the bar at a beer festival. It can’t be the worst thing that’s happened to him.

I did try and take some outside but I think my judgement was a bit off…the “Rubber Queen” bike wheel is less amusing when sober, and True Lover’s Lane is a bit horrid.

I’m particularly proud of the finger slightly over the lens.

We valiantly tried to bez through the 40 exposures but there were three left at the end. There’s a setting on the camera to take C, H and P (panoramic?) printand the manual says that this can be changed mid rolls. As you can see, the results are stunningly diverse.

Right, next time I’ll use a camera that’s a bit more proper. Promise!

This blog was first published on 52rolls.net

52 Rolls Week 8: Fuji Instax. Abandoned office and a new beginning. / June 29, 2016 by Jacqui Booth

I’m losing my way a bit here, but bear with me. I knew there’d be glitches.

So – time to call in the Instax. And a lunchtime trip to an abandoned office with the house mamil. Fortunately, I consider this perhaps more of a treat than a ribbon wrapped box from Pandora. I think. Okay, I’ve never actually experienced that but I’m pretty sure that half an hour spent with oddly itchy legs, carefully seeking out solid bits of floor whilst hoping nothing disturbed the falling in ceiling at that very moment is much much more the thing for me.

I’ve got mixed feelings about ‘urban exploring’, ‘ruin porn’ and that whole shebang but this was fun. The water had poured through the roof, bringing down the false ceiling and great clods of insulation which let the light flood in, so it appeared to be illuminated. I picked my way over loose parquet floor (which I figured must have been laid on a solid foundation) and felt a little better when I deduced that the pile of poo on a block of foam definitely wasn’t human. I didn’t much fancy opening the door at the back of the office though…

The outdoor shots, still taken on auto, were over exposed. I rather liked the mossy carpet at the back of the building and temporarily developed a strange infatuation with a tree that had grown in a rather tiny enclosed concrete square where the building didn’t quite tessellate. Plucky little tree.

And then – to my amusement – I experienced that age old problem. Two shots to take before the end of the ‘roll’. So, the camera popped out in the rain to visit our new Little Bird SOS studio space. It’s just on the edge of Leicester so we’ll get to gaze upon the National Space Centre from the balcony. Expect to see a lot more of this scene, though hopefully slightly less grey!

And then it was time to have stab at parenting. This photo is from my (brave) spot on The Teenager’s bed as I threw forward bits of design based help I’m sure he didn’t really need. We’ve often spoken of the importance of taking photos of the ordinary and the lack of record of my teenage bedroom, which was some distance from ordinary and now only exists in folklore. Think Joe Orton’s/Kenneth Halliwell’s room crossed with the trappings of a teenage goth and you’re about there. For some strange reason my parents saw fit to obliterate it when I left.

Z keeps a much less alarming room, even though he’s inherited my noticeboard and doodlings. I’ve just noticed that’s one of the first film shots I took and printed over his PC. Aww. Anyway, he’d actually asked me to take a proper picture to document his room so we’ll call this flash assisted effort a test shot.

NB. I do not have a cat to waste my last frames on. Well, I do – but I’ll need to dig her up.

This blog was first published on 52rolls.net

Flowers at the Refectory Table / June 12, 2016 by Jacqui Booth

Well, yesterday, my involvement with Little Bird SOS let me to hang out in Loughborough, Leicestershire, in a garden belonging to Janet Currie and Pete Mosley. Janet had very kindly invited us to display our handmade items for sale, and Pete has long been a supporter, dishing out carefully considered advice to Lisa and trusting me to review his book, The Art of Shouting Quietly.

Their expertly tended garden was open as part of the National Garden Society Open Gardens Scheme. I'd had the opportunity to see it a few days earlier when installing a yarn bomb, as you do, and knew I had to take my long neglected macro lens out to see them on the Saturday. So, after setting up stall and making sure we had enough help for the rest of the day, I headed out for what was actually a very happy and absorbing half an hour, before heading home to my abandoned children and the comparative wasteland of my own garden!

52 Rolls Week 7: Holga – Jack White (at the allotment) / June 11, 2016 by Jacqui Booth

Well, I had a week off work. You’d have thought that would make things easier, right? But no…I barely managed to get out to do this one. Due to my “start at the doorstep and work out” the allotment was next. It should be an idyllic place but sadly the local council’s contribution to an allotmenteers wellbeing is to come over all officious at every opportunity and after a good start I’ve very nearly lost all enthusiasm for it. Last year’s seed potatoes had shrivelled on the bench and yesterday I just glanced at the new stocks in the shop. I might just clear it up this year and give the hostility a miss.

BUT the Jack White Holga was primed and ready to go. I’d wanted this camera for years – since my eldest son was born – but couldn’t justify buying it. Last year I bought what turned out to be a really knackered 2nd hand one. The masks are missing too, but I’m only going to tape the thing up and ruin it further, so it doesn’t really matter. The tape fetches off the red on this and the Diana Meg – so there’s no point being too precious about it.

The day before my sister, knowing that we really needed to get out, drove us to Foxton Locks, a popular tourist ‘beauty spot’ in South Leicestershire. We got there late so there’s just one shot of the canal. Then we tried to save a lamb that had foolishly squeezed out through the fence and, to put not too fine a point on it, was shitting it. As we decided that giving up was the best bet (this creature could not fathom the concept of gates and she had her baby in a sling) the farmboy turned up…and the lamb bolted out of the field entirely and onto the towpath. He called it ‘mate’ a lot and eventually coaxed it back. We could all sleep well.

So then it was time to face the allotment. Not surprisingly, my neglected polytunnel was the worse for wear. The whole thing had shifted onto the herb patch but some kind soul had caught the torn cover and weighed it down with a bit of fence. I gratefully shoved the muddy cover into the shed and sat in the drizzle for a bit, looking around at the mainly vacant plots.

Time to wander…

I’ve photographed this place many times before – not with the Holga though and not with a fisheye lens (which is three times as heavy as the camera and dutifully plopped off into the mud after the first shot) so it was really quite a quick whizz round, especially considering the wintry conditions and the low light.

Seeing as the light was low, it seemed a good time to pop out a double exposure too.

The last shot is of the local primary school, which thankfully both my kids have left (we had the misfortuntune to attend under the management of the most bonkers head mistress ever experienced. I’m being kind here). It was a strange feeling looking out onto the scene of many nativities, though happily the memory of my naughty little donkey shaking his fist at the innocently singing robin character was the strongest…an improvised performance I’m told he repeated the next day too. Ahem.

I turned towards the exit and moved on.

Technical shit:

Film: Fomapan 100 B&W – not expired!

Pre soak 20 deg water 2-3 mins, with waggles. Water went crazily green. I was scared.
Developed in Ilfotech HC 1+22 @ 20deg – agitated for 1st min then for 5 seconds every 30 seconds
Water rinse 20 deg water 30 seconds, with waggles
Fix 10 minutes – agitated each minutes
Water rinse 20 deg water , changed frequently, just over 10 mins as I couldn’t be arsed to do it for 20 mins.

This blog was first published on 52rolls.net

52 Rolls Week 6: Polaroid. Various Failures / June 11, 2016 by Jacqui Booth

First of all it’s late. I bought the wrong Polaroid film from the Impossible Project people. They have very kindly offered me a refund so when I’m feeling a little more confident I’ll try to order the right film.

I also excitedly bought a Macro Polaroid off eBay…only to find that there’s a third format of Polaroid film I needed to know about and everyone knew this except me. Ah well. Learning is good, right?

So, then him indoors offered me one of his expired Impossible project films for the house Polaroid (donated some time ago by Jo and Richard – thanks!) and I accepted as they’re normally pretty much okay, handed over the cash, and here’s the results.

Good eh?

I finally got three shots out by figuring that they didn’t like one iota of light between their ejection into the atmosphere and them hastily being shoved into a dark box, so these last three were clamped to the bottom of the camera the moment they were spewed out.

Not a resounding success, but given the circumstances I think I’ll settle and go read a book.

This blog was first published on 52rolls.net