Color Film in Monochrome

Lately, the trend of cross processing film in chemicals designed for a different type of film has been attracting more and more attention and enthusiastic fans. Usually, color slide film is processed in chemicals meant for color negative film, but it can also be done in the reverse. 

The following photos have been cross processed as well, but with a different twist.

The images were taken on a roll of color 120 film, using a Holga. I was curious about the images and  wanted instant results... so mailing in the film for processing in a professional lab wasn't my first choice. Instead, I developed the film using the materials I already had on hand: instant coffee, soda ash, and pure vitamin C.

Those three ingredients are mixed with distilled water to create a stain developer called caffenol (or more precisely, caffenol-c, since it's the variant with vitamin C for speedier development). Caffenol is normally used to develop black-and-white film. But why not try it with color film as well?

Reflected tree line

To my happy surprise, the film did just fine in the caffenol, and all the images turned out mostly clear... maybe with just a slight haze. I chose to scan the film in color, leaving the color cast just as the scanner read it. It varied a little from one photo to the next, some appearing brown-toned while others have a green, golden, or even eggplant tint.

Harwood Mills

Peeking into a barn

 

Smithfield

I'm sure I'll be processing color film in caffenol again soon!

World Pinhole Day

In celebration of World Pinhole Day this past Sunday, I took a walk around our neighborhood with my trusty Holga WPC (Wideangle Pinhole Camera) in tow. Pinhole photography is an enjoyable challenge in that it takes photography back to its foundations. A pinhole camera is nothing more than a dark box or chamber of some sort (a camera obscura, literally) with a tiny hole in one side and light-sensitive material inside on the opposite side. And that's all you need to capture an image! As impressive as modern advances in technology are, sometimes it's refreshing to go back to the basics.

 The Holga WPC does offer a few conveniences over a bare-bones shoebox or coffee can pinhole camera: it has a shutter mechanism with a cable release and of course the advantage of being able to shoot a roll of film rather than a single image. But the concept is still wonderfully simple: dark box, pinhole, film. No viewfinder, no light meter, no camera settings at all. I enjoyed my walk and eventually decided that these flowers in my neighbors' yard would be my chosen subject. 

I've been warming up to the Holga WPC over the past few months and getting a better sense of the correct exposure times. I'll be ready to share more results soon!

F-Stop Magazine: Optimism

Check out the December 2011 issue of F-Stop magazine here, and don't miss the group exhibit entitled Optimism. I'm excited and honored to have contributed!

Look for the following four photos: 

Direct links to the images in my portfolio:
Sunsoaked
Leafburst
Blossom
Upside Up

The Holga in Naples

A few more Holga images from our favorite city:

The 15th century Porta Capuana, next to Santa Caterina a Formiello and not far from where one of our good friends lives.
Ciao, Gianni!

Piazza Bovio

And a muti-city multiple exposure: I took a photo of the Pantheon in Rome, then forgot to advance the film before I photographed laundry in Naples hanging out to dry from a balcony.

Santa Caterina a Formiello

Santa Caterina. I'm not sure I can put into words exactly what it is about this church and this neighborhood that I find so fascinating. But I'll try. I think it has something to do with its thoroughly Neapolitan character: Raw and real, it has the characteristic grittiness of downtown Naples, combined with the energy of scooters, kids kicking orange soccer balls, outdoor markets, and granita kiosks selling various flavors of snow cones. The church's beautiful interior is reason enough to visit, but there's so much more to see. Perhaps parts of Naples are an acquired taste for travelers... but for me, Santa Caterina gives me the thrill of exploring a well-kept secret, an area often overlooked by visitors.

On one of our walks through Naples, I pulled the Holga out of my purse for a quick photo. In the year that had passed since I saw her last, Santa Caterina had lost none of her charm.

Lomo Smena 35 (ломо Смена 35)

A Russian plastic camera with a plastic lens in a faded cloth case. Mixed Roman and Cyrillic lettering on the camera case. And a set of neatly folded, somewhat yellowed operating instructions, with the serial number of the camera and the production year (1972) hand-written on it. When I picked up the Lomo Smena 35, I didn't know anything about it. But I knew that I found a thrift store gem.

The camera is fully manual: focus, aperture, and shutter speed, conveniently labeled in numbers on the bottom of the lens and corresponding weather icons on the top of the lens. And the shutter and film winding mechanisms are independent of each other, meaning that it'll do double exposures as well as endlessly overlapping panoramas. What more can you ask for?

Detailed instructions explain exactly how to operate all the controls... just not always in perfect English. For example: "With stopping down the lens, the near limit of field depth will approach the camera while the far limit will run away." Although I intuitively understood the meaning of this sentence (small aperture = greater depth of field), it took me reading it several times before I could wrap my mind around the words. But there's something so amusing about imagining the depth of field literally running away from my camera! Just reading the instructions felt like a little adventure.

I loaded the Smena with a roll of color film and, after having set the aperture to f4 on the dial on the front of the camera, I taped a Sepia 2 filter over the lens.

And I was ready to go! An afternoon at First Landing State Park provided ample opportunities to try this fun and funky camera, film, and filter combination.

Through the lens of the Smena: looking up in First Landing State Park. I'm still loving all the bare trees.

windy day

Sand dunes: Fort Story, Virginia Beach.

Taken with my Holga.
Long live plastic!

The Photo Master Mystery

A little while ago, I received a fun little present... and a challenge. Two identical plastic Photo Master cameras. Thank you, Genevieve!

The adorable Photo Master in all its tiny, lovable plastic glory.

I took the two cameras home, took them apart the very same evening, and found that in the pile of plastic and metal camera pieces, I had exactly one working part of each. A few minutes later, I had one (presumably) functional camera and one pile of... let's call them spare parts.

The aftermath.

The Photo Master camera is designed to be used with 127 film, which is hard to find nowadays. So I improvised. In a dark room, I pulled a 35mm film completely out of its canister and cut it free, wound it around a film spool, and attached the end to a second film spool (since I had an extra from the second camera). In the dark, I somehow managed to arrange it all inside the camera, close it, and tape up the sides with electrical tape to protect against light leaks. I was ready to go.

I carried the camera with me to several places, taking a photo or two in each place over the period of several weeks. I had no way of knowing how far to advance the film, so that was a bit of a guessing game.

So... the results from the first roll of film are in, and they are both exciting and mystifying. Exciting because I did manage to capture a few images... which is a victory in itself. But I am mystified by the fact that only a few images showed up on the film, separated by alternating areas of light and shadow. And the photos are all of the same place, even though I shot in several different locations. Hm...

Also interesting is the fact that the shape of one end of the film, which I had cut to a point to help me attach it to the film spool, showed up in a photo (see above). I'm wondering if the film didn't neatly travel from one side of the camera body to the other but somehow ended up in the main compartment. I may have to come up with another way to run film through this camera. I love projects like this: the more nontraditional the setup, the more interesting the photos may turn out. If I'm lucky, hehe. We'll see how the next round goes. I'm loving this!

Old Point Comfort Light

Old Point Comfort Light

Old Point Comfort Light is located at the entrance to Hampton Roads, and at 207 years old, it is the oldest light in service in Chesapeake Bay. It is located on the grounds of Ft. Monroe, although its construction predates the fort by several decades. It is only 58 feet tall, yet its red light still serves to guide ships into the bay to this day.

Quickshot X3000 Lens

When I picked up a lone plastic camera lens from a cluttered basket at a local thrift store, it gave me an idea. I rummaged around some more, found the corresponding camera body (a plastic Quickshot X3000), and purchased them both for 75¢.

Once I got home, I cut away as much of the extra plastic from the lens as I could manage and then held it up to my Nikon SLR camera body to see if I could take photos that way.

The pictures didn't turn out very well at first, and I realized that I needed to get the lens closer to the sensors on my camera. All it took was a few more tweaks to the lens and to my camera settings, and I was happily snapping away, taking milky, soft-focused photos of a few items I found around me.

ceramics on the mantelpiece

two outdated Polaroids

beige wedges

piggy bank

my purse a.k.a. camera bag

lacy shirt

brown heels

pink heels

the purse

the view out the window

Who knew that a broken plastic camera could be so much fun?