Tales on Film

First of all let me wish you all a happy 2012. As one of my New year resolutions, I decided that I will keep on posting interesting things about film photography, but I can’t keep up the rate I did last year until september. It’s just not possible to combine this blog on that intensity with all with my work and shooting. However I will not let the blog die. So to show that I’m still committed to posting, here is the first post for 2012.

A little while ago, I was playing around with the Diana F+ and got the idea to try and see if it’s possible to fire a pocketwizard (wireless flash trigger) with the Diana. After some testing and with the little hotshoe flash accessory that came with my Diana F+, it turned out to work. I loaded some film in the camera and went on to do some light tests.

Thanks to the internet I knew that the F+ has a diafragma of about f11 and that the shutter time varies between 1/100 and 1/60 of a second. That made that I had to put my studioflashes for those conditions, I used the old school method of a light meter and made sure I used the lower end of all settings. So I measured for f8 at 1/60 of a second on iso 400 because I was using Kodak Portra 400VC. It was an experiment, and boy was I happy when I saw the photos.

It even delivers some interesting results when you start using double exposures and flashes, just remember to adjust your settings.

So it’s perfectly possible to use a Diana F+ for studio photography. There are some catches however, first of all, the Diana F+ has no real focus, so that means unless you are using a lint meter your shots are going to be a bit soft like the photos above. The second problem is that because you are not working with a through the lens viewfinder and you don’t exactly see what you are framing and that means you’ll get some pictures like the one above, where the head is cut off. So it is possible to use a Diana F+ with off camera flash and there for in a studio environment, I would not recommend it

A little while ago I read a very interesting article for making business cards with instant film. A business card made from instant film is an awesome idea for any photographer, using instant film. It will get you noticed and remembered as being different and it’s a great way to show off the value of instant film.

I’m not going to repeat the how to, but you can find the tutorial over at the lomography magazine, it’s written by wn7ant.

The tutorial shows you how to make the cards on fuji instax film, but my guess is this works on every type of instant film you use in a pack. From polaroid film to fuji packfilm.

BTW I did not yet try this myself, because I didn’t find any transparency papers yet for a decent prize, but I will definitely try it.

When you are using a older film camera, a lot of times there is no coupled light meter telling you what exposure you best use. So you have to purchase a external light meter. This can be expensive if you go for a new one. Luckily there are other options, like buying an older light meter for natural light, you can get one of those for about 5 euro, but you have to get used to reading such a meter. In this post I will explain how you do that.

In this example I use photos of a Russian light meter, the leningrad 4, although every light meter lay-out is a bit different, the general idea stays the same.

So the first thing to do is actually meter the light, this means most of the time you push a button on the side or just point the meter at the scene. A meter will move over the scale, as you see in the image above. This will give you a number, this corresponds to a number on the dial scale. The next thing is to match the number on the scale with the one you got from the reading. This will give you an aperture and shutter time on the other side of the dial. Most light meters will have a scale that shows all possible apertures with the appropriate shutter times. This way you choose whatever aperture or shutter time you want to use and don’t have to calculate the corresponding value.

The only thing we have not taken into account now is the asa/iso setting. As you can see, there is also a dial where you can set the iso. This also adjusts the times and the aperture ring again, to show you the appropriate times/apertures to shoot in the current circumstances with the film you have in your camera.

So it may seem a bit difficult at the beginning to use an older light meter, but once you get the hang of it, it’s actually quite fast to meter and set the correct settings on your camera.

A lot of medium format cameras have a waist level viewfinder. What this means is that instead of looking through a rather small eyepiece with a mirror and a prism projecting the image, you look directly at the image through the mirror. This is convenient in a way, but requires some adjustments.

The first problem you’ll probably face is: “How do I see something in this thing, I can only see myself.” The reason for this is the ground glass you’re looking at. The ground glass is the somewhat milky glass that get’s the projection of the image from the mirror. In most cases this glass has some feature to get a better focus, some have a small magnifier built in the middle. But there are several other methods.

A second problem is the hardest getting used to. Everything you see in the waist level finder is mirrored, this means when you want your camera to photograph a bit more to the right, you need to move it to the left. That’s weird and even after 2 years I’m still sometimes confused.

The biggest advantage of a waist level finder, is probably its size. You are looking in the exact same measurements at what your film will capture. This allows for very precise framing, adjustment of detail and is just marvelous to look at. I even sometimes just walk around while looking in front of me through the WLF.

It also provides for photography from a different angle, this can be both favorable but it can be a great challenge too. As you can see in the photo above, I wanted to shoot from eye-level, but that’s just not very convenient, so you’ll have to be a bit flexible. In retrospect this technique can be quite handy when taking photographs in a crowd. It raises the camera above the crowd while still allowing you to look through it and frame kinda properly.

I do like waist level finders, but as with everything, there are drawbacks. Once used to the different thinking and acting it’s very fun to find new ways to use this. Feel free to share your experiences with this type of viewfinder, do you hate them, love them,…

Today I had quite a big scare, during a shoot, my Canon EOS 3 stopped shooting and was flashing bc on the lcd on top. As you can’t shoot anymore, you don’t want to see this. but don’t panic instantly, there are a couple of reasons why this can happen.

The most logical and easiest to solve, is because the battery is dead. Just replace it if the blinking message disappears, you’re ok to shoot again.

Another cause could be the contacts between the lens and the body, this is also easily checked, if you remove the lens and you can shoot, just clean the contacts, if not, try another lens. When you can shoot try the lens on another camera if that gives the same error, have it fixed.

If all the above doesn’t work, the problem can be the contacts in the battery compartment, clean them with an pencil eraser, just be careful not to leave any residue in any of the compartments in the camera. Also clean the contacts on the battery, because that turned to be the problem on the new battery I installed today.

If that still doesn’t help try to wedge a piece of paper between the battery and the top part of the battery holder, apparently the new batteries are a tiny bit smaller than the old ones.

The last resort before sending your camera out for repair is, to try and leave the battery out of the camera for a couple of hours, sometimes it just works afterwards again.

Let’s hope this helps some people, as I read that the eos cameras are very prone to dirty contacts between the camera and any other part.