The Pentax 6x7 in South Korea

The Farmer's Dance is a traditional ceremony performed at planting and harvest seasons. These days it is performed mostly at festivals.

 A Camera with Soul in Seoul. 

 In 1992, I received an assignment from Compassion International, a Christian relief agency, to document some of its work in India and South Korea.

Like the somewhat better known World Vision, Compassion has a sponsorship ministry that enables people in the U.S. and other first world countries to sponsor disadvantaged children and young people in other countries. 

With me on the trip was Douglas LeBlanc, the editor of Compassion Magazine. My job was to make photographs to accompany the articles he would write. Doug turned out to be a very good travel companion and we have remained friends, even though we haven't seen each other for years. We keep in touch by email from time to time and he  comments occasionally on this blog. 

I carried a kit of two Olympus OM cameras and four lenses, all Olympus Zuikos: the 24mm f2.8, 35mm f2, 85mm f2, and the 180mm f2.8. No zooms on this trip. Plus about 110 rolls of Fujichrome 100D film.

A newly-wed couple at a Buddhist shrine seeking a blessing on their marriage.

Being young (just a 55-year-old kid), strong, and stupid, I also packed a separate case with a big Pentax 6x7 and a bunch of 120 Kodak Ektachrome EPP film. I don't remember why I didn't use Fujichrome -- maybe I got a better price on the Kodak. Also, there wasn't any good reason for carrying two separate systems -- it was just something I wanted to do, was able to do (young, strong, and stupid, remember), so I did it.

The bulk of my work on this trip was done with the Olympus equipment. I used the Pentax some in India, not a lot, but it was in South Korea where the big gun came into its own.

I described the Pentax as a camera with soul, and I have to say that if I ever owned a camera with soul, it was the Pentax 6x7. Big, heavy, loud, and totally reliable, it had plenty of personality. And it also gave me the highest percentage of keepers of any camera I've ever used. Of course, with only ten shots per roll of (expensive) 120 film, I was very careful with my focus and exposure. 

Shortly after arriving in Seoul, Doug received a call from his wife. His father was seriously ill, and it was necessary for him to return home immediately.

After several days of being taken in and around Seoul by the Compassion staff to make photographs and gather information for Doug's articles, I had an afternoon off which I used to make some pictures on my own. There was some kind of festival going on, so it was a target-rich environment.

Another Farmer's Dance scene.

More to come in my next post. All photos, of course, were made with a Pentax 6x7 camera, a 105mm f2.4 Takumar lens, and Kodak Ektachrome EPP film.

Visit my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  

Signed copies of my book Backroads and Byways of Georgia are available. The price is $22.95 plus $4.95 shipping. My PayPal address is djphoto@vol.com (which is also my email). Or you can mail a check to 8943 Wesley Place, Knoxville, TN 37922. Include your address and tell me how you would like your book inscribed.

Photography and text copyright 1992-2025 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

Tags:   photography    film photography     Ektachrome EPP film    Fujichrome 100D film     travel photography     Seoul    Pentax 6x7 camera     Takumar 105mm f2.4 lens     South Korea     Farmer's Dance     Kodak

The Jenkins Family Goes Camping

 

 Loading our first camper for one of our first camping trips.

(Click on any picture to see an enlarged version.)

This slide was made on an inferior film (probably Ferannia, sold by 3M). It is not very sharp. The colors were faded and washed out, but some work in Photoshop fixed that. Whatever its photographic faults may be, the picture is absolutely precious to us. 

The year was 1969. The scene was our home in Miami. We were loading our first camper for one of our first camping trips. 

Eight-year-old Rob, or Robbie, as we called him then (he's a very distinguished college professor and author these days) is holding one-year-old Donny (now a successful businessman). Louise is packing things in the trunk of our 1963 Plymouth (a really good car).

Our camper was a Ted Williams model, sold by Sears. We bought ours used for about $400, as best I remember. It was small and light and easy to tow, but the top opened out to a big tent that was plenty roomy for us.

The body of the camper was accessed by two large doors, one on each side. In the compartment on one side I built a set of shelves to hold non-perishable foods and cooking utensils. On the other side, I placed a crib mattress and it became Donny's bed, as you can see below. We also had a chest-of-drawers, with drawers for clothes for each of us. When traveling, we simply slid the chest into the compartment and closed the door.

Donny's bed/storage compartment in our Ted Williams camper.

 

Louise's "kitchen."  Camping on Lookout Mountain near Rock City.

 

We definitely got our money's worth out of our little Ted Williams camper, with trips to the Keys, the Everglades, Florida state parks, and more. In the summer of 1969 we spent a month camping on Lookout Mountain and two more weeks at Fall Creek Falls (Tennessee) State Park. When we moved to Tennessee in 1970 we lived in the camper until we found and bought a house.

 

I had only dimly remembered many of these scenes/events from the early years of our family. The pictures brought everything back. Carry your camera and use it. It's a memory-making machine.

 

I believe these photos from the spring/summer of 1969 were made with a Petri rangefinder camera with an f2.8 lens, my best 35mm camera at the time. That fall, I was able to upgrade to a Nikon F.  However, I did use the Petri to make the first picture I ever sold. But that's another story.

Visit my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  

Signed copies of my book Backroads and Byways of Georgia are available. The price is $22.95 plus $4.95 shipping. My PayPal address is djphoto@vol.com (which is also my email). Or you can mail a check to 8943 Wesley Place, Knoxville, TN 37922. Include your address and tell me how you would like your book inscribed.

Photography and text copyright 2025 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

Tags:   photography    film photography     3M Ferrania film    camping   Ted Williams camper     Nikon F camera     Petri f2.8 rangefinder camera     Lookout Mountain     Rock City     Fall Creek Falls State Park

More about Film: Black & White

 The Dreamer: First Presbyterian Sunday School, Chattanooga.

Some ramblings about black and white films.

Over the course of 35 years as a film shooter, I used a great many black and white emulsions. Kodak's Plus-X and Tri-X, of course, and some Pan-F.  I shot a lot of Tri-X. Didn't everybody? But it was never my favorite film. Too much grain, unless I shot it at 200 and reduced the developing time. Might as well shoot Plus-X to begin with. 

Between Tri-X and Ilford's HP-5+, I preferred the Ilford. I also used Ilford's FP-4 and liked it, as I did Ilford's chromogenic films XP-1 and XP-2 for their ease of use and smooth rendition. However, I preferred films I could process myself.

In my early days in photography I was hooked on the style of unobtrusive observer/available light photography popularized by such workers as Henri Cartier-Bresson and Elliott Erwitt in the photo magazines of the day. Consequently, I was always trying for all the film speed possible. I pushed my films by rating them above the factory recommended speed and extending the development time. I also tried HP-5 and Tri-X in a number of developers, such as Diafine, Acufine, and Acu-1, which promised enhanced film speeds. Nothing worked to my satisfaction, because with speed, you get grain. And I don't much like grain. 

Also, I never used Agfa's Rodinal developer, which seems to still be popular more than 100 years after its invention, because again, I don't like grain. YMMV.

After some years, I gave up on the speed race and mostly shot fast films in medium format cameras, where the grain didn't show as much. I also learned to light, which helped a great deal.

Later in my film-shooting days, I settled on Kodak's T-Max 400 film for 35mm use because of its good speed, excellent sharpness, and unobtrusive grain structure. 

I used the very popular Kodak D-76 film developer for many years, mixing a gallon at a time and storing it in a brown glass bottle in my darkroom. Eventually, I noticed that my developed negatives were becoming denser when shot at the same film speeds. What I found is that D-76 gains strength over time when mixed in large quantities and stored. The solution: mix smaller quantities as needed (inconvenient, as D-76 is a powder, not a liquid); or change developers. 

I changed to T-Max developer, which is a liquid and can be mixed in small quantities I found the quality of T-Max-processed negatives to be as good as those processed in D-76, so I stayed with it until the end of my days in film.

We had so many things to choose from and so many different ways to do things. Photography is simpler these days and not nearly as much fun.

 

Three church leaders in my studio: First Presbyterian Church, Chattanooga.

The black and white photos in this post are from scanned prints. The negatives are in storage and would take some excavation to find, so I can't say for certain what films were used. I do kinda think, however, that the photo at the top may have been made on Ilford's XP1 chromogenic film. The camera for both photos was probably the Canon EOS A2.

Visit my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  

Signed copies of my book Backroads and Byways of Georgia are available. The price is $22.95 plus $4.95 shipping. My PayPal address is djphoto@vol.com (which is also my email). Or you can mail a check to 8943 Wesley Place, Knoxville, TN 37922. Include your address and tell me how you would like your book inscribed.

Photography and text copyright 2025 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

Tags:   photography    film photography     film processing    Kodak Plus-X film    black and white film     Kodak Tri-X film     Kodak Pam-F film     Kodak D-76 developer     Ilford HP-5+ film     Ilford FP-4 film     Ilford XP-1 film     Ilford XP-2 film     Kodak T-Max 400 film     Canon EOS A2 camera     Kodak T-Max developer     Agfa Rodinal developer

More about Film: Color

Louise and Donny at Pioneer Day Fair. Miami, 1969.

 This post is mostly about films I've used and places I've been, so if that doesn't interest you, it's okay to tune out now.

Color Transparency Film

I settled on Fujichrome 100D as my transparency (slide) film of choice in 1986-87 and used it until moving to digital in 2003. When I was traveling internationally on photojournalism assignments in the late 1980s and early '90s, I would often board a plane with a carry-on bag containing five or six 100-foot rolls of Fujichrome 100 film in canisters, a daylight loader, a changing bag, and a bunch of empty, reloadable cassettes. I occupied myself on those long trips by loading the bulk film into 36-exposure cassettes, so that I would arrive fully ready to shoot. (Each 100-foot bulk roll gave me nineteen 36-exposure rolls.)

I used Fujichrome for Rock City Barns: A Passing Era, traveling 35,000 miles in fifteen states in the mid-90s. The book was published in 1996 and won numerous awards. It was the most significant accomplishment of my career.

Color Negative (print) Film

My main use for color negative film was weddings. Until the mid-90s, I photographed two or three weddings most years, whenever someone would ask me, but I didn't market for weddings. I mostly used whatever film Kodak was selling at the time. 

That all changed around 1996-97, as I noticed that my commercial business was declining somewhat and began to explore other possibilities. 

Until then, I had been using medium format cameras for weddings because the quality of the available 35mm films wasn't all that great. However, Fuji introduced two game-changing new 35mm films: Reala (100-speed) and NPH (400-speed). The quality was comparable to medium format films of just a few years ago.  16x20 prints from 35mm Reala easily matched my best Hasselblad prints from 1990.  

In a comparison test of 22X enlargements from Reala, NPH 400, Fuji NPS 160 and another 160 speed portrait film, viewers consistently picked NPH as second only to Reala in sharpness.  In a 20 x 30 print it has slightly more grain than the 160-speed films, but it's noticeably sharper. I standardized on Fuji NPH for wedding photography and used it until digital changed the world.

Next time: Black and white films

The above photo was made on 35mm Kodachrome-X, the predecessor of Kodachrome 64. The camera was a Nikon F (original), my first really good camera, and a Tamron 135mm f2.8 lens.

Visit my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  

Signed copies of my book Backroads and Byways of Georgia are available. The price is $22.95 plus $4.95 shipping. My PayPal address is djphoto@vol.com (which is also my email). Or you can mail a check to 8943 Wesley Place, Knoxville, TN 37922. Include your address and tell me how you would like your book inscribed.

Photography and text copyright 2025 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

Tags:   photography    film photography     Kodachrome X film    Fujichrome 100D film     Fuji Reala film     Fuji NPH film    Nikon F camera     Tamron 135mm f2.8 lens

Films I Have Known

Some of the films I've used over the years.

 

As I said in my previous post, I photographed on film for 35 years before switching over to digital photography in 2003. It's safe to say I burned through thousands of rolls of many different kinds of film in those years. Some of them are in the picture above. 

In the early years, when I was still a teacher and yearbook sponsor obsessed with photography, I bought many out-of-date rolls of Kodachrome X, the predecessor to Kodachrome 64, and Kodachrome II, the predecessor to Kodachrome 25. I still have many of those slides, and they still look good. 

In 1970, we moved to Chattanooga. Throughout that decade I shot many rolls of Kodak's Ektachrome 200, especially after I began working for Continental Film Productions in 1972. 

In those days I could buy rolls of Agfa black and white film in 120 size for 25 cents at a local discount store. I shot many rolls of it in my Rolleicord and Yashica TLRs and developed it in Diafine at my kitchen sink. It was easy to do because Diafine's processing temperatures were not critical.

After I opened my own business in 1978, I continued using Ektachrome 200 for color work, gradually moving to Kodachrome 64 in the early '80s. K-64 was a beautiful film, but had to be sent out for processing. Which was expensive, and required several days turnaround time.

In 1986 and '87, I did two major audio-visual projects for a local college and began using Fujichrome 100D film. It offered several advantages: the colors were rich, rivaling K-64's; it was 1/3 stop faster; I could send it out to a lab or process it myself, which I had been doing with Ektachrome 200 for a long time; and I could buy it in 100-foot rolls and load it into cassettes myself, which was a major saving.

I stayed with Fujichrome 100 as long as I continued to use film.100D eventually morphed into two films, Provia and Astia, which are still available. Provia has what many would consider purer colors, but I prefer the warmer color rendition of Astia, which is more like the original 100D. I never cared for the exaggerated color saturation of Velvia and shot very little of it.

Actually, I would have been content to keep using film for the rest of my life. The move to digital was a business decision forced by my competitors, who were able to offer clients faster service as well as lower prices because they no longer had to charge film and processing fees.

 

I'm finding that I have much more to say on the subject of film than I realized. I haven't even begun to talk about black and white. I'll continue this discussion in my next post.

 

(The boxes of Kodachrome X and Ektachrome 200 came from my souvenir shelf.) 

Visit my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  

Signed copies of my book Backroads and Byways of Georgia are available. The price is $22.95 plus $4.95 shipping. My PayPal address is djphoto@vol.com (which is also my email). Or you can mail a check to 8943 Wesley Place, Knoxville, TN 37922. Include your address and tell me how you would like your book inscribed.

Photography and text copyright 2025 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

Tags:   photography    film photography     film processing    Kodachrome X film    Agfa black and white film     Kodachrome II film     Kodachrome 64 film     Kodachrome 25 film     Ektachrome 200 film     Fujichrome 100D film     Fujichrome Provia film     Fujichrome Astia film     Fujichrome Velvia film     Rolleicord TLR camera     Yashica TLR camera

The Joys (?) of Doing It Yourself

Film Processing Equipment

If you can bear with the ramblings of a senior flatulent (a few of you will get that), I'll tell you how it was back in the day when film was all we had.  

First, let's see what's in the picture. In the front are a few rolls of hand-rolled HP5+. The yellow things are two empty cassettes, ready to be loaded from the 100-foot roll of film in the daylight film loader, which is the black box with the red cap. The stainless thing on the left is a processing tank, and on the right are two 35mm film reels. The tank holds two of them or one 120 reel. I also have a larger tank that holds four 35mm reels or two 120 reels.

The long black tube in the rear is a Unicolor Film Drum. It can be used to process black and white film, but I only used it to process color slides -- seven rolls of 35mm or four 120 rolls at a time. I used it in a homemade water bath (a restaurant bus tray) with a fish-tank heater to regulate the temperature.

My photographic obsession began in 1968. Over the next 35 years I shot many thousands of rolls of film (not to mention some sheet film). Some of the film, including all color negative, was sent out for laboratory processing, but much of the color slide film I processed myself, using Unicolor or Kodak chemistry. I also processed all the black and white film in house.

Being thrifty (okay, cheap), I saved a lot of money over the years by buying my black and white and slide film in 100-foot rolls and loading it into cassettes myself. (You can do it while watching TV.) This, by the way, is something you can still do. The equipment is still available, as are many black and white films. Color is more problematic.

But it all ended in 2003, when I bought my first digital SLR. I've shot a few rolls of color transparency since then, but sent them out for processing. 

Do I miss it? I miss the days of shooting and processing film keenly. Would I go back to shooting film? No. It's far too expensive to shoot color these days, and I'm a color photographer. I could shoot and process my own black and white film at reasonable cost, and I love black and white. But color is the way I see. So no, no going back for me. YMMV.

Visit my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  

Signed copies of my book Backroads and Byways of Georgia are available. The price is $22.95 plus $4.95 shipping. My PayPal address is djphoto@vol.com (which is also my email). Or you can mail a check to 8943 Wesley Place, Knoxville, TN 37922. Include your address and tell me how you would like your book inscribed.

Photography and text copyright 2025 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

Tags:   photography    film photography     film processing    Film processing equipment     black and white film     bulk film loading

Composition by Serendipity

 The church at the Monastery of the Holy Spirit, Conyers, Georgia. 

 

I could not have planned this composition. I would not have thought of posting two worshipers, in those positions, one on each side of the aisle.

 

Even if my mind could have conceived such a thing, it's not likely two people would have been there, dressed identically, and even more unlikely I would have thought of arranging them in this particular way -- or that they would have been willing to do as I asked.

 

No, this is all serendipity's doing. Remember her? I've written about her many times. She is the photographer's best friend.

 

 All I had in mind was making an architectural photograph of the church interior. It was serendipity who took over and arranged for two people in hoods to sit on opposite sides of the aisle to make the picture something more than an architectural record shot. 

According to Mr. Webster, serendipity is "an apparent aptitude for making fortunate discoveries accidentally." I can't do much about controlling fate, maybe, but I've found serendipity to be a most agreeable muse, and one who can be courted by the photographer who is willing to spend some time with her. I wrote extensively about her here.

  

The truth is, I owe serendipity for some of my very best photographs. All I have to do is be ready and recognize her gifts when she presents them.

 

The above photograph was made in the late 1990s with a Canon EOS A2 camera, the Canon EF 20-35mm f2.8L lens, and Fujichrome 100D film.

Visit my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  

Signed copies of my book Backroads and Byways of Georgia are available. The price is $22.95 plus $4.95 shipping. My PayPal address is djphoto@vol.com (which is also my email). Or you can mail a check to 8943 Wesley Place, Knoxville, TN 37922. Include your address and tell me how you would like your book inscribed.

Photography and text copyright 2025 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

Tags:   photography     travel photography     Conyers, Georgia     Rockdale County, Georgia     Canon EOS A2 camera      Fujichrome 100D film     film photography     Catholicism    Monastery of the Holy Spirit     serendipity