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.
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| 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.
|
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| Shot Number 21 |
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| 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.
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| Test Strip 1 ( Top two strips) 18 seconds - 3 seconds |
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| Test Strip 2 ( Two middle strips) 30 seconds - 5 seconds |
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| 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.
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| Final Contact Sheet (Top Half) 11 Seconds |
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| 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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