Camden Lock Market, Experiments in Film

A couple of weeks ago, went on a little walk round Camden Lock Market with Ed Walker, he armed with his trusty Nikon D80, me with the old film Nikon F65 and the trusty 50mm f/1.8. On the first walk, I was loaded with Ilford ISO400 black and white film of some sort.

As you can see, the black and white set was pretty good. Of 36 shots, I’m showing 15 here but could easily show more. They cover the whole range of nice sitz-im-leben people to some abstract architectural stuff. I did very little to them after scanning, beyond hitting the B/W button, as the prints were very blue and bumping the contrast a little. Oh, and a little definition and sharpening. Happy with these, especially the skinny Levis girl. The Levis, not the girl, although she was skinny too.

The colour set was VERY disappointing. After getting home and having a up of tea, I noticed a lovely golden hour in progress, so I loaded up some Fuji Superia and hit the market chasing golden highlights. I shot 36 in about half an hour doing a circuit of the market and the high street and ended up with five I’d class as “passable”. The film and/or printing just didn’t capture the gold in the air and to get these images I’ve bumped the saturation significantly.

Oh, and Boots won’t touch the b/w film. It needed Snappy Snaps to screw it up.

I think these are my final flirtations with film. A decent exposure in RAW gives far more options in processing. I guess this is the “digital darkroom” we hear so much about. Gonna stick with the B/W in the D300 in future! Does everything I want and like.

In the context of the street photography exhibition currently running at the Museum of London, one of the things said in the introductory documentary is that colour street photography is HARD. As well as thinking about composition, depth of field and all that, you really have to concentrate on palette, something I hope I’ve managed here to an extent. It’s bad enough having someone photobomb your shot without having to worry about a a jumble of random colours doing the same.

Also, people who get arsey about having a photo of their stall taken are stupidheads.

Still, enjoy these and bump the slideshow up to full screen!

Camden Walkabout, Film! – Images by David Hodgkinson