old and new

You know, I quite like taking pictures of traditions and collective behaviour, but I have to say that after hearing the same three marches repeatedly the whole day I’m actually sick and tired of it! 24h of drumming, marches and singing …! I think I only needed this once in life and will make sure that I’m not in town next year! One thought made me chuckle quite a bit: make this groundhog day and I’d call it hell!

In any case, as you know I’m always experimenting with something or other. One of my recent experiments was to get a bulk loader and spool my own rolls of film from bulk rolls and re-used canisters. I just rolled my last roll of XP2 and it was definitely a successful experiment. The only problem I had was that I made some of the rolls too full which can cause leaks and tear sprocket holes. I quickly figured out that with the AP bulk loader rolling one full round up to the triangle +1 frame is about the limit of what a canister can take and with this I got 19 rolls of film out of a 100ft roll. Bulk loading turned out substantially cheaper with 3.94€ per roll instead of 5.37€ for XP2 and I didn’t have any problems with scratches or anything like that. I’ll definitely continue with the bulk loading and already have a 100ft roll of Double-X lined up that my friend Almut brought me from the US.

What’s my verdict on XP2 then? Well, I think it’s not too forgiving and generally doesn’t push very well. In bw chemicals it doesn’t really push at all and in C41 ISO 800 is pretty much the limit considering the grain. So, in the end it’s not very versatile and really more of a ISO 200 film rather than 400 as the packaging says. Since I find this stuff too expensive to develop it in C41 chemicals I don’t think I’ll be shooting this much for street in the future. At some point in summer I will try to shoot a couple of rolls at ISO 200 as well, but right now it’s just too wintery for that.

All pictures taken with: Rolleicord V, Schneider-Kreuznach Xenar 75mm f/2.8.
Tri-X, semi-stand in Caffenol-CL, 35min.

© Lilly Schwartz 2014

© Lilly Schwartz 2014

Normally I avoid mobile phones, but with this one I couldn’t resist. Slightly odd combination.

© Lilly Schwartz 2014

© Lilly Schwartz 2014

Textures.

© Lilly Schwartz 2014

© Lilly Schwartz 2014

I was enjoying the view, so I took a picture of it as well.

© Lilly Schwartz 2014

© Lilly Schwartz 2014

Did I mention that I love the Xenar lens? It has such character!

© Lilly Schwartz 2014

© Lilly Schwartz 2014

Autumn was almost over then.

© Lilly Schwartz 2014

© Lilly Schwartz 2014

Occasionally I feel like taking such pictures as well.

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