On Saturday evening’s double header, I shot five rolls of three-year expired 1600 speed color daylight film (A couple of years ago I panicked with the prospect of this film being discontinued by Fuji and I bought half the world's existing supply from a guy in Israel off ebay). And I shot my last four rolls of recently expired Fuji Natura 1600 speed color film (which, as far as I can tell, is the Asian brand name of the same film). I bought 15 rolls of the Natura at the bargain price of $6.20 a roll the last time I as in Hong Kong (www.flickr.com/photos/nocklebeast/5080700016/).
I brought three film cameras with me. My Minolta X-GM with a ridiculous lens attached (www.nocklebeast.blogspot.com/2010/06/ridiculous-lens.html) , and two Leica M-mount rangefinders, a Cosina Voightlander Bessa R3a (which developed a sticky shutter button during the evening, aaaauugh! gawdammit!), and a silver Zeiss Ikon (which has the most dreamy, big bright viewfinder… could it be better than Leica’s? Yup, could be!)
The film was shot. The film was developed and scanned by Bay Photo. I’ve tweaked in software just about every photo here. I added a little bit of micro-contrast (“clarity”) to all of the photos. Many have been cropped. Maybe none of the photos I’ve left “as shot.” I converted a few to black and white. But unlike the warehouse with its fluorescent lighting, I kind of like the mixture of flash and tungsten that lights the Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium (thank gawd! They left the sodium lamps off!) And I stomped on the level curves of most (both in color and in black and white) to increase the macro contrast. So maybe none of the frames are “authentic.” I’ve processed the scanned jpegs a bunch in software.
One thing I didn’t do (Two things). I didn’t smooth out the grain, and I didn’t photo-shop out the scratches in the film. So in that sense, the images are authentically film.
the full flickr set is here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nocklebeast/sets/72157631345470104/
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