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By Brian Tan, October 3, 2009 6:43 am

Street Performer in Kaifeng

Night Market in Kaifeng

Hanging around in Kaifeng

No phone while driving? Nice one...

National day in China is special. For the party member, this is the 60th such celebration and from what I’ve heard, there will be more fireworks burnt tonight than during the Beijing Olympics and the giant footsteps will make its way to Shanghai, if what I heard is correct. To me it’s quite obvious they will use more fireworks for the 1 Oct celebrations, especially when you consider it will be celebrated country-wide.

Debate aside, along with the midautumn festival, I get to have 6 days off. All of it public holidays.

Now I’ve been fixated on Henan province since early this year when I read about it. Early golden dynastic years of the Chinese empire happened here. Out of the 8 ancient capitals of China, 4 are located here. That would be Zhengzhou, Kaifeng, Luoyang and Anyang. After the first emperor set up camp in Xian, the capital quickly moved to Henan (I believe it was Luoyang, but wikipedia will tell you what it was). Of course Longmen grottoes/caves are here. So is the very commercialised Shaolin temple at Song Shan. Better still, my chinese surname, Chen, the top 5 most common chinese surname, originated here in Henan. The article I read indicated it was in Puyang. My search on the web says another town to the east of Henan which I doubt I will visit due to time constraints. More googling says that it began when Chen state was established, and so on, and the town inside Chen State is today Zhoukou, not too far from Zhengzhou and Kaifeng.

Retro province requires retro equipment. Leica M6 and M2 doing the duties for Henan Province along with 15 rolls of film.

So, the masterplan is to fly into Zhengzhou and cover all 4 ancient capitals and their most important sights and cover two thirds of the cities which are the possible origin of my surname. All these in 6 days.

Continue reading 'Henan Province, China: Zhengzhou, Zhoukou and Kaifeng'»

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By Brian Tan, August 16, 2009 11:49 pm

While out in Changxing Island outside of Shanghai, I shot 4 rolls of 120 film in one whole day with my Mamiya RZ67II and being my first time out with the ultra cheap Shanghai film (less than a buck each US) I didn’t know that the end tape doesn’t include any licking tackiness to it. There’s a piece of paper that says that the film is exposed, but what’s the point as it doesn’t stick to anything, wet or dry. So I jury rigged something out of the next roll and stuffed it into the phone pocket in my pants, and when I got to the ferry point, realised that the first roll unrolled itself. Definitely fogged to Hades, and I was hoping the black paper would save the day.

No it didn’t. Light did REALLY get to the film. Processing was via 1+100 Rodinal on stand development in 27C water for 1 Hour. To my surprise (seriously, there was no big surprise!), the base was all dark, no frame marking at all, and there were just a small trace of image on it. First frame was 90% destroyed, and other than uneven fogging, some Photoshopping might recover some details.

And it did. Actually, the result is less Holga, and more wet plate collodion with a little age induced fogging. Possibly making some nice artistically inclined shots. Here they are…

First picture of the frame. No, its not god rays, but a ship under repair on a floating dry dock. Being the first frame in the roll, this one took the full brunt of the fogging.

All these rural places in China are full of these crude minotaur of a vehicle. The fogging is apparent, but there's also a little texture in it. This frame is in the first half of the roll, so I'm guessing this is the texture of the black backing paper, that somehow managed to transfer itself to the film during the fogging.

This one I like. Looks like the result from a lost world war 2 negative of some Japanese port. No, its Changxing Island circa 2009. And the texture is also here. This one is actually frame no.2.

Stacks of bricks. The actual shot of this is less interesting as the background is visible. The yard is not THAT big, but due to the fogging, it suggests an infinite storage area. On the contrary, but a nice surprise. This one is towards the middle of the roll.

This is a small river that cuts through the middle of Changxing Island. The fogging sets back the scene 100 years to the past. Nice!

Tractors here are all caked in some white alabaster thingy. No I didn't stick my fingers into it to confirm, but up till now I still don't know what it is for sure. This is one of the last frames in the roll.

Surprise, surprise! Now I’ve added another processing trick into my darkroom arsenal!

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By Brian Tan, January 4, 2009 2:22 pm

ERA100 Flatenned Film Packaging

I have been quite adventurous with film. For serious shooting, I’m sticking to Tri-X and just recently 125PX but every once in a while, as I now live in Shanghai, I would try out a Chinese film or two to see how they perform. The first thing that would catch my eye would be the cost of one roll of these local film. ERA 100 costs 10 RMB, or right about $1.5 USD. I have heard a lot about this film from local shooters. The other popular Chinese film is Lucky SHD100, but the only problem I find with it is that it is good for flat scenes, but once you have plenty of contrasts, you’ll find that the chemical tends to leak or diffuse across the border, giving the “glow” look of older RF lenses. 

This was the first roll of film I shot this new year, and over the long weekend I took a long walk around Shanghai Puxi area with my Leica M3 and 50mm f2 Summicron loaded with ERA100 for some street shootout. First thing I noticed was that the film base seems a little thicker than Lucky films, which is a good thing. Lucky has been known to have very thin film, sometimes breaking when the rewind motors are strong.

Continue reading 'Cheap Films: ERA 100 Panchromatic Film Adventures'»

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By Brian Tan, December 2, 2008 12:02 pm

Coming back from those two provinces, I ended up with 12 rolls of film, 1200 pictures from the DSLR and 1500 pictures from the point and shoot. As you can imagine it takes a long long long time to sort and categorize them and delete the junk shots. I have spent a week developing the rolls of film, and I can only go thru 200 pictures a night maximum for the DSLR as they are all shot in RAW NEF format and needs some kind of adjustments in Lightroom. 

So bear with me for a moment. I will put up the pictures on the postings and will announce on Twitter or Jaiku once I get them ready. Post processing sucks. But there are some nice pictures there!!!

This will also mark the start of me putting watermarks with copyright logo on the pictures, even though they are all small. Read about how pictures are reused without permission and just wanted to be sure I’m protected as much as possible.

Planning to label the posts with the following:
- *Incomplete* means I have not started on it yet
- *Partial* means that I have loaded pictures from some but not all my cameras yet. Soon to have more pictures coming up.

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By Brian Tan, July 26, 2008 8:08 pm

Noon at the Kirifuri Highland (Hasselblad 503CX)

When you look at the map of Nikko, there are 3 major attractions. There’s Nikko town proper, with all its UNESCO temples where the majority of tourists are dropped, then to the west there’s Lake Chuzenji and the Onsen at the end of the road, including Senjogahara, which I did in the last trip… and finally there’s the east with Kirifuri highlands. And a visit is not over till I’ve gone to Kirifuri, which is the destination this week. Mountains, forests, valleys & cows!

Its a similar early morning sight. I am having a McGriddles at the McDonalds at Asakusa in the alley near to the Tobu railway station, waiting for the Tobu Sightseeing Center to open its doors at 7:45am to buy the 4400yen All Nikko Pass. The current expectation is that this will not be as impressive as the latter but the only way to find out would be to go and have a look.

Tobu-Nikko Train Stationmaster's office (Leica M6, 50mm Summicron)

While having my McGriddles, it looks as though the bus ride to Kirifuri Kogen will be cheaper to go a-la-carte rather than a full All Nikko pass. A bus ride to Kirifuri cost just about 650 yen according to the web. Making the quick decision to jump on the next available train to Nikko without waiting for the sightseeing centre to open. Looks like I don’t need the All-Nikko pass this time.  Again, cheapest ticket is the 2hr train to Tobu Nikko at 1320yen. The limited express trains costs double as they have reserved seats and possibly half an hour quicker. They seem to call these limited express and the services have names like Kegon and Kinu. For me, I can spend 30 minutes extra. Everything is routine now for me with the Tobu station at Asakusa. This is my third time here. Buy ticket, go to platform 5 and board the first 2 trains away from the station entrance. Remember, the other train cars get left behind on the way to Tobu Nikko.

Continue reading 'Travels: Kirifuri Kougen: Tochigi Prefecture, Japan'»