Happy Thursday to my fellow companions! Today, I will share the first real challenge of my film photography journey. As you may or may not recall, I started shooting on 35mm in February when I purchased my Olympus PEN EE3. It's a fantastic point-and-shoot camera, which essentially means it functions similarly to a disposable camera. The camera does 90% of the work for you, all the user needs to do is...point and shoot! I firmly believe it is the perfect camera for anyone interested in beginner film photography. It was only $100 on eBay, and it's a half-frame camera, which means you can shoot anywhere from 72 to 75 pictures per roll of film (rolls that would typically allow you to take 36 pictures). It's an insane value, especially when film photography is becoming more of a niche hobby and therefore increasingly expensive. As with anything, there's a downside: I don't have much control over the photos. I've evidenced in a previous blog on the exposure triangle that I have a fairly advanced understanding of the basics of photography. Sometimes I want to be able to use that knowledge and manipulate the settings on my camera.
This led me to take the next step and purchase a Nikon FE film camera body that came with a 50mm lens for $150 on eBay. Solid deal considering it comes with a lens (most of the time you have to buy each separately). The camera arrived during April, and on Friday, April 18th, and Saturday, April 19th, I shot a test roll of Kodak Gold 200 on the camera to ensure everything worked properly. I dropped the roll off for development that Saturday and got my photos back on Monday. It worked! I was able to get 38 pictures because the Nikon FE allows you to shoot on exposure numbers "00" and "0", which are usually reserved for allowing additional room to ensure that your film is loaded properly and to ensure that exposure number 1 is not exposed to sunlight when you load your roll into the camera. Very exciting! Here's some of my favorites from the test roll.
If it worked, then why is this blog about my first challenge? Well, I wouldn't learn until Friday, May 2nd. I dropped off two rolls of film that day from the trip that my beautiful wife and I took to Washington, DC the weekend prior. The first roll was Ilford HP5 black & white film I shot over Friday, April 25th, and Saturday, April 26th. Black & white film has to be hand-developed, so it both costs more and takes longer to get back (both drawbacks are so incredibly worth it, I love this film stock so much). The second roll was Portra 400, my first time shooting Kodak's professional color film stock that people swear by. I shot this roll on Sunday, April 27th, during our Monuments and Memorials bike tour before we returned home. Since color film is typically developed and scanned within a few hours, Will and I were playing DayZ that same Friday afternoon when I received my scans for the roll of Portra 400.
I excitedly opened the transfer link and looked at my photos. It was at that moment that I discovered my new camera has a "light leak", which is something that happens when the back of the camera isn't properly sealed and light leaks through, damaging the film inside by exposing it to outside light. What was even more confusing is that I only received 32 pictures back, which is not something that would happen because of a light leak. I was incredibly confused by both issues because my test roll returned all 38 exposures with no signs of light leakage. I began thinking back on the light conditions and film stock (Kodak Gold, an ISO200 stock) when I shot my test roll over those two days.
Over that weekend, I looked at the photos I got back, researched, thought long and hard, and eventually came up with two hypotheses, one for each issue, as I now believed them to be separate.
1. The light leak
This issue is easy to diagnose, so I was very confident in saying that there is a light leak. I was more interested in why I didn't see it on the first roll. Did I somehow damage the camera? I did bike with it multiple times, after all. I thought back on the lighting conditions of the test roll for each day I used the camera. The first time I used it, I took it on a bike ride along my typical route. I took about 10 photos, and most of them were in or around shade, as there are a ton of trees along this route. No direct and intense exposure to sunlight, certainly not the kind we had on that Sunday morning with nary a cloud in the sky. The second time I used it, Lizzie and I went on a hike at Sweetwater Creek State Park. I had never been, and it seemed like a cool spot, plus they have filmed a bunch of movies there, including a scene from The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 where Katniss and Gale talk at a cool destroyed building along a river. The hike where I took most of our pictures was under the cover of trees, and the camera was used under shade for pretty much every picture. Okay, makes sense. Lesson learned on how to properly test a camera!
2. The 32 exposures issue
This one is much more complicated. A few scans like the ones above that I received were extremely helpful in diagnosing this issue. This confirmed that if I didn't get 38 scans back, it must be because those exposures were completely black. I received a couple of scans like that one back because there was also a light leak on it. I eventually realized that it is likely due to an issue with the shutter. The Nikon FE has a somewhat automatic mode where it chooses the shutter speed based on the amount of light + the ISO of the film stock. I used Kodak Gold 200 for my test roll and Portra 400 for the roll that was messed up, which is another clue. 200ISO film, such as Gold, requires a longer shutter speed to get a properly exposed photo. That, combined with the fact that I wasn't in super bright conditions, meant I never got up to the super fast shutter speeds like 1/1000th of a second. On a bright sunny day in DC, shooting 400ISO film? You bet that meter was probably recommending a 1/1000 shutter speed fairly often. Boom! Epiphany. For whatever reason, that shutter speed is BUSTED.
After coming up with these hypotheses, which were like laws of physics as far as I'm concerned, I reached out to the eBay seller on Sunday to try and seek a refund since I wasn't sure how costly it would be to repair this camera (I still don't know). To my surprise, they responded incredibly quickly and offered a choice between a partial and full refund (not sure who would choose partial here), plus I get to keep the lens, which works perfectly, and the camera. I purchased a certified eBay refurbished Nikon FE body the next day, and it has arrived at my door at the time of this typing (Thursday, May 8th at 12:24 PM Eastern). Wow!! What a quick, easy, and happy resolution! Yet another #TestRollWeekend is on the horizon.
The Wildcard - My Roll of Ilford HP5
After all the dust had settled, I was still eagerly awaiting my scans from the roll of HP5. This film stock is also ISO400, but was taken on rainy days, so I was extremely hopeful that those photos would turn out well. Well, folks, on this past Monday, right as I was arriving for a dinner with the ATL boys, I got the transfer link. I snuck a peek at all the photos before dinner (37 exposures in total!) and was overjoyed with the results. There is some light leakage, but it's nowhere near as consistently present and in most cases it's pretty tasteful. Cheers to more knowledge gained on film photography. Enjoy these photographs!
