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Welcome to my annual experiment with B&W film and antiquated cameras. I replaced the Canon AE-1 that blew up last year with a slightly more modern Canon A-1 so I could still use my old FD lens (24mm, 85mm and 200mm). Unfortunately the camera came with a curse. I'll get to that.
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I'm starting off with Ilford Delta 100. I've already said in the past that it's too contrasty and has ridiculous amounts of grain. Why did I use it? Well, Ilford has been having hard times lately and I felt sorry for them!
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On most of these shots, I'm shooting through a YA2 (orange filter). It's great for getting these contrasty skies. Unfortunately it adds way more contrast than a Y2 (yellow) filter which sure didn't help Delta 100 one bit.
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For three quarter portraits, the 85mm was the best.
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As soon as I looked through my 200mm lens, I thought "Why the hell am I using a 200mm lens? It belongs on a satellite!" I had used it at the Portland Exchange but then Pioneer Square is about four times the size of Westlake Mall and has things to stand on. I shot these 200mm shots literally from the other side of the mall.
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Now I'm shooting Fuji Acros 100 which Fuji just introduced a couple of years ago (a new B&W film?). I was really pumped about this film at the Denver Exchange. It has fine grain, excellent lattitude and is really cheap. No wonder Ilford is in trouble.
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200mm works really well for candid half shots if you can keep people out of your way. No one will even know you're there.
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Oh I see I had used my 200mm a couple of years ago and got mostly close ups. That works too.
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How to test a film's lattitude? Take some shots of blondes in bright sunlight.
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Notice how the detail in Trudi's hair isn't totally blown out? Good film.
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Notice how Emily is being lit from sunlight reflected off of a building's windows? Must remember that for next year!
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Remember that curse I mentioned? Here it is -- the viewfinder was misaligned. That made me cut the tops of some people's heads off. Fortunately I cut off mostly guys' heads so no big deal. If you buy a 30 year old camera, you really should test this. At least it didn't have any light leaks.
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OK now were shooting with Kodak 125PX. The PX is short for Plus-X which means nothing to me. It's about average in grain and lattitude. Go for the Fuji Acros instead.
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When I got home, my cat decided this roll would be his new toy. Good thing I found it in a closet a week later, cuz there are some fun ones here.
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Another good side-lit shot. Must remember that for next year.
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As the shim-sham commences, I've switched to Kodak BW400CN. This is Kodak's version of the wildly successful chromogenic B&W film that Ilford started with the XP series. This is actually color film formulated to print B&W so it's cheap to develop. And like Ilford's XP-2, it totally rocks!
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Here I've purposely aimed the camera so one side will blow out. Yeah, purposely. Anyway, notice how detail is more or less recoverable in both sides? That's lattitude, people. Most regular B&W film would have fucked this up.
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Here I've cropped an underexposed shot by 50%. Where's the grain? Nowhere to be found. Awesome!
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For the final roll, let's finish the event with the worst B&W film that's not made by Agfa: Ilford HP5. To be fair, it's designed to look like old old old film but if you aren't expecting that, you would probably start sobbing once you got your shots developed.
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Now I've cleaned up most of these shots because I don't think our follows want to look like they're growing beards. I'll point out the ones I didn't clean up.
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Then in some very bright situations, HP5 works almost as well as most other films.
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The absence of detail is a side-effect of the scrubbing bubbles I needed to clean up shots like these.
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Lattitude? Forget it pal.
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Here's some totally uncleaned (and colorized) HP5. If you want grainy artistic expressions instead of pictures, you could use HP5. Or you could save some money and buy the crappiest Agfa B&W film available. Whoops, looks like Agfa is doing even worse than Ilford these days.
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Grain, thy name is HP5.
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If you find yourself shooting in high-contrast situations with film that can't deal with it, you can try blowing out the background and colorizing the much darker foreground like this. It makes a nice separation between the fore and background.
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For some reason I don't feel like filling my refrigerator with boxes of HP5.
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