Instant film photography #2

This is one of my favourites from the project. I absolutely adore sunsets & taking photos of them , there is something about them that is so mesmerising & stunning in a way unlike anything else. The colours they create and how different each one is. I took this when I was sat in the car (I wasn't the one driving ha) , I knew I wanted to add a sunset shot to the collection and I loved how dramatic the clouds were surrounding the sunset. Notice the little blue dot directly in the middle of the sun? that's just ink (the ink that creates/develops the photo) I've seen it appear in instant photos taken by other people too , I believe its from where a certain section is blown out.

Again , the idea was that it's spontaneous , I carried my camera everywhere with me so I was prepared for the moment I wanted to quickly snap. And if that moment means I was in a car driving past a sunset , so be it :) 

-Ella-

Instant Photography Project , Photo 1

Maybe it's about time I showed some of my instant work I did for a college project called 'point and shoot' , I briefed the work myself and it  was probably one of my favourite projects to date. Some of you may have seen this before : 

(as it is my blog background image) which shows several of the photos from the collection but I thought I'd do a series of blog posts showing the photos a bit more up close & in detail. So let me know what you think.

Firstly I guess I should start with the first photo I took with my instant camera (Fuji instax wide 210 in case you were wondering what model the camera is)

I was a little nervous about taking my first photo with my instant camera mainly because the viewfinder isn't lined up with the lens meaning what you see isn't exactly how the photo will come out. That's something I learnt to keep in mind more and practice with during the project. To think more about composition knowing if I photograph the subject directly it'll crop a bit off. I was also very excited to use the camera , I had always wanted to use an instant camera , I was eager to see the photo develop in front of my eyes. It seemed like magic. 

I'll give you more information on the project. The idea behind it was to show that you don't need thousands of pounds worth of equipment to take well composed , interesting , story-telling photos. Also that the physical quality of the image doesn't need to have thousands of mega-pixels...also that you don't need to spend hours planning a shoot and that you can literally pick up a camera at the right moment and take a photo to be proud of. I love the idea of spontaneousness & photography going hand in hand.

My first instant shot is of a friend , Mary. The photo was taken in the gorgeous woods of her back garden , the light outside was stunning and I loved the shadows it created , I wanted a pretty relaxed portrait so I didn't think too much about it and pressed the shutter. The first thing that surprised me was how soft focused the photos are that the camera produced , I expected them to be a little more sharp but overall I wasn't too bothered as one of the key points of the project was to shoot with equipment that didn't cost thousands or even hundreds.

Honestly it is SO great watching the photo develop in front of your eyes without spending hours in a darkroom.  And I knew instantly that I was going to love taking more.

-Ella-

Technical Post ; OM-10 Problems

It's been exactly 245 days since I was given my film camera (Olympus OM-10) for Christmas..and less than a year in I've already decided I'd like a new camera. It's a sweet relatively sturdy camera and usually gets the job done , it's better to use with the manual adapter if you want more control over the settings (again , usually). However without the manual adapter the camera itself is aperture priority* so really its more built towards having a little control and even when I have my manual adaptor fully attached I have noticed despite changing the shutter myself , it will ignore that occasionally and pick a shutter for me which is really very inconvenient as I am always using it handheld without a tripod and if I want to take sunset photos (which 80% of my not yet developed roll is) it will lower the shutter right down and ruin the shot, which is greatly annoying as film.is.precious. and not cheap especially if its expired which most of the film I use is.

So I'm still looking to stick with the Olympus OM brand , probably (hopefully) the OM2N or something similar where the camera is fully manual.

Aperture priority ; The photographer picks what aperture and the camera automatically controls the shutter speed to what is 'correct'.

Example of the shutter taking control ^    :(

-Ella-

Roll 7 ~ elderly-esque ?

                            Orlando Roll 7

Camera: Olympus OM-10

Film: Agfa Vista Plus

Bottom two have been converted to B&W

Sorry it's been such a long time since doing a post , It took me a while to get my latest film developed, I got the results back today and despite the fact ASDA suck at scanning photos and just anything photo related at all , I'm pretty chuffed with the results. However I have noticed there seems to be an issue with my camera's shutter which is slightly forgiveable considering it's age. It's also a pretty good excuse to invest in a different 35mm. Thinking about getting the Olympus OM2N so if anyone reading has any experience with that particular camera let me know what it's like.

Anyway...

Anyone that knows me , knows I adore photographing old people and capturing their stories , this latest roll was me doing that but in a slightly different more personal way I guess. I have my own style of photography which I'm quite proud of because it can be a hard thing to achieve. In my case , I love capturing light in different situations ...sunsets, light streaks , light leaks just about anything light related, I love it. I love photo's that tell stories , I love photo's that maybe look a little bit abstract or even just relatively simple (example : the 2nd photo ^ ) and I incorporated that into these 'elderly-esque' photographs. 

The current film I'm using in my camera is from 1988 so fingers crossed I'll get some good results shortly.

-Ella-

Ilford Pan 400 ~ Minimalist Rose

Camera: Olympus OM-10

Film: Ilford Pan 400

Oldies ~ Ilford Pan 400

All of these photographs were taken with a pentax k1000 & Ilford Pan 400 film. The first photograph and the last photograph are actually from my first ever roll of 35mm film which I don't think are too awful considering. All of these were developed/processed by myself. I have just started 'scanning' my old negatives with my DSLR hence the flash backs. Hope you like them! (plenty more to come).

-Ella-

Ilford pan 400

This is one of my favourite black & white shoots so far , although I haven't spent much time using black and white film. After watching a documentry on the photographer Jane Brown yesterday I feel inspired to explore more of B&W.

I developed/processed the film myself and spent hours printing in the darkroom.

Camera: Olympus OM-10

Film: Ilford Pan 400