I took one roll of Fujichrome Provia 100F and one roll of Kodak Ektachrome E100 and shot them in the same light with the same settings using the same camera.

Then the best frames from each roll was professionally scanned by drumscanning.co.uk. The supplied TIFF files were changed from 16 bit to 8 bit then saved as JPEG and then uploaded to Flickr. No colour corrections or other adjustments were made. Yes, I know I need to fix the light leak in the film back.

To my eye, I can’t tell any difference. There might be a bit more red in the Ektachrome but not something that would bother me or make me choose one film over the other.

I found it an interesting experiment anyway. Not many photographers, that I could find, have done a side by side comparison with these two films on a portrait shoot. I’ve managed to find landscape shoots but not portrait shoots. Which makes me wonder if I would have a different result if I had taken these pictures on a sunnier day.

To prepare for which ever Nikon Z camera body I’m going to get, I decided to get a lens adapter for use on the Hasselblad lenses I already own. It makes sense to have the option to use the glass I already own.

Yes, I will probably get some native Z lenses but in the meantime the new camera will at least work out of the box without wasting money on a kit lens. I don’t fancy needing to part exchange the kit lens or finding room at the bottom of my camera bag.

The Z mount has allowed Fotodiox the ability to create this adapter. Something that was not technically possible with the F mount.

I was thinking of showing you more pictures of this adapter but as I don’t have a camera there doesn’t seem to be any point. I’ll update this page when I properly get to use the adapter.

I haven’t done one of these in a long time. Looking back at the last one took me down the path of getting the Hasselblad film cameras. Will this wish list be just as ground breaking?

So what did I want Santa to have brought down the chimney? Honestly, I don’t think Santa could have worked his magic this year. The equipment I would love to have doesn’t yet exist. There might be secret prototypes of what is in my mind but there are no final production versions.

With the first orders shipping out of the Nikon Z9, I am wondering what the Nikon Z8 will look like. The Z9 is clearly a replacement for the Nikon D6. Looking back, online reviewers at the time were really hoping that the D6 would pack the technology inside the Z9 but it was not to be.

Knowing what we know now, I wonder if the only reason the D6 was launched in February 2020 was so that there would be a new high end camera for the Tokyo Olympics that had been scheduled for that year. In the end we got to see the first glimpse of the Z9 at the Tokyo Olympics that took place this year.

When I look at the Z9, I will very rarely be in a situation in which I will need that much fire power. Yes, I would love to be able to use the focusing technology of the Z9 but I don’t need to burn up memory cards in a few seconds flat. So I am hoping that the Nikon Z8 will be a camera for the slower, considered situations and retains the best things that make the Z9 such a great camera.

The Z9 has a UK price of £5299 and I am hoping there is a lower price point for the Z8 that is in the same region as the launch price of the D850 at £3499.99. I can not justify spending over five thousand pounds on a camera that is not my daily workhorse.

Realistically, if the Z8 is THE camera that meets my needs, I am not sure if I will have the spare cash for any native Z lenses. But high up on my Z lens list would be an 85mm f1.2 (which also isn’t out yet). And in the meantime I will have to get a FTZ adapter to use the lenses I already own.

There is no question that I will be going to the Nikon Z system. Be it the Nikon Z8 or a full frame Z fc but I’m waiting for a camera with a closer match to the features I’m personally looking for.

When Profoto and Nikon announced that they would be collaborating in a vague press release back in November, in my mind it made a lot of sense. And now with the latest announcement that the Nikon Z9 is fully compatible with the Profoto AirTTL products it would seem that Nikon won’t be bringing out a dedicated flash unit for the Z9 camera.

The last high end Speedlight Nikon launched was the SB-5000 which was announced on the same day as the D5 in January 2016. There was no Speedlight for the D6 camera. Which was probably the first sign that Nikon was moving away from creating in house flash units for their cameras.

My experience with the Nikon Speedlight range has been disappointing since using Profoto equipment. I have said in the past that the colour accuracy of the Speedlights I own hasn’t been great.

Seeing other photographers choosing the Profoto A series units over the SB-5000 it really is the right logical move for Nikon to stop research and development into a product line that would always come in second place to Profoto.

I don’t own any Profoto A series units so I can’t tell if there has been a firmware upgrade for them to work with the Nikon Z9. At the time of writing, there is no firmware upgrade for my Air Remote TTL-N for Nikon. I can only speculate that Nikon made sure the Z9 worked fully with it before shipping the Z9 out.

I really am excited to see what new things this collaboration brings in the months and years ahead.

I’m excited about the Rotolight NEO 3 coming out next year. A powerful small LED that can run off the standard Sony NP-F type battery is something that interests me.

Side note, according to the company, it is not recommended to use the flash mode with non Rotolight batteries as the draw on the battery may cause issues. Non Rotolight batteries are fine in continuous mode.

The issue I have with my Westcott Ice Light is swapping out the internal battery when it no longer holds a charge. It seems like a complex thing to do that will involve getting parts shipped from the manufacturer.

And being able to swap batteries to maintain a lighting setup is very important to any professional assignment. Messing about with a piece of lighting equipment that has run out of juice is never a good look.

The price and weight of the NEO 3 is also much lower than my Profoto B10 lights. Three of these lights are about the same cost as one B10 and my spine will thank me too. The NEO 3 weighing in at 354g compared to 1.5kg for the B10.

Another advantage of the NEO 3 over both the Icelight and the B10 is being able to change colour without the need to place gels in front of the light.

I’m not one of the Kickstarter backers, so I won’t be one of the first to get my hands on the NEO 3 but I do hope to be able to get it as soon as I can.

I’m not the first or am I going to be the last person to be talking about the Nikon Z9 camera.

All I know about the camera is what I have seen online so there is very little point in me adding anything to what has already been said.

What I do know is that this is the first Nikon Z camera that has got me wanting one in my camera bag. I wasn’t really interested in any of the previous models but this one has certainly got my attention.

Question is, if I had £6000 to spend, would I get he Nikon Z9 with the FTZ II or do I get the Hasselblad CFV II 50C?

Truth is, I can’t justify having that amount of equipment sitting around doing nothing most of the time. Oh well, one can only dream.

I saw an online auction site the sale of a Hasselblad Zeiss Planar 110mm f2 lens. It was being sold by a German seller and the price they were asking for it was much less than the Japanese dealers. However, there was a reason for the low price. This lens is stuck wide open and would need repair.

The seller was open to offers and I wasn’t expecting my £250 less than the asking price to be accepted. They accepted it pretty quickly and I now regret not asking for more off. I wish that I had as there is an additional bill of £165 by the courier company for the import due to the UK being out of the EU.

Why buy a broken lens you ask? Well, I have seen in forums and elsewhere that it is a well known problem for this lens to get stuck. My thinking is why pay for a lens at double the price if there is a high chance of it breaking in the future. I’m going to be shooting wide open most of the time so wouldn’t really be stopping it down. Besides, I have the 150mm f4 if I needed a smaller aperture.

I have no idea how much it will cost to repair and won’t investigate it until things are a bit more normal.

Still haven’t shot a roll of film with the lens so I won’t know if I have brought a lemon.

10 April 2021 The film has come back from the lab and here is one of those frames.

There is some slight movement in the aperture blades from f2 to f2.8 but from the testing I did it makes very little difference to the exposure. So we are all good.

However, there is some light leak on the film. I don’t know if it is a bad roll of film or if it is the film back that has a broken seal. I know it is not the camera body as the light leak is in between the frames on the film.

What I will do now is to try out a different roll of film to eliminate that as a factor. But if it is the film back that is leaking it is supposed to be relatively easy fix. Something I may give a go at.

19 April 2021 Using a new roll of film has given me some light spots after development. They are in the exact same positions as before, so it is pointing more to a broken seal in the film back. So going to try the other back I have just to be certain there isn’t an issue with the camera.

I said I would test out Ilford XP2 C41 film cross processed in E6 and this is what I discovered.

Apart from marking up the film going to the lab that this C41 film was to be processed in E6, I wanted to check with them that I wasn’t going to mess up their chemicals or systems. The reply I got back from them was that it was possible, they rarely did it and that the results are going to be pretty strange.

From my research I knew that it would give a blue tone to the film rather than a black and white result. And over exposing the film would give you back something to work with.

Both these images were over exposed by 2 stops and they have come out better than the frames I exposed correctly and by 1 stop.

Some people might not like the look of these frames but I am actually pleased with the way they look. It is a way of making a night time scene during the day. Well worth exploring more with the rolls I have left and what subjects work with this technique and what doesn’t.

10 July 2021 Have just discovered that Polaroid are producing a Black & Blue Duochrome 600 film which produces very similar end results as what I’m doing with the cross processing of Ilford XP2.

I was just looking back at the files on my computer and sometimes the only camera on you is your smartphone. If that is what you have and you see a shot then you should take it.

My final film review is the Fujichrome Provia 100F Professional transparency slide film.

Anyone following along will know that I purchased some expired rolls of this film to practise and test the cameras on. I may have been lucky with the expired film I got as I have not seen any noticeable loss in quality. I might be wrong when I run through a fresh roll of film.

When I purchased this roll it was still fresh. But now that I have come round to opening the film it has now expired. It hasn’t expired by much and I did keep it in the fridge but is it worth taking the same test pictures as the ones I shot on the Ektachrome and Velvia?

My instinct is not to bother. I have pretty much already decided that Provia is going to be my go to film of choice. If I want to have a different look I can always get a roll of Ektachrome or Velvia for whatever I want to achieve.

What I want to test instead is to see how well the C41 black and white Ilford XP2 film is when crossed processed in E6 to give a transparency slide. So watch this space.

Below for completeness is the tech sheet for Provia.