July - Back on the digital detox
Sometimes it’s really nice to go back to first principles with photography and there is no better way to do that than by shooting film.
It really does slow you down a bit, firstly because there’s so much work involved in the processing of the film and secondly that there’s only 24 or 36 photos per roll.
This month, I spent time shooting and developing some of my favourite films that I haven’t used in a while. I’m concentrating on black and white films this month. Next month, I’ll do the same with colour film.
Kicking off I shot some rolls of Ilford FP4 plus which I particularly like for its low cost and classic look. It’s not as contrasty as I generally like, but it’s easily possible to get a bit more out of it by additional agitation during the development phase and more still by digital tweaks in the scanning & digital post-processing.
FP4 works really well as a general purpose film, but I also like shooting vintage cars with it where it produces a look that seems very befitting of the vehicles, but sharp and contrasty enough for good detail if I get the processing right.
The next film was Rollei Retro 400S. This is a lovely panchromatic film which has a nice ‘smoky’ render to it, but with high contrast and great sharpness. It’s a little more sensitive to blown highlights than the Ilford film, so I tend to under-expose a little if I need to preserve the light tones.
Finally, my trusty Kodak TMAX100, but pushed 1 stop to ISO200. According to the data sheet, the development times don’t change much when you push it by 1 stop, but I like to run it an extra minute or so and increase the agitation for more contrast which seems to work well. The result is a sharp, contrasty image which has a lot of character.
