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| Missy, not enjoying have a camera thrust in her face in Italy, 2018. |
The reasons for the dirty look I’m getting is ‘cos it was after a very long day traipsing around Pompei in the hot afternoon sun. Missy was not impressed when I lifted the rangefinder to snap her up, poor thing. Dads, eh?!
It wasn’t too difficult to get the film edges half decent - it only took a couple of wasted sheets of paper. In the end I kind of split-grade printed the thing, in reverse. To begin, I exposed the whole thing (neg&edges) for a few seconds at grade 5. Then under red light I masked out the film edges using the easel, just giving a thin border around the negative (best done, I found, at full aperture to get it as accurate as possible). Then red light off, stop down the lens again and expose a few more seconds at grade 2.5 to give those skin tones a chance.
I like the result. Not perfect but then I kind of like the imperfections of analogue photography, if only to differentiate it from that clinical digital look. That’s my excuse, anyway! On Ilford Classic fibre paper.
Clever title. I've always heard, and it's true for me, that frames 36 and maybe 35 of a roll are for pets after you get home with a leftover just-in-case frame or two. In families with children, is frame 34 reserved for a child at the end of a vacation day? :) How many photos like this do you have?
ReplyDeletePizza in Pompeii sounds perfect.
Thanks Marcus. I haven’t heard that end-of-film line before but it makes perfect sense! I wish I had heard it as I’ve lost a good few decent shots which ended up on the last frame and were unusable. From now on that’s what I’ll be doing, so thanks for the tip.
DeleteThe frame numbers above don’t really mean anything here, though - I buy 35mm in bulk and load my own, so the frame numbers are all over the show. Usually I roll 25 shots per roll as (i) that seems about right for the way I work and means the film isn’t sitting in the camera for too long and (ii) 36 can be a bit sticky to load on the reel.
I would probably buy 24 exposure rolls of film if the price of development and scanning was cheaper than a roll of 36 exposures. I work slowly, and it can take a while to get through a long roll.
DeleteOh... at the end of a long day in Pompeii, huh...?
ReplyDeleteI can only say that I really know the feeling, and that Missy have my full sympathy in this case. Been there, done that on a day very close to around 250 deg. C It was hell on earth, nothing less!
Can I just out of curiosity ask what type of spools you roll your film onto, Michael? I have been using my old fashion Ilford cans, but they really start getting towards the end of their lifetime now, so something new has to be purchased sooner rather than later. Any good tips to spread around for what to get?
Roy I spool my film into used cassettes that I get from my local 'SnappySnaps' high street printers. I have a close relationship with them - they send over all their B&W films which I develop for their customers. I don't honestly know what I was thinking when I said 'Yes' to that suggestion but these things happens sometimes. In return they give me a bag of film cassettes every now and again - from what I see, it's mostly colour film that people use here and their machine neatly trims the film off, leaving about an inch sitting outside the can. Perfect for me. So I re-use the cassettes a half dozen times or so and them bin them.
DeleteTruth is I only get about a dozen films a year or so to develop, so it's no big deal. Ideally it's HP5 or FP4 and I can just toss it in with one of my own films. Occasionally it's an odd one like Tri-X or even Agfa and then I have to go and look up the times in the MassiveDev App.
One time the guys negs looked terrible - poorly exposed, light leeks, out of focus. I was hoping that it wasn't something gone wrong with my Paterson tank or that I had screwed up a customer's film. I made some notes on the sheet I returned with the film - "Please check your camera, there is something weird going on here". A few weeks later I get a reply - turns out it was a home-made pinhole camera. I was both relieved and happy that someone is using such a thing around here!
Ah, that makes sense! I have been thinking about trying out film cassettes from shops like this myself as well, but have not been able to find any in my area. I know a couple of guys in my local photo store, so I might just ask them if there's anyone in town using film anymore. They should know, I would guess.
DeleteI could do their B&W's actually, not that I think there's even one single other soul using that around my bits of the world.
So it was a pinhole dude, huh? Well, that's interesting enough I would say.