No, not an Alanis Morissette reference but rather a comment upon the irony of choosing to shoot film as an aesthetic choice and as an alternative to digital only to need to digitise the images to share them to a wider audience. Even creating a book of photographs to be printed requires digitising these days.
Sprocket Rocket teamed with Lomography 800 colour negative film for a riot of abstract colour.
So, to compound the irony, here’s a small selection of recent Sprocket Rocket images that ram home the irony by including the sprocket holes of the 35mm film within the frame! All are scans of the negatives; I use an Epson V550 with Silverfast and NLP software..
Lomography Sprocket Rocket | Lomography 400 Digitized with Epson V550 + Negative Lab Pro v2.1.2 | Digitaliza Home developed in Digibase c41
Sprocket Rocket teamed with Lomography 800 colour negative film for a colourful take on a garage wall
Lomography Sprocket Rocket | Kodak Portra 400. Digitized with Negative Lab Pro v2.1.2. Digibase c41
In my previous post I ended by saying I was off to put some 35mm colour film into a Mamiya RB67. Well, I wasn’t joking so here are the first three scans just to show I’m a man of my word. Once I’ve finished the scanning I will post a full update. A small spoiler though: my first attempt with the RB67 produced 10 negatives, but I managed 13 on the first roll of colour and 14 on the second.
To mark my resurgent interest in instant photography I have set myself an additional daily challenge for August. In addition to the ongoing 365 Challenge I am also making at least one instant photo a day using the instant cameras that I’ve been acquiring from a well-known online auction site. But, it seems that not every day is suitable for instant photography, at least not when you’re still only a tiny way along the learning curve; my SX-70 Sonar for example uses 100 ISO film and needs lots of light or a tripod.
Instax Wide 210 – slightly more forgiving with 800 ISO film
The Lomo’ Instant uses Instax Mini film which is rated at 800 ISO so I thought I would use it for my daily image on 16th. Now, I am already liking the aesthetic from the Lomo Instant – I am amazed at how differently it renders images than say the Instax when they are using the same film stock. One thing however that is becoming very clear is that setting the correct exposure first time is going to come from experience. My Fuji Instax cameras generally do very well in Automatic mode and do it consistently but results from the first pack of film in the Lomo Instant are certainly not consistent and I am already sensing a tendency to underexpose.
Three test shots – Lomo’ Instant and Fuji Instax Mini film
For my first shot I left the camera on the Automatic everything setting and the result was very under exposed so I then shot another at Automatic but with +2EV of compensation set with much better results. For good measure I also shot a third image at +1EV for comparison. The results are shown above. In the end I used the version from the Instax Wide 210 shown at the top of the page for my Daily Instant but I have to say that the Lomo has the potential for much more atmospheric images once I’ve mastered it’s foibles.
To be fair this was not an easy scene on a dull day when it was actually raining but it’s an exercise I can repeat on a brighter day to see what happens in different conditions. I will also put the camera on a tripod and play with an external light meter to see how well the camera settings relate to light meter readings.
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