Thursday, 13 September 2012

36 Hours !


The first assignment '36 Hours', was a big turnaround for me because the assignments that I have had in the past, I had only used a digital camera, whereas in this assignment we were only allowed to use a 35mm film camera. The film camera that I used for this assignment was a Praktica BMS and with that a Fuji NCN 400 asa black and white C-41process film and this was given to me by my tutor due to me having no knowledge on what I had to do. I had never captured images in film so this was a new experience for myself and I now look at the differences between a digital camera and a film camera. Now that I have experimented with a film camera, I want to carry on using film throughout this year on the course to achieve great outcomes of photographs and gain a great knowledge for this type of photography.

The assignment's brief was to take 36 images over the course of 36 hours over the weekend. This happened by taking a picture every hour, depending on how you split your hours up. I split my 36 hours into 12 hours each day throughout Friday, Saturday and Sunday, because otherwise I would have been confused on which frames went with which day. Also I had hours spreading into the evenings, due to having work during the day, but this brought on a great challenge because I didn't have a flash with my film camera and also I didn't have a separate one either.
Shot Number 1

On the Friday, which was the first day that I had ever used a film camera in my life, I experimented around with the aperture and the shutter speeds inside my house so that I would have a rough idea on what settings I have to use within the house and other inside spaces, which use tungsten light. Further on in the day throughout Friday, I had a varied amount of pictures, which were taken inside and outside. The images that I shot outside had the right settings set for the locations through the 12 hours, because my outcome pictures are not under-exposed or over-exposed. I am happy with my outcomes for my first day of the 36-hour assignment, due to the fact that I have never used a film camera before and that all my exposures are all perfect.





Shot Number 21
On the Saturday I had work from 6:30 - 2, so this meant that I had to take one photograph before I went into work and maybe a couple of images when I was on my breaks. This was hard for me because that meant that I had to catch up on a lot more hours of images, but because it was getting relatively dark early in the early evening, this meant I had to double the pictures an hour to catch up to my 12-hour regime. This brought a lot of stress among myself but I had now realised that if I was going to rush through my images the exposures and whole image would not look that professional. It was a very bright day around 3 o'clock and one of the most difficult things about taking a picture when it is very bright is when you have to think very carefully about the end result, because there was a very high chance that the image will look too exposed than it should be. From Saturday, I had some difficulties with camera shake during the day and exposure difficulties, but for the outcome of my images there are a variety of different exposures and focus and camera shake problems. This is a good in the way that I will be able to know what to do in them situations again, by either using a tripod to get rid of the camera shakes and focus. And as well for the too bright exposures, I can always know for the future what aperture it has got to be on so I do not over-expose the photograph that is being taken at the time.

Shot  Number 28




My last day, Sunday I had to work yet again but I was only able to take three images in between at work and on my breaks. This again meant that I had to catch up throughout the day by taking more images every half an hour. But all the outcome of images, they were all mostly different in the way that some are great photographs with perfect exposures and not camera shake,  whereas some had incredible camera shake and a couple were under exposed. I am very happy with my outcomes for this days images because I really now do have a vision and have knowledge of how to approach and have a great attitude towards film photography. 

My aim for this assignment includes all my other small aims within this project, but altogether gaining a new experience was the only aim that I wanted to achieve. I wanted to achieve this aim by experimenting with different apertures, various shutter speeds different locations with different lighting's and many different types of objects altogether that I could photograph. One of my small aims was to keep aware on what was going on around me and if I saw something happening in that special moment and capture it, even if the outcome came out blurry I had still persisted with my aim and gone for it. Another small aim was to take photographs of objects that are not that likely to be noticed without really thinking about. For example taking a picture of some old rusty door that people walk past every day and don't really stop and think if that door has history behind it or really how old is it. I liked this aim because I have tried to capture this within my pictures, because people these days take many things in life for granted and if they really stopped and looked and some smaller and less likely things to come to the eye they might actually appreciate the town that they live in.

The great thing with a film camera is that you can’t see the pictures straight after you have shot them. This gives the experience of learning a lot more about patience when taking a photograph with a film camera and also having an eye for artistic values. I mean by artistic values is the way that I could take a picture of anything and the composition, angle and even the lighting would all match and look professional.  Another great thing about a film camera is that because you cannot see your final outcomes, you would be able to know how I could improve pictures if they have sudden camera shake or even if the exposing of the image is too low or too high. I have now grown a passion for film photography because I love seeing the outcomes of my images when I have had my film developed and I feel a great admiration for myself because I have managed to conquer something that spectacular to me that I wouldn't think I would be able to achieve.

Having my negatives back we then had to start making test sheets for a contact sheet that we would finally have all our overall experience of taking a picture every hour for 36 hours. 
  •  First off, before we started to make the test strips for our contact sheet we had to cut our negatives into six frames at a time so that we could place them into negative sleeves so that they would not be damaged. Negative sleeves are one of the best ways to store negatives because there is a chemical inside them that one protects them and two, it stops the negative from fading.
  • Secondly we had to go to an enlarger and grab a devise that we would put our photo paper and place our negatives down securely by the glass that was attached to the devise and locked it down so there would be no reflective lines or wonky lines on my final outcomes.
  • Once grabbing the devise, we had to cut some strips of photo paper up and start to do test strips with 12 frames at a time on each test strip, to cover more ground. You conquer the test strip by having a wooden board and by how many seconds you hold over one place you move it over to the left/right and then the frame you have just done will have double the seconds than that one you will be doing.
  • With the top line test strip I tested from left to right with 3 seconds each go. Altogether I had done 18 seconds and from right to left the number would be going from 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18 seconds, and the result from left to right it was going from very under-exposed to very over-exposed. My bottom test strip was the same exact procedure as these 12 frames didn't have any over-exposures, they only had under-exposures.
  • With the middle test strip, the procedure was a lot different compared to my other two test strips, this was because I had many over-exposed images, so this meant that they needed to have more time than the other test strips. I did exactly the same procedure with the wooden board and did 5 seconds each time and altogether I had 30 seconds overall. So from right to left the number of seconds were 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30.
  •  After every test strip I had to place it into the developer chemical for 2 minutes and make sure that the chemical had covered all the paper. Next I had to move, with tongs, the paper into the stop chemical for 30 seconds. Then I had to move yet again the paper into the fixer chemical, again with tongs for another 2 minutes. Finally I had to move the paper into the wash to wash off any chemicals that were unwanted.
  • Once that process was finished, I took my prints to the dryer so that I could examine how many seconds overall my final contact sheet would have to go under, to make all the exposures visible and appropriate.
Test Strip 1 ( Top two strips)
18 seconds - 3 seconds
Test Strip 2 ( Two middle strips)
30 seconds - 5 seconds
Test Strip 3 ( Two bottom strips)
18 seconds - 3 seconds

Once I had dried all of my test sheets and had examined all the different gradients on what time would be best and this time was 11 seconds for the whole print. For my final contact sheet, not all 6 film negative slides fitted onto one piece of paper, so I had to work out a solution for this obstacle. My outcome was to have 2 separate bits of contact sheets, that would include one sheet with the top slide and one sheet with the bottom slide. 

For my contact sheet I had to go through all that process of timing, however I didn't have to use the wooden board because I wanted the whole piece of paper 11 seconds. So I let the timer count down, then I placed the first sheet into the developer, but now for 5 minutes because I wanted this to be my final print and I wanted the entire contact sheet to be fully developed. Next I put my sheet into the stop chemical for 30 seconds and then after that into the fixer for another 5 minutes. To make sure that all the chemicals were off my final print I left my contact sheet in the wash for 5 minutes just to be double sure. I then did exactly the same process with my other sheet for my contact print.


Final Contact Sheet (Top Half)
11 Seconds

Final Contact Sheet (Bottom Half)
11 Seconds
Overall my final print came out how I thought that it would be, in the way that I knew that the pictures that were already over-exposed were going to be a little brighter than others and that some of the under-exposed pictures were going to be a little dark, but overall I was very happy with my efforts and achievement for making my final contact sheet and my ever first contact sheet that I have ever developed in the darkroom!

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