Black and White Film

Nude From Above

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I apologize if it feels like it has been a minute since I’ve updated this blog. A lot of life changes have been going on, mostly for the better, and that means having to prioritize what I can realistically accomplish without burning myself out. I assure you however, I have been very hard at work making new images! In fact that has been my primary focus right now. Developing film, editing finished pieces, and enjoying the satisfaction of completing something.

Social media and the internet in general sometimes just needs to be ignored in order to make that happen.

Photographed with a Hasselblad 500c/m and Ilford FP4 ISO 125 medium format film.

Anyone who has ever photographed with any camera with a waste level finder knows that it can be incredibly complicated and disorienting to try and photograph straight down. This is primarily due to the fact that the image in the viewfinder is already reversed, and when you are holding the camera above your head or straight out at arms length and aiming down it will almost make you dizzy trying to compose an image.

I made about seven exposures of this exact pose in this exact spot and this was the only frame that I feel like I composed properly. I was standing on a broken log above the model, balancing as best I could, with the camera being held straight outward, the lens aiming straight down. Needless to say, a Hasselblad isn’t exactly built to be held in this manner and working the controls, focus, and hitting the shutter button was awkward.

The little challenges one encounters with photography can be interesting that’s for sure!

Escaping The Wind

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Sometimes when the weather is not cooperating during a photographic outing one really needs to get creative. Or you just need to get lucky. When these photographs were being made the wind was bitterly cold! The temperature on paper wasn’t really so bad, just a mild day in the late fall here in the Pacific Northwest. But the wind… The wind was making it feel fifteen to twenty degrees colder than it actually was.

Anyone who has ever tried to operate a camera with bitterly cold wind howling around you, not to mention anyone who has ever tried to remove their clothing under such conditions can tell you - it is really not fun!

Photographed with a Hasselblad 500c/m and Ilford FP4 medium format film.

I was actually ready to call the day a bust when we found a strange tree growing near the ground along the shoreline that had a perfect opening. I was able to stand out in the windy cold while the model was able to take shelter at the opening and didn’t have to endure the wind at all. The branches and foliage on the tree were so thick it felt like climbing into a sturdy tent.

Photographed with a Hasselblad 500c/m and Ilford FP4 medium format film.

Our options for posing were very limited given the small opening, but I think we made do with the difficult conditions we had before us and I’m quite happy with the results. I was only able to expose one roll of film in this spot before it was physically impossible to continue. Sometimes one roll of film is all you need though.

Using the Hasselblad SWC In Small Spaces

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I’ve mentioned before on this blog how much I really like using the Hasselblad SWC. The 38mm Biogon lens is an absolute marvel and I very much appreciate the almost point and shoot nature of working with the SWC. Set your focus distance, meter the scene, and you are good to go just pointing and clicking to your hearts content.

Photograph of a nude model made with a Hasselblad SWC and Ilford Pan F ISO 50 film.

I’ve noticed a lot of camera reviewers making hay about having to “guess” the focus distance with this camera but in real world use I have found this to be a complete non-issue. Even at a wide open aperture, the depth of field is so wide I never miss out on focus.

There is one scenario where the Hasselblad SWC can be a bit of a challenging tool - working in tight spaces. To be fair, I’m not sure the SWC was really meant for small rooms. This is a landscape camera through and through. However, I’ve never been one to be contend with using a camera purely in the situations it was designed for. I recently used the Hasselblad SWC on a balcony overlooking downtown Portland that was about four feet wide and only about three feet deep. It was tight quarters for sure, but I think the Hasselblad SWC is perhaps the only camera I own that could have pulled off some good images at all.

Photograph of a nude model made with a Hasselblad SWC and Ilford Pan F ISO 50 film.

The challenge to using the SWC in small spaces is the fact that the closer you get to your subject, the more the viewfinder on the top of the camera becomes “off”. The fancy term for this would be Parallax Error. In other words, what I’m framing with the viewfinder on the top of the camera isn’t the same thing the lens is seeing just below it. When your subject is far away, the difference is minuscule and practically undetectable. The closer one gets to the subject, the more dramatic the difference is. On a tiny balcony I was forced to be only a few feet from the model meaning I was guessing my adjustments big time.

Thankfully practice can make perfect. Or as perfect as visual art can be anyway.

Reticulation With Black and White Film

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The weather here in the Pacific Northwest has been incredibly hot the last week or so. Heat waves are not my favorite thing, in part because it can make working with analogue photography quite difficult. Not only is it unbearable to go outside to make actual photographs, but it can also make the back end darkroom process a bit of a pain to work with. In my case, the difficulty can be the reticulation effect with film.

Photographed with a Hasselblad 500c/m and Ilford HP5 120 film. Film was developed in cold water and rinsed later in hot water to get the reticulation effect.

What is film reticulation you might ask? In the world of emulsions and film, reticulation is simply the science of distorting the emulsion layer to create an overall pattern in the film. The single most important ingredient to produce reticulation is extreme changes in temperatures of developing solutions. In other words, because film emulsion is based with silver, hot and cold temperatures will make the emulsion expand and contract creating a textured effect.

When the weather is incredibly hot, the water will come out of my tap in spurts ranging from hot to cold at random. Normally I develop my film at an even 68 degrees. But during heat waves, the water will vary from about 60 degrees to 85 degrees at will.

Now, if I wanted to I could use ice cubes and steady water baths to keep my temperature consistent. In most cases that is what I do. However, sometimes I will just embrace what mother nature put in front of me and run with it, crossing my fingers that the effect will work out in my favor. I think that was the case here as the foggy misty morning where this photograph was taken compliments the reticulation effect quite well.

So hey it worked out!

As always with film however, you just never know and letting the reticulation effect take control in the development process can be risky.

Film Review: Film Ferrania P30 In 35mm

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After what seems like an eternity of paused availability (no doubt due to COVID) I recently received the welcome news that Film Ferrania is once again ramping up their production of P30 film stock in 35mm format. I became aware of Film Ferrania a number of years back when a sales rep at my local camera shop recommended it and I liked the film immediately, though I wasn’t totally happy with the images I made with it. That was of no fault to the film but more my skills as a photographer. By the time I got around to picking up some more stock became low and I was forced to go back to my standby films like Ilford and Rollei.

Photographed with a Minolta SRT-101 and Film Ferrania P30 35mm film.

P30 has a box speed of ISO 80. Since these are the first rolls of P30 I’ve worked with in a long time I decided I better not get fancy and just metered everything at ISO 80 with a hand held meter. Often it is best to see what a film stock is capable of at the manufacturer’s recommendation even if your lighting situation is a bit on the tricky side. I would have preferred to put my test rolls through the paces on a more overcast day with even lighting, but alas, summer decided to come out in full force this past week. As such, there was a huge range in light values coming through the studio windows, sometimes as much as four or five stops between light and shadow.

Made in Italy, Film Ferrania markets their film stock as being similar in look to the stock used by Italian film makers such as Roberto Fellini. If you’ve ever seen classics like 8 1/2 or La Dolca Vita you’ll know the look they are talking about. Normally I would consider lines like this from a film manufacturer to be a bit of a gimmick (I’m looking at you Lomography!!) but with Film Ferrania I can see where they are coming from. P30 has a punchy and contrasty look to it but manages to easily keep detail in both the highlights and the shadows. It also has very minimal and very soft grain, especially considering the fact that I developed these images in Rodinal, a developer known to produce sharp and pronounced grain structure.

Photographed with a Minolta SRT-101 and Film Ferrania P30 35mm film.

Speaking of Rodinal, P30 seems to be a perfect candidate for stand development. For the images on this post I metered areas where dark shadow and bright light came together and developed at 1:100 for exactly 60 minutes. Agitation was for fifteen seconds at the beginning and five more agitations at 30 minutes. Normally with stand development I get a lot of highlight effects where dark areas of the final image transition to more neutral gray. Sometimes I like this effect and sometimes I don’t. With P30 I don’t seem to get any of that, which isn’t necessarily good or bad, but is an interesting characteristic of the film. Every single frame on two rolls of film came out well exposed with plenty of gradation from white to black.

Photographed with a Minolta SRT-101 and Film Ferrania P30 35mm film.

Right now Ferrania P30 is only available in 35mm. That’s all well and good and the world needs as many 35mm film stocks as we can get. However, I can’t help but feel excited at the prospect of P30 perhaps being available one day in medium format (120) or heck, even larger formats like 4x5. I also think P30 would look great in a smaller format like 16mm or even 8mm but I know the market for smaller formats like that are limited and a release is unlikely.

Now with all that being said, if you are going to work with a film stock that is slower than ISO 100 I suppose 35mm is the one you want. Why you might ask? Well, the answer is pretty simple. 35mm cameras tend to have faster lenses which means you can open up the aperture and let in more light, keeping your shutter speeds up, and negating the use of a tripod. The 50mm lens on my Minolta SRT-101 opens up to f/1.4 and I did the majority of the images in this review from f/2 to about f/5.6. I’m always thankful when I can avoid a tripod and at ISO 80 that wouldn’t necessarily be the case with slower medium format lenses.

Photographed with a Minolta SRT-101 and Film Ferrania P30 35mm film.

You can read more about Film Ferrania on their website HERE including where to purchase over the coming months. I imagine it will still take some time before they are in full swing, but if you get a chance to pick up some P30 I definitely recommend it.