{"id":4909,"date":"2015-02-04T09:10:06","date_gmt":"2015-02-04T09:10:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/?p=4909"},"modified":"2015-02-03T23:19:10","modified_gmt":"2015-02-03T23:19:10","slug":"my-1980-colour-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/?p=4909","title":{"rendered":"My 1980 Colour (part 1)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"80-slide032srgb600\"Clapham, London. 1980<\/small><\/p>\n

In 1980 I was usually carrying two cameras when I went out to take photographs, one loaded with black and white film, usually ASA 125 Plus X Pan in the Leica M2. In my jacket pocket, even when I wasn’t going out to take pictures I always had a small camera, a Minox 35EL with a fixed 35mm lens, one of the smallest 35mm full frame cameras. I had both 50mm f2.8 and a 35mm f1.4 for the Leica. In the middle of the year I switched to Ilford FP4, probably only because I found a cheaper source of film.<\/p>\n

But in November there was a significant changes. Ilford had brought out the first black and white chromogenic film, XP1-400. According to Wikipedia it went on sale in January 1981, but the first roll of it I took has a few pictures of our Guy Fawkes night celebrations on November 5th, 1980 (and Christmas 1980 comes a couple of rolls later.) I had a Leicameter MR4 on my Leica M2, and it was usually good enough for conventional black and white film, but exposure became (at least for me) more critical with XP1, and I soon switched most of my black and white work to the much more accurate metering of the Olympus OM1.<\/p>\n

\"80-slide047srgb600\"
\nLondon, 1980<\/small><\/p>\n

I’d started off using the OM1 for colour transparencies, where exposure was always very critical, and had kept the camera when I upgraded to the Olympus OM2, which had an even better metering system. I think all of the colour slides from 1980 will have been taken with the OM2.<\/p>\n

\"80-slide027srgb600\"
\nBrick Lane, London, 1980<\/small><\/p>\n

I’d bought the OM1 with the standard 50mm f1.8 lens (there were two faster alternatives, but it didn’t seem worth paying a lot more for a bulkier and heavier lens with only a relatively small speed advantage.) I’d started too with the latest thing in lenses, one of the first popular zoom lenses, a rather bulky 70-210mm or thereabouts. It wasn’t a bad lens, but after a year or two I sold it and bought a much smaller, lighter and faster 105mm Tamron.<\/p>\n

\"80-slide020srgb600\"
\nEast End, London. 1980<\/small><\/p>\n

Later I found a Zuiko 35mm f2.8 shift lens secondhand at a sensible price in Hull – around a hundred pounds less than in London – and added that to my kit, and later still I found a 28mm f2.8 bargain. I had to buy the 21mm f3.5 new, but the 200mm lenses (eventually both the f4 and f5 – I could never decide which I liked best) also came secondhand. But I think all of the pictures in 1980 will have been made with the 50mm or 105mm.<\/p>\n

\"80-slide029srgb600\"
\nLondon, 1980<\/small><\/p>\n

\"80-slide030srgb600\"
\nCanal, London. 1980. This may have been from a Group Six walk<\/small><\/p>\n

In 1980 I was working in three different ways. When at home I was making regular trips to London and walking around various areas, mainly taking pictures in black and white, some of which are in my book http:\/\/www.blurb.co.uk\/b\/4048897-london-derives?class=book-title London Derives<\/em>. One Sunday a month I would go out with a bunch of other photographers -usually between 4 and ten our us – on a photographic outing. We were enfants terrible<\/em> in a photographic club who refused to take the club restrictions and conventions seriously – or perhaps we were just serious about photography in ways the club didn’t understand. At first we were a group of the club (the sixth group formed, which had, for want of a better idea called itself Group Six<\/em>, though by the time I joined there were only four others.) We took it in turns to organise where to go, and these often took me to places I wouldn’t otherwise visit, including rural Wiltshire and Margate in the pictures here. Some of those along the Thames may also be from one of these outings. Any I suggested tended to be in London, while most others preferred more obviously picturesque locations.<\/p>\n

\"80-slide021srgb600\"<\/a>
\nA rather wet Wiltshire on a Group Six trip<\/small><\/p>\n

\"80-slide023srgb600\"<\/a>
\nTerry King on a Group Six outing in Pewsey, Wiltshire. 1980<\/small><\/p>\n

The final area of my work was in Hull, where we went several times a year to stay with my parents-in-law. Much of the black and white work from there is in my book Still Occupied<\/em>, but my show there also included roughly 40 colour images as well as the around 100 black and white works.<\/p>\n

I’ve done some rough corrections on the scans that I found, some made a few years ago, but haven’t removed every blemish. It’s hard to know exactly what colour some of them should be, and I still am having to use an uncalibrated screen. Where possible I’ve tried to balance on a neutral gray with Photoshop.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clapham, London. 1980 In 1980 I was usually carrying two cameras when I went out to take photographs, one loaded with black and white film, usually ASA 125 Plus X Pan in the Leica M2. In my jacket pocket, even when I wasn’t going out to take pictures I always had a small camera, a … Continue reading My 1980 Colour (part 1)<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-my-own-work","category-photo-issues"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4909","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4909"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4909\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4924,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4909\/revisions\/4924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}