Thursday, September 5, 2013

Getting Into Film Photography




From 1937 Underwood Universal Portable Typewriter


11 comments:

  1. HAM radio! Could be fun. :-)

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    1. HAM Radio? Well never thought of that but sounds interesting. By the way, thank you for coming here and reading my blog and posting your valuable comment.

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    2. You're welcome! It's always nice to read about other Typospherian lives.

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  2. There are several people in the typosphere who are also into film photography. I see the connections.

    Strikethru (strikethru.net) is now in the Bay Area too. I'm out in Oakland twice a year. Let's aim for a type-in sometime.

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    1. I will be looking forward to your Bay Area/Oakland trip. Kodak had recently reported a resurgence of interest back to film photography and I hope that just like the typewriter, the resurgence is strong enough so that manufacturers have enough business justification to keep providing us the spares, materials for years to come.

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  3. Clocks? We've re-instated our 8-day wind-up clock in the house. And a mechanical watch (also a theme in the Typosphere I think :)
    Alarmclock maybe next, but those bells really do wake you up - not subtle, not at all.

    Great to read your experience with photography. Now almost regretting throwing out a development kit (all metal) almost 20 years ago... then again the chemicals scare me a bit. May try again to get film, Ilford in the UK make 120 film still!

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    1. Hello Robert,

      Thank you for visiting my blog and your valuable comment. Mechanical clocks? I have always been mesmerized by the internal mechanism of the mechanical clock, be the big ones on the clock tower or the Grandfather clock to the small table top ones. The whole system of gears, rotors, weights, and the mainsprings. It is just awesome.

      Regarding film, I would say you can get used stuff like enlarger, trays, timer clock and safe light for much cheaper. I printed my black and white photographs on Ilford photopaper. Ilford safe-light is not available anymore and may be hard to get, especially here in US but a Kodak safelight with "OC" filter should work just as great.

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  4. Hello Rudra, I just found your blog. Nice to see that you are using film. I have a few 35mm cameras and I used them quite a lot about twenty years ago, but sadly, I didn't become a better photographer as a result. So now, I'm planning to learn a little more about correct exposures, apertures, etc, with my digital camera and hopefully, I will get better with film.
    If you're wondering about other analog technology to explore, my first thought would be an automatic or hand-wound wristwatch. I collect them, so that would be my first suggestion.

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    1. Hi Teeritz,
      Thank you for visiting my blog and sharing your thoughts. Hand wound wrist watch? Now that is interesting.

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  5. Another interesting post. Despite the ability to capture and keep so many digital images, I doubt if I will ever catch up the the number of actual keepers I've taken and printed using film and gelatin/silver photographic paper. After four decades of working in darkrooms, from bedrooms to dedicated spaces, and only two in the digital darkroom, I still feel the urge to turn out the lights when I open a package of inkjet photo paper. Thanks to posts like yours I'm going to avoid the urge a bit longer to clear out the space now dedicated to storing my enlargers, trays, developing tanks, safelights, and on and on. It sounds like you are not having any trouble sorting out the analog photography processes, but don't hesitate to ask me any questions. I'm at mindling at comcast dot net. Or, of course, via real mail per the address I placed in another comment on your blog.

    --cheers, and looking forward to your next post,
    Tony

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    1. Hi Tony,
      I find film photography to be more challenging and hence more interesting than digital photography, because it is very much process oriented and that it requires a lot of planning and execution that each session is a complete project as you do not know what will finally appear on the paper :) Plus exposing the negative to the paper for varied time interval and then processing the image in chemicals each time with different a ratio can dramatically enhance the same frame and bring out other subtle features in the photograph that makes film photography so much more interesting.

      I got my tips and hints on film development from photo.net and plus the technical literature available with Kodak. Thank you for offering to help me with film photography, now I know who to contact just in case I have questions :)

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