A Year in Photos

Photography, fiction, and personal essays form my three primary creative outlets. For this blog's first 18 months, I used it primarily for photography. As I've returned to creative writing, I'll use this blog for fiction, too. Sometimes, when reality needs to be discussed more than truth, I write personal essays.

This blog will continue to showcase as many above-average photos as I can muster. Hopefully my written work will be as good or better than the visual. Whichever drew you here -- photographs or fiction, I hope you enjoy both.

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

New Film, Change of Plans

Last Thursday I had to visit Concord, California, for work. And, unsuprisingly, got no photos taken with my FTN and 43-86 combo that I'd taken. So that night I tested out a new film I got -- Ilford P4 400 ISO surveillance Film -- in my Pentax K2. I managed to pick up 450 feet of this film, on a lark, and to take a chance that it might be great. It is. This film has a greater tonal range than I had expect and many of the images are so silver that they look like digital monochrome conversions instead of standard monochrome film shots. Also, this film can apparently be shot at up to ISO 800 or 1,000 and push processed to deliver a low-grain, low-light film. I have three shots to share, two of which are of my dogs. Cope. You'll see more of this film next week as I'll use it exclusively.


Dogs make a great film test subject because if the film performs poorly, the fur will be a much or, at best, out of focus. This film performs superbly well with great detail and no white-space blowouts. Normally, Cheever's muzzle is a big white mash in photos, but in reality he still has some dark hair speckled throughout. This is the first film I've used that captures that without additional post processing.


I had read this film has a low glare propensity. This image would seem to confirm that. The sun is in the lower left and this lens (Pentax-A 28-80) has a tendency to glare.


One final shot, looking through a hollow football.

No comments:

Post a Comment