Tuesday, November 27, 2007
An experiment “pulling” film
I bought a bulk roll of black and white film, 100 ft for about $30. It’s cheap stuff, but it saves me a ton of money over buying individual rolls. I got a bulk dispenser w/some ebay stuff awhile ago, so I can load up a film canister with as much film as I want and shoot it. And develop it myself. Presto, very inexpensive film!
Anyway, the cheapest stuff I could find was 400 ISO. I normally use 100 ISO, because the light outside is so bright here. Plus, on one of my old 35mm cameras, I have to just guess at the aperature/shutter speed, I don’t have a light meter, and it doesn’t have one built in. So I use the sunny 16 rule, which is: Set your shutter speed to whatever your film ISO is, and set your aperature to 16, if it’s sunny out. You can adjust from there—if you want a wider aperature, adjust your shutterspeed accordingly, or vice versa. Problem is, with the lens I have on this old camera, I’d only be able to shoot at one aperature if I set the shutter speed to 400 (=500, on this camera) for 400 ISO.
So, I tried shooting the film as if it was 100 ISO, and then developing it as if it was 100 ISO. Because the film speed is 400 ISO, that’s called “pulling” the film. Mostly what you hear of is people “pushing” the film. That means going the other direction—for example, shooting 100 ISO film as if it’s 400, and then developing it like it’s 400.
Anyway, my first attempt didn’t come out all that great—over exposed, mostly. And because I’m not sure I had the exposures exactly right in the camera—using the sunny 16 rule can be tricky, especially with my brain—I don’t know if I messed up the development time or not. It’s going to take a few tries for me to get it figured out, I think.
These were taken with my Zenit-TTL, an old tank of a Russian camera. I went for a walk around Central Park, which is a park just down the street. There’s a man-made pond or lake in it.
There’s weird trees in California:
Too bad you can’t really see all the ducks in the water. The lake was overcome with them:
Those last two had the best exposure. I think most of the problem was me overexposing the film in the camera. I may have developed it a bit too long too.
The top two look like great Christmas cards, and I love the bendy trees near the end, 7?, they look like they are dancing to me. #8, the one with the lake is calls me also.
I might go back and try to get a better exposure of #8, I like that one too. I knew #7, the bendy trees, would make a good shot if I got the exposure right. The sun was setting and coming through at an angle. I totally guessed at the exposure.
They may not be perfect, but I love the old timey feel they give. On a stark white wall mounted without frames. The bendy tree is nice, I’d be interested in seeing other angles from it too.
they look pretty good for a test roll that “didn’t turn out”. :)
Ha. I had to do a lot of levels work in Photoshop!