Donald Traxler's Poetry: 02/11/22

Friday, February 11, 2022

This Body Is a Friend / ᎯᎠ ᎠᏰᎸ ᎨᏒᎠᏎ ᎤᎾᎵ

My Return to Film Photography - IX

Since the last instalment of this series, I've shot a couple of rolls of Ilford HP5+ in the C33, developed them, and scanned selected negatives. I'm happy with the results, though I'm sure I will do better as I re-familiarize myself with the camera.

I am also re-familiarizing myself with the processing of 120 film. For example, the other night I was opening a roll of exposed film (in the changing bag, of course), and that simple step was made much more difficult because I had not folded under the tongue of the backing paper before licking and sticking the tape. Now I know why I always used to do this. I had a hell of a time, because I couldn't find the right place (or any place) to cut the tape. Under normal conditions (especially now that I have a larger changing bag), I can get the film loaded onto the reel and the reel securely in the tank in ten minutes. This simple omission when I sealed the exposed roll added five minutes and some stress to the process.

Having jury-rigged a long cable release, I shot a lot of nude (but modest) selfies, under controlled conditions. Here is a sample:

This is a tight crop, representing about half the area of the original 6x6cm negative. The main light was a 60-watt quartz halogen indoor flood (not very well directed). I believe the exposure was 1/30 sec. at f5.6.

The Mamiya C33 has no internal metering. My handheld Gossen Scout 2 light meter has a selenium photocell that overestimates modern light sources such as LED and quartz halogen. For this reason, I have to set the meter's ASA/ISO at only 150 when I am using ISO 400 film with these light sources. Outdoors, in sunlight, I would set the meter's ISO normally, but I have less need of a light meter outdoors.

Here is a photo of our dog, Betty:

This was a spur-of-the-moment grab-shot (not easy to do with a TLR on a tripod). I panned and hastily focused. I had to act fast, so I left the exposure settings as they were from the previous shot (1/250 at f5.6, for deep shade). This was open shade, so f8 would have been preferable. HP5 has plenty of latitude, so not a problem. Betty's hair needed brushing, and she had some leaves stuck in her coat, as usual.

Since a regular cable release works just fine with the Mamiya, I decided to do a mirror selfie with the C33 beside me. Again, this is a tight crop, representing a relatively small part of the negative:

For this type of shot, one has to double the distance from the mirror to the camera's film plane. This I did, making the effective distance about nine feet, which I set on the distance scale for the 80mm normal lens. I must have stepped back a bit, though, since the camera seems to be more sharply in focus than I. The exposure was 1/30 at f4, so the lens is quite sharp, even at f4.

Until quite recently, all of my film cameras had maximum apertures of f2.8. Now, though, I have an f1.4 normal lens for the Canon AE-1 (two stops faster). This will make it possible to do some interesting shooting, which I'll share with y'all next time. In the meantime, shoot it with film, if you can!

(to be continued)