Full Colour FED

Garden of Memorial, St Marys Church, Lutterworth

I think these are some of the best photographs I’ve managed to extract from the FED 1 camera thus far. High bright Summer light, focussing on colour as much as form, although taken well away from the classic ‘Golden/Blue Hours’ so not much in the way of sky to trouble the FujiColor 200 film. Typically softish contrast from the Industar 10 lens has given everything a lovely ‘vintage’ look, pin sharp and high contrast these ain't!

A late Summer walk with heavy rain approaching near Lutterworth

So for the most part I'm really pleased with the new improved FED, although I've noticed that uneven exposure across the frame remains something of an issue. Perhaps a tenth of the frame on the left (or top with portraits) is noticeably lighter, but only really apparent on images where there's a lot of light sky (I think there's a hint of it on the image above for example). I suspect this may be a problem with the fastest shutter speed, 1/500th on the FED, which probably requires a slight tweak to the tension on one of the curtains. Given that I tend to shoot the FED in the 1/60th to 1/200th of a second range, unless it's really bright and I'm struggling to stop down the aperture enough, I'll probably let it go for now.

Class 37 Diesel Locomotive at the privately owned and rarely open Gotherington Station on the Gloucester Warwickshire Railway

Toddington Station Footbridge on the Gloucester Warwickshire Railway

Curve Theatre, Leicester

Fairground Ride at the Rutland Garden Show

Town Hall, Lutterworth

Corby Rail Station Lamp Post

Bell Tower for St Frances Cabrini Church in Bedford

 

Class 24 Diesel Locomotive approaching Gotherington Station

Street Art, Southampton Street, Leicester Cultural Quarter

Burghley Sculpture Garden

Pod by Nick Horrigan

Fire by David Annesley

Much as we loved our trip to Kew for the Henry Moore Exhibition, a combination of the relentlessly dry and crispy condition of the gardens, and perhaps a smidgen too many Henry Moore's on show had me yearning for something with a bit more variety. Ideally a bit closer to home... and a bit greener!

I'll travel quite a distance to see good modernist sculpture by an absolute colossus of the form like Moore, but perhaps not quite so far when there's dozens of them. A single statement piece in an appropriate setting is always going to impress. By the twentieth statement piece, the impact is likely to have diminished somewhat. In this age of instant access and short attention spans, I want to be surprised and titillated at every turn, because I'm shallow like that.

Fool's Lantern by Nick Horrigan

Interred by Joseph Hillier

Living as we do in semi-rural North Londonshire, we have the pick of Stately Homes to visit. Which is a shame because I've never felt the need to gawp at upper-class life in that way. The gardens are a different matter though, often the venue for major events and festivals, relatively inexpensive to visit, and who doesn't like strolling around a well-tended garden with an ice cream.

One of the more local Country Piles to us is Burghley House near Stamford. Home to the world famous Horse Trials of course, slightly less famous for it's impressive collection of modern Sculpture.

There's truly something for everyone here, including a delightful Garden of Surprises that's ideal for children of all ages, ourselves included. Access to the gardens is around £12, and you'll be happy strolling with your Camera (and perhaps a picnic, the café wasn't all that to be honest) for two or three hours on a sunny day at least.

The Edge by Nicolas Moreton

I took the FED on this slightly more affordable occasion, and very quickly shot my way through 24 exposures of Kodak Gold 200, running out of film just as we were ready to leave. Once again I left feeling we went at the wrong time of the year. The gardens were very busy with families, a last hurrah before little-uns returned to school, and how much better would it all have looked on a frosty Winter morning, perhaps cloaked in mist or blanketed in snow, when the gardens are sadly not actually open...

Garden of Surprises

Copper Tree Fountain - Garden of Surprises

Tower 4 by Denis O'Connor

Vertical Face II by Rick Kirby (rear)

Vertical Face II by Rick Kirby

From Far Away Great Changes Come As Forms
 You Thought You Knew by Robert Fung

Gloucester Old Shots

Class 26 Diesel-Electric Locomotive

I must say, I felt much happier loading the recently serviced FED (below) with a cheap and cheerful Colour Film than the (even cheaper) Black & White roll I'd tested the camera with. Don’t get me wrong, I like monochrome well enough, in fact I like it a lot in the hands of really good photographers. But for myself I'll continue to use powerful editing software for the less colourful stuff, particularly when it helps papers over the cracks of some of my poorer photographic efforts.

The scans from this Fujicolor 200 film, exposed as they were through a relatively inexpensive 1950’s Collapsible Lens, are perhaps not the best quality images all told. The colours are somewhat muted, slightly washed-out I'd say. They have, for want of a better word, that 'vintage' look that's so popular in photography now, and yet somehow they look realer to me than the hyper-real images from my phone camera.

This is partly a nostalgia thing of course, because this is what photographs looked like in the golden age of cheap Point and Shoot cameras and High Street Kiosk developing (ask your parents!). I think it also reflects something we’ve become all-too familiar with, the tendency for phone cameras to deliver a level of ultra-contrast and colour that's certainly attractive, but doesn't necessarily represent what we actually see with our eyes/brain.

Concrete Mural by Joyce Pallot and Henry Collins
Sainsbury Store, Gloucester

As we know, even the most expensive film emulsions can struggle to reproduce what we actually see, but we also know that camera phones come with all manner of image-enhancing software, designed to produce the perfect exposure under a wide variety of lighting conditions.

Unfortunately there's rarely an option to turn these 'enhancements' off, so what appears on the screen may well be pleasing to the eye but it's rarely what we actually see in reality, and of course the temptation to tweak, edit, and enhance digital images even more is something that few of us can resist.

Class 37 Diesel-Electric Locomotive

The main reason I was keen to load the FED with colour film was a long anticipated day out with friends at a Heritage Railway in the Cotswolds. A day spent trundling up and down between Broadway and Gotherington Station on the Gloucester Warwickshire Steam Railway, vintage camera in hand, hauled on this occasion by vintage Diesel traction rather than 'fire risky' Steam Locomotives.

Now I’m certainly not a Rail enthusiast, but my goodness, don’t these old-fangled locomotives look great captured on old-fangled film! A fact that seemed to be lost on the many enthusiasts filming the action on the day with high-end DSLR's. Pretty much everyone had a camera in tow, but as far as I could tell I was the only one shooting 'era-appropriate' film on the day, which of course marked me out as more of a casual tourist than serious Rail buff. So the question is, were those sideways glances looks of envy, or pity!...

Other great photo opportunities were taken/missed throughout the weekend in Gloucester, and during a walk on the sunny Stroudwater Navigation from Nailsworth to Stroud.

Kyneburgh Tower by Tom Price

Gloucester Docks

Clapham Court, Gloucester

Locks on the Stroudwater Navigation, Gloucestershire

Stroudwater Navigation

Art Exhibition, Gloucester Antiques Centre

Kew, 'Jumping' with Sculptures

Goslar Warrior

You wait and you wait for a trip to the Capital, 20 years to be precise, then two come along at once. We're country bumpkins you see, anything bigger than Nottingham is quite the scary proposition for us, particularly given that London doesn't seem to be one of our lucky places. Mrs Fed Kandi was in London when terrorists bombed the Underground in 2005, and my limited experience of the city in recent years has been regular trips to St Pancras and back when I've ended up on the wrong train.

Three Piece Sculpture: Vertebrae

Our recent trip to the Royal Albert Hall for the Ballet was no different, coinciding as it did with a serious rail crash on our local mainline to London, and an unprecedented heatwave that practically closed the English rail network. As it happens, and despite all these problems, we had a jolly fine day out in Kensington, which went a long way to allaying our fears for a much-anticipated excursion south of the river to Richmond.

I've never been to Kew Gardens, and if I'm absolutely honest it's not somewhere I've ever felt drawn to. In fact my feelings on the matter is that it's a long way to go to look around a garden. We've got one of those at home, and there are some quite impressive ones nearby should the need arise. However, none of these options are currently playing host to the largest ever exhibition of outdoor artworks by one of our favourite artists and sculptors, Henry Moore.

Sheep Piece

The Henry Moore: Monumental Nature exhibition at Kew Gardens has been on our to-do list for most of the year. We were merely waiting for the inevitable rush to die down, and of course the weather to ease off a little, which it finally did in August. Mrs Fed Kandi does like a garden of course, albeit one less brown and crispy than it was on this occasion, and we both love a good sculpture, in fact we both have something of a history with Henry Moore.

Of all the monumental bronzes on show at Kew, Oval with Points (right) was the one we most wanted to track down. It was this very sculpture that at one time sat on the lawn in front of the Fielding Johnson Building at Leicester University. In fact the very same casting by Morris Singer that myself and friends would non-reverentially lounge on when attending Rock Discos at the nearby Students Union building. Mrs Fed Kandi remembers it too from when she worked at the University, neither of us had seen it since it was controversially reclaimed by the Henry Moore Foundation in the mid-80's. Needless to say we weren't allowed to lounge on it this time.

Much as I wanted to travel as light as possible on the day, a photographic opportunity of this magnitude demanded the very heaviest Soviet camera, and with the finest lens that my money had recently bought for a tenner. So I loaded up the Zorki 4K with a roll of Kodak Gold 200, and packed a spare too because this wasn't a day for eking out the exposures.

Double Oval

Large Interior Form

I'd already shot a test roll through the Zorki so I knew it could deliver the image quality I was after, but this would be the first opportunity to really test the Jupiter 8 lens on what would prove to be a gloriously sunny day. I didn't want to just record the sculptures though, I was aiming to 'photograph' them, show them in as interesting a way as possible, ideally with a bit of context. Opportunities to play around with Depth of Field were necessarily limited by the bright midday light, which meant that even at the Zorki's top Shutter Speeds the Aperture needed screwing down a fair bit. A late afternoon or early morning would have been a better choice, but needs must!

What of the actual exhibition itself? Well if I'm being really picky... perhaps too many Henry Moore's! Much as I love these sculptures, half a dozen statement pieces is probably enough for me. I think the experience would have worked better with a bit more variety on show, perhaps a few Barbara Hepworth's dotted about, the odd Jacob Epstein or Antony Gormley in the mix, perhaps even something new. For me this was a case of less would be more, although I'd have to say the exhibition of works in the Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art by Moore was worth the admission price alone. Henry Moore: Monumental Nature continues until the 31st January next year, and will of course be a much different experience should we get a proper cold Winter to cloak the landscape. I'd very much like to see photographs of these sculptures in the frost or snow...

Hill Arches

Three Piece Rclining Figure: Draped

Draped Reclining Figure

Two Piece Reclining Figure: Cut

Reclining Woman: Elbow

Large Standing Figure: Knife Edge

Large Spindle Piece

Two Zorki's, One Test Roll

The Soviet-era Zorki 4K camera shown here represents that thing I said I absolutely wouldn't do. An impulse purchase of a camera that's close enough to one I already have, making it entirely surplus to requirements. Because I'm not a camera collector, or so I keep telling myself.

As is so often the case though, it was the diminutive price of the thing that caught me off guard. That and a moment of weakness when the beloved FED was away for it's well-earned 70 year service. I was missing the heft and clunk of a mid-century Soviet Rangefinder, who wouldn't! Of course none of this explains why for a short period of time I had two Zorki 4K's. Oh deary dear!...

The image on the left goes some way to explaining why. The one disappointment of this otherwise fully operational £12 camera was a mightily scratched Jupiter 8 lens. Not to the point of being unusable, but certainly optically compromised and something I was never going to be happy with. The lens was also out of adjustment in some way that I've yet to fully understand. Something to do with the alloy shim that separates the focussing body from the optics which meant one of the rings didn't line up with the markings.

So I was on the lookout for a replacement Jupiter 8 50mm lens, or even better an inexpensive Jupiter 12 35mm lens. The 50mm lens is regarded as being pretty good optically, with good clean examples to be had for around £30 so nothing to break the bank. The 35mm examples on the other hand are regarded as being a bit average, but their relative rarity/desirability pushes the price up to around £100! So a Jupiter 8 it is then...

My preferred developers have a whole bunch of Vintage Camera relics gathering dust in their shop, for display, but no reasonable offer refused. After a good rummage in the cabinet we found a nice clean Jupiter 8 lens (above), safely attached to another Zorki 4K. A very reasonable deal was struck, a cheap test roll purchased, I now needed to decide which camera body would be the keeper.

Here’s some shots from the test roll with this second camera, which seemed slightly more accurate to me at the 1s Shutter Speed when tested side by side. I must say that this lens is a good deal better (and faster) than the Industar 10, so whilst the FED will remain my principal camera, if only because of the sheer convenience of the collapsible lens, this Zorki will make a good alternative when I'm happy to carry a heavier lump around and want better image quality.

The other Zorki with scratched lens has now been safely returned to the display cabinet, because whilst I don't particularly need a second Soviet Rangefinder, I certainly don't need three…