A recent trip to the big apple captured on film. Black and White film is such a unique medium to work with, you learn to both see and ignore colour, looking more for composition, thinking in shades of gray. The photos were captured using Rollei Pan 25, a fine grain panchromatic film that caught my eye on the Freestyle website.
Customer - Wow, I’m surprised you still stock film, I used to shoot a lot of Fuji Chrome back in the day
CSR - We still have a few customers that shoot film, we don’t have a big a selection as we used to.
Me - I still shoot film, a lot of film. I like the look and feel of it, the need to really pick your shots.
Customer - Really? I would expect someone of my age to say that, not a young man like you.
CSR - This one probably shoots more than the “old guys”
This little conversation happened yesterday at my local Henry’s store while I was picking up one of two rolls of film that I had dropped off earlier that week for developing. Most people give me a strange look or question the fact why I still shoot with film saying it’s old, obsolete, and not really needed these days with the wonderful world of instant digital photography. (Oh and yes, I have a Polaroid camera as well, two of them, which I also shoot when when I have film from the Impossible Project on hand. The birth of instant photography right here.)
Why I still shoot film, because it’s a unique look, there’s something special about looking at a slide negative, there’s a depth and sharpness of colour that I can only achieve on digital with a certain amount of tweaking in post processing, or using various filters and in camera tricks. I remember when I saw my first 6×6 colour slide, and then of course my fellow film nerd and friend Julie showed me one of her dad’s 8×10 slide film shots….yeah.
Also with film it makes you think, since you are very limited in the amount of consumable media you carry, and the amount you get per roll you have really make sure you are shooting what you want, and how you want it. Black and White is great for that because the colours won’t matter (much, everything is in shades of gray) so you really have to make the composition of your shot carry what the image is about.
That’s why I shoot film, not only that put the selection of film cameras out there is amazing, large format crown graphics, medium format Twin Lens Cameras, to sleek 35mm range finders.
And if you’re a film nut like me, you might want to check out the Film Photography Podcast, produced twice monthly by two awesome guys from New Jersey.
You can find them on:
The Official Website: http://www.filmphotographypodcast.com/
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Film-Photography-Podcast-Internet-Radio-Show/382315292393?ref=ts
Flickr: http://www.filmphotographypodcast.com/
I realized that I never actually posted this. Back in January I had the honor of learning from a master developer, on how to develop and print Black and White Film. The experience was fun actually, and I’ll admit I was a little nervous when I started the processing, if the shots I had taken would even work, or if I screwed something up. I was using my old Yashica, which does have shutter problems in the cold weather.
But after pulling the negs out I was pleasantly surprised that it had actually worked! Aside from some issues along the edges, probably due to loading/unloading the film in the bright sun (it was a clear sunny day at the Pit Mine). The next day was printing, that was a little bit more tricky, but again got some good results for my first attempt.
All shots were taken using a Yashica-12 (Copal-SV 80mm 1:3.5) on Kodak TMax 400 film, developed in Kodak D-76 Developer. Scanned using an Epson V500 scanner @ 1200 DPI, edited in Adobe Photoshop CS3 for curves, and sharpening.
