ELCOME
to my picture gallery. I've been taking pictures since the 1940s and have
hundreds of negatives stored away but not, I'm sorry to say, in any sort
of indexed order. But I've been though most of them and picked out a few
representative ones from each decade trying to make a varied selection.
As I sort through them and begin to get them into some sort of order I may
add more and, of course, will add some of the current pictures I take.They were taken with a variety of cameras and, in some cases, I can only make an inspired guess, but where possible I have added the camera and what I can remember about where and why I took the picture. The black and white film was either FP4 or its forebear FP3, plus the odd roll of HP3. Tri X and Panatomic X, all developed in ID11.
The few exceptions are some of the early pictures from the 1940s when film for civilian use was very hard to come by. Some of the 35mm film was out-dated ex-government tropical packed and marked just Ilford 100ASA. I assume it was similar to Ilford's FP3, or even FP2, but the edge markings just had Ilford with a code number. I also used to get 'end of reel' Ilford 35mm negative stock from film studios, usually in 200 feet lengths which I shared with two friends. I hadn't got a 35mm camera so I cut mine down and wound it into backing paper so I could use it in my 127 Kodak VPK either to take 'panoramic' shots or with a cardboard mask for 24x36mm. I got pictures, but it wasn't a huge success as a project. There was no indication of the film speed but I rated it at 100 ASA which seemed to work OK.
With colour sildes in the 1950s and 1960s I tried most brands I could find. Kodachrome, of course, gave superb colour slides as always, but it had to be sent to Kodak for processing. Ektachrome was very good away from a lot of ultra violet light. But for beach pictures it always seemed to give a blue cast. The big advantage with it was that it could be pushed processed if necessary. Ferrania C50 slide film for home processing was cheap and, if you got everything right, gave nice results. But it was so unforgiving. More than a stop out on exposure, or much more than a degree of temperature either way in the first processing solution and the colour balance was anybody's guess.
When reliable colour print film became readily available it had much more latitude towards exposure errors, and C41 processing, if you wanted to do it yourself, was no more difficult than black and white, but with the spread of one-hour photo labs it was hardly worth the trouble. For a long time I remained faithful to Ilford and Kodak films and still like Ilford for black and white, but when Fujicolor and Fujichrome appeared I tried them and liked them and stayed with them for years. Nowadays I use any colour print film I can find at discount prices, mainly Agfa or Konica 200, but I like the latest Fuji print films, and on the rare occasions I still take colour transparencies I also use Fuji.
Anyway, that's enough waffle.Come back with me through six decades of photography.. I hope you enjoy it. Visit the galleries from time to time because I will keep adding pictures, old and current.
