Sunday, February 20, 2011

Film

I love the shallow depth of field you can get with an SLR/DSLR cameras.  Think of Doni's pictures. My default camera, though, isn't an SLR, so sometimes I borrow Ben's old Canon to shoot my work. Ever since we went to Brian Brake's Exhibition in Wellington, I've been wanting to get back to some film photography, especially because I have a lovely little macro lens, so I combined the two last weekend.
I shot a roll of anything I fancied in my stash room, and it was a.... hilarious experience.  I hadn't used the camera in nearly 10 years, and I forget that:

1) Unless I have a zoom attached, which I didn't, the lens stays at one length;
2) I have to wind after every shot;
3) I have to check the meter before every shot and change the shutter speed or the aperture if need be;
4) If I have the object in focus but have to do 2) and/or 3), I need to check the focus again.
5) That a roll of 24 shots is going to give me, at best, around 26 shots... 

The stash room was dark, my film was only ASA200, (but I grew up with ASA100, so I thought it was sufficient,) the macro lens is not a particularly light lens, and I couldn't hold the camera as steadily nor stand as still as I used to.  The only thing that came back right away was my strange way of fine-tuning the focus with both my forefingers while holding the camera steadily.  Never mind, it was fun.  And I two rolls of ASA400 this time. Now if I remember what I learned when I was 13, the pink overtone is due to underexposure, but I didn't want to open the aperture any more, and I was shooting at 1/4 and 1/8 secs.
And I didn't do any ironing last week, so this mountain is about to topple.

(Something wrong with the compatibility between scanned files and my photo editor - that's the smallest my name will go in, but Ben found a solution, so the next roll will be better.)

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