5 (plus one or three) Frames of Raglan Castle – A Return to Velvia with the Best Camera Ever Made.

The ruins of Raglan Castle dominate the landscape mid-way between Abergavenny and Monmouth in South Wales and will be familiar to anyone travelling the A40 between the towns. The large and imposing ruins have the appearance of an impregnable medieval fortress. A close inspection however reveals relatively thin walls and large windows facing outwards, making it clear this castle was built to impress and intimidate rather than be purely defensive.

Raglan was then much more a country house than what we now consider a castle, but nevertheless in 1646 held out for 11 weeks in the siege right at the end of the English Civil War. The length of the siege however could be as much due to a general war weariness amongst both sides combined with the time it took the Parliamentary forces to get the huge mortar “Roaring Meg” into position, the defending Royalist garrison apparently surrendering soon after its arrival.

After the surrender what was left of the building was slighted, supposedly to prevent it being used as a fortress again, though probably mainly to piss off as much as possible the owner and leader of the defenders Henry, Marquess of Worcester.

According to my notes the last time I used a roll of Velvia 50 (RVP) was in May/June 2007. I don’t remember when exactly but at some point in the previous two or three years Fuji had announced Velvia 50’s demise. At the time I, like most other photographers, was using almost nothing else as photo agencies would only rarely accept images taken on another film. I bought as many rolls as I could afford and then eeked them out while testing the alternatives. As it turned out the alternative was digital, as over much the same period the agencies went from ‘definitely no digital cameras’ via ‘maybe’ to accepting digitally-taken only.

Returning to film in the last couple of years for personal interest only I have mainly been using black and white and doing my own developing, the cost of slide film together with processing being unaffordable, and my loathing of colour negative film undiminished. Then I noticed that by putting in a back order on out of stock film I could possibly buy 120 Velvia 50 at the same price I was spending for a roll of monochrome. I didn’t seriously expect the order to be honoured as the list price was about 60% higher when after 6 months some rolls were finally dispatched. These have been in my deepfreeze ever since waiting for suitable subjects, there is the extra cost of processing E6 to add on but for a couple of films every now and then I don’t mind too much.

This is RVP ii which I had never used as it was launched after I ceased using slide film, and also all the other hundreds of rolls of Velvia 50 I have used have been 35mm in what were then modern cameras with accurate metering, Velvia 50 is not kind to inaccurate exposure. My most modern medium format camera dates from 1958, and none of the ones I am using have shutter speeds marked that I would consider completely accurate reflections of the actual opening times.

But with careful metering and choosing the most reliable machine I have managed to get a few images I am reasonably happy with.

And quite a number that I am not.

Overall though I am surprised how good the transparencies look, made with a nearly 90 year old camera and lens that were designed before the birth of practical colour photography. But then perhaps I shouldn’t be, those German engineers in Dresden really knew what they were doing.

And finally, I also ran through a few frames of Delta 100. After scanning I realised 3 overlapped so I asked Lightroom to stitch them together in a panorama. I quite like the result so thought I would add it here.

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