Superb explanations from Tim Parkin. He’s in Leeds. And on twitter @timparkin– isn’t everyone?Similar Posts:

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About once a month someone asks this question of Google and lands here, where we didn’t get round to it that time. So here’s how. You will need:

1. Sharp scissors or craft knife.

2. Your beautifully exposed, lovingly developed slide film. 35mm or 120, either will work nicely.

3. Pair of soft cotton gloves (sold in chemists’ shops)

4. A pack of suitably sized slide mounts.

5. A felt tip pen.

6. Your begged or borrowed slide projector and a nice white wall.

You can buy boxes of slide mounts for very little money now. People who use slide film often just process and scan these days, especially since printing has become so difficult and relatively expensive. You can still get Cibachrome prints from Owen Boyd and allegedly from Jessops, although since they have stopped selling everything except silver point & shoots and trendy bags, this might not now be happening.

Please put suggestions for Cibachrome printing in the comments.

So, buying mounts. Try eBay or 7 Day Shop or ring Paul Cordes at Classic Photographics, he probably has some, he does have all things obscure and commonplace. They are extremely cheap at the moment. Digitalab in Newcastle recently had some in a discount bin for £2 a box.

There are two types, with and without glass, and sometimes they hinge, while others have two separate halves that snap together.

There’s been a long running debate about whether glass mounts are useful or not, very similar to the debate about whether or not to use a skylight filter on your lenses.

Glass keeps out the dust but might degrade scanning or projection quality. Glassless is lighter and easier to store. Your choice. If you’re lucky enough to come across any of those lovely old cardboard mounts, you will also need glue or use double-sided sticky tape cut to fit. Or you can go the whole retro way and borrow this handy little tool.

Wearing your cotton gloves, and using a light surface or white paper on top of a cutting mat, identify the dividing line between each frame, and cut through neatly and in one stroke. If you use scissors you might want to practice a few times on the film leader to test sharpness and the length of the usable blade. If you do this frequently it is useful to keep a pair of scissors aside just for this, so you run no risk of sticking tape residue or whatever clinging to your precious transparency. It should go without saying, but 120 film needs longer bladed scissors.

There’s a wrong and a right side to your transparency, and a wrong and a right side to the mount. The letters and numbers across the top of the frames will show you which is front and back. Put all your frames into the mounts the same way around. That’s the right way up, and with the letters & numbers showing the right way around when facing away from you and towards the light when you hold them up to check.

Pull apart the two plastic halves, and gently lift your frame into the slide mount. Most mounts have little guide bumps so it’s easy to tell if they’re straight. Lift the other half over the top to make a sandwich and snap the two halves together: there’ll be a little click. That’s it! Simple.

Lots of mounts have a wrong and a right side with the wrong side a different colour or texture. This is handy for seeing which way around to put them in the projector in the dark. Whichever way around you mount them, do them all the same way.

What’s the felt tip pen for? If you draw a diagonal line across the top of the edges when you have boxed them all in order, it’ll be easy to tell in which order to put them back.

Any questions, comments, additions or suggestions?

Here’s a final gratuitous Agfa wonky pack shot. Enjoy.Similar Posts:

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Back in 2006, someone was persuaded to give a last-minute place on a degree course to a mature student. It does happen: these days there are at least one, maybe two of us in every class of 30 or more teens. If you’re thinking about doing a photography degree, or an arts foundation course, or maybe you already have a place for this autumn, don’t hesitate, go for it.

Fourteen Tips for Your Interview

1. It’s never too late. Most of these courses are desperate for your money, and they like eager mature students, thinking they add a certain amount of moral levelling to the cohort. Whether we do or not, you can apply right up to the start date, and often after, even up to the end of the first term.

2. Don’t bother about UCCA, that’s largely for school leavers. Although you will have a form to fill in it will be a miniature version, because you’ll do it after you’ve been accepted.

3. Search the University or College course you’re interested in, find the name of the course leader and phone and/or email them directly, asking about a place. Be prepared for a few brief questions over the phone, and have your diary ready and empty. If you’re reading this, you’re probably going to be keen enough to be offered an interview.

4. Prepare thoroughly, as for any job interview. Be knowledgeable about the school’s previous successful students, about the tutors’ own work and interests. Google them if you don’t already know, find their book(s) in the library, look up their exhibitions, form an opinion about their work. You went to their end of year student degree show, yes? Find someone who did and ask about the high and lowlights.

5. Organise your professional website or blog, pushing entries about your shattered love life down in favour of a couple of intelligent reviews of work you’ve seen recently or previews of your own projects. For a fine art foundation course, cinema reviews, crafty ideas and photos of art in progress are all good blog fodder.

6. Get into a darkroom and make some prints from scratch, using basic black & white chemistry. Don’t get all arty, just some work that shows you can process film, you can print using dodge and burn, and that it’s straight and clean.

7. Make a portfolio of your best work, assembled in themes. This doesn’t need to be expensive or fancy. A4 prints in some clear acetate sleeves in a stationary ring binder will be fine for undergraduate interviews. Three or four themes will be enough: a series of landscapes, some portraits, some using indoor ambient light. A strong documentary series is always impressive, so if you haven’t already got one of those, start making one. We’ve heard of people getting onto an MA course with a few 6×4 machine prints in an envelope, but you’d have to be an awfully good talker.

8. If you’ve got a sketchboook, tidy it up and take that too. If you haven’t, it’s definitely about time to start one. These are strange and often rather lovely beasts – more on that in another post.

9. If you are a digital maven make some prints using the best printer you can find, and that’s not usually the one on your desk at home. Use your local pro lab or mail order.

10. Be nervous. It shows you’re keen. And nobody likes a smartypants.

11. If they ask you to go away and do X, go away and do X rather well, then phone them up when you’re ready to show them your magnificent X. It’s a device often used as a filter, to show how committed you are. If they don’t actually like your X, they will still be impressed that you’ve followed their advice, which is a basic requirement anyway.

12. Teaching the same bunch of 19-20 year olds year in, year out can have all kinds of obvious and hidden benefits but after a few years they do all tend to blur into oneness. You, however, are going to stand out whatever you do, so make sure you’re memorable for all the right things and not as a cynical old know-all.

13. Be prepared for a few personal questions about how you are going to pay for the course, because it is expensive. Most photography degree courses require you to have your own equipment, and they sell film and paper and printing but it’s always to make them a bit of profit. If you’re retired and/or on a low income, it’s doable but they will want to know that you can complete. There might be bursaries. Ask about them after you have been offered the place, or ask their student services department.

14. When you get an offer, you don’t have to accept. You will spend 2, 3 or 4 years of your precious mid-life with no spare money, no social life, and you will lose friends and neglect your family. Your photography might improve far more if you spend a year with 52 rolls of HP5 and a Leica M6. If you’ve always wanted to spend a year with a M6, now might be the time to do it.

Whatever you decide, good luck! Let us know how you get on.Similar Posts:

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Via Jason Hynes, who went to Darlington to pick it up. Thank you.Similar Posts:

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A Model Release is a simple contract, a form signed by the subject of a your photograph setting out what are your contractual obligations to each other. If you are working for publishers in the USA, or intend to sell photographs into the stock images market, you will need to get signed model releases for each photograph. Here’s Alamy’s model release page, and here’s one from a US model agency.

In the UK? No.

There is absolutely no requirement in the UK even to ask permission to take someone’s photograph, providing the photographer doesn’t harass the subject in any way.

If someone asks you to take photographs of them for a modelling portfolio, agree the terms for your payment in advance. In UK law the photographs always belong to the photographer, who might in law do anything, including publishing them anywhere, without recompensing the model.

Redeye, the Manchester photography network, say:

“if you are photographing in public for editorial or artistic purposes, it is good professional practice to explain to people what you are photographing them for, and ask them whether they mind their photograph being used. Whether you back this up with a piece of paper is up to you. If you take a photo of someone in the street and then distort it hideously and supply an offensive caption, they should sue you for defamation whether or not they gave consent.”

Photographing children is slightly different: paid child models need to be licensed, so use a reputable model agency. For photographing children who are not professional models, again it isn’t compulsory to obtain a model release, but a signed parental consent form is a good idea if you’re doing studio shoots.

There are a full set of legal forms at the back of the AOP’s Beyond The Lens, and available for free download from their website. The Getty Images model release form is on Page 18 of the PDF.

The standard legal guidance for photographers in the UK is available for download as a PDF from Linda Macpherson. The secretary of Newcastle Uni’s Photo Soc has some slightly more strident advice here.

So If you have photographs of local Yorkshiremen and women, their children and dogs, posing for your camera in the weak spring sunshine on Saltburn pier – go ahead and publish them!Similar Posts:

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I really like all this contemplative stuff, it’s beautiful, and hard to do well. It would be interesting to make a miksang collection of an industrial site, or perhaps make a miksang portrait. Many of the Strandhill photos I took last month would qualify as miksang. Here’s another of them:

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1. Ask the owner: obvious really. They’ll be able to tell you how to switch it on, change the battery, load the film, all the essential whatnot. If the previous owner has lost all interest, or is sadly no longer with us, try working through the points below.

2. Identify your camera.

Chances are, you’ll be holding a single lens reflex (SLR) camera in your hands, lucky you! It’ll be a Nikon, Canon or less likely, a Pentax. These come in broadly two types, older metal bodied cameras with few (if any) automatic features, or more modern plastic bodied lighter weight machines with several modes, and very similar looking to modern day digital SLRs.

There are 2 basic types of 35mm film camera: rangefinders and single lens reflex cameras (SLRs). If your camera is a rangefinder, it will have a flat top and probably a Russian name. I’ll write about these another time, but if you’ve got an old one lying around, roughly the same rehabilitation tips still apply.

3. If your camera looks similar to the one above, it’ll need a battery. The battery slot is in the bottom of the hand grip. They’re usually of the double type, and are sold in most camera shops and places like Maplins and Dixons, as well as shops on the internets. Take the old battery out: it’ll have a reference number on it.

4. Don’t open the back of the camera if there is a film in it! You can tell by looking through the long thin window on the back. If you can see some colour and lettering through the window, that’s the side of the film canister, and you’re in luck! It is always a great pleasure to finish a film belonging to someone else: you might even be able to retrieve the last photographs someone has taken before they died, so it can be a privilege as well as a pleasure.

5. While you’re waiting to get the battery replaced, give the whole thing a good clean. Most people smoked, or heated houses with coal fires, especially here up north, but in any case, there’ll be dust. You can use a weak washing-up solution and a soft cloth to clean up the body. The lens might have a filter attached: if it does, you can unscrew and clean both sides of the filter and the glass of the lens with some glass cleaner, preferably the type used to clean spectacles, but any will do.

6. When the battery arrives, load and switch on! A Canon on-off switch is hidden in on the dial. On a Nikon, it’s on a ring around the shutter button. If all is well, a small box on the top of the camera will illuminate, showing how many frames are left, and the f-stop and shutter speed. Hooray!

7. If there’s no film in the camera for you to finish, buy some from me, or from 7dayshop, or your local camera shop, and load. Open the back by pushing the small button on the side upwards, and put the film canister in the side facing the opening – it will only fit one way in any case. Draw out a short length of the film and pull across the black shutter window, resting the end at the other side. Try not to touch any of the matt-painted shutter parts inside the camera whilst loading the film. Close the back: you will hear the film being drawn onto the spool inside the camera, and the number counter will register 24 or 36, depending on what size film you purchased.

8. If you don’t hear it whirring, or the number doesn’t register on the window, open the back and try again. You can always draw film back into the canister by winding the protruding bit at the top of the cylinder. Bear in mind though, that any film that’s been drawn out of the canister has been exposed, so try to use just what you’ll need to load, which will be the approx 4-6″ that lies flat from the canister to the reel on the opposite side.

9. Go out and take some pictures!

10. If you’re a bit stuck as to how to operate the automatic functions of your camera, set it to Aperture Priority and let it do the work for you. On Nikons that’s the round dial on the top set to A, on Canons it’s Av. If you have an autofocus lens, let it do its work by half depressing the shutter to set the focus, and then frame your shot before depressing fully.

11. The best way to learn how to take photographs is by using a SLR on manual. Choose your aperture and change the shutter speed until the meter you can see through the viewfinder registers in the middle. You’ll see what I mean by switching on the camera and looking. The same illuminated strip will show a bright dot when your lens is in focus. Get used to using these, and something like the sunny 16 rule to decide your exposure settings. Or yes, just ignore all that and go to 10. until you feel more confident.

12. When the film is finished, it will rewind automatically back into the canister. When the whirring stops, open the back and take out the film for processing. There is at least one film processing shop in every medium sized town or busy High Street, and several large supermarkets do film processing. You can expect to pay between about £3 and £5 to develop and print a 36 frame colour film, and maybe another £1 or so to scan your photos in small size to a CD. More about that in another post.

13. If you’ve tried all the above, and got nada, your camera might just need a thorough service. In the north-east I can thoroughly recommend APM Camera Repairs in Old Eldon Sq in Newcastle, or RGB in Middlesbrough. Ask for a CLA (camera, lens, aperture clean, lubricate, adjust), which will check things like shutter speed, and the condition of your lens. If the camera belonged to your beloved mum or grandad, it’s definitely worth repairing, even if you’re told that the repair costs more than it’s worth. The price of all types of film cameras has plummeted lately, so it’s probably not worth selling on eBay in any case.

Please do let me know how you get on, or if you’ve done this yourself and have anything to add. These plastic 35mm film cameras were the top of their league back in the day, and are still the best tools you can get for snapshots, holiday photos and for learning, and the results are always much better than you can get with the digital point-and-shoot Santa Claus brought for your nephew.

But that’s a whole other story.

–
Edit: a few additional resources

Canon EOS range unofficial manual and guidance
Canon 1000fn official specifications on Canon’s camera museum pages
The inimitable Ken Rockwell on Nikon film cameras.
More than you ever wanted to know from the Nikonian gentlemen’s club.
The Pentax user forum
Olympus – thanks Alex!

Film:
7 Day Shop
I’ve got some nice Agfa for sale – sold out, sorry!

Developing:
Spectrum Imaging in Newcastle (will also do mail order)
RGB in Middlesbrough
Colourworld Imaging, North Shields
Digitalab, Stepney bank, Newcastle
Photofast Sligo
Max Spielmann in Birmingham are allegedly a disgrace.
Snappy Snaps is okay in London, check provincial branches
Peak Imaging (mail order)
[this developing lark is a whole post in itself!]Similar Posts:

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There’s a shop in Leeds devoted entirely to lighting.

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The cross processing produces lovely globular grain, with detail in some areas, and not much in others. It’s unpredictable. To add to this delicious sense of going awol, remove the roll of film when it’s not been quite wound back into the canister, and reload. Better still, swop an exposed film with with a friend.

The best results come from combinations involving lots of detail and not much sky, unless it’s got a lot of patterned cloud. Pattern upon pattern is good, and because the film’s going through twice, you can afford to underexpose a bit, but the whole point is play. Don’t think about it too much: just shoot.

If you’d like to do an exposed film gift or exchange, please let me know. I’ve just bought a big stash of suitable film, and compact cameras like the XA are a very few pounds: I sold one on Ebay earlier in the year for £5. When I get a gallery application running properly over at brendaburrell.com, I’ll publish the results of some collaborations so far.

It’s a great escape from the exactingness of studio work and lighting nerdery. Freedom!Similar Posts:

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