As I was keen to try out my newly purchased Pentax P30T, I loaded it with a roll of Ilford Delta 100 film and went off to nearby Little Moreton Hall, a National Trust run property in Cheshire.
It was a bright but cloudy day, no sunshine but plenty of light, ideal for photographing this timbered Tudor manor house.
All in all, I’m pleased with the camera. I used it in aperture priority mode and found it quite simple and easy to use. The hardest part was remembering to wind on after many years of using digital cameras. I did find the zoom lens useful for composing the shots but a little heavy, I think I might see if I can get a 50mm f1.7 or f2 lens for a good price.
The film was developed at home – the first time for probably 40 years using Ilford DD-X developer (1+4 10.5min at 20C) and the negatives looked well exposed. I did try to digitise the negatives by photographing them using a Canon 1000D and a Jupiter 8 lens (see an earlier post for more details) but I wasn’t satisfied with the results so the negatives got put away until I had a suitable alternative.
Once I had my own scanner, I scanned the negatives using the Plustek OpticFilm8100 at 3600dpi using the settings suggested by the manufacturers and applying only a modest amount of sharpening. The images above are as they came off the scanner with no additional post production apart from cropping.
Overall I’m quite pleased with the results although I think I might go back and experiment a little to see if I can make the images a little crisper.
I BOUGHT AN OLD FILM CAMERA 