Roll with it #2
Fraught with danger, hit and miss results and it takes forever; I'm learning to love film again.
Firstly let’s talk about the that outing two weeks ago.
Wednesday the 28th of January, yes it was still raining then and I was wondering round a field, film camera in hand, shooting a variety of mundane every day sights on a foggy misty morning.
I wrote about the experience in roll with it #1 and now we have the images to match.
Before my digital camera battery ran out for the first time in five years while outside actually photographing with it (no doubt the irony of this project not lost on it), I took the opportunity to capture exactly the same images with both 28 mm lenses via two very different mediums; composing the image and using the Leica exposure settings to capture at 400 ISO, I would then switch to the manual film camera and shoot a couple of similar if not exact duplicate images onto Ilford HP5 with the same exposure in an attempt to investigate the real difference between film and digital.
This was a very misty day, the very air surrounding me in the cold wet field fell onto the film seemingly to make that point; the simple lines of fencepost and wire receding into the mist immediately illustrated the power of film to me.
The texture of the water droplets and imperfectness of contrast and grain awoke the realisation that any comparison was really quite redundant and unnecessary; yes the Q2 delivers incredibly complex digital images of outstanding detail; but film was what I had been missing for 30 years
Behold the beauty and grainy texture of film versus the clarity and clinical execution of digital.
The Pine needles provided me an excellence opportunity to give context and clarity to the emptiness of the mist hanging over the field I walk around most days of my life; it’s always there in the background, today and everyday.
Can you see the difference; what does it matter?
Proceeding around the field, numerous opportunities arose as film enabled me to use my signature style which I guess rather predictably is to frame the image in your mind and isolate some obscure object in the stark foreground with as narrow a depth of field that is available; pine needles and signposts take note; the blurred distant background seems to be my natural default and there is no point changing now; although working with film I can see useable results from this process will be be far more hit and miss; more valuable somehow, than their casual digital counterparts.
And it’s not a bad thing; because less is more.
Moving away from the henge to the lanes that disappear into tunnels of gloom; freshly cut hedgerows, recently savaged by fiercely rotating tractor mounted blades; the damp wood of the now isolated footpath sign standing out against the grey dank wet sky.
Just accessing the everyday features of my daily walk via black-and-white film has taken me back to the images my brain sees from around Knaresborough, York and other locations from the 80’s; I will be revisiting many to try and re-capture those images as part of a film project this year, once the weather improves.
Buoyed with success, I loaded up my second roll of HP5 and headed to London to see family & friends to try a second style; I was to find how fickle film is!
Appreciating the time required to frame and expose a portrait is a skill I will have to work on.
Despite enthusiastic support and willing subjects, a 35mm hand held camera with no flash and relatively slow film proved disastrous for most indoors situations; the likes of which the Q2 eats for breakfast; lesson learnt, use the right tool for the job, you can’t change ISO mid roll on a 35mm film camera!
As a result over half of my interior shots were probably too underexposed to be salvageable; in other news, I will import these high resolution scans into Lightroom and attempt to manipulate them as I would normally with any digital image; could be interesting to see what can be created, but in terms of pure aesthetics and film images straight out of the can (which is what I have done for all my film work to date), I failed badly here.
Safely returning to Yorkshire with a few images left to use up the second roll, I tramped the damp streets of Ripon to facilitate a quick processing turnaround from the lab to get this post out on time; the safer urban environment of characterful shops, people and daylight provided a more sensible backdrop to practice my lost skills.
I will return to Appleton‘s butchers shop; the texture and contrast of its window’s treasure will take some time to process; they deserve in investment in colour film at a later date!
I rounded off the week by attending an excellent film workshop with Dan Wheeler at Take it Easy Lab in Leeds on Monday night; learning something I wish I had known a very long time ago…
Each f stop move either way increasing or decreasing exposure with shutter speed, aperture or ISO, halves or doubles the amount of light coming in.
It’s probably 40+ years of holding a camera and I never clocked that; I thought clicking those dials was of course an increment of light, up and down yes, but not halves or doubles!
As I tend to favour a wide open shot to focus on the foreground with a narrow depth of field, this works well in a digital environment where ISO can be changed for each image according to available light.
I am learning; and that explains my success rate to date.
Work to do.
With one role of HP5 still in the fridge I have decided to venture towards the world of colour; armed with both a Kodak Gold 200 and extremely expensive Kodak Porter 800, I will set out in the coming weeks to metaphorically bring colour to the end of these damp dark days.
Let’s hope we can continue to roll with it and experiment with film together on this journey dear readers!
The process is frustrating, costly and time consuming in equal measure; I’m hoping it will also continue to be hugely rewarding!
My objective remains; build a small body of work that reminded me why film is so important, I’m pleased to say despite all of the above, I still bloody love it!
You can buy a film camera for less than £5 on eBay
You can get a film processed for £5 at Take it Easy Lab
You can do anything
Thanks for reading You can do anything.
Your follower-ship means a lot to me; I appreciate not everybody is interested in analog photography but hope you are all interested in making the most of every single day on this god-forsaken planet; if reading YCDA has in any small way helped to put a smile on your face, then my work here is done and I say ‘Happy Friday’ to you.