The first instameet for the year, and the theme is something different, something fun: Film. (or anything analogue).
Yeah.. totally wanted to bring a wet-plate and make peeps stay still for an hour, and develop pictures on the spot as if it was the 1850’s.
I kid. I kid.
I got myself a lovely Olympus OM-4Ti October last year, which I rarely carry around because I just prefer to carry by digital Olympus PEN E-P5. It’s time for the film camera to be the star and keep my digital camera as the supporting actress.
This instameet felt like a hipster gathering on full throttle; various antique portable imaging devices made their appearance, ranging from small 110 film format to medium formats. It was a refreshing sight, I’d say.
Not trying to be a hipster or anything, but I mostly shoot with traditional B&W film.
There’s just something about the silver grains in traditional B&W film that made me shoot almost exclusively on B&W film. Also, B&W photos are just a lot more dramatic; and the you know what makes B&W more dramatic? DEAD TREES.
Yes, meetup was held at Yoyogi Park, and the trees were mostly leafless. Perfect.
Above are all the participant’s film cameras; taken with my digital camera of course since all the analogues are on the bench. For this outing, I choose to pair my camera with my favourite film: Ilford Film’s HP5+, shot at box speed 400 ISO.
I’ve shot with films before but there’s no way that I can claim myself that I’m good with it. Plus, I only know how to develop with gelatin silver process (which is a fun thing to do and I’ve been contemplating to develop films again at home).
Hence, B&W photo will be the only thing you’ll see here.
Hai of Notes of Nomads; the ever cool dude who organises the instameets that I go to. He has been taking us to awesome places with mad photographic opportunities.
However, there’s a downside of taking pictures with gelatin silver film instead of the popular C-41 process films: it takes a lot of time for the shops to develop it. Usually it takes 1 week, while C-41 takes less than an hour.
However for some weird reason, maybe due to peak season or something, it takes them 3 weeks to develop it. Yes, I was really, really tempted to develop it myself, but meh, I’ll be patient.
I’ll develop my own films in the future. IF ONLY I’M NOT LAZY.
Anyway, here are some of the photos that I managed to capture during the shoot. Some of them will be on my B&W instagram account @flytemono (with crappy instragram compression, of course that would destroy most of the lovely grains).
Not my camera, but it’s something that I would like to get. Soon. Maybe. I need a washing machine first.
As a bonus, here’s a picture of my negative capture setup (also, one of the only 2 colour photos in this post lol). Used my trusted Olympus E-P5 attached with a M.Zuiko 60mm f2.8 Macro. I took 4 shots per exposure at different corners and photomerge them via Lightroom; turning my negative into a digital negative at a whopping 40 megapixels DNG with 12-bit depth. It’s mad enough to preserve the lovely HP5 grains.
Yes, it’s overkill, but many knows me well that I love to properly archive my stuff (and also for future-proofing).
However, if you noticed, I forgot to dust off the dust and lints on the negative; but I’ve decided to leave some of them there for A-E-S-T-H-E-T-I-C purposes.
It was a really fun hangout and I am really looking forward to another film themed outing in the future now.