In this blog I have decided to mix things up a bit and share my film photography experience. Among the seminars I have watched about photography, few of them mentioned of film photography and during those moments I always thought of it as being difficult and I wasn’t much keen on delving in to that side of photography.
But the film photography kept on coming up in various other videos I enjoyed, such as the videos about Michael Kenna, Sebastiao Salgado and the most fascinating one for me – Nick Brandt. Nick Brandt is a Wildlife Photographer and an conservationist who shoots medium format film, and when I first found that out I was quite surprised!
Then one day I was watching a video of the landscape photographer Thomas Heaton in which he mentioned the film photographer Nick Carver, he was specifically talking about Nick’ laundromat video. So after finishing that video I watched that laundromat video and there were a lot of things I liked about that video. But mainly that got me curious about film photography in a way that got me thinking about giving it a try.
Hence began the binge watching of all film photography related YouTube channels and after watching quite a bit of film photography videos I now had a rough idea on what to do, but to make sure it was just not a fade I decided to shoot a disposable camera at my friend’s daughter’s birthday.
Once I got the photos back from the lab I was quite happy with the results, though the main thing happened while taking the photos, now I had heard throughout the videos on ‘why shoot film’ that it helps you slow down but I realised that first hand when I was shooting. As I only had finite amount of photos I can take, it made me stop and think whether I really wanted to take that shot or should I change the composition/wait for a better moment?
Now I was ready to buy my first film camera, and I wanted to get something vintage. By this time Christmas was nearly there, which meant it was time for Kris Kringle at work. This year we had a wish list going so at least people don’t end up getting something they are not into – like someone who doesn’t cook getting a frying pan! I wished for a used film camera, but Santa was super nice to me and got me a brand new Lomography La Sardina! Which was quite over the limit of our 20$ minimum, I must have been a good boy.
I didn’t know about this camera, but as it was brand new it came with instructions and a photo book (which was really good and full of tips). I found out it was fixed aperture, fix shutter speed, plastic lens camera where you only had two focus settings – close and far. So this was basically a point and shoot camera where you had to choose a film depending on what you wanted to shoot.
For my first roll I decided to shoot black and white film as that’s what I am attracted to. This, I figured out quickly after watching few videos and later on getting the photo books of above mentioned photographers. I love grainy black and white photos!
As Melbourne is usually cloudy I decided to go with ISO 400 film, and I chose my first roll to be of Ilford’s HP5 Plus- mainly due to watching too many Matt Day videos.
I was working at boxing day test match at MCG so I planned to photograph few iconic buildings in the CBD and other things that may interest me.
(Majority of the photos you’ll see below are unaltered, only thing I did was to add framing. Though for a couple of them I decided to do perspective correction as the distortion was too much and in couple of photos from a sunny day I had to bring the highlights down a bit.)
Upon reaching train station, I figured I wanted to take the photo of train approaching the platform. But first I took a photo of empty station in landscape mode, and while looking through viewfinder I thought of taking the photo with the oncoming train in a portrait mode. It turned out to be one of my favourite photo, not just from this roll but in general as well.
Upon reaching the city I had to take an obligatory shot of Flinders Street Station, and St. Paul’s cathedral. (After looking at few photos from two rolls I have shot I learnt that I’ll have to point the camera a little higher than what I see in the viewfinder).
After walking around and reaching the Palace Theater, I had an idea of photographing the old City Circle tram passing by the theater but whenever the tram passed-by my views were blocked by the passing traffic. And after waiting fifteen minutes it seemed like I had my best chance but as soon as the tram started moving the pedestrian crossing opened up as well so my shot had two people walking across in it.
That day I walked around and photographed few other buildings, cityscapes and statues. The next day was sunny so I photographed only during the earlier part of the mornings as I thought the light was too bright for ISO 400 film, and my photos showed that too, a couple of the photos had some areas over exposed.
I still had some photos left in the roll, which I decided to use during my birding outings so I have some examples of landscape shots too.
Photos I got from the parks were a mix bag, as one day it was quite sunny and I shot mostly in the shadows but the parts that were not in shadows were over exposed. Another day was dark overcast day so the photo from that day had no details-it kind of looked like a photo from pinhole camera (these are not included here).
There were a couple of photos that worked though which I have included here.
So how was my experience you ask? It was an amazing feeling looking at the scans for the first time. I loved the grainy look that you get, and the amount of time you stop and think before clicking the shutter as each photo will cost you money!
After this roll, I had shot Kodak C200 with this camera. And in that role I had few close up shots which came out really nice and it made me think this is a better camera to shoot close subjects rather than distant landscapes. For a plastic camera it is really fun to use and produces some good results in well lit conditions. Once I read more into it I found out it is very easy to shoot double exposures on it too, but I am yet to give it a go.
I am currently shooting this with Kodak Ultramax which I got in last year’s KK, and I have some plans for that roll so hopefully there will be a blog about it later down the year.
As always your thoughts and suggestions are most welcome.