Figure Study

Final Frames Of Film In 2024

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I was fortunate enough to squeeze in one last photo session in 2024 before the calendar rolled into the new year. It was a very simple session, using a rented studio in downtown Portland and sticking mostly to working with natural light, but it was also one of those times when I have a feeling I’m going to like a lot of the work we did over the course of a few hours.

I’m posting three images on this blog entry from the first, and only, roll I’ve developed so far. I’ve got eight more rolls to process that I’m sure I’ll get to over the months ahead.

Photographed with a Hasselblad 500c/m and Kentmere ISO 400 medium format film.

From a technical perspective, the star player in 2024 for me was absolutely Kentmere ISO 400 black and white film. This is the so-called “budget” black and white film Ilford has been putting out and I have to say it has really surprised me in its quality. It’s almost half the cost per roll as most other film stocks on the market right now and the quality is amazing. All of the images you see here had very strong backlighting and yet it wasn’t difficult at all to soup Kentmere 400 in Rodinal and still retain detail. I plan on working with this film stock for as long as I can find it available. It certainly makes my bank account much happier!

Photographed with a Hasselblad 500c/m and Kentmere ISO 400 medium format film.

My favorite photo sessions are the ones where it feels like I’m hanging out with a friend and talking about life as opposed to working particularly hard. This was one of those times and I can’t help but smile a bit when looking at the images. I had the camera set up on a tripod due to the low light and we’d snap off a frame, talk and laugh about some odd subject for about ten minutes, only to remind each other to get back to work and maybe take another picture every now and then. This can be the best way to make art sometimes. No real pressure to do anything amazing. Just the comfort of good company and faith that your results will be as authentic as possible.

Photographed with a Hasselblad 500c/m and Kentmere ISO 400 medium format film.

I feel oddly optimistic about the upcoming year even though given the state of the world I have no logical reason to be. I plan on diving into some serious long term projects that I’m looking forward to sharing but I’m also not putting a huge amount of pressure on myself to get anything done by a certain arbitrary time table.

We’ll see what happens…

Fujifilm Neopan Acros II: Two In The Studio

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I’ve long been a fan of the black and white film stocks offered by Fujifilm. For many years my staple film stock was Fuji Neopan 400 and I worked with it in nearly every situation in every season of the year. Indoors, outdoors, I could push or pull Neopan 400 to meet any environment I found myself in. That film was discontinued back in 2013 and I still mourn the loss to this very day.

Right now the only black and white film Fujifilm still makes (not counting instax film) is Fuji Neoplan Across II, which is a lovely ISO 100 film that is still quite beautiful and I get excited every time I load it in the camera. Unfortunately at about $13 a roll in medium format at the time I’m writing this, I don’t work with it nearly as often as I’d like.

Photographed with a Hasselblad 500c/m and Fuji Neopan Acros II 120 film.

With the first image, you can see how the film renders using a very crude 500 watt flood light. This is why Fuji Neopan Acros II really shines in my book. Contrast if very heavy, but there is still a wide range of tones present. It’s dramatic with no details lost at all. On the full resolution scan of the image I can zoom in and still make out the details of the model’s skin and hair no problem. It feels as if the image was put on to paper using natural paints or inks as opposed to the silver gelatin of a camera negative.

Photographed with a Hasselblad 500c/m and Fuji Acros II 120 film.

Even with very subdued natural light Neopan Acros II still produces a wide range of tones. Perhaps even more so. Deep shadows slowly transition to bright highlights in the most magical of ways it honestly takes my breath away when I look at it. In short, I just love the results!

This is just one of those film stocks where a scan or even a computer screen will never do it complete justice. Physical prints are just far superior and I’m looking forward to taking both of these negatives into the darkroom to make prints in the very near future.

Panon Widelux Portraits

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I made a quick blog post last month about my early experiences with the Panon Widelux F8. It should come as no surprise at all to anyone that I brought the camera along with me to a session with a live model at my earliest opportunity. I’ll be the first to admit that the Widelux is a camera that didn’t have portraiture in mind when it was designed. It is definitely more suited to landscape work or even street photography. However, the unique design of the swivel lens can yield some incredibly interesting results.

Photographed with a Panon Widelux F8 and Ilford FP4 35mm black and white film.

These images where captured in a natural light studio with me sitting about four feet back from the model. I didn’t even bother using the viewfinder on the camera as it is highly inaccurate at close distances and instead opted to just aim the camera in the right direction as best I could. You can see I accidentally caught a bit of the studio window in the right side of the frame. The ultimately field of view with the Widelux is always just a little longer than I expect it to be; which is kind of cool to be honest.

Photographed with a Panon Widelux F8 and Ilford FP4 35mm black and white film.

The reason the model appears twice in each frame is because about halfway through the camera’s lens travel from one side to the other I moved the Widelux on the tripod to follow the track of the lens with the subject. You can see Jeff Bridges employ this technique in the following YouTube video when he appeared on the Jimmy Kimmel show using his own Widelux camera. It’s a fun way to experiment with the camera and it resulted in more failures than it did usable images for me, but that is perfectly fine. Photography has never been about getting an entire roll of perfect exposures.

Polaroid I-2 and a Hasselblad

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I’ve been a long time fan of making photographs with instant film. Anyone who works with instant film stocks knows it can be a frustrating thing to adore. Over the years the creative community has lost a lot of choices. Everything from the original SX-70 film stocks that could be manipulated while the image was exposing, Type 85 and Type 55 positive/negative film, peel apart pack films from both Polaroid and FujiFilm, the list goes on and on and on. Heck, I even once had the opportunity to work with the massive 20x24 Polaroid camera in a San Francisco studio.

It can be a little sad to think about quite honestly.

Photographed with a Polaroid I-2 and Polaroid 600 black and white film.

It’s a rare event when instant film users get thrown a very serious bone and today’s iteration of Polaroid did just that when they recently released the Polaroid I-2 camera. This post isn’t meant as a review of that camera, there is plenty of that elsewhere on the internet, but in a nutshell for the first time in a long while we have a brand new camera we can buy today with a quality lens and some creative control over exposure. In a very short amount of time it has replaced my trusty vintage Polaroid SX-70 as my instant camera of choice. I never thought I’d be saying that in the year 2024 so hey, good things do happen!

Photographed with a Hasselblad 500c/m and Ilford Delta 120 film.

It is a really common practice for me to expose a few Polaroid prints during photo sessions. I’ll often ask the people I’m working with to hold a pose for just a few more seconds so I can take a snapshot of the scene. Sometimes I’ll give those prints away on the spot to the model. Sometimes I’ll keep them as a quick visual diary of the work I’m doing at the time. Very rarely will I share them on the internet. Instant prints don’t quite have the same power and magic when scanned and shared on a digital screen in my opinion. That’s just part of their charm and power and it is one of the many reasons I like them. Not everything needs to be posted on-line after all.

Still, I thought this was a fun comparison. This isn’t meant as a test to determine which image is better. More of just a reflection that different materials and different mediums can have vastly different vibes and emotions from the same scene.

Large Format 4x5 Film In The Studio

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It feels like it has been quite a while since I’ve worked with 4x5 film. After a recent photo session in the studio I think I intend to change that habit. For anyone who has ever worked with large format film you know that it is a slow moving process. Very slow. Like sloth climbing up a tree slow. But as I get older and the meaning and purpose behind photography changes for me over time, the slow methodical nature of large format film appeals to me more and more.

Photographed with a Calumet 4x5 Camera and Ilford HP5 Large Format Black and White Film.

From a technical perspective this image has a lot of failures. I think there is a bit of a light leak in the 4x5 film back I was using which was made all the worse by the fact that my studio lights were very close to the camera and the model. Either that or there is a light leak in my developing tank. I’m going to have to do some experimenting to figure out which of those two potential problems is true. In addition, when I developed the film my temperatures were a bit high making the final results a bit too contrasty for my taste.

However, for some reason i’m more forgiving of technical errors when it comes to large format photography. The slow methodical nature of the process makes everything feel more organic, including mistakes. I don’t feel as compelled to have perfect results like I normally would with 35mm, digital, or even medium format film.