alicethewhale

I’ve been back home in London since Wednesday catching up with family and friends and it’s been lovely.

I didn’t bring my digital camera though and couldn’t post film this week as my me super is loaded with an unfinished roll of slide film. So it’s me in my backgarden with my easter egg. :-)

Also, flickr has informed me via Niall’s photostream that my Bronica ETRS has arrived in the post EXCITEMENT-NESS-ESS. *dances*

I get way too attached to my cameras… but it’s probably not a good thing. However, my pentax K-1000 which my Grandad gave me when I was 15 is falling apart now but will always be my favourite ;-)

Byeeeeeeeeee.

I’ve been playing around with Bristol photosoc’s new Bronica ETRSi this week and have just spent the day developing/scanning the roll of Kodak Tri-X that I shot on it as well as deciding… I WANTS ONE!

I came very close to spending £260 on one from ebay but then snapped out of it, realising that I was still a poor student… and will be for at least another few years *sigh*.

Instead I am selling my old digital SLR camera and am going to attempt to raise some money (not by any heroic means mind… i’ll just ask for money for my birthday) so I can buy a Canon 550D and film my super exciting trip to Iceland.

This excites me more then buying my own Bronica, especially as I can just keep borrowing the photosoc one! :D 

I’m tired now so I am going to have a nice bubble bath, read a nice book and have nice dreams about cameras and pretty places.

Goodnight :-)

It’s been an awesome week, full of sunshine, beer and photography.

Of course, the majority of time was spent in and around the dark room for Bristol uni photosoc’s annual ‘week of dark’ in which we spend a week doing lots of fun stuff the good old fashioned way…

This was shot on the Wednesday when I learnt how to use studio lighting and used a Bronica ETRSi medium format camera for the first time :D

I’m a tad disappointed with my self poirtrait though, I think perhaps it would have looked better had the piano been facing straight on to the camera and the bottom wheel wasn’t cut out of the frame.  But heyho it was still pretty fun and there are many more I’ve taken of my friends with silly props left lying around from the latest drama society production.

Also on Wednesday was Matt’s 22nd birthday of which the first half was spent shooting a professional model. The evening was spent celebrating with (lots of beer/cider) and a midnight trip to the local Indian restaurant.

On Friday we played around trying to make our own pinhole cameras out of cardboard boxes. Only Niall and Matt suceeded… I tried about three times, got bored and gave up. My excuse was that I’ve had success before and didn’t need to prove myself :P

We all gave up at about 4pm though and so went to sit by the Clifton suspension bridge with more beer and cider then went home and had a BBQ in the back garden. 

What a perfect start to the spring holidays :D

So I did a bit of experimental developing with Matt today. We made a home made developer called ‘Caffenol’. Here is the result:

Unfortunately for Matt, his film went first and we under developed it (although pictures still came out). I did mine after him and developed it for 6 minutes longer (it was the same film). I’m pretty pleased with the result actually - I was convinced it was going to have some kind of sepia tone but no… pretty smooth looking black and white. Lovely :-)

So… the technical stuff.

1. Dissolve 6 rounded teaspoons of instant coffee in 150ml of water (20°c).

2. Dissolve 4 level teaspoons of soda crystals in 200ml of water (20°c).

3. Mix them together and then mix in 1/4 teaspoon of pure vitamin c powder, then leave to stand for 5 minutes.

The film I used was Rollei RPX 400 and I developed it for 15 minutes, then stopped and fixed as normal. 

Today was a fun day… I am going to conclude it by eating some expensive ice cream and watching a nice film.

Byeyeyeyeye!