It’s a peek through the lens of natives and visitors, who bring their unique perspective to the ochre buildings, the steely lake and the people of Stockholm.
We’ve handpicked images with the usual Kolla rigour, and printed them on high quality paper in limited editions. All photographs in the Kolla X Sthlm collection are available both online and in the pop-up shop at Sergelgatan 10.
An additional collection in cooperation with Fujifilm will be exhibited and sold exclusively in the shop.
Aight, so while Kim shot the serious photos for magazines etc I had the opportunity to experiment a bit with my film photos. All film shots are taken with a very basic setup of a Minolta X500 and a 50mm f2. The first photos here below are on a new Kodak gold 200 stock, I had a few exposures left on it from a previous shoot. However, as is very well visible, there is some serious light leaks going on. In an attempt to somewhat match this new film to the expired one I was going to shoot with later, I allowed some light into the film chamber, and the results are in some exposures quite nice. (And some are completely wasted, but I should keep that to myself)
Alma on Kodak Gold
This first one came out beautiful, I feel like it has an aura of a beginning, like a cover shot for a VHS or something. Below is a the rest before the roll was out and I changed to the exciting expired one.
Alright continuing with the expired Kodacolor. So this one expired some 10 years ago and I have no idea how it spent those years. What i did know was that I had some mixed expectations on the results, both very high but also kind of non existent. So yeah I was very happy when i saw the results below.
I feel like the ”film-borders” sets the tone for how the photos are interpreted so to be able to judge them in a more contemporary light I’ve cropped a few of them below and added a few digital shots. It’s quite easy to distinguish them without any explanation. In terms of the expired film I am as mentioned pleased, and to be honest quite intrigued. The film grain is quite harsh and the edge sharpness is bad as it seems the edges kind of bleeds into each other creating this. But all of this together results in a ”punchy” look in lack of better words.
Below; Some of the shots from above and a few digital Fuji.
And that’s it, hope you enjoyed some of the photos, thanks!
Not being the only photographer on this shoot really gave me the freedom to experiment, and i believe that is quite evident in the photos presented here, they are somewhat all over the place in terms of consistency. But anyway, I think this is a good way to develop.
So in conclusion I don’t really have one, a conclusion that is. Cheers. Thanks to everyone involved, that is Kim, Alma, Anna, and Ellie for being such generous and kind people.
Some time ago I found a beautiful Rolleicord V up for auction. Unfortunately upon arrival I found out that the lower shutter speeds, those below 1/30, was not functioning. The mechanism closing the shutter on the slower times are most likely being hindered by old lubricant that once helped it move but now instead stops it. A not so uncommon problem on older cameras. After all, this camera was made 1955 and can by all means be called old. Anyway, this camera has a Schneider-Kreuznach Xenar 1:3.5 75mm lens or in simpler terms a 75mm f3.5 lens. And upon writing this I realise that all the information about this camera is probably easier read and found somewhere else on the internet.
So, photos! (Well, soon). My first roll of film was almost completely wasted as the spring enabling the shutter-count to start moving was off, hence allowing me to roll potential exposure after exposure into the take up spool without realising. Well I did of course eventually realise something was off but having to reopen the back and check whats off etc obviously caused me to expose parts of the film. So I ended up with 3 exposures in the end. And none of them worth saving.
Next roll! Portra 160 (again), a quite affordable colour film, that is if its even possible to describe film as affordable or cheap or anything along those terms. Learning my lesson from the first roll everything now seemed to work, and actually after having had the film developed and scanned it with my ”dslr” setup, surprisingly enough the photos came out quite nice. As can be seen below I’ve so far found this camera to produce the best results with portraits. In frame is beautiful Cornelia, www.instagram.com/jonssoncornelia
Something I struggled with in the photos above was the blue colours, specifically the dark blues originally in the sky of the last photo for example. I have tried to lower those blues in the photos presented above. Scanning is always a bit of a struggle but after experimenting a lot with my 35mm films i have found a method that gives quite pleasing results (perhaps more on that later). In short the setup is, XT-2 with a Minolta 50mm f1.4 lens plus extension tube and adapter, tripod mounted. Negatives placed on home-made lightbox/filmholder above an ipad as light-source. Then conversion made in Lightroom with Negative Lab Pro.
And perhaps something to mention, focusing on this camera is not really a breeze as one would say. This is very well demonstrated by me below thinking i focused on the subject. And as a bonus a messed up triple exposure intended as a double exposure.
I have since then shot 3 more rolls, all of them fomapan 200, one of them developed and scanned. However i am yet to get the knack of exposing this B&W film to get the look i desire, will keep trying with the next developing batches. I also tried shooting the Rollei hooked up to an external flashgun in an ”studio-environment” which seemed to be working seamlessly, but that remains to be seen, perhaps in a later post (a few years from now maintaining the same post consistency).
