Ilford Pan F 50 and a Figure Study

I’ve long had a love for Ilford’s Pan F ISO 50 film stock. It captures a ton of detail and its exceedingly low grain can give images a very painterly kind of feel. It is also the film stock that I probably find the most challenging to work with and my results can be a little bit hit or miss with it sometimes.

View fullsize

Photographed with Ilford Pan F in medium format and a Hasselblad 500c/m

I have often found with Ilford Pan F that is it very easy to blow out the highlights and let contrast get out of control. With portraits and figure studies this is not such a great thing so I have to be very careful with my exposures and development. Often I find myself exposing the same shot, bracketing my exposure. In addition, the detail captured with Ilford Pan F can be unflattering with human skin.

Despite these challenges I like the give the film a go every so often. Usually I’ll pull out a roll after working with film stocks that are a bit easier to work with like Ilford FP4 or HP5 so if I don’t get results I like with Pan F then it is no big deal. With the image I posted here, this was exposed at the tail end of a session done in my living room. All I did was move my furniture out of the way giving me a blank wall to work with and a single strobe light to the right of the frame. It was a tight space to work in, but I think the results look rather nice.

---

Old Houses in the Deserts of Los Angeles

Several years ago I made a pilgrimage down to Southern California. I’ve always had a love and hate relationship with the larger metro area that people typically just lump into the label of the greater Los Angeles. On the one hand the traffic is monstrous and frustrating in the best of times. The sprawl and the row after row after row of generic apartment buildings and flat six lane roadways just make me sad.

At the same time, despite the massive population in the area, it is shockingly easy to find places where one can be isolated and alone. It is simply a fact that Los Angeles, and by extension, Southern California, is a place of contradictions.

View fullsize

Photographed with a Mamiya C330 TLR and Fomapan 100 medium format film.

I only brought one camera with me on this trip, my Mamiya C330 TLR. I also only brought one type of film with me, Fomapan 100. Predictably, the sun was incredibly bright and harsh the entire trip and I found myself working with the film at ISO 50 nearly the entire time. I’ve always found Fomapan to be a great film to pull down to a lower ISO. Diluting Rodinal just a little bit and developing with some slow agitation tends to yield very low contrast negatives, something I needed to counteract the harsh lighting.

Only an hour or so outside of the greater Los Angeles area there were a lot of abandoned houses, totally falling apart and sitting forgotten under the unforgiving sun. No trees around, no people, not even paved roads leading up to the front doors. It was eerie and quite and made for a great spot to expose this particular frame that has long been my favorite from the trip.

---

Natural Light With A Hasselblad 500c/m

I’ve never been completely comfortable working with really harsh natural light. Living in the Pacific Northwest I’m constantly spoiled with nice and even overcast weather. Every photographer knows, especially photographers who work with film, that overcast lighting is incredibly easy to expose. Bright and harsh light on the other hand can be incredibly difficult. Sometimes if feels like you have dark shadows, bright highlights, and absolutely nothing in-between. Losing out on detail in your final exposure is an incredibly easy mistake to make.

View fullsize

Photographed with a Hasselblad 500c/m and Ilford Delta 400 medium format film.

This image is one of those rare cases where I think I made some very harsh lighting work. It was a summer afternoon and the light coming in through my studio window was harsh to say the least. It was so harsh in fact that the entire scene felts sweltering and hot. I wanted to play with the shadows and the light the best I could and I thought it would be fun to let it swirl about the shapes of the model’s figure.

To retain as much detail as possible I exposed a roll of Ilford Delta 400 down to ISO 200 and pulled back my development by about 30%. This tends to work pretty well lowering contrast and keeping detail in both the shadows and the highlights. I also won’t deny I bracketed the heck out of each exposure, working with three frames per pose. One and a half stops over, one spot on, and one and a half stops under. Not surprisingly, the image I liked best was the spot on exposure. I should learn to trust my light metering skills…

---

Portrait Holding a Yashica 124g TLR

I feel like it is probably inevitable that when one is working with another photographer that all the cameras are going to come out eventually. In this particular case we were both admiring our respective TLR cameras - for myself I was working with the Mamiya C330 TLR and she had the Yashica 124g. Both lovely machines in their own right with their own distinct advantages and disadvantages. Sometimes it really is just a treat to stare at someone through the ground glass.

It was a really gorgeous spring day when this photograph was made and I was glad I brought along a roll of Kodak Ektar color negative film to work with. Sometimes Kodak Ektar isn’t the greatest film stock when working with people. Skin tones tend to lean really far toward the red which doesn’t always work well. Here, the red-ish skin tones contrasted against all the green foliage in the background is perfectly fine though. Even welcome in some respects.

---

Portrait in Natural Light

In my small living space I have a window that faces toward the west. It is by far the biggest window and for a very short window every year there is a period of time when the light coming through it is just stunning for about one hour a day. Depending on the weather this is typically around the end of April through the month of May.

It’s a soft light, yet very bright. It swoops down low toward the horizon and casts long shadows that require only the tiniest bit of diffusion. A sheer curtain is enough to do the trick. There is just enough space to make a nice head and shoulders portrait with the standard 80mm f/2.8 Planar on my Hasselblad 500cm. Most admirably, it is the kind of light were it is really hard to make a bad image when I’m using it.

I made this portrait last may using that lovely evening light coming through my western facing living room window. It was kind of an odd period of time. COVID was in full lockdown mode still, at least around the Portland area, and I had to be careful with who I was choosing to work with. I was incredibly grateful that even in the scariest and weirdest of times I was still able to get work done that I am proud of.

---