St Ives - through my eyes

St Ives - One would say quintessentially Cornish, picture postcard views and one of the singular most popular seaside towns in the UK. Its colourful, great out of season and very photogenic. But as photographer like most, often see what others don’t. Tourists will continue to take those typical St ives seaside shots we all see and love, but personally, I prefer to see a different side to it whilst at the same time, seeing different views.
Enclosed are just a few of what I see……

I tend to search out colours, use different film formats and a selection of film stocks to mix it all up.

A cliff top view here overlooking Porthmeor beach before the crowds arrive and the emptiness disappears. i often find that the morning light delivers the best light, thats always providing the clouds stay away

At low tide, St Ives offers free food for all. I refer to Cornish muscles if your a seafood lover. Remember though, go safe and be careful of the rocks and watch the tides etc. Im certainly not going to tell you where I harvest mine from, but wherever it is, I get the biggest muscles time after time.
There is a saying that you should never harvest muscles in the months with an “r” in them. Ive never found that an issue

They’ll always be somewhere to point your camera in St Ives and there’s always a different view, if you look for it. Colour will always stand out here, even in the off seasons. St Ives will always remain popular with tourist and locals alike. I’ll continue to look for more ways to shoot more content here - but always at first light and when the place is empty

Camera & film stocks used :
Pentax 6x7, Hassy 500 cm & Konica Hexar. Portra 400vc expired, expired ultramax 400 & Kodak Gold 120

New Kodak Gold 120 200 review

Since the recent launch of the new Kodak Gold 120 stock, Ive been looking for an appropriate subject matter to shoot it with, both on 6x6 and 6x7. Colour wise for me , Cadgwith fits the bill 100%. It’s one of those quintessential colourful Cornish fishing villages that has it all. Granite old school Cornish cottages, thatched roofs, pastel coloured boats, glorious views and the Atlantic ocean pushing into its sheltered cove

The colours look great for me and Cadgwith certainly delivered on the colour front. Early doors is always the best time to shoot these locations. On reflection, Im pretty happy with Kodak Gold

The new Kodak Gold 120 seems to sit somewhere between Portra 160 and Ektar I reckon. Maybe not so vivid perhaps as Ektar and not so neutral as Portra but the colours do pop for me, and Cornwall always delivers on the colour front which makes my job so much easier. By the way, Im no expert or a technical photographer in any way but these are my findings, results and my review.

Camera’s used in this shoot: Hasselblad 500 CM/ Asahi Pentax

no PS, LR. Presets, just straight out of the camera at box speed

Please note: other views and opinions are available but these are mine

Kiro 400 review

Id never heard of Kiro 400 film stock before until a friend of mine sent me a roll, free of charge I might add - cheers Jonatas. I reviewed it on line as that what I do with most stocks I’ve not shot before and thought Id give it a go. I did have one narrative in mind at the time but the French buggered that up for me. That was snow! Dam, I still cant forgive those French fops.

Anyhow, Enclosed are a selection of images of different subject matters colour values and different lighting conditions.

Camera of choice: Konica Hexar AF

For me, the colours do stack up and there are some elements of other films stocks to Kiro too. I did read somewhere that Kiro might be a Fuji C200 rebranded stock. Im not convinced of that if im honest.

To summerise then, Kiro 400 is a solid colourful 35mm stock, not of the finest grain of course but it works under variable light and conditions. Would I shoot it again? of course. Remember, shooting film is all about grain and loving the grain, not those dreadful pixels things - #embracethegrain

Please note: All of the images contained within this post and other posts, and on my site are free from Photoshop, Lightroom and presets. All my imaging is real .

Other opinions are available

Shooting Kodak Vision 250 3 D

For those of you who are uncertain as to what Kodak Vision 3 is, its a 35mm colour negative film originally made for motion pictures. The film's standard development process is ECN2 and Im told it can also be processed using the C-41 process. Double check that. I chose to go down the ECN2 route which is more costly one and you’ll need to search out someone in the UK who does specialist processing. I used Nik & Trick ( www.ntphotoworks.com), excellent service I might add. You’ll need to wait a little longer than the standard 2/3 days turn around time on this stock though. Factor in say 2/3 weeks to get your shots back.

So, the first set of images here are from the first roll I shot. I had no real subject matter in mind at the time other than to just roll off the film at whatever

Camera: Konica Hexar

Roll 2
On this occasion, i looked for more variety and colour to further test this stock and I found subjects that it suits, and perhaps others that it doesn’t. For me, the portrait shot below is fine in its composition but I can see yellow and slight green ish tones to it.
Given I know the subject well, the skin tones and studio walls colours, are not correct.

Further evidence of those yellow and green ish tones are highlighted here when I shot this image in low light conditions. The film was shot at stock and the light reading was fine, its just Vision3 that gives it these tones especially in low light

So, is it a stock Id shoot again? Hell yes! I like the fact that Vision3 for me seems to offer colours and tones that other stocks don’t as such. It’s never going to be one of my top 5 stocks but I will continue to shoot it

Please note: All of the images contained within this post and other posts, and on my site are free from Photoshop, Lightroom and presets. All my imaging is real