It’s that wonderful time of year, where you get to fly into a blind panic trying to think of thoughtful and meaningful presents for the people in… Read more “The Photographers Christmas Gift Guide 2020 (things your favourite photographer actually wants)”
Category: Uncategorized
Olympus XA
This is the most compact range finder I own… in fact I’m pretty sure its the smallest rangefinder anyone can own. This little gem was the flagship… Read more “Olympus XA”
Olympus XA2
This camera has served me well over the years, it’s tackled at least 4 festivals and more nights out that I care to remember. It’s ultra compact and easy to keep in a pocket or bag without any worry about space or weight. That being said, the camera has a metal body with some plastic components. This leads to a highly durable camera.
The Olympus XA2 is a 35mm point and shoot camera made in Japan by Olympus between 1980 and 1986. The XA 2 and in fact the whole XA line were designed by Yoshihisa Maitani , he was also credited with the creation of of some of the most prolific camera lines that Olympus ever made including the OM and Pen series cameras.
It is an automatic exposure camera, with scale focusing, very similar to the LOMO LC-A. This leads to a lighting fast camera that requires very little adjustments to the settings.
Autosave-File vom d-lab2/3 der AgfaPhoto GmbH
I’ve used the camera for all sorts of photographic work including three consecutive years at Download Festival. It’s compact and smooth design makes it easy to carry on day to day basis. It has a fantastic, high quality lens that creates beautiful images in any lighting situation. This camera is one that everyone needs in their collection, however the price of them is quite inflated as of this post being written. I was lucky to have mine handed down to me by my mother, but to buy one today you’re looking at paying at least £100 to get one in good condition. This camera is a classic as far as compact 35mm cameras go. If you get the camhance to use you, I guarantee you’ll instantly fall in love with it!
Olympus Pen ft
Double your money with a Pen that is mightier than the sword!
Endings.
Endings was an exhibition, setup, planned, and executed by myself and members of the Foundation Degree Photography year 2 students. The exhibition was held at the Redhouse… Read more “Endings.”
Abergavenny Vintage Toy & Car Market.
These images were taken last year at the vintage toy and car market in Abergavenny. The show hosted dozens of vintage vehicles, toy stalls and dioramas. It is an annual event and I have attended 3 years in a row as there’s always something interesting to photograph.
This series of images was presented as a documentary project for university and earned a 1st.
Archiving Project
A few weeks ago a really interesting project landed on my desk. A box of glass plate negatives were anonymously donated to Redhouse in Merthyr Tydfil.
In the past I have been contracted to archive and retouch family photo collections. This experience coupled with my already extensive experience with analogue film processes, made me the perfect candidate for the project. The image on the left was taken on my smart phone and then converted to negative in order to give us a better idea of what images we were dealing with.
The negatives were stored in a curious wooden box and were separated by the pages of a book. they had such a ghostly feel about them due to their age and content. In my own opinion I would date the negatives from between 1890 and 1920 due to the fact that they are dry-plate glass negatives and the kind of clothing worn by the subjects. The subjects of the images ranged from portraits to street scenes, landscapes, graveyards and even a shotgun!
While searching the box I came across this one image which simply looked menacing with the pages of the book underneath.
To start the scanning process I had to ensure that I could create the highest quality images from these negatives. To achieve this I started by deep cleaning the Epson V700 Perfection flatbed scanner and preparing a program
Epson scanner with Mac and Silverfast 8.
Cleaning the flatbed scanner before use.
Removing negatives to check condition.
Cleaning negatives carefully to remove dust particles.
Placing negative on center of glass on at a time.
Prescanning negative to adjust settings before a full scan is done.
The process took roughly 45 minutes per image as they each had to be cleaned, scanned, processed and retouched. The process of retouching the images was left up to my own discretion; the authenticity of the images being a key part of my ideals, I decided to only retouch the faces of the subjects in the images and leave the rest in the original condition. By doing this I believe a good balance has been struck between restoration and the retention of authenticity. I also scanned with the intention of keeping the whole negative intact with no cropping; whoever shot these images really knew what they were doing.
The intention of scanning these negatives is to hopefully create an exhibition from them, possibly at Redhouse in Merthyr Tydfil.
If you feel you have information regarding these images then please contact me as I would love to help create a full account to accompany these mysterious images.
RPeterThomas Photographic 