What better of a way to start out on my new year than to write about something that Chris mentioned in the comments of my last post. I went to El Dorado Nature Trail back in November to see if I could get any fall colors.
I haven't shot color film yet with my medium format, so I was stuck between Fuji Portra 400 C-41 or Fuji Velvia 100 Color slide film. I didn't have a light meter yet and I heard slide film is a bit harder to get correct lighting shots so I went with the easier color negative film, the portra. I also took three rolls of Ilford hp5+ black and white film, which are what the shots below were taken with.
This first set demonstrates one of the good mishaps that can happen when you shoot with a Holga. I accidentally forgot to set the camera back to the 100x shutter speed setting and left it on the Bulb setting. The bulb setting will leave the shutter open for as long as you have your finger on the shutter release. So, most of them below look like they have some motion blur or they have a couple different exposures of the same scene. I got about 3/4 of the way through Which is where the set on the bottom come in.
Now this set was the weird ones in the bunch. I'd never seen this happen before. I had two mistakes happen on these next few.The first are the big white streaks Those are light leaks from when I was transferring the film from the spool to the development tank. I accidentally dropped the spool, when I was in my makeshift darkroom, in front of the crack at the bottom of the door. There was a bit of light coming in down there. Major bummer.
The other issue was when I developed the film, my stock developer liquid was just a bit too strong and I agitated the container too much. Your supposed to do either 10 second agitation per minute or 5 seconds every 30 seconds. Well, on some of them I was doing 10 every 30 seconds. That's why the pictures look a little dull underneath.
Well there ya have it. I think I'll do the first mistake again. I was showing a co worker, whom was a former pro photographer, those pictures and he thought they were good enough to be framed and hung. I think I might just do that. Especially with the 2nd image of the little bridge. Experimenting in your hobby's teaches you big time!
